Patrick Troughton: The Beginning, End and In-Between

John Hussey continues his retrospective of the Troughton era, reviewing several stories.

‘The Power of the Daleks’

“It can do many things, Lesterson. But the thing it does most efficiently is exterminate human beings.”

‘The Power of the Daleks’ had a massive responsibility in establishing Troughton as the new face of the Doctor after William Hartnell’s departure at the end of ‘The Tenth Planet’. The Second Doctor was rather dazed and confused within his first moments as he adjusted to his ‘renewal’, as regeneration was referred to within the story, before rummaging through his things and addressing his original self in the third person. One of the cleverest things employed was the reflection of the First Doctor after the Second Doctor looked at himself in a mirror. The beauty of this serial was whether or not Polly and Ben Jackson could trust this person, with Polly using her intellect to put the pieces together whilst Ben spent the first couple of episodes doubting his credibility.

I found the atmosphere of this serial to be truly tense and sinister throughout. It wasn’t an average introductory episode to a new incarnation nor was it an average Dalek story. The serial was slow in its development and produced a tension-building tale that demonstrated the destructive nature of power. The subplots were the dominant factor of the narrative. These subplots showed Lesterson’s mad determination to use three uncovered dormant Daleks as a tool for the colony on Vulcan. The other subplot followed Bragen’s lust for power and his insane motives to achieve that power through manipulation and murder.

In many ways this was the core of the story and it showcased how power in different meanings could be used for deadly purposes, echoing the Daleks storyline of using the Colonies power supply to regain their own power. What made the balance of power all the more chilling throughout was the Daleks being sly and calculative, remaining under the human’s wings by pretending to be their servants. This key plot-point allowed them to slowly rebuild their forces in secret and by the time the truth was revealed it was already too late.

The Second Doctor quickly gained his feet within the role and demonstrated his characteristics. In many ways the focus of the story wasn’t about accepting him as the new Doctor but rather the story at hand. It was risky in many ways but the producer’s and writer’s did a good job at simply continuing the storyline as normal. Episode One clearly indicated at the change and concentrated upon this change but after that the story became about the Daleks and the Doctor’s attempts to stop them. It all worked rather well. The story was slow in places but the thrill of the slow build-up made for the sweet end result of seeing the Daleks finally rise up and create a massacre through killing every human they could find. Another engaging factor was the Second Doctor being made helpless throughout due to nobody listening to him about the Daleks true threat.

I found the resolution was rushed and too much was left to resolve within the last episode, like the Daleks up-rise, but as a whole ‘The Power of the Daleks’ served as a sinister tale for the Daleks because of the serials dark nature and tone. Also it did well at establishing Troughton as the Second Doctor and pushed the show forward into a new direction.

‘The Enemy of the World’

By David Whitaker (1967, 6 Episodes)

“People spend all their time making nice things, and then other people come along and break them.”

Once again I’ve probably surprised a few with my choice, some wondering why I didn’t go for ‘The Tomb of the Cybermen’ or ‘The Web of Fear’. Though both of these stories are classics within their own right I really love the narrative to this particular tale.

‘The Enemy of the World’ is a triumphant episode for many reasons, mostly because it incorporated the idea of having the villain being identical to the Doctor. We had seen this done briefly within ‘The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve’ where William Hartnell portrayed Abbot of Amboise, though the First Doctor never actually interacted with Amboise and instead swapped between characters during the different episodes. This time however the two characters were written to meet and this idea was the core point to the story.

The villain of the serial, Salamander, was nothing less than an evil dictator whose ambitions tried to lead him to becoming ruler of the world. It was thought near the beginning upon witnessing one of his speeches that the man could be a good person within his intentions, to which even the Second Doctor believed to be true, but from then on the serial went about to uncover his true self. Salamander was a great villain, and played to a tee by Patrick Troughton, which made the story all the more engaging because we witnessed him portraying such a diabolical character. Salamander’s means of gaining power was through manipulation and black-mail, at one point trying to persuade Fedorin to join his cause by killing off the original leader of the region with the promise of him gaining power. Upon failing to poison Denes, Salamander then poisoned Fedorin for his failure.

It was later revealed within the serial that Salamander had gone to the lengths of manipulating the minds of a group of people to believe they were humanities last survivors in order to have them control his Earthquake machine. Through this Salamander had power over the Earth and fooled his enemies into believing he could predict disasters. He also went as far as having anyone who stood in his way, including a questioning worker from the underground base, killed. These lengths made his character so unlikable but yet charming because of Troughton’s performance throughout.

One of the best aspects of the serial was the thriller side to the narrative’s tone, making it resemble a spy film, especially through Barry Letts’s great direction which brought out some fantastic action sequences. The whole idea of the Second Doctor going undercover to aid in bringing Salamander’s reign of power to an end was wonderful to watch and left you in places wondering who was who. Even Salamander attempted to fool the audience into believing he was his opposite, resulting in the brilliant climatic duel between him and the Second Doctor aboard the TARDIS. Short but sweet, the end result had Salamander fall out of the TARDIS to his death as the rest of our heroes clung on for dear life in preparation for the following serial ‘The Web of Fear’.

‘The Invasion’

By Derrick Sherwin (from a story by Kit Pedler) (1968, 8 Episodes)

“Is this what you wanted? To be the ruler of a dead world?”

