The Highlanders

Episode 1

Hannah: Oh cool, Scotland.
Me: Is that sarcastic?
Hannah: Yes, but I was just being facetious; any place is good. That's an imaginative title, by the way.
Me: As opposed to, say, The Smugglers? Or almost any other Doctor Who title?
Hannah: Oh, I'm not detracting from their boringness. It's just adding to the ranks.

Patrick Troughton's second story, like his first, is entirely missing; it won't be until episode 2 of the next story that we finally get to see him. It can't come soon enough for us, not least because it looks like Hannah is having a little trouble adjusting to the new Doctor.

Hannah: I thought he'd be Hartnell.
Me: No you didn't.
Hannah: No, I was genuinely expecting a white-haired man to step out of the TARDIS. I don't know why.
Me: Well, let's just get through this story and then you can see him properly.
Hannah: I'll get over it. I'm just annoyed that I have to go back to concentrating really hard on the reconstructions after watching the animated episodes last time.

Ben's hope that they've arrived back in time for the 1966 World Cup final is dashed when our heroes narrowly avoid getting bowled over by a stray cannonball.

Hannah: I think they were firing cannons in the port yesterday. I walked out of work and there were sudden bangs and I could see smoke drifting, but it was still daylight so it couldn't have been fireworks.
Me: Really? Sounds dangerous.

Then Jamie turns up, played by future Emmerdale star Frazer Hines. Hannah perks up a little when she hears his name.

Me: What?
Hannah: I know a few companions; it's hard to forget that someone once told me that an historical Scotsman in a kilt, called Jamie, is a companion at some point. I'm hoping that this is the same guy, otherwise it's either going to be a very weird coincidence later on, or I've remembered something very precise that doesn't actually happen.
Me: It wouldn't be the first time.
Hannah: I'm hoping that if he does become a companion, he'll last longer than Katarina; if she was killed off because it was difficult to write a story with a companion from so far back in history that she needs to have everything explained to her all the time, surely Jamie can't fare much better. At least he's from a much more advanced culture, 3000 years closer to the "modern" time, but is that good enough? Can he travel comfortably with Ben and Polly, let alone confront futuristic technology and alien races?

The Doctor reprimands Ben for not knowing his history.

Hannah: I don't know much either. Actually I know nothing at all about this period, so I have no insight on accuracy; I can't even use pretend-knowledge from Braveheart because I only saw that once. I don't even know if that's the right period.
Me: Give or take five hundred years.
Hannah: You see?
Me: We're in 1746, right after the Battle of Culloden.
Hannah: Well there's still bits to mop up, clearly.
Me: Sort of. The Jacobites are fleeing the battlefield after being massacred by the British Government's army.
Hannah: Did you do research for this?
Me: Not exactly. Ten years ago I watched a six-part documentary series about the Highland Clearances called Highlands, because I knew someone who appeared in it and worked as the historical consultant.

Shout-out to Ray Owens (or "the Highlander", as he's professionally known). Meanwhile, the Doctor is adopting a German accent for some reason and introducing himself to the British soldiers as "Doctor von Wer".

Hannah: "Doctor from..."
Me: He's calling himself "Doctor Who".
Hannah: No, he's calling himself "Doctor of Who".
Me: Yes, well, pedantry aside, it's the first time he's ever called himself that.
Hannah: I like it.
Me: Do you really?
Hannah: I like it when it crops up occasionally.
Me: When he calls himself "Doctor Who"?
Hannah: Well, when he gives himself a surname...
Me: You thought it was weird when Peter Cushing did it.
Hannah: Yes, because it's not his actual name. The real Doctor has never called himself "Doctor Who".
Me: He has, just now.
Hannah: Yes, but that was in German.
Me: Oh, okay. So it doesn't count if it's in German?
Hannah: That's right.

The Laird's daughter Kirsty is played by a familiar actress, "familiar" being a relative term in this case.

Me: Look, it's Hannah Gordon.
Hannah: I don't know who that is.
Me: You never watched Watercolour Challenge?
Hannah: No. Have you?
Me: Of course not. Anyway, it was a daytime TV show on Channel 4 that she presented, and she's also the woman who accidentally killed Victor Meldrew in the last episode of One Foot in the Grave.

As the Doctor, Ben and the male Jacobites are led away to Inverness Gaol to await death by hanging, Hannah fixates on Polly's teeth.

Hannah: I like it when the companions make little anachronistic references and then correct themselves, like when she mentions fillings and then realises that they don't have fillings. That's my favourite bit of time-travelling.
Me: Really?
Hannah: No. But it's a part of time-travelling I really like, and I like it when they acknowledge it.
Me: Like in Back to the Future?
Hannah: Exactly. There are so many times that they don't do it, and it's really annoying and they just go on and assume things are the same, but then there are so many other times when they do draw attention to it and I like it.

