Saturday Night Showcase> The Two Doctors (Who)

If I were to have done this in order of favorite Doctor Who crossovers rather than airdate, the list would be:

• The Five Doctors: It’s the debut of my favorite console with my favorite classic Doctor, and seeing four of the five Doctors working together is just fun for me. It’s too bad Tom Baker didn’t take part, but supposedly he had scheduling conflicts. Given his disinterest in Companions or working with other Doctors in Big Finish, part of me wonders if that’s the only reason.
• The Three Doctors: Probably the best written of the classic team-ups, watching Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee play off each other was a delight. It’s a shame they didn’t get to team up more. I’m letting the fanboy choose this list, not the story critic.
• Time And The Doctor: Not available for Saturday Night Showcase as of this writing, David Tennant and Matt Smith (the latter being my favorite New Who Doctor because I seem to choose the one after the popular favorite) has the same chemistry and it’s a great story, though forced to introduce the War Doctor because Christopher Eccleston wanted nothing to do with BBC Wales while the same people were involved. I would love to see the trio team up in Big Finish at least. Too bad they broke the crossover name pattern.
• The Two Doctors: Tonight’s finale in the Doctor crossovers. John Nathan-Turner wanted to do another crossover, and for whatever reason chose the Second Doctor. Seeing the two Bakers play off each other might have been frustrating, as both tend to be the more confrontational Doctors, I suppose they could have gotten Hurndall back as the First, it was probably too soon for the Fifth, and I’m not sure Pertwee’s Doctor and Colin’s would have gotten along any more than the two unrelated Baker Doctors. Plus it would be Troughton’s final appearance as the Doctor before his passing, and the two apparently appeared together before, in a children’s show called Swallows And Amazons Forever!, though I don’t know if they shared the screen.

I do like how in tribute the episode opens in black and white, as that’s what the entirety of Troughton’s main run was in. Not having the console from that time, they did have the previous console, which stood in to make it look like the older–well, I guess it would be newer depending on perspective–TARDIS, though they had to use the same walls and monitor that was in use from Tom Baker to the end. I would have liked more with Troughton and Frasier Hines as Jamie, since they’re probably the best Doctor/Companion pairing of the classic era. Meanwhile they name drop Victoria to set a time frame, but it would still be a time in which the Doctor was still on the run from the Time Lords. Fans have tried to come up with an explanation for how it could be happening, but officially this is a plothole.

As for the present team, Sixth is teamed with Peri, my choice for the cutest of classic Companions, and an American…in character, as Nicola Bryant clearly wasn’t. Consider it payback for all the fake British accents some American actors try to pass off. It works for the show’s homeland but not the character’s. Their opposition are the Sontarans, and two member of the Androgum, writer Robert Holmes (a vegetarian) doing for meat eaters what the creator of the Ferengi tried to do for capitalists by making them over the top in their meat eating habits. Fortunately for the Ferengi they had other writers and directors come along and tone them down and make them less silly. The Androgum will not get that chance. Still, you can tell what Holmes thinks of anyone who enjoys a hamburger, and I found the part with the Doctor and one of the Androgum, Shockeye, to be a rather uninteresting sequence. There’s even a swipe at butterfly collectors if you pay attention to how he’s written.

Otherwise the episode isn’t terrible, but clearly a step down from the other crossover. Still worth enjoying for the performances and Troughton’s last turn as the Doctor.

Next time…something not Doctor Who related. Maybe if “Time And The Doctor” ever get an official posting on YouTube I’ll pop that one in. Right now you can’t watch that era anywhere in the US, making a big gap between Classic Who and Disney Who.