Doctor Who - The Two Doctors
An interesting king-sized episode, The Two Doctors takes the normally rather contrived multiple-incarnations-of-the-Doctor plot and runs with it, free of the trappings of having to celebrate any particular anniversary of the show. In this case, it takes on a slightly bittersweet quality, as Patrick Troughton died about a year after filming it, as did writer Robert Holmes, both of whom had played essential roles in the history of Doctor Who.
This 2-DVD set contains the original 3-part story on one disc (those three parts each being 45 minutes long, as was the case with all of Colin Baker’s first full season as the Doctor), along with a lively commentary from a rotating combination of director Peter Moffatt, Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Frazer Hines and Jacqueline Pearce. Some of the actors disappear and reappear later when a larger stretch of a given episode doesn’t include them, though in a few places all five are present, throwing an assortment of barbed one-liners at one another and remembering - or trying to remember - the behind-the-scenes realities of making the episode. Also included on disc one are the isolated music score feature (with Peter Howell’s outstanding, and previously unreleased, score combining electronic menace and flamenco guitar befitting the story’s location shooting in Spain), a production trivia subtitle track, and - never seen in its entirety since its original broadcast - the infamous Jim’ll Fix It In A Fix With Sontarans segment starring Colin Baker, a bizarrely out-of-place Janet Fielding, the two Sontarans from The Two Doctors, and young fan Gareth Jenkins in his home-made sixth Doctor costume. It’s all rather hilariously improvised, but if you ever wanted to see how bossy fifth Doctor companion Tegan would have gotten along with the considerably more bossy sixth Doctor, this is just about your only chance.
Disc two centers around two major featurettes assembled for this DVD. The 45 minute “Behind The Sofa” piece gathers script editors Terrance Dicks and Eric Saward, ex-producers Barry Letts and Philip Hinchcliffe, and writer Chris Boucher to reminisce about the life and work of Robert Holmes, who served as script editor early in the Tom Baker era and had been writing some of the series’ most memorable and pivotal episodes since the Patrick Troughton era. All five men worked with Holmes at the opposite ends of his involvement with the show (Boucher was script-edited by Holmes on Doctor Who, and then himself became a script editor working over Holmes when Holmes passed on the opportunity to take the script editor position for the BBC’s new SF series, Blake’s 7). The stories are colorful, but respectful. Holmes invented the Autons, the Sontarans, and the Master, and virtually created the entire Time Lord mythology, right down to the 13-regeneration limit and naming their planet Gallifrey. His scripts saw in Pertwee and saw out Davison. Robert Holmes was an absolutely essential player in Who history, and as lovely as the documentary about him is, it seems to stop just short of really spelling out how important Holmes was to the show.
Also on disc two, production manager Gary Downie reminisces about shooting in Seville and the Spanish countryside, the antics of Colin Baker and Pat Troughton (arguably the two biggest pranksters ever to hold the keys to the TARDIS) on the same set at the same time, and the era of producer John Nathan-Turner (Downie’s partner until Nathan-Turner’s untimely death in 2002). There are two other features - two selections of unedited behind-the-scenes material, one in studio and the other on location - and an audio-only behind-the-scenes special from a BBC children’s radio program.
The commentary is actually the source of the most surprising trivia in the whole package: Jackie Pearce is not only very squeamish when it comes to scenes that she herself was in, but she professes to neither like nor understand science fiction (and this coming from the uber-villainess of Blake’s 7!). Nicola Bryant was a little perturbed when John Nathan-Turner kept sending her back to the costume department to have her bikini top made progressively smaller. And a most interesting exchange occurs when director Peter Moffatt complains about the fact that the cliffhangers, end credits and opening titles of all three episodes have been included, rather than editing the entire epic into a movie-format compilation. Colin Baker advises him - quite correctly - that the fans have insisted on having the shows as they originally aired - to which Moffatt responds by launching into a tirade about the Five Doctors DVD, which was drastically altered without the director’s participation or approval. (And unlike later Doctor Who stories which featured revised special effects, Five Doctors didn’t include the original version as an option, so he’s got a really good point.)
Yet another stellar Doctor Who DVD package, and a nice send-off for the late Pat Troughton as well as the late Robert Holmes. I’ll admit that I was surprised to find the retrospective material weighted toward the latter of those two dearly departed players in the show’s history, but that focus is far from unwelcome. This marvelously playful and yet unnerving story seems to escape much of the criticism (but not all) of a season, and an era of the show, that isn’t held in the highest regard, and those two people have a lot to do with that. This DVD is an appropriate tribute to them both.