Episode 1
As usual, Hannah has absolutely no idea what to expect, so I'm trying to hide my enthusiasm as much as possible. Apparently I'm not doing a very good job.
Hannah: I'm interested to see why you're so excited to show me this.
Me: At the moment I'm just excited to watch anything that isn't The Space Pirates.
Hannah: Oh. I was hoping for something else.
I think I got away with it.
The title card is interspersed with stock footage of World War I, accompanied by the crashing sound of roaring gunfire.
Hannah: That's dramatic; maybe even a little bit too dramatic. Very intense.
The TARDIS crew arrive in the middle of no man's land during World War I.
Hannah: The TARDIS noise has changed slightly. Look at them! This happens so many times; they get out of the TARDIS as soon as they land, and they're already perfectly dressed for what's outside.
Me: You think so? The Doctor doesn't look any different, and Jamie's still got a kilt on.
Hannah: Well, Zoe's wearing a coat for once.
Not only does the location filming look convincing, it's also quite close to home. Well, in a manner of speaking.
Me: It's a Brighton rubbish tip.
Hannah: That's not really close to home.
Me: We go to Brighton for day trips quite often.
Hannah: Yes, and it's a two-hour train journey.
Me: Anyway, this location had just been used for the film version of Oh! What a Lovely War, so the barbed wire and trenches were still in place.
Hannah: Handy. If they're saving money like that, I'm expecting the rest of it to be decent.
Me: We've got a new producer, Derrick Sherwin, so you might start to notice some subtle changes over the next couple of stories.
When the bombs start to fall, the Doctor and his companions are picked up by Lady Jennifer in her military ambulance.
Me: This is the producer's wife, by the way.
Hannah: Where are they going? I would just get back to the TARDIS.
Me: By running out into no man's land? Probably not their best option.
Hannah: Wow. This is one of those episodes where I genuinely feel they could be in danger. You've got no idea with all those electric zappy guns; half the time they're just set to stun, and Jamie always gets shot in the face and nothing ever happens to him.
The ambulance is met by Lieutenant Carstairs, and our heroes are brought back to the field office.
Hannah: You've already told me that there are no straight historical stories anymore, so I'm wondering what's going to happen here.
Me: I knew it was a mistake to tell you that.
Hannah: I'm glad they get to do a period piece again, even if it's always going to be backed by something mysterious from now on. I'd wondered whether they'd ever do World War I, so I was disappointed when you told me that they weren't going to continue with the historicals.
The Doctor and his companions are escorted to the ruthless commanding officer, General Smythe. I explain to Hannah where she's seen the actor Noel Coleman before, with the usual result.
Me: He played a cat priest in an early episode of Red Dwarf.
Hannah: "Cat priest"?
Me: A member of the humanoid cat race.
Hannah: I'm not sure if I remember that.
Me: I suppose that one was a bit of a stretch, considering you didn't recognise Michael Gough or Marius Goring.
General Smythe is known locally as "the Butcher"; cue the obligatory dramatic chord.
Hannah: See, this is how you do it; you have the music punctuating things, rather than just warbling over the space scenes.
Me: Isn't that what Star Trek does?
Hannah: I don't like original Star Trek, I'm just saying I can feel the tension a lot better than in The Space Pirates. The music fits in.
When it becomes apparent that none of the soldiers can remember how long they've been there, Hannah's suspicion begins to take root.
Hannah: Interesting; makes me think this isn't real. And also that fact that it's called "The War Games"; either they're making some kind of commentary on politics and history, or it could literally mean that they're accidentally stuck inside something, like some kind of recreation or tourist attraction, and none of these people are real.
Me: Have you ever seen WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick?
Hannah: No. Doesn't he play noughts and crosses with a computer? And then he realises that it's the actual nuclear computer that controls all the missiles for the country, or something?
Me: Not quite; he makes a computer play noughts and crosses against itself until it decides not to start a nuclear war.
Hannah: Oh, right. Much more plausible.
In record time, Smythe charges our heroes with espionage ("I suppose rushing it through like that doesn't give the Doctor any opportunity to come up with the usual kind of random bollocks lie about where they've come from") and the Doctor is sentenced to execution by firing squad.
Hannah: But the Doctor knows he can't die.
Me: Yes, but the writers and the audience don't know that yet.
Hannah: Well he's already done it once, and if it's something that his species can do, surely he would have been told about it.
Me: The concept of regeneration still hasn't been properly invented yet; they called it a "renewal" last time, and they haven't introduced the idea that it's something that happens whenever he's badly injured. They haven't even established the Time Lords yet.
Hannah: Oh, yeah; at the moment he's just another version of the same Doctor. It's like he got to the end of the tape, and it's flipped over from Side A to Side B.
Me: Besides, Time Lords aren't immortal; he could die before the cells have a chance to regenerate.
Hannah: I suppose he might die if they shoot him too much. Hopefully they'll shoot him just the right amount.
