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| THE TWO DOCTORS :: DVD REVIEW
by Stephen Mills
Added Wednesday,
September 17
2003
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When New Orleans collapsed, Seville was chosen as an alternative, and that helped to create a colourful backdrop to the last Doctor Who appearances of Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines, as we welcome The Two Doctors to DVD. |
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» THE PLOT ... |
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| Whilst investigating unauthorised experiments into time travel aboard Space Station Camera, the Second Doctor and Jamie come under attack from the war-like Sontarans… Elsewhere, the Sixth Doctor and Peri also decide to pay a visit to Camera. They find the station abandoned, but discover Jamie, half crazed, hiding in the ducting. And he tells them that the Doctor has been murdered… | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| » THE MENU'S ... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This disc is the standard layout for the two disc Doctor Who DVD. