A mysterious power emanating from a black hole threatens to overwhelm our universe, with even the Time Lords powerless to stand against it. In desperation, they recruit the first three incarnations of the Doctor with a special mission: locate the source of the danger and eliminate it.
In 1973, Doctor Who turned ten years old. The BBC was determined to celebrate the show's longevity, and the production team decided to create a story where the three Doctors - William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee - joined forces to face down a mutual threat. Producer/showrunner Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks also decided it was long past time to end the Doctor's exile on Earth. The format had succeeded in freshening up the show, but was also becoming limiting in the kinds of stories that could be told.
Slightly oddly, they decided to lead the season with the anniversary story, although airing in January 1973 made it closer to the ninth anniversary than the tenth (in fact, the first story of Season 11, airing in December 1973, was actually closer to the date). The Three Doctor is the first "multi-Doctor special," a concept that a lot of fans and creatives on the show love, and one that a lot hate (most famously, Russell T. Davies and Peter Capaldi). These stories, although still in canon, are generally an excuse for knockabout fun rather than doing anything too serious, and so it proves here.
That said, the story should really be called The Two-and-a-Bit Doctors, as William Hartnell was rather unwell at the time and found it difficult to stand and remember his lines, so is limited to pre-recorded VT footage on the TARDIS and Gallifrey scanners. This is a shame, but his warmth and irascible wit still comes through nicely in what would turn out to be his swansong (he passed away in 1975). The story itself becomes the Troughton-and-Pertwee Double Act and it is splendid, the two veteran actors sparking off one another with aplomb. The script also gives Jo Grant, Sergeant Benton and the Brigadier a lot to do, so the Doctors don't overwhelm proceedings. There are some superb visuals, with the entirety of UNIT headquarters sucked into a black hole, and some effective location filming in the inevitable quarry location. The monsters for this story - the Gel Guards - are both deeply stupid and highly prescient, acting as early predecessors to British television icon/nightmare from hell, Mr. Blobby.
Stephen Thorne is certainly...enthusiastic as long-missing Time Lord stellar engineer Omega (here not looking quite so much like a giant skeleton demon thing, as he was inexplicably portrayed in New Who's fifteenth series), but doesn't give a lot of nuance to his performance. I get the impression his mask was confining so he has to yell his lines rather than act them. But it does add to the "expensive panto" feeling of proceedings. The script has some great lines, and it's so much fun seeing Troughton and Pertwee joining forces you can forgive the slightness of it all. The story's biggest weakness is that the Brigadier acts like a total military dolt for most of it, an easy mistake to make when writing the character. Still, highly enjoyable, knockabout fun.
Carnival of Monsters starts as a weird one, with two apparently disconnected stories. In one, two new arrivals, entertainers, try to get through customs on the planet Inter Minor only to run afoul of customs. In the other, the Doctor and Jo arrive on a ship that famously disappeared in the Indian Ocean in the 1920s, which is attacked by what appears to be a dinosaur. The Doctor realises the ship is trapped in a time loop. The oddness of the two disconnected storylines is soon resolved: the entertainers are carrying a device called a Miniscope, in which a whole load of miniaturised creatures are being carried to entertain the crowds. A potentially fascinating premise is let down a little by the limited sets and locations available: the Doctor and Jo spend ages stuck in the guts of the machine, making their way across massive circuit boards. The serial hints at the possible return of the Cybermen before annoyingly pivoting to featuring creatures called Drashigs as the main threat, which are a very nice design but don't have a lot of depth to them.
More successful is Robert Holmes's banter-laden script, with a lot of funny lines and some early appearances for future Davros Michael Wisher (as Kalik) and companion Harry, Ian Marter (as Andrews). Leslie Dwyer and Cheryl Hall are also most entertaining as Vorg and Shirna. Potentially a great story is let down by what feels like budget limitations (the makeup for some of the aliens is poor, and some sets are overused) and pacing problems. This is a four-parter that can feel longer than some six-parters. Still, entertaining stuff, especially for the implication that the SS Bernice was a missing ship as famous as the Marie Celeste, but, thanks to the Doctor's actions, its disappearance never happens and the timeline adjusts (hence why we've never heard of it).
Frontier in Space is that rare Doctor Who beast, a full-blown space opera. Arriving in the 26th Century, the Doctor and Jo find the mighty Earth and Draconian Empires on the brink of full-scale war, with both sides accusing the other of attacking their ships. A full-blown Malcolm Hulke Special, packed with convincing, intricate worldbuilding (I would kill for some of this in the modern show), genuine political intrigue and the Doctor in full diplomat-pacifist mode, and with Jo getting some meaty plotlines. The Master showing up is much more tolerable here than normal, especially if you know this is Roger Delgado's last appearance: he tragically died in a car crash just a few weeks after the story was transmitted.