The Doctor is lined up in front of the firing squad, and the episode ends with a gunshot.
Hannah: I really like this. I'm intrigued; I want to know what's going on, why the General is doing this and why he's got a communication monitor thingy in his office. Is it just him? Is anyone else in league with him? So many questions. This is much more threatening and exciting than The Space Pirates.
Me: That's not saying much.
Episode 2
The episodes are split across two DVDs, but by now Hannah knows better than to take the menu screen at face value.
Hannah: Are there five episodes? Or more than five?
Me: There are more than five.
Hannah: Hmm. Well, hopefully it'll be interesting enough to continue this long. You can fit six episodes on a disc, can't you? So there must be at least seven.
Me: There are ten episodes.
Hannah: That's a very long story.
Me: It was originally going to be a six and a four, but both those scripts had problems and there wasn't have much time to replace them, so the incoming script editor teamed up with another writer and put together a ten-part story at short notice.
Hannah: Ah, okay. So it's not necessarily going to be excellent script-writing, if they had to bang it out because they were short of time and had no alternative.
The plot thickens when Jamie meets an 18th century redcoat ("He looks a bit out of his time!"), but then Hannah starts feeling nostalgic all of a sudden.
Hannah: I miss the recorder... occasionally. I wish he'd get that out.
Me: Do you really?
Hannah: Yeah, it was his thing. I'm glad he got rid of the hat, but sometimes I miss the recorder. I liked it, even though it made him obnoxious.
She's jolted out of her reverie when the prison guards shoot down the redshirt... sorry, I mean the redcoat.
Hannah: Aww! I mean, I'm glad it wasn't Jamie, obviously, but the redcoat hadn't done anything.
Me: Yeah, well, that's war for you.
Hannah: I feel sorry for the throwaway redcoat. It's a shame they had to shoot him; I would have liked Jamie to reveal more about his pre-Doctor life.
Zoe gets points from Hannah when she smashes a vase of flowers over the head of a military prison commandant.
Hannah: She's getting violent. Look at the concentration on her face before she does it; it's like she's scientifically considering how to do it.
She's buzzing with excitement when the Doctor discovers the anachronistic monitor in Smythe's office, but the screen remains disappointingly blank.
Hannah: I thought perhaps an alien would appear on the screen.
Me: What, you thought it would be a Sensorite or something?
Hannah: Not necessarily something that we'd seen before, but I was hoping for something that would reveal who's behind it all.
The Doctor and his friends escape through a barrier of mist, only to find themselves being charged by an army of Romans.
Hannah: Haven't I seen that before? Isn't this like the end of the first Dr. Who film?
Me: Not quite.
Hannah: It's a very dramatic cliffhanger. There's a lot of good stuff in this story. It's also bloody weird.
Episode 3
Hannah: I'm wondering how long it's going to take to find out who or what is behind all this strangeness, or who the General really is; it took four episodes to reveal the Cybermen in The Invasion, and that was shorter than this. But how much longer can you keep people interested without revealing your villain?
Me: By the way, this is our fiftieth Doctor Who adventure.
Hannah: Oh, the fiftieth story? Why didn't you say that before?
Me: I didn't think you'd find it interesting. Not that it's ever stopped me before.
Hannah: Of course it's interesting. Fifty stories!
When the Doctor tries to crack a safe, Jamie jokingly suggests picking the lock with a tuning fork.
Hannah: Ha. The writers have actually read the previous story, then.
Me: One of the advantages of being written by the script editor, presumably.
The Doctor tries to convince a German soldier that he's a time traveller by whipping out the sonic screwdriver and giving a demonstration on some screws.
Hannah: That is pretty cool, but it doesn't prove that he's from another or that his story's true; it just means that he's got a piece of technology that this guy's never seen before. As far as he knows it could just be the newest innovation, a new bit of science with slidey bits that he hasn't heard about yet. Screws exist.
Me: Yes, very much so.
Hannah: Wouldn't it be cool if you had a sonic screwdriver dictaphone? You could just whip it out and record things.
The whole area is divided into time zones, representing various wars in human history. When the Doctor and his colleagues arrive in the American Civil War zone, they come under heavy gunfire and Carstairs stays behind so that the others can escape. This act of self-sacrifice doesn't sit too well with Hannah.
Hannah: I don't want Carstairs to die.
The episode concludes with the Doctor and Zoe stepping on board an alien machine, which promptly dematerialises.
Hannah: This is exciting. I want to watch the next one.
Episode 4
The travel machine is bigger on the inside, which raises the question of who else could have space-time machines like the TARDIS.
Hannah: Well, Daleks do. (hesitantly) So do other Time Lords, but...
Meanwhile, back in the American Civil War zone, the Confederate leader turns out to be the same alien who was posing as a German captain in the World War I zone.
Hannah: So they get to go and play general in loads of different sections, then? Why doesn't each sector have its own general?
Me: Maybe they're short-staffed.
