Day 634: The Two Doctors Part 2

I think that the writing of The Two Doctors is easily the strong point, and that's thanks to Robert Holmes, a returning writer for Doctor Who, who has worked for the series off and on since The Krotons, and previously wrote the acclaimed story The Caves of Androzani. Here, he's given a challenge, where he has to shoehorn in two Doctors, two companions, a returning enemy, a new enemy, a foreign location and make it all into a palatable piece of television. He succeeds, in part thanks to the return of an old friend to the series, or what could be seen as an old enemy, the longer story.

Longer stories have been part of Doctor Who since the second serial, which was 7 parts long in duration. That said, they aren't perfect, and they can occasionally grow boring as it becomes apparent that there's only enough plot to fill an episode for four episodes and now it is being stretched out to six or more (e.g. The Daleks, The Monster of Peladon). However, they tend to allow for a story of more depth, allowing more time for character development or more complex plots (e.g. Doctor Who and the Silurians, The War Games). In this case, it is quite apparent that it is needed for a story of this scale, in order to make it worth watching and not a large mess, but there's also the underlying issue of keeping the audience interested throughout the adventure.

Holmes manages this with aplomb, through various methods. For a start, he ensures that the characters are all worth watching and have their own motivations that are interesting enough to hold the story in their own right. There's Chessene, a genetically modified being with delusions of grandeur, or Dastari, the person who augmented her and wishes for her to be made into a godlike creature. There's also Oscar Botcherby, an actor who has a dramatic turn of phrase but a wish to not really get into trouble, or Shockeye, the alien cook who wishes to taste human flesh.

The villains are also given enough menace to make them believable and somewhat frightening as well, such as can be seen in the cliffhanger to this episode where Shockeye's hands move towards Peri in a point of view shot, giving a truly creepy and disturbing feeling to the cliffhanger and making him feel like a tangible threat. This is clearly one-up to The Mark of the Rani, which felt that you could make a good villain by just giving them good dialogue. That's not to say that there's any shortage of good dialogue here, with plenty of witty exchanges between the characters, that are given just the right turn of phrase by the actors playing them that they can turn from a slightly odd thing to discuss to something weirdly hilarious, such as Shockeye's desire to eat human flesh. It all keeps the story interesting, which is something that is certainly needed as this is an awfully long story.

But, I'm rather happy to spend all of this time with this story, as it's clear that it's being written by a master of his craft, in the form of Robert Holmes. I'm actually quite glad that he's now seemingly returned to the programme for the long term, and I look forward to future work from him, as it seems like he's never been away.