The War Games was the last serial of the 6th season. It was also the last episodes for the 2nd Doctor and his companions Jamie and Zoe. Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury all decided to move along from the series. It was the last serial to be filmed in black and white. It's a ten parter that ran from April 19 to June 21 1969. It was the only 10 part serial they did and it's out on a three disc set. Five episodes on each of 2 of the discs and the last disc is all extras. The series had dropped a bit in popularity by the end of the 6th season with about 5 million people watching each episode on average. There were 55 million people in the UK in 1969 so that's still a pretty good crowd watching each saturday afternoon. Earlier seasons the viewership often topped 10 million an episode. The first color serial would average over 8 million an episode. Here's a couple of color pictures of some of the sets of The War Games. They look much better in color. I'll be glad to see the show in color next week.
The Tardis sets down on a ravaged area on what looks like Earth. The Doctor finds some military gear that leads him to think they are in Europe during the 1st World War. They get shot at and hide in a ditch. They're rescued by a lady driving an ambulance of WWI vintage. It's a real vintage ambulance that was still running in 1969. Jane Sherwin, who was wife of producer Derek Sherwin when the episode was filmed, plays the lady, a nurse, and she actually got to drive the ambulance. In the making of featurrette she mentions the explosions going off all around her and pieces of dirt and rock whizzing by her head through the open sides of the ambulance. The Doctor and his pals are captured by Germans and rescued. Then they wind up in the trenches. From there they are brought to headquarters where they are believed to be spies and traitors. The Doc gets condemned to death and faces the firing squad. Don't worry, he'll be rescued. There's a lot of running around and some typical Doctor activities. The find other fights from different parts of history and the Doc eventually figures out that they're on a different planet. Soldiers from several periods in Earth's history have been brought there and brainwashed to fight. There are plenty of interesting characters and that helps make the 10 episode long story move along fairly well. I thought it bogged down a bit in the middle, mostly from repetitive action. Writer Terrance Dicks says in the commentary that they called it a loop. The characters run around, get captured and escape all without ever having advanced the plot. Still, even with all issues they did a pretty good job for having had to write it at the last minute. The last 2 stories of the season were deemed useless and Terrance Dicks was asked to come up with a new story. He'd been given no time to do it so he hired Malcolm Hulke to help. They managed to create a good adventure with some good villains. Sometimes working to a tight deadline gets the creative juices going.
The serial is where we first meet the Time Lords. They are the Doctor's people and they aren't happy with him. That's the Time Lords up on the left. They're all somber and soft spoken. The Doctor says they like to lecture but what they like to do is watch. They're pretty darn powerful but they have a strict don't interfere rule. It's what the Doctor broke when he took the Tardis and started fighting evil. The Doctor thinks he needs to get all up in there and straighten out the problem. He gets put on trial and his punishment is to be sent to Earth and left in England in 1970. He can't use the Tardis he stole so he's stuck. I'll be finding out what he does on Earth next week. Zoe and Jamie are returned to their own time with some of their memories erased. A better than average story and one I liked watching more than most.
The third disc has the usual bunch of featurettes. There's one on the serial which covers the production of the show and the main cast leaving, one on B&W tv, another on the Doctor's regeneration process, a nice 'then and now' short on the locations they shot the outdoor stuff at, a short on the Doctor Who novels and writer Malcolm Hulke and another on the comic books of the second Doctor. Most of it was pretty entertaining.
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