Hannah: I was fully expecting this to be another person, but no, they just gave it to the same bloke.
Hannah is pleased to see that the controls for the space-time machine are distinctly otherworldly.
Hannah: Looks like a nifty cool control system; it's weird and completely alien.
Me: They're fridge magnets.
Hannah: Yes, but it's all kinds of shapes instead of numerals and letters. It's a lot more interesting than a load of buttons.
Jamie and Lady Jennifer encounter a group of resistance fighters who have been able to withstand the alien brainwashing that affects the other soldiers.
Hannah: It must be so weird to suddenly wake up and realise you're somewhere else, and there's all this weird stuff happening around you and everyone else believes it's real.
Back at the alien base of operations, the head scientist is giving some students a demonstration of the processing machine.
Hannah: I was expecting that thing to light up. I've got prop disappointment.
Me: What about those glasses that everyone is wearing?
Hannah: They look absolutely ridiculous. Why have they got plus-shaped eyes? They look like clowns.
The Doctor crosses paths with the War Chief, and it's immediately obvious that they recognise each other on sight.
Hannah: Who is the War Chief? I don't want to put forward a guess about him being the Master, because I'm very likely to be wrong. But as far as we know, there are only two races in the universe that have time-and-space technology that also includes being able to create something that's bigger on the inside: the Daleks, and the Doctor's own people. Perhaps it's the Monk from The Time Meddler, and he's become a different man in the same way the Doctor has? Still meddling, but now he's younger, handsome, severe, and cruel. I'm really curious as to what's going on here.
The Doctor and Zoe do a runner, and Zoe runs into an old friend: Lieutenant Carstairs, who has been conditioned to believe she's a German spy and prepares to shoot her.
Me: We're nearly halfway through the story. How are you finding it so far?
Hannah: The whole thing's pretty much excellent.
Episode 5
Thanks to some quick thinking and fast talking, the Doctor gets a crash course in how to reverse the effects of the processing machine.
Hannah: I bet the Doctor's going to rig up some kind of device that transmits the deprogramming signal across the land so that he can "wake" everyone.
Then the Doctor and Carstairs sneak into the Security Room, using the ingenious tactic of "hiding" right next to the doorway as the Security Chief leaves the room.
Hannah: Well that's not very secure, is it? What kind of head of security doesn't look around when he's walking into a corridor?
Zoe explains that the Security Chief used a headset to show her pictures of the resistance members.
Hannah: Did they use one of those toys where you click a button and it shows a slideshow of pretty photographs?
Me: You mean a View-Master?
Hannah: My grandma had one; you could change the cartridges in and out, and then you clicked a button and the disc turned and it showed you different slides, like "The Wonders of the World" or "British Countrysides".
Me: They made a couple of Doctor Who ones in the early eighties, with stills from selected stories.
Hannah: We only had about two sets of pictures, but I used to love playing with it. It was really fun.
Meanwhile, Jamie meets the resistance leader, Russell.
Hannah: Where's he from?
Me: The Boer War.
Hannah: I wrote essays on the Boer War. I didn't enjoy it.
When one of the space-time machines returns to the American Civil War zone, Hannah seems to be getting suspicious.
Hannah: This machine is sounding much more TARDIS-like as time goes on; it didn't sound quite so TARDIS-y to start with, but now it really does.
Me: Well, they've already got a space-time machine sound effect, so why not use it? It's just their standard sound effect.
Hannah: Yeah, I guess it's just a sound effect for time-and-space travel, not the TARDIS in particular. But that's like saying all cars sound the same.
I think I managed to bluff it, but it's all academic anyway because the next scene reveals that the War Chief isn't part of the same race as the other aliens; he's a traitor to his own people, a race that knows the secret of space-time travel. But before Hannah can start unpacking the implications of this, Jamie and the resistance members turn up in one of the machines and are immediately gunned down by the guards.
Hannah: Not again! How many times does Jamie have to get shot? And, as usual, you don't know whether or not they've set the guns to fatal; they're just spraying circles around. I don't want to think that he's died, but I don't see any reason why he shouldn't have done... again. There's only so many times you can avoid death when people are always shooting at you.
Me: Well, you try coming up with nine different cliffhangers.
Hannah: "Shall we shoot Jamie again?" "Yeah, go on."
Episode 6
The episode opens with the Security Chief and the head scientist comparing notes on the War Chief, who is revealed to be a renegade Time Lord. It doesn't look like Hannah has noticed the significance of the name-drop, at least until the end of the scene when she suddenly makes a series of lively high-pitched noises.
Me: Is there a dolphin emergency?
Hannah: Depends whether the dolphins are concerned about the first use of the term "Time Lord".
Me: Oh, you noticed that?
Hannah: Unimportant, clearly.
Remember, all you aspiring writers: foreshadowing is our friend.
Hannah: It's odd that a random Time Lord has gone out and become a part of whatever weird scheme this is. What interest could he have in whatever they're doing? And why are they doing it, anyway? We still don't have the answers to why they're running war simulations.