Episode 2

Me: I don't know if I ought to tell you this.
Hannah: What?
Me: This is the...
Hannah: Worst episode they ever made?
Me: No, this is the last historical.
Hannah: (disappointed) Awww. They really decided that it just wasn't as popular and wasn't worth doing anymore?
Me: Well, there's a myth that the viewing figures for the historicals were significantly lower than the other stories, but that's not really supported by the facts so maybe the producer just wanted to do more monsters instead. Obviously we're still going to get stories set in the past, but this is the last "pure" historical without any aliens or anachronisms except for the presence of the TARDIS crew. Well, there's a two-part story in fifteen years' time, but other than that, this is it; the last one.
Hannah: So the rest of the series is going to be like all the modern ones, where they go back to the past and it always turns out that the ghost or whatever is actually an alien.
Me: I always thought it would be really nice to have at least one "pure historical" episode in the new series; you don't need aliens to make it an engaging story. It would have suited Peter Capaldi particularly well.
Hannah: You can still have plenty of legitimate terror and threat, but I suppose nobody would be that interested in the history stories anymore.
Me: They might feel a bit cheated, yes, but I think it would work, especially considering each modern series usually gets at least one experimental episode and they're usually quite successful. We keep getting the occasional episodes that's almost like that, and it feels like the aliens have been thrown in at the last minute. They occasionally do it in the audio adventures, at least, but I do miss them.
Hannah: Okay. Well, I'll try and cherish it.

She's having a bit of a hard time with the accents, finding Troughton's German accent so vague that she even mistakes it for French at one point.

Hannah: Are any of these actors actually Scottish? Some of the accents are more believable than others.
Me: Some of them are, some aren't. Frazer Hines certainly isn't.

But she's impressed with the resourcefulness of the Doctor's companions.

Hannah: Ben's quite clever, noticing things. Obviously he'll know about tide marks, having been in the Navy. Polly is witty, too. They seem to have a lot more initiative than some previous companions.

The Doctor isn't without initiative either; he disarms and ties up a solicitor, then stuffs a handkerchief into his mouth and comments "I've never seen a silent lawyer before." Then he locks him in a cupboard.

Hannah: This Doctor is so much more calm. Calm and witty.
Me: Calm in what way?
Hannah: He just gets on with it.
Me: Hartnell did that.
Hannah: He would have just spent half the time shouting and calling him a fool.

And that's not the only thing that separates him from Hartnell...

Hannah: Hmmm. Is he going to disguise himself as a washerwoman?
Me: Yep. Just like Mr Toad.
Hannah: Exactly. This Doctor seems to have a clear personality, continuing from his first story; less angry than Hartnell, and perhaps more cunning and ingenious. He's certainly more of a clown, though fortunately not as slapstick as I feared they might push it. Dressing up as a woman, pretending to be German, managing to overpower two men and medically "treat" them with almost no force... his approach to problems is very different, and it's good to see that he's a "whole" person from the start, distinct from Hartnell's Doctor. Peter Cushing's Doctor was too similar whilst being too different at the same time, which was unnerving and annoying, but this new Doctor is setting the trend for all future new Doctors; he's the same in many ways, but with a covering of different mannerisms and thought styles.

Episode 3

Hannah: I like the historicals; it's unfortunate that they decided to stop doing these.

Ben and Jamie are given three options: turn traitor and give evidence as the King's witnesses, be hanged, or sign seven-year contracts as plantation workers in the West Indies.

Hannah: Bananas or death.
Me: What would you do?
Hannah: I'd go off to the colonies. Nah, I'd probably give evidence; I'm not honourable when it comes to my own life. I'll dob someone in if I really have to. All the options involve you never having to go home and speak to anyone you know again. Become a traitor; no one will talk to you, but at least you could go and live in your own country somewhere else.
Me: There's worse things in life than having no one talk to you. It would certainly make taxi rides a lot more bearable.

Polly, Kirsty and the Doctor manage to escape the solicitor's assistant Perkins.

Hannah: He's such a useless, wet character. What are orange wenches?
Me: Wenches who sell oranges. Or possibly the cast of The Only Way is Essex.
Hannah: Incidentally, the Doctor seems to be spending a lot of time as a woman.
Me: You haven't seen anything yet; just wait until you see how Jodie Whittaker plays it.

Then the Doctor decides he's had enough of being pro-active and settles down for a nap instead.

Hannah: He's very unhelpful. But I know what it's like when you just have to go to sleep.
Me: (wearily) I know you do. Frankly I'm astonished that we ever managed to get through the Hartnell era.

Back on the cargo ship, Ben is getting tossed off.