The story is very busy, avoiding the normal problems of duller six-parters, with the story moving from Earth to a penal colony on the Moon, to various spaceships and the Draconian capital. There's a lot of macho posturing, more subtle political overtures and military shenanigans, to the point where this story feels like a dry run for both Blake's 7 and Babylon 5 (Joe Straczynski is a noted Doctor Who fan, and the backstory of the previous Earth-Draconia War feels somewhat familiar). Throw in the Master, Ogrons, the surprise return of an old enemy, and you have what should be a total winner. What lets the story down is the fact that the Doctor and Jo spend most of it in prison. They go from being prisoners of the Earth Empire to incarcerated by the Draconians to prisoners of the Ogrons to prisoners of the Master, sometimes in what feels like the same episode.
Planet of the Daleks starts a rather dim trend for Doctor Who Dalek stories, with the appearance of the Daleks kept a surprise for the end of Part 1 of the story, despite "Daleks" appearing in the title, and in this case the last story pretty much letting us know that the Daleks might be about. This is Terry Nation's first Doctor Who script for almost a decade, and it's clear he hadn't been keeping up with the show in the interim as the script showed up with individual titles for each episode (something that hadn't been done for seven years at this point). The story has promise, as it brings back the Thals from the OG Dalek story and has a very small, focused cast, with each character getting a solid amount of development. There's also a rare moment of continuity as the Doctor talks about some of his former companions. The characters in this serial feel like their stories actually continue when the Doctor isn't around, which is rare at this point in the show.
Again, this is a four-parter masquerading as a six, and the pacing is a bit sluggish. There's a lot of people running around and getting captured and split up and infected with a fungal virus and needing a cure. The vfx are again a bit too ambitious as well, and Nation seems to be fall back too readily on ideas from earlier scripts (the sequences in the Dalek base feel a bit too reminiscent of the very first Dalek story). But there's a solid action-adventure story here, and the ending is a major cliffhanger which eventually gets tied up in a great comic story (Paul Cornell's Emperor of the Daleks).
The Green Death sees shenanigans down a coal mine in Wales, sparking an investigation from both the Brigadier (on the side of the local big energy conglomerate) and Jo Grant (on the side of the local eco-warriors). The Doctor, in something of a huff at everyone getting along without him, goes off to Metebelis III alone and, in one of the funniest sequences in the show's history, gets ten shades of trouble knocked out of him by the local flora and fauna. This sequence put me in mind of playing Dungeons & Dragons and one player has a strop and flaps off on a solo side-quest where the DM kicks the hell out of them until they get with the program and rejoin the rest of the party for the actual main story.
The rest of the serial unfolds as something of a spiritual successor to Season 8's The Dæmons, with the full UNIT team getting lots to do, with the locals pitching in to help or hinder as required. There's a right-on ecological message where the metaphor drives the story without the need for the writers to give a TED Talk on what it all means, a winning guest cast and one of the show's more outrageous villains. The ultimate bad guy is a very overused trope (one Star Trek had rather over-used a few years earlier) but the writers give him a ridiculous sense of humour and whimsy so he becomes a bit of a scene-stealer, and arguably loses because he's too busy trying to impress the Doctor with witty repartee rather than actually enacting his Evil Plan.
The story is also notable for seeing the departure of Katy Manning as Jo Grant after three seasons, making her (at this point) the show's second-longest running companion (after Jamie in Seasons 4-6, back when the seasons had far more episodes). It's probably fair to say that Jo had a mixed run as a companion, especially early on. She was supposed to be a skilled UNIT agent, trained in escapology as well as armed and unarmed combat, but the writers had a tendency to forget about that and have her screaming and getting captured. But when the script allowed it, Manning's superb sense of humour would come through (quoting Beatles lyrics to a confused Second Doctor in The Three Doctors), as well as her ability to unexpectedly take command of threatening situations (shutting down the prison riot in The Mind of Evil; posing as a royal princess in The Curse of Peladon; defeating the Master in a battle of wills in Frontier in Space, earning his grudging respect). Her departure is one of her best stories, especially for the impact it has on the Doctor, who seems more quietly devastated by her leaving than any other companion bar his own granddaughter Susan (at least at this point). Pertwee is particularly superb at this point.
Season 10 (****½) is a very enjoyable season of Doctor Who, with some great scripts, ideas and performances. Even when stories fall short of their potential, the ideas are at least very interesting. You can criticise the season for maybe being a bit too ambitious at the time, with the vfx creaking to realise the writers' vision, but it's all solidly fun stuff.
The season can be seen right now on the BBC iPlayer in the UK, BritBox in much of the rest of the world, and is also available on DVD and Blu-Ray.
- 10.1 - 10.4: The Three Doctors (****)
- 10.5 - 10.8: Carnival of Monsters (****)
- 10.9 - 10.14: Frontier in Space (****)
- 10.15 - 10.20: Planet of the Daleks (***½)
- 20.21 - 10.26: The Green Death (*****)
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