Me: We're only halfway through! They've got five more episodes to fill yet.
Hannah: I know, but it's exciting that I'm slightly right: he's a Time Lord. I wonder how long we'll have to wait before the Doctor and the War Chief have a conversation. Does the Doctor recognise the War Chief specifically, or does he just recognise him as a fellow Time Lord?
The War Chief is overseeing Jamie's interrogation. (Anyone who's surprised that Jamie is still alive, raise your hand. I didn't think so.)
Hannah: Jamie was just stunned, then.
Me: Don't look so shocked.
Hannah: The War Chief has very intricate facial hair.
Me: I don't suppose you recognise him?
Hannah: Well, I have this horrible feeling that I've seen him in clips before.
Me: I doubt it, but he did have an important role in The Reign of Terror.
Hannah: Oh. I don't remember his face.
Me: I'm not even going to bother asking whether you've ever watched Rentaghost.
Hannah: What?
Me: Never mind.
One of the soldiers is played by a young actor named David Troughton.
Hannah: Is that his son?
Me: One of them, yes. He's already been an extra in The Enemy of the World, and later appears in a Jon Pertwee story and a David Tennant one. His younger brother Michael turns up in the Peter Capaldi era, too.
Hannah: Aw, the Doctor's ripped his trousers!
Me: In all fairness, he has been through a lot. He's literally been in the wars.
Russell and Carstairs take out a couple of guards, with help from Jamie.
Hannah: Why has the fighting gone back to being rubbish again? Jamie's not even touching them! The hand-to-hand combat in this episode has become appalling. And what happened to the expertly-placed music?
To make matters worse, the aliens still seem to be struggling with the concept of peripheral vision.
Hannah: Everyone keeps hiding in plain sight! This is ridiculous.
Thankfully, the fight between Russell and Moor is a lot more convincing.
Me: I think that was pretty good.
Hannah: Yeah, that was alright. Just Jamie that's rubbish, then.
Jamie remarks on the similarities between the space-time machines and the TARDIS, which only serves to fuel Hannah's suspicion ("They keep shoehorning in the references"). The cliffhanger, in which the Doctor, Jamie and Carstairs are trapped inside a rapidly-shrinking travel machine, is met with a mix of excitement and impatient frustration.
Hannah: I still desperately want to know what's going on; why does a group of aliens want a planet full of replica war zones? And now I also want to know why a Time Lord wandered in and started helping them. How did he find them? What does he gain from sharing his knowledge? How long does it take him to get his facial hair so perfect and exact? I want to know everything! How long before I can find out?
Me: What, everything?
Hannah: Everything.
Me: Well, not until episode ten, obviously.
Hannah: Everything important!
Me: The Paul McGann movie.
Hannah: I want to watch another one. I don't think you realise how desperately I want to Google this.
Episode 7
The knock-off TARDISes are finally given a name, which means it's time to open up a can of worms that I've been anticipating for a while now.
Hannah: Did he say "Cybermat"?
Me: It's pronounced "side-rat". S-I-D-R-A-T.
Hannah considers this for a moment.
Hannah: (laughing) Is that TARDIS backwards?
Me: It's what they're called in the script, but this is the only time it's actually used on-screen.
Hannah: Surely it would be pronounced "sid-rat"?
Me: You'd think so, but apparently not.
Hannah: "Space In Dimension Relative And Time". That's just silly.
The War Lord finally arrives at the base, and he's not satisfied with the way the War Chief has been holding the office together during his absence.
Hannah: The War Lord doesn't look as impressive as he was hyped-up to be. The actor is brilliant, the character is sharp and commanding, but for some reason I was expecting someone more visually-striking. Not just someone in a turtleneck and glasses.
Me: He doesn't need a ridiculous flamboyant costume, you can tell he's in charge. He's much more threatening this way.
Hannah: I thought at the very least he would have a gold armband or something, just to distinguish himself as the leader.
Me: Do you recognise him?
Hannah: Give me a clue.
Me: He was in Doctor Who very recently. In fact, it was so recent that he was asked to grow that beard in case the audience recognised him and thought he was playing the same character.
Hannah: Is he the one with the monocle from earlier in this story?
Me: No, he was in The Krotons.
Hannah: It's not our favourite U-boat captain, is it?
Me: Yep, it's Philip Madoc again.
Hannah: They liked him so much that they invited him back within the same series?
Me: Can you blame them? He's incredible.
The Doctor, Jamie and Carstairs find themselves back in the Roman zone, where they find themselves being charged by an army of Romans and we find ourselves with a bad case of déjà vu.
Hannah: It's the same footage! They've re-used the exact same footage from last time.
Me: Yeah, but that was five weeks ago and nobody had a home video recorder.
Hannah: Do these guys just attack anything that randomly turns up? They're all armoured up and ready to charge as soon as you arrive.
