The War Games

Dear Gary—

How can I begin this ending? The War Games is the ten part conclusion to the Patrick Troughton era. It marks the departure of both Jamie and Zoe. It is also the last Doctor Who serial in black and white. However, to borrow a line from William Hartnell’s Doctor, “It’s far from being all over.”

 “Lots of impossible things happen when you pass through time,” and The War Games is all about passing through time. Soldiers from various wars in Earth history have been transported out of their own times to simulated wars on an alien planet. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe have landed in the middle of this splintered battlefield and pass from one time zone to another, piecing together the dastardly plot and uniting rebel factions to overthrow their captors.

This puzzle of war torn time zones provides plenty of Doctor Who action over the course of our ten part story and a multitude of juicy roles for the sprawling cast. But it is the final piece that completes not only the picture of The War Games but the journey of Patrick Troughton as the Doctor; it bridges the gaps between Hartnell and Troughton and between Troughton and future incarnations. It provides revelations and beginnings and firsts in this story of closure.

“I was bored.”  Such was the genesis of it all. The Doctor was bored. He was bored with his “immensely civilized” planet and with his own race—for the first time revealed as Time Lords. “With a whole galaxy to explore; millions of planets; eons of time; countless civilizations to meet,” the Doctor wanted to go out and explore and meet. He did not want to just sit back and observe and gather knowledge. He was bored.

Boredom led him to a junkyard on Earth.

William Hartnell’s Doctor was still shaking off the shackles of the Time Lords as he strolled into that foggy London junkyard. He was bored. He was curious. He was on an adventure. But he was not yet completely free of the ‘civilized’ Time Lord mentality. It took Barbara and Ian to gradually knock the binding ties loose.

And so Patrick Troughton’s Doctor can now say, “We must stay here and see what is happening,” when his companions desire to leave this dangerous world behind.

 “It is a fact, Jamie, that I . . . I do tend to get involved in things.”

He stays. He finds out what is going on. He gets involved.

Or as Jamie says, “Whenever there’s any trouble, he’s in it right up to his neck.”

The Doctor finds plenty of trouble in The War Games. He first runs up against the military leaders of the various factions within the war zones. Each one is as sinister as you would expect from any good Doctor Who story. Yet as menacing as they are, these are merely henchmen.

The next layer of villainy is inspired. The War Chief and the Security Chief sit at the center of the puzzle, moving their players around by means of SIDRATs, modified TARDIS machines that have a remote control and dimensional flexibility (although these modifications have the unfortunate effect of shortening the lifespan of the machines). The War Chief is revealed to be a fellow Time Lord renegade. The Doctor has run up against one of his own kind before (the Meddling Monk), but this is the first time that their race is named. This in itself would make a sufficiently dastardly antagonist for the Doctor, but The War Games is more ambitious than that, for we also have the Security Chief.

The Security Chief is not a Time Lord but of some unnamed race of warmongers. The War Chief has come to this hawk-like race with his SIDRATs to aid them in their quest to build a super army. His aspiration is to ultimately take control and become the supreme power in the galaxy. The Security Chief suspects him, leading to further complexities within this fascinating tale.

But The War Games is still not done. The final layer in this wealth of villainy is the War Lord. I have to say, Gary, that I still can’t quite believe that this character is played by Philip Madoc, the same actor who ran around  in The Krotons looking so much like a Kewpie Doll and who would later go on to play the wild eyed Morbius in The Brain of Morbius. The War Lord is a truly sinister character. He brings to my mind the intellectual peasant turned Bolshevik Pasha/Strelnikov from Doctor Zhivago.  One look and you can just feel the cold, dead soul at the center of him.

This trio gives the Doctor more than enough trouble, but it isn’t anything he can’t handle. No, it is the problem of returning all of the displaced soldiers back to their own time and place that stumps him. His TARDIS, as Jamie is so fond of pointing out, is unreliable, and the SIDRATs are coming to the end of their power. This is a job for the Time Lords.

Not only are the Time Lords named in The War Games, but for the first time we are taken to the Doctor’s home planet (although still not identified as Gallifrey) where the Doctor is put on trial for his crime of breaking the Time Lord’s most important law—non-interference; a crime that the Doctor proudly admits.

“While you have been content merely to observe the evil in the galaxy, I have been fighting against it.”

The Time Lords deem the Doctor guilty, but with some justification. This leaves the Time Lords with something of a dilemma. They realize the Doctor has a role to play in fighting evil, but he must be punished. Their judgment: his companions are to be returned to their own time with no memory of their TARDIS adventures (although they are allowed the memory of their first meeting with the Doctor); his appearance is to change; he is to be exiled to Earth; his knowledge of the TARDIS is to be taken from him.

I’ll start with his companions, Jamie and Zoe. I’m glad that the Doctor seems to have gotten over his temporary resentment of Zoe that he displayed in The Space Pirates, and early in The War Games he has a sweet moment with her as he declares, “Oh what a nice and clever girl you are,” and gives her a fatherly kiss on the forehead. And I suppose it is better that both she and Jamie are returned with most of their Doctor memories wiped. It would have been too hard for them to carry on their lives back in their own times otherwise. At least they will always retain that first adventure. (I have gone on long enough, Gary, so I won’t get into how this parting differs from that of Donna which still makes me angry.)

Next his appearance. This marks the end of Patrick Troughton. He has come to the end of his run. We still do not get a name for the process, and it is still not clear exactly what this process is or even if it is normal to a Time Lord. The Doctor does state at one point that Time Lords can live forever “barring accidents” but he does not elaborate. When the Time Lords pass their judgment they say of this aspect of it that he has done it before, but again there is no elaboration. They then proceed to give the Doctor several options to choose from. (Now again, I have rambled on long enough, but I can’t let this pass. Some fans have complained bitterly about the nonchalant way in which Romana regenerates, but clearly the precedent has been set here at the end of the Troughton era.) As the Doctor dismisses each choice the impatient Time Lords declare they will decide for him.

Finally the last two pronouncements. He will be exiled to Earth (which seems to have a bad rap—the Warmongers had chosen humans for their experiments because Mankind is the most vicious of all in their eyes, and now the Time Lords choose Earth because it is the most vulnerable). And his use of the TARDIS will be taken from him.  This sets the stage for the future format of the show.

“You and I know—time is relative, isn’t it?” Time is relative. Past, present, and future. Passing through time. Hartnell, Troughton, and next Pertwee.

You and I know, Gary . . .