Hannah: Is this the cliffhanger? Is Ben going to die? We've seen his replacement, so maybe he will. Although if Ben can't swim, he's a shit Royal Navy sailor.

Episode 4

Hannah is sad to see the end of the Doctor's transvestism.

Hannah: Disappointing.
Me: What?
Hannah: He's putting his old clothes back on.
Me: It's been two episodes. Do you really want to see him drag up like Bugs Bunny every week?
Hannah: Yes.

What she can't see, because there's no surviving footage, is the fight between the captive Highlanders and the slave traders.

Hannah: I can't make any comments about whether or not the fighting is any good. It saddens me.
Me: Sounds decent, though. It sounds like too much of a scuffle to have looked really staged.
Hannah: I should hope so. I wish we could see things.

She's enjoying the characterisation of the new Doctor, especially when he manages to pull off a cunning ruse to get himself out of trouble.

Hannah: He's a constantly sneaky Doctor. And having a younger actor means that they can do more energetic things, like jump on someone and kill him.
Me: He hasn't killed anyone!
Hannah: He knocked out the guard. There's a lot more energetic and fun things that Hartnell would never have done.

After the slave trader is arrested and taken away ("I like it when the baddie gets caught and not just left behind"), our heroes invite Jamie to come along. "Where are we going?" Jamie asks; Polly's reply isn't very helpful.

Hannah: No! You can't just say "You'll see." What if they go somewhere else and then he says "No, I choose to stay in Scotland. Oh, too late is it? Great." It's not fair!

The Doctor and Ben enter the TARDIS but Jamie hesitates, so Polly takes his hand and leads him in.

Hannah: You can't force him to come with you! She dragged him in by his hand. He agreed to come with them, but he doesn't know where they're going; he thinks they're going over the border or somewhere, but they're going to time-and-space places that they can't come back from. If they'd told him where he's going he might have changed his mind, he's allowed to. You can't just lead him into the TARDIS like that.
Me: It's a shame you already knew about Jamie, because this is one of the few stories where the new companion is genuinely a complete surprise. In their introductory story, a new companion's role usually gets built up so that they're acting like a companion instead of a supporting character long before they end up joining the TARDIS, but Jamie is more of a side character in this one; Kirsty is more the sort of character you would expect to be joining them at the end. He wasn't originally intended to be a companion when the story was being written; he was written into the regular cast at the last minute.
Hannah: Why? Did they fancy having three? Did one of the others want to leave?
Me: I think they just liked him.

This leads to a conversation about one of the show's most controversial companions.

Hannah: When I watched modern Doctor Who, I was captivated by the relationship between the Doctor and his companions. I was young and emotional, and really felt the bond between Rose and the tenth Doctor. I knew other people didn't like it; I was aware that it felt over-the-top to some, and even just wrong if you consider how different the two people are, especially the age difference. But I loved the love. And I like emotional Who.
Me: Hmmm. I like the River Song storyline but there's something horribly unpleasant when it's one of his teenage companions, especially when you consider how insufferably selfish and possessive she became with Tennant after being so great with Eccleston.
Hannah: By watching old Who, I've finally understood the distaste. I know the Doctor is old and intelligent and different, but seeing how he started out, seeing him as an old man, changes my perception of the character. The tenth Doctor is not visually old, and he has the characteristics and mannerisms of a young man, but now I can start to see the gravitas, age and grandness of the man inside. Hartnell is inside there somewhere; Troughton, too. I'm starting to see that more clearly. Tennant's Doctor is like a pinball machine in a cathedral; he's fun and bouncy and sometimes feels uncontrollable, but just beyond that you can see vaulted arches and stained-glass windows. When that juxtaposition of the Doctor revealed itself to me, it made the youthful love drama start to feel awkward and not fitting with the feel of the show. When I get to watching new Who again, it's going to feel so different. I'm not ashamed of liking it the way it was, though. It was moving and exciting to me.

The Score

Hannah: It was quite exciting; I like rebels versus the establishment, and running around in kilts. The accents weren't too bad, and I understood most of what they were saying. Maybe the third episode was a bit slow; all that happened was that they managed to get some weapons and oranges. And I'm annoyed that there's only a couple of women in the whole thing; the Doctor doesn't count. So it's a mixed-up tale of people being sold for slavery whilst the Doctor dresses up and does fun things.
Me: Did it buckle your swash?
Hannah: It did. It was a little bit pirate-y, and a little bit Wind in the Willows...
Me: Only one bit!
Hannah: He dresses up as a washerwoman, I really like it! I like this Doctor, a lot; he's devious, fun and willing to make a small fool of himself. It's hard to judge this one, because there's so much going on that you can't see. It's fun and entertaining, and maybe if I'd been able to see it I would have seen just how fleshed-out it was, but it felt a little bit flat. I'll give it...

7/10