The War Lord tells his War Chief and Security Chief to stop bickering and start co-operating. Philip Madoc delivers the threat in a quiet, understated manner, and he's bloody terrifying.
Hannah: He is good. Is he your man-crush?
Me: I don't think I've ever had a man-crush on anyone, but if I did, it would probably be reserved for Dan from Game Grumps. He's just so damn charming.
The Doctor starts dismantling some machinery with his sonic screwdriver.
Hannah: I like it. He's sonic-ing things, just like he does in the new series.
The cliffhanger comes when the Security Chief and his guards raid the resistance base in a SIDRAT and snatch the Doctor.
Hannah: The Doctor does make a lot of fuss, doesn't he?
Me: He's being abducted by alien warlords; I think he's allowed to protest.
Hannah: Why didn't the resistance soldiers fire at them when they arrived? They heard the machine coming, they got themselves ready to shoot anyone who came out, and then they didn't do anything!
As the closing credits roll, Hannah still has something on her mind and she can't let it go.
Hannah: I still can't believe they called it a SIDRAT; it's an absolutely abominable name.
Episode 8
In a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, the cliffhanger reprise has taken some liberties with the events of the previous episode.
Hannah: That's been re-filmed; the resistance didn't shoot last time! It's like Star Wars; they've just decided to go back and change what actually happened. They didn't even fire their weapons the first time around.
Back at the alien base, the Doctor is met by a welcoming committee of armed guards.
Hannah: Now that I can see ones of those guards properly, up close... it looks like they're wearing shorts underneath their gimp suits.
Me: It's probably the actor's underwear.
Hannah: Oh, yeah. I always forget about boxers.
The War Chief takes the Doctor away for a private reunion.
Hannah: Are we getting back story?
After fifty adventures, the truth about the Doctor is finally revealed: he's a renegade Time Lord who stole a TARDIS and absconded from his own people.
Hannah: I'm so excited that the Doctor and the War Chief finally got to have their little chat. So the Doctor's a thief and a runaway? Not just an old wanderer. Maybe it's supposed to make you question his morality by introducing some doubt about the real reasons behind his constant travelling and all his decisions. And now that we know the SIDRATs are just dodgy TARDISes created by the War Chief, I'm wondering if the Doctor will steal some bits and pieces so that he can fix his own TARDIS.
Me: What do you think of the aliens' plan to create an army of human soldiers from various time periods up to 1917 and set them against all the planets in the galaxy? Can you imagine their army coping against a horde of Daleks?
Hannah: Nah, they're just going to be cannon fodder. And these are supposed to be the worst wars in human history? Was the Battle of Culloden particularly brutal compared to, say, the Boer War?
Me: It only lasted about an hour, but it was extremely brutal.
Hannah: Well, exactly. How can you have an entire zone that only lasts for an hour? It may have been a nasty fight, but it wasn't actually a war.
Me: Nobody's mentioned a Culloden zone yet anyway, and it's not on the map; all we've seen is that one random redcoat. Maybe the aliens have closed off that zone, like a ride at Alton Towers.
Hannah: It's like he turned up just to give Jamie something interesting to do, even though it doesn't fit in with the grand scheme of things.
The War Chief tries to convince the Doctor to join him, and the Doctor agrees to co-operate. The War Lord gives his consent, but promises that failure will mean death for both of them.
Hannah: Why does it never mean cake?
After this slightly esoteric Eddie Izzard reference, she becomes so engrossed in the story that she lapses into a captivated silence. Which is all well and good, but I'm the one who's going to have to write up the blog later. I try to get the conversation ball rolling by pointing out that the word "TARDIS" is now being used as a generic term for any Time Lord time-travel machine, despite Susan's claim in the first ever episode that she invented the name.
Hannah: So we're pretending she never said that? Maybe she was lying to show off. Or maybe she coined the term on their home planet.
Me: What, and it just caught on? It went viral?
Hannah: Maybe she was part of the design team. Why not? I'm assuming she was on the home planet at some point, and she wasn't born on the run. Otherwise, where's her mother?
Me: Maybe she got dumped on a war-torn planet as well.
Hannah: For all we know, Susan could have come out of an egg. Maybe Time Lords hatch out of eggs.
Me: Well, some novels claim that Time Lords reproduce by weaving new adults from looms.
Hannah: What, woven from the fabric of space-time?
Me: Something like that.
Hannah: Interesting.
Me: If you say so.
The episode concludes with Jamie, Zoe and the resistance leaders arriving at the alien base in a SIDRAT, only to walk into an ambush when the Doctor turns them over to the War Chief.
Hannah: They must feel horrible.
Me: Do you think the Doctor has turned against them?
Hannah: Obviously he's got a plan. But it must be horrible for them to feel betrayed by the person they trust more than anything, and the Doctor must feel horrible for making them feel like that.
Episode 9
The Doctor tries to use flattery to convince the War Lord that he's switched sides; the War Lord remarks that the Doctor has a silver tongue.
