The Two Doctors is an interesting story. It represents a weird mix of both the old and new of Doctor Who, with various elements of the past returning for no specific reason other than it should make for a fun story. These returning elements are all quite different, but they're all quite interesting, and show just how much Doctor Who has changed over the past 22 series.
The most obvious returning element is Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, alongside Frazer Hines as Jamie. The reason for their return is because the production team enjoyed working with Troughton so much during The Five Doctors that they decided to invite him back for a return story, and to be honest I can hardly blame them. Amongst the many wonderful things about The Five Doctors (and indeed The Three Doctors), Patrick Troughton's performance as the Doctor is easily one of the highlights. As can be seen in this episode, he steps into the role as if he were never away, playing at equal parts the clownish figure who wanders throughout the universe, or the deadly serious man who fights to protect the Universe from all sorts of horrors. This is best seen in the scene where he encounters Dastari where he goes from joking with him in an attempt to show that he is a friend to be trusted, whilst also telling him that he wants his work to be shut down, to getting progressively angrier with him as he realises the short-sightedness of Dastari and that he doesn't realise the implications of his work and how dangerous it could be.
There is, however, the question of continuity. This story has the Second Doctor working for the Time Lords, alongside Jamie, as they sort out the issues with Dastari. But the only problem with this is that the Second Doctor never really worked with the Time Lords, indeed he spent much of his time as the Doctor running away from them. No explanation is given in this story as to why this is happening, although fans have developed a theory revolving around the Doctor being taken away after his trial to work as a rogue agent for the Time Lords. But all of this brings forth a tiny little issue that I have with this, that this isn't the sort of thing that the Second Doctor did during his tenure, and so we're not really getting a true representation of his wonderful time as the Doctor.
But maybe that's just the point, that we can't really return to things just as they used to be. Instead, we return and find that they've developed and changed whilst we've been away, and we're not entirely sure about how to deal with that. But I suppose that that's just the very nature of life itself.
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