Doctor Who: The
Three Doctors (Story
No. 65/BBC DVD)
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: A+ Episodes: A
While it hasn’t happened recently, past Doctors have been
teaming up for years. These team-ups
were always highly touted and special events in the life of the classic Doctor
Who show. “The Three Doctors” (story no. 65) kicks off the show’s tenth season
and runs four episodes. While the title
suggests equal participation from all three Doctors (William Hartnell, the 1st
Doctor, patrick Troughton, the 2nd, and John Pertwee, the 3rd, and then current
Doctor), only Mr. Troughton and Mr. Pertwee played major roles. Mr. Hartnell was too ill at the time of
filming, so his role had to be scaled back.
Producers taped his sequences at separate studios, then
contrived the story idea of having him trapped within a time eddy to explain
his limited role. Although only in one
scene, and projected onto the TARDIS view screen, Mr. Hartnell’s 1st Doctor
sets his two successors on the right path and settles their squabbling.
A story this big needs a big adversary, and Omega, the
renegade Time Lord provides it. Trapped within and anti-matter universe on the
other side of a black hole, Omega has gone bonkers, and wishes to take vengeance on those he believes wronged
him. Thus he begins draining the life energies from Gallifrey itself; with the
Time Lord’s home world in jeopardy, they break a hallowed rule of time travel
and call forth the current Doctor and his past identities to work together to
thwart Omega.
Along with Jo Grant (Katy Manning) and select members of
UNIT, the two Doctors take the TARDIS through the Black Hole and into the
anti-matter universe. There they
eventually split up, get capture escape, and finally confront and defeat the
mad Time Lord Omega.
The ample extras in this two disc set include
commentaries, interviews, featurettes starring Katy Manning and Stephen Thorne
(Omega), a delightful featurette entitled “Girls, Girls, Girls” that features
interviews with Manning, Caroline John (Liz Shaw), and Louise Jameson (Leela),
episode trailers, and much more. Once
viewers have watched both discs, they’ll appreciate the special nature of this
amazing debut story to the Doctor’s historic 1oth season.
- Scott Pyle