Hannah: And a brown nose. He doesn't believe him though, does he?
The Doctor finally gets a chance to explain the situation to his imprisoned friends.
Hannah: What happened to the guards who were standing in the background at the beginning of the scene? Have they managed to overpower the guards in the confusion, or are they just standing in the room while the Doctor explains his plan?
Me: Maybe the Security Chief paged them?
There's just the question of how to return all the abducted humans back to their own time periods.
Me: It's all very well sending everyone back to their own time, but they're just going to end up getting killed in the real wars instead.
Hannah: Yes, but if you weren't sending them home, where would you put them?
Me: You could just leave them on that planet to live in harmony for the rest of their lives.
Hannah: They've got no infrastructure, no farms, nothing. They don't have mills to make their clothes, or factories producing tins of Spam.
The Doctor realises that he's out of his depth, so after all this time he's finally forced to ask his own people for help.
Hannah: But there have been so many times where they've almost died, and he's never bothered contacting them before.
Me: He's been on the run from them ever since the series started; he's only sending for help now because he can't get everyone home.
Hannah: What's he doing? He's done a little bit of meditation, and now he's made a cube.
Me: It's a message cube. There's a Matt Smith episode where he receives a Time Lord message in the same way.
Hannah: I love that; it's really cool idea for a piece of Time Lord technology, and it's all very deep and mysterious when the Doctor does telepathic stuff.
The War Chief isn't too keen on facing the wrath of the Time Lords either, but it's a moot point because he ends up getting shot down for conspiring against the War Lord.
Me: So what do you think of the War Chief?
Hannah: What about him?
Me: Do you think he's the Master?
Hannah: No idea. I mean, why not?
Me: Well, he's dead, for one thing.
Hannah: He's dead-ish, but he's a Time Lord so he can always come back again. He has a thirst for power and subterfuge, so he could actually be the Master and they just don't use his name yet; there might be a reference to him in the next episode, or it might be that we meet him a second time and then they give him the name. Or he could be an inspiration for the Master; we've already met the Monk, so why not have another random Time Lord and then the Master later? And then, later on, they decide that he's a character that they would like to re-visit and they end up developing the Master.
Me: Do you want me to tell you?
Hannah: No. I want there to be a surprise when he next turns up, or doesn't turn up.
The episode ends with the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe making a desperate run for the TARDIS as they try to escape the Time Lords.
Hannah: I like the grand church organ music as the Time Lord motif, because I know what they look like in modern Who; they're all big collars and cloaks. Just like a War Lord should look.
I ask Hannah what she thinks of these recent developments.
Hannah: I really like finding out about the Doctor's life and his past. I know literally nothing about where he came from, what he did, or why he's running away, and I'm happy that this story is finally giving us some background by introducing his species and giving him a reason for why he's wandering around. It's so, so exciting for me, I don't think you understand.
Me: Some would argue that it was more interesting when he was all mysterious and we didn't know anything about his background, and that it spoils it when you start filling in the backstory.
Hannah: I understand what they mean, but you can get bored of that. Until now there was nothing that really made him stand out, other than the fact that he changed his face once.
Me: Yeah, a trivial little thing like that.
Hannah: The novelty loses its shine after a while; adding more details brings the intrigue back again. Besides, I'm incredibly nosey and curious and I want to know everything.
Episode 10
Hannah: I'm excited to finish this, but I'm sad that it's ending.
Desperate to escape the Time Lords, the Doctor drops the TARDIS into the sea.
Hannah: Did they use this clip for... the other thing?
Me: Yes, this footage has been recycled from the opening of Fury from the Deep.
The Time Lords break down the TARDIS defences and water starts leaking into the console room, but the Doctor is optimistic about his chances of steering it somewhere else.
Hannah: Well, he can't. He's never been able to get anyone anywhere.
Having established that the ship is no longer air-tight, the Doctor decides to escape to safety... by materialising in deep space. No, it doesn't make any sense; just go with it.
Hannah: Are they surrounded by web?
Me: Yep, that's recycled footage from The Web of Fear.
Hannah: I thought so. They really struggle to stretch out the budget when they've got ten episodes to fill.
The Time Lords eventually catch up with the Doctor and bring him home.
Hannah: At least maybe he can get the TARDIS fixed whilst he's there.
Me: You reckon he's going to get some mechanics to take a look at it?
Hannah: Why not? Although I'm still not sure whether it's broken or he's just really bad at flying it.
Our heroes arrive on the Doctor's home planet just in time to see the War Lord stand trial before a Time Lord tribunal.
Me: Do you recognise...
Hannah: The one on the left?
Me: No, the one in the middle. Why, who's the one on the left?
Hannah: No idea.
Me: That's Trevor Martin; he played the Doctor in a stage play called Seven Keys to Doomsday in 1973, along with Wendy Padbury. Oh, and Simon Jones was in it too, a few years before he became Arthur Dent.
Hannah: What about the person in the middle?