‘The Invasion’ is without a doubt one of my favourite Cybermen plots. Like with ‘The Power of the Daleks’ it showcased the Doctor’s enemy in a different light through their direction in action by being sly and under the radar. The serial was a slow story and branched out over eight episodes. The glorious thing about the serial was the fact that the Cybermen didn’t get revealed as the enemy of the narrative until the end of Episode Four. It’s a great surprise for the audience in the long built up as to who are allying with Tobias Vaughn in his inhuman schemes to take over the world.

Vaughn acted as another brilliant megalomaniac, similar to Salamander, with ambitions beyond the stars. Throughout the story his ambitions were shown more and more and his insanity grew. The way he addressed Packer like he was the master was chilling and near enough distressing to watch. He quickly switched between a calm, calculative villain to an aggressive psychopath. Vaughn constantly believed he was in-charge of every situation and even believed he could control the Cybermen. His blindness and arrogance brought about his eventual downfall when the Cybermen tossed him aside once his usefulness ended. The Second Doctor quickly addressed his crushed ambitions by showcasing he had now become a ruler of a dead planet, the exact opposite to his plans for conquest. This in turn led to him resorting to forging an alliance with the Second Doctor in order to fight the Cybermen. In the process he was killed.

Many memorable moments came out of ‘The Invasion’, most notably the Cybermen’s marching in front of St Paul’s Cathedral. The Cybermen were chilling within the story, made more so with the sinister incidental music throughout, through their electronic voices and their toppling presence during the invasion of Earth. Their defeat was clever through using Zoe Heriot’s computer skills to calculate the missile strike to destroy the Cybermen’s fleet. Their end defeat left some tense moments during Episode 6 as there was still a chance the Cybermen could gain a victory through planting their bomb on Earth before the final missile struck their last ship.

This story had the importance of introducing the United Nation Intelligence Taskforce. We had the return of Lethbridge-Stewart who was now promoted Brigadier of UNIT. During the events of ‘The Web of Fear’ Lethbridge-Stewart was very sceptical about the Doctor’s lifestyle but was now open-minded and led the cause against Vaughn at all costs. Throughout the adventure he proved very loyal and useful to the Second Doctor and I always enjoy watching the Second Doctor’s relationship with the Brigadier. They always got on and had a perfect understanding of one another.

We also got the introduction of Benton. Though he was more of a background character at the time, it still established the direction in which Terrance Dicks wanted to take the show after the departure of Troughton.

‘The War Games’

By Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke (1969, 10 Episodes)

“All these evils I have fought, while you have done nothing but observe! True, I am guilty of interference. Just as you are guilty of failing to use your great powers to help those in need!”

Unlike Hartnell’s less impressive departure, Troughton received a grand serial spanning over 10 episodes which really pushed him during his last adventure. It was a clever story revolving around the insidious schemes of the War Lords who were creating a sick, twisted War Game derived from Earth’s greatest battles. The evil part of the serial was knowing that the soldiers in combat were actual humans stolen from their own time in order to fight and die for this immoral experiment. What made matters worse was the fact that the War Lords kept manipulating the soldier’s through brainwashing their memory.

This serial was cleverly designed through challenging the audience’s expectations of what was going on within the narrative. It started off as a typical historical story but quickly changed its approach through the small hints that something wasn’t quite right. Though the serial was extremely long, I feel the narrative, and all the padding in-between, made it a fantastic story to watch. The characters involved, the different locations, the multiple villains and all the dilemmas the Second Doctor had to face made this serial one of the most satisfying conclusions to a Doctor.

The unique part about ‘The War Games’ was being introduced to the Doctor’s own race for the first time by both name and in person. We had already been introduced to the concept of the Doctor having a family through Susan Foreman and that his race could turn evil through the Monk. Once again the writers and producers incorporated another insane member of the Time Lords to challenge him in this great ordeal. The War Chief engineered the evil scheme by granting the War Lords the power of time travel in an attempt to gain further power. He proved as an interesting villain, one that always showed power and dominance onscreen. Though like most villains, when the situation was turned the War Chief began to become uneasy and even showed fear through the idea of the Time Lords being summoned.

I never care much for the Security Chief on any of my watches of this serial as he comes across as a paranoid, and quite frankly jealous, member of the War Lords. His distrust within the War Chief always frustrates me because his accusations steam from paranoia, instantly claiming that the Second Doctor was in-league with the War Chief and that they conspiring against them. The big bad of the story, the War Lord, was played perfectly by Philip Madoc, coming across as a cold, powerful villain who could control the situation around him from his stern presence. His crimes kept getting larger through his War Games, the murder of the War Chief and even threatening the Time Lords within his own trial. In the end him and his race got what they deserved by being erased from time.

The resolution to the serial was nothing less than tragic. The Second Doctor was faced with a problem too great and was forced to call upon the Time Lords for help, resulting in his capture and trial for his crimes against the Laws of Time. I always love the Second Doctor’s defence to his actions and constantly challenging the Time Lords till the very end. Sadly he both won and lost his case, having to say goodbye to his companions Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe knowing that they wouldn’t remember any of their adventures with him. He was then forced to regenerate and was exiled to 20th century Earth. It’s one of the most chilling and saddening endings to an episode due to being forced to watch the Time Lords humiliate the Doctor and defeat him in the cruellest way. It was also unsettling watching those final moments as the Second Doctor fell deeper into the void and disappeared from our screens.