the good old days

“The Three Doctors” is a remarkable Doctor Who story.  The name says why.  The hero’s first three incarnations combine to fight one of the most dangerous forces ever to appear on the show.  And unlike some more recently done galaxy-shattering epics like “Journey’s End,” it is extremely good.

This story is very well plotted.  It begins like many other Doctor Who episodes from the period, setting up a s science fiction mystery plot on Earth.  A gamekeeper recovers a fallen weather balloon carrying a cosmic ray detector and promptly disappears.  (In care you’re wondering, weather balloons really are excellent for doing cosmic ray physics, although these days, the best data come from ground-based Cerenkov telescopes like H.E.S.S. and large area ground detectors like HiRes.)  Investigation of the instruments from the balloon reveal more mysteries when they are brought to the Doctor’s lab.  Then suddenly, a shapeless black antimatter monster appears, along with gel-covered malignant mound creatures, who try to hunt down the doctor.

It turns out that what’s happening is much more serious than earlier alien invasions of Earth.  The Time Lords are under attack as well, and the whole of the universe.  The Time Lords decide that they must break the First Law of Time and send multiple incarnations of the Doctor to the same location to fight this threat.  They have enough energy to send the second Doctor in fully corporeal form, but not quite enough for the first.  After a bit of inter-regenerational humor, the Doctors and several others are teleported away to a desolate world, where their enemy awaits in a strange underground lair.  In the third episode, the enemy is revealed to be Omega, the ancient solar engineer who provided the Time Lords’ original power source.  Thought dead, he was instead trapped in an antimatter world near the singularity of a black hole.  Harnessing the core of the black hole with his mind, he shaped the strangely beautiful gelatinous fortress and its pudding-like inhabitants.  He wants freedom and revenge on the Time Lords, but he can only escape if another Time Lord mind stays behind to maintain his world after his departure.

Omega is a tragic figure in many ways.  He possessed a brilliant mind, but after ages of abandonment, madness consumed him.  He was a prisoner in a pocket universe where he could create anything, but nothing existed except his own creations.  Nothing there was real.  In fact, the turning point of the story comes when the Doctors reveal to Omega that he isn’t real either.  His physical form is long gone, and he exists, like everything else in his domain, only because he believes he exists.  There is no escape for him, not in a conventional sense, but the Doctor’s provide him with a sad substitute for escape.  Having brought a bit of ordinary matter into his antimatter world, they blow the whole place sky high, and Omega perishes along with all his deeds and creations.  (Omega would return in “Arc of Infinity,”  but that villain was a poor imitation of the sad, mad Time Lord of “The Three Doctors.”)

The design work on this story was extremely good.  From the realistic looking scientific equipment carried by the weather balloon to Omega’s fortress, there was clearly thought put into every prop and set.  I wonder whether, since this was a special story, the BBC was willing to spend more on this serial.  The jelly-like blobs on Omega’s servitors and the same blobs that line many of the walls in his maze-like underground den were beautifully done.  Omega himself is clad in garb similar to that worn by the Time Lords, but dull and gray and topped by a huge mask which is supposed to protect him from the black hole’s dangerous emanations.  The mask is high and imposing, but when I look at it closely, I seen an icon that is just as deeply sad as it is threatening.

The special story was the first one shown in Doctor Who’s tenth season.  Why it was shown first, much closer to the program’s ninth anniversary than its tenth, is something of a mystery.  Perhaps the production staff was afraid that if they waited another six month to make the serial, William Hartnell might no longer be able to participate, on account of his failing health.  Or it might have been driven by story-related factors.  “The Three Doctors” marks the major dividing line of the Jon Pertwee era.  At the end of the fourth episode, as a reward for his service, the Time Lords release the Doctor from his imprisonment on Earth.  (This is also the first episode to delve into the Time Lord power structure.  The two most important leaders of Gallifrey–the president of the council and the chancellor–have their titles given for the first time.  But unlike later episodes like “The Invasion of Time” or “Arc of Infinity,” the appearance of the Time Lords doesn’t debase them by reducing them to petty fools, no wiser than mankind.  Producer Barry Letts also made a point to use the same actors who had already appeared as Time Lords in earlier stories, even though the characters were never explicitly said to be the same from serial to serial.  Again, later producers departed from this practice, relying on regeneration to explain why the same actors never reappeared, even when the same Time Lord character would make repeat appearances.)

The only real weak point in this episode is William Hartnell’s extremely small role.  His failing health may have been an important factor in his departure from Doctor Who during the fourth season, and by late 1972, when “The Three Doctors” was filmed, he was too weak for regular acting work.  In the story, by the time the Time Lords think to deploy the first Doctor to aid his compatriots, they have too little energy to transport him completely, so he spends the entire serial trapped in a time vortex.  This means he can communicate with other characters via view screens (on which he is seen seated in a floating deltahedron) but do little else.  Hartnell’s limited dialogue was filmed in advance, with minimal rehearsal.  It was his last acting work, and he died about two years later.

Perhaps because Hartnell could manage only a cameo appearance, it was first established in this episode that the original Doctor was in some sense the wisest.  The second and third Doctors engage in a lot of competetive banter, but Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton couldn’t interact with Hartnell in the same way.  So when the first Doctor instructs his successors, they obey, and the second Doctor explains that he has the greatest respect for the first’s judement.  In order that Hartnell’s Doctor should have a meaninful impact on the plot, he is given the solutions of two major problems that have other regenerations stumped.  That he has the wisdom to see what his other selves cannot becomes the first Doctor’s most important characteristic.  The first Doctor’s more aged appearance and more serious demeanor no doubt also contributed to his taking of this leadership role when the various Doctors are seen together.  Indeed, in “The Five Doctors,” the first incarnation (now played by a lookalike), is the only one who realizes the truth (that the entire Game of Rassilon is a trap) in time to save the universe again.

It had been many years since the only other time I’d watche “The Three Doctors,” and I’d forgotten how good it really was.  Unlike some Doctor Who stories, this is one that I’ll definitely want to watch again.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Classic Nerd Television, Doctor Who. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.