It’s time to end the Multi-Doctor Catch Up Marathon with the very first multi-Doctor story! The Three Doctors aired to kick off Season 10 (and so fans have taken to call it the 10th Anniversary story, though technically that’s not true…) and saw the return of Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor to assist his successor. Sadly William Hartnell was too ill to actually participate on set so he advises from a “Time Eddy”, or a small plastic triangle in someone’s shed, but hey-ho. At least had an excuse, unlike Tom Baker in the Five Doctors! Add in some early fun Time Lord lore and a cheesy villain it’s a good time in front of the telly. Let’s take a look!
The story actually starts in a very similar way to most Third Doctor Earth-based UNIT stories with strange happenings getting UNIT’s attention as a man disappears when a monitoring device lands on his bird sanctuary. That being said the person who made the device, Doctor Tyler (Rex Robinson), called UNIT in not just due to the disappearance but because he’s been getting strange results from his experiments into cosmic rays, where the stream of light has been getting narrower. The Doctor (Jon Pertwee), Jo Grant (Katy Manning) and The Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) all ponder over Tyler’s latest cosmic ray picture as it seems to have a screaming person inside of it, so while The Doctor and Jo visit and sanctuary to get some readings Tyler is invited to stay at the base… where he promptly vanishes as a strange blob appears (badly realised due to the special effects of the time being too primitive for what was essentially CG-like effects done via overlay…) The goo absorbs Bessie the car as well when The Doctor and Jo arrive so they all head back into the lab, where the two of them plus Sgt. Benton (John Levene) take refuge in the TARDIS. At the same time the Brigadier and the rest of UNIT are being besieged by one-eyed blob creatures (more traditional “men in rubber suits” stuff, though why they make what can on be described as “weird blob noises” I don’t know… as in someone saying into a mic “blobby blob-blob-blob”, not squishy sounds or anything… it’s really off-putting due to how funny it is!)
“I’m sorry Doctor… space… aliens? I don’t buy it.” “Brigadier surely! Our whole organisation is built on-” “No, sorry.” “Argh!!”
We then switch to some Time Lords of Gallifrey for the second time ever on the show. Their power is apparently being drained by the same stream of cosmic rays Tyler was looking at and so in a moment of desperation they send the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) up his own time-stream to assist his future self, laws of time be damned. The two Doctors have a natter (and a bicker!) before their original self (William Hartnell) appears on the screen to calm them down and gets them to think. He’s only on a screen because the Time Lords didn’t have enough energy to fully pull him to the present and he got “stuck in a time eddy”… Shortly after The Third Doctor and Jo get zapped by the bad special effects blob, now identified as anti-matter somehow existing on regular-matter Earth and soon wake up in a familiar looking quarry that is apparently the anti-matter world and are taken to the main base. The Brig, Benton and the Second Doctor eventually board the TARDIS but as they try and “take off” the anti-matter blob transports the whole of UNIT HQ to the anti-matter world, rather than just the TARDIS.
Anti-Matter Blob Creature with an early example of photo-bombing.
It’s here we’re introduced to the big bad of the story: Omega (Stephen Thorne), the man who gave the Time Lords their power to travel in time but who was then left to die, but instead he ended up in the anti-matter universe using purely his will to create a solid surface to stand on, and eventually a whole world. I have to mention here that Mr. Thorne goes full-on super-cheesy villain here, I’m talking would make Skeletor from the classic Heman cartoon blush kind of over-the-top villain performance. It never fails to make me smile but it may take you out of the story, if you don’t enjoy a cheesy villain like I do… anyway, he wants The Doctor to take his place in the anti-matter universe so he can return to the regular one, as if he stopped concentrating on creating his world in order to escape for even a second his matter body would collide with anti-matter and explode. As the Second Doctor arrives Omega is thrilled as the two of them can take his place instead, but as he gets the Doctors to remove his helmet he finds out he no longer has a physical body, instead he is literally just pure will contained in his vague shape holding everything together, he has no actual body to return to the regular universe in, a fact that sends him even more mad than before…
It’s a fun story, again so long as you can take the OTT performance of Omega as it is. Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee make a fantastic double-act and are clearly having a great time, and seeing the Brigadier and Benton deal with the TARDIS and other-universe travel is a nice touch as well. It still feels very Third Doctor era but is also a good celebration of the first 10 years of the show.
The Continuity:
You do have to wonder why exactly Omega is dressed like that… Was that all the rage on ancient Gallifrey?
Without getting too spoilery before the Spoiler section the two big things are related to The Doctor’s exile, which started at the end of the Second Doctor’s final story “The War Games”, and the fact that Omega himself returns in the Fifth Doctor TV story “Arc of Infinity”, as well as its follow-up audio “Omega”. Beyond that there are just a few mentions of old adventures, especially the last time the Second Doctor was involved with UNIT in “The Invasion”.
Overall Thoughts:
The Doctors are asked how they can be the same person again…
“The Three Doctors” manages to be both a really fun Third Doctor UNIT story and a fun multi-Doctor story, with Troughton and Pertwee making for a great double act. The addition of Time Lord lore and the super over-the-top Omega performance only adds to it. If it weren’t for some moments of padding, particularly in the final episode, it would be a five, regardless though I’d happily watch it again!
The two Doctors escape Omega’s fortress and meet back up with all the human characters at UNIT HQ, where they re-enter the TARDIS and have another chat with the First Doctor. The three Doctors together come up with a plan: everything was converted into a safe state when it was brought to the anti-matter world apart from certain things deep within the TARDIS that were protected by its force fields, so all they’d need to do was introduce some regular matter and “boom!”. It means killing Omega, someone they still revere as a hero of their people, but they see it as a mercy given the non-life he’s living. They trick Omega by saying they’re going to stay with him to keep him company for his eons but only if he sends all the humans back, which he does (slowly as each walk through pillar of smoke one by one… they were clearly struggling to fill the last episode’s runtime!)
You’d think the TARDIS would’ve developed non-glass TV screens really… I mean, we have…
After they leave the Second Doctor offers Omega a gift: his recorder that he’d been looking for across the four episodes that had fallen into a space in the TARDIS where it was protected by the conversion. After some back-and-forth Omega knocks the device holding the recorder to the floor and his whole anti-matter world explodes, his floating will with it. Everyone at UNIT is worried until the TARDIS arrives and the two reveal they’re okay, having been able to pop back into the craft before the explosion. The two younger Doctors say their goodbyes as they return to their regular point in time and The Third Doctor rejoices when he realises the Time Lords have restored his knowledge of how to pilot the TARDIS to him and given him back his dematerialisation circuit, meaning his exile is finally over and he’s free to roam time and space again for the first time since he was his previous self. A fun way to end the 10th anniversary!
Hogan Reviews 