Me: The one in the middle is Bernard Horsfall; he played Gulliver in The Mind Robber.
Hannah: I don't remember him being so blonde.
Me: That's because he wasn't.
The Time Lords turn out to be pretty reasonable, all things considered. Having said that, they're not above using telepathic torture when the War Lord refuses to speak.
Hannah: So, Time Lords can burn your brain with their eyes. Why don't they do that anymore?
Meanwhile some technicians are examining the Doctor's TARDIS, much to Hannah's delight ("He actually does have mechanics!"), but her hopes are dashed once again when the War Lord's guards turn up, gatecrash the trial and hijack the TARDIS.
Hannah: Awww! They just shot a couple of unarmed men! That's not fair. The Doctor's never going to get his TARDIS fixed! How did they have the co-ordinates to get there, unless the War Chief is still alive?
Once the Time Lords have dealt with the incursion and erased the War Lord from history, it's the Doctor's turn to stand trial. He begins his defence by recapping some of the monsters he's fought, starting with the Quarks.
Hannah: Why would he start with them? And why is he talking about the Quarks and the Yeti, rather than the Dominators and the Great Intelligence? He should be talking about the actual evil beings, not the robots that were being controlled by them. It's like showing them a microwave and saying that someone cooked a poisoned meal in it. And he keeps talking about how everyone tried to invade Earth; surely at some point they're going to say, "You really like this earth, don't you, Doctor? What is it about you and Earth?"
Let's talk about Time Lord architecture.
Hannah: Oh, of course, every big important building has random pits of dry ice and flypaper hanging around. Looks perfectly normal. Why have they got so many little lights on sticks everywhere?
While the Time Lords consider their verdict, they prepare to return Jamie and Zoe to their own time periods. Even worse, their memories will be altered so that they only remember their first adventure with the Doctor.
Hannah: I don't want them to go! So they're being sent back to the moment when they made the decision to leave with him, and then they make the other choice and stay behind?
Me: More or less. So Jamie will remember everything that happened in The Highlanders and Zoe will remember everything that happened in The Wheel in Space, but that's it.
Hannah: But Jamie's got no friends and family anymore, because they all sailed off in a boat at the end of the story.
Me: The worst part is that he won't even remember Zoe.
Hannah: Taking away their memories is just mean. They don't get a say in whether they want to go back to their own time, they have to say goodbye to the Doctor and to each other, and then they're thrown back into their own lives with their memories wiped, which feels really invasive... it's their brain, why can't they just agree to not talk about it? It doesn't feel fair.
Me: I suppose the Time Lords aren't happy with the idea of Jamie knowing all about hovercrafts and neutron bombs and things.
Hannah: Yeah, I suppose. And then he would start inventing all this random weird stuff, and we'd get a Scottish Da Vinci in the 1700s.
Me: Well, I don't know about that...
Hannah: He'd probably be scribbling all this random stuff down and saying "I saw it, it's weird stuff but I'm sure it would work."
The Time Lords have reached their verdict: the Doctor will be exiled to 20th century Earth, without the use of his TARDIS. Oh, and he'll be forced to change his appearance again.
Hannah: NO!
The story ends with Patrick Troughton pulling faces at the camera as the Doctor begins to change.
Hannah: He is silly. So does this count as a regeneration or not?
When the credits are over, there's a tense silence.
Me: Well, we've finished the 1960s.
Hannah: (sullenly) I don't want to watch it anymore.
Me: I've spent the last year waiting for you to see that one, but it was worth it.
Hannah: I'm genuinely annoyed!
Me: Why?
Hannah: Because I really like Troughton. The Doctor's had his only friends taken away from him and then he's basically being sent to Earth as a prisoner.
Me: Well, obviously the real reason is that the new producer wanted to save money by leaving him on 20th century Earth for a while.
Hannah: Is that really what it is? That they were overspending? But surely the ratings were high enough to justify it?
Me: No, the ratings were in a lot of trouble at this point.
Hannah: What about after this story went out? Surely that would have been really exciting for people? This story made me feel so many emotions; I genuinely enjoyed it for so many reasons, and I'm legitimately upset and annoyed that my Doctor has been taken away from me. And it's not just his face that's changed, it's his whole personality; they might as well have just killed him. That's not a very nice punishment.
Me: It does seem a little harsh in hindsight, but they still haven't nailed down the rules of regeneration yet. It wasn't really interpreted as an execution at the time.
Hannah: I'd say that one doesn't count.
The Score
Hannah: I genuinely thought he'd be around a little longer.
Me: He was there almost as long as Hartnell.
Hannah: Yeah, but I wanted him to be there a lot longer. I really, really like him, probably more than any of the other ones I've seen. He's so fun, and I'm glad he got to go out with one of the best stories I've seen in the entire programme. Even though the last episode is completely different to all the rest, all parts of it are just as good as each other; the war games bit is amazing and then the Time Lord bit is amazing... I don't really think there are other words to use. I love Time Lord stuff. All these massive secrets; they can use telepathy and turn force fields on with their minds, and you realise that this bumbling old man who wanders around the universe is from the same race of people who can turn force fields on with their minds and zap you in the brain. It just paints the Doctor in a new light, and I'm sad now that we're not going to see any of that because he's just going to be stuck on 20th century Earth and unable to go anywhere.
