The Three Doctors

Dear Gary—

The Three Doctors—can it get any better than this? Well, it could actually. It would have been much better if William Hartnell had been up to an active part rather than consigned to reading lines while trapped in a time eddy.

How magical it could have all been.

Time is not just relative; time is devastating.

“Oh, so you’re my replacements—a dandy and a clown.”

 “I am he and he is me.” Or so the Doctor says. Or is it the Doctor? Jon Pertwee, meet Patrick Troughton. The First Law of Time be damned.

The Time Lords have breached this First Law of Time (which states that a Time Lord cannot meet his previous selves) due to a force equal and opposite to their own emanating from a black hole that is draining their power.

I have a couple of things to say about this, Gary. First, this view of the Time Lords as little more than air traffic controllers is somewhat disappointing. Secondly, it seems “rather too convenient” (Alpha Centaurie didn’t know how apropos he/she was in this remark) that Absolute Laws of Time can so easily be broken. But then, where would Doctor Who be without the ability to so blithely break the Laws it makes up?

It seems there are no dire consequences for this violation; some minor bickering between the two Doctor selves is all that occurs.

“You’ve got no right to be here,” says Doctor Three to Doctor Two.

“I can see you’ve been doing the TARDIS up a bit; I don’t like it,” says Doctor Two.

In steps Doctor One to mediate: “Stop dilly dallying.”

Taking the first Doctor’s advice to heart, Doctor Three rushes out of the TARDIS and is promptly zapped “over the absolute event horizon” with Jo into the antimatter world of the black hole. The second Doctor, meanwhile, is left at UNIT HQ with Benton and a somewhat befuddled Brigadier to deal with the cleverly named “some kind of powerful organism thing.”

Doctor Two decides the best way to deal with this organism thing is to confuse it with senseless information: “I wonder if I have a television set handy.”

“Seems to be your forte Doctor--confusing people.” But the Brigadier won’t stand for confusion. He deals with what is set before him.

“As long as he does the job, he can wear what face he likes.”

The Three Doctors, however, doesn’t merely present us with three faces of the Doctor; it presents us with three distinct faces of Time Lord. We have the all powerful but detached beings who are content to sit back and watch as events unfold represented by our air traffic controllers; we have the ever curious and adventure seeking renegade who stands up to bullies represented by the Doctor(s); and we have the Time Lord gone wrong, represented in this story not by the Master but by Omega.

“A hero . . . I should have been a god!”

Omega: legendary architect of the Time Lord’s power; Omega: long believed dead, trapped in the black hole of his creation; Omega: a hero, not a god.

“Power is the only freedom that I seek; absolute power is absolute freedom.” Omega is quite literally out of his mind; in fact, he is out of his body. Omega has ceased to exist; only his will makes him so.

Omega is a triumph of a character. The inscrutable mask he wears never changes, yet it manages to project profound sadness, loneliness, bitterness, anger, and insanity in turn as the story progresses. The robes he wears, too, are deep, rich, and luxurious. He commands attention with his presence and his voice demands respect.

All of the Time Lords’ power cannot cope with this equal and opposite force Omega. It takes not one but three (or more accurately two and a fraction) Doctors.

The second Doctor soon joins the third in the black hole, bringing UNIT HQ, the Brigadier, and Benton with him for good measure.

“Now see here, Doctor, you have finally gone too far.”

The first Doctor is still confined to the TARDIS screen and can only offer counsel to the other two.  “I always had a great respect for his advice,” the second Doctor says of the first; even confined as he is in this limited role, William Hartnell still manages to exude wisdom.

Patrick Troughton, on the other hand, disarms with his childlike fervor: “Are you sure that you and he are of the same intelligence?”

Meanwhile Jon Pertwee impresses with his elegance and athletic prowess.

“Three of them; I didn’t know when I was well off.”

Three of them.

The Time Lords, for all of their might, can only sit back helplessly; Omega, for all of his might, is trapped in the world of his own creation; the Doctor, with his intelligence, enthusiasm, and flourish finds the way out of this impasse.

“Care for a Jelly Baby?”

No, Jelly Babies are not the solution, it is the recorder actually (both courtesy of Doctor Two), but it is that type of sideways thinking that suits the Doctor(s) so well and allows him to defeat the Daleks, the Cybermen, and any alien the universe throws at him, including Omega (“Mind over antimatter”).

The Brigadier, on the other hand, doesn’t think outside the box, he confronts problems head on, military style: “First we do a reccy; then we mount a surprise attack.”

Never mind that the ‘we’ he is referring to consists of simply himself and Ollis, the unsuspecting game warden who was the first to be whisked up into this world of black hole antimatter. The Brig makes his plans just as if he were commanding a troop of armed and trained soldiers.

The Three Doctors might be what this serial is all about, but the Brigadier is the stand out star.

Having the three (or two and a fraction) Doctors together is a treat; Omega is a triumph; but the rest of the story is rather hit or miss and would have been an overall disappointment if it had not been for the Brig’s priceless commentary throughout.

“It’s quite obvious to me what’s happened; you’ve been monkeying around with that infernal machine of yours.”

Everything is obvious to the Brigadier, and if it is not he makes it so.

And so I will give the last word to the Brig: “As far as I’m concerned, Doctor, one of you is enough—more than enough.”

Three is fine for the odd serial or two, but one will do for the every day. At least the current Doctor has now been given back the secret of time travel by the grateful Time Lords.

And so I send this out, Gary, looking forward to more of Doctor Three and saying a fond last farewell to Doctor One and a ‘till next time’ to Doctor Two . . .