Me: Did you think it was too long?
Hannah: It does feel like it needed ten episodes, because each episode went somewhere and added something to it. At no point during these past ten episode have I been bored; there was a lot of going round in circles and ending up in the same place, but it was all necessary because it all advances the plot in some way.
Me: It's quite a journey; you start off in a World War I trench, and it ends like that.
Hannah: Yeah. The Doctor having his face ripped off. I really hope that Carstairs found Lady Jennifer. But they probably would have been sent back to wherever they were in their normal time, and they wouldn't remember each other. And they'd probably die anyway.
Me: Yeah, probably. So do you want to score it?
Hannah: Well, what can I give it? I don't see how I could possibly not give it...
10/10
Hannah: Thank you for sharing this with me. Because I would never have seen this without you.
A few days later, just for good measure, I decided to push my luck and introduce Hannah to the world of Doctor Who fan films.
The DVD release of The War Games contains footage from a fan video project called Devious, produced during the 1990s when fans were so desperate for new Doctor Who that they felt compelled to start making it themselves. The net result is essentially fan fiction on video, albeit with the occasional returning companion. This particular film stars a transitional version of the Doctor, caught halfway between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee, and played by an actor who looks a bit like each of them; it also has the distinction of featuring an appearance by Jon Pertwee in his last recorded performance as the Doctor.
The DVD footage only lasts twelve minutes, so I thought it might be a good way to introduce Hannah to the concept of fan films without having to do anything drastic, like having to sit through a whole one myself. It was a mixed bag of experiences.
Me: Oh look, the title sequence is halfway between the two eras as well. It's like a mix between the Troughton design and the Pertwee colour scheme.
Hannah: It makes me feel sick.
First we get a confusingly-edited montage of quick-cut action sequences, which is presumably intended to summarise the adventures of the two-and-a-halfth Doctor.
Hannah: It looks like somebody's A-level project, but at least they had enough money to do some decent effects.
Me: This was the nineties, remember. There was only so much you could do on home equipment back then; my university roommate made a short film for his degree in 2007, and it looked like a Hollywood blockbuster compared with this.
Hannah: I can't follow this story.
Me: I really wouldn't bother.
Then we're dropped straight into the final scene, and Hannah is speechless for the first time in her Doctor Who career.
Hannah: It's just... these guys must be really good actors, but the direction is so bad!
Jon Pertwee shows up to give the interim Doctor some career advice.
Hannah: Why did he agree to be in such a piece of crap? Also, I take it back; this new Doctor is not a good actor. His facial expressions are unbelievable, and the way he delivers his lines is even more unbelievable. I liked it when he hit his head, though; that's a nice Doctor-y touch, it's like a proper Doctor Who touch. So they didn't want to make Jon Pertwee look like his younger self, then?
Me: How much money do you think they've got?
Hannah: What, we're just supposed to pretend that he looks he did when he first appeared?
Me: They would have needed to make him look 25 years younger. Besides, what's one more implausibility at a time like this?
After some classic Pertwee gurning ("Yay, he's doing his crossy-eye thing!") we segue into the opening of Pertwee's first episode and the footage more or less ends.
Hannah: Well, that was... hmmm. I mean, it's interesting that these things exist, and that people were able to fill their time when there was a lack of Doctor Who.
Me: Keeps them off the streets, I suppose.
Hannah: No, what I meant was that it's good to see people using their imaginations and, y'know, some skill, but it just feels like... what's the point? Do people really, really like it? Do they really like these things and eagerly seek them out so they can watch them?
Me: Not really, they were just starved of new TV content.
Hannah: Why else would you put up with such a limited production level? Surely it's better to have no Doctor Who than absolutely shite Doctor Who?
Me: Same reason people write fan fiction, I suppose.
Hannah: I know, and I do read it, but I only read the good stuff; if I want to kill someone after one page, I stop reading it. And this is the one that was good enough to actually attract Pertwee to appear in it? You think he was desperate for work?
Me: I don't know, maybe he just fancied doing it.
Hannah: He feels like a golden nugget in a bowl of turd. The people who made it must have been out of their minds with amazement that he agreed to do it, and that they could have a real Doctor Who in their film.
Me: There's a commentary track from the creators, if you're interested.
Hannah: I'm alright, thanks.
I ask her to sum up.
Hannah: Well. It was curious. It's the kind of thing everyone would like to be involved in, but really, you need a lot more skill to make something worth watching. I'm glad we didn't watch it all. I mean, I'm not saying I could do any better; good on them for trying, good on them for getting Pertwee, but... I do hope they have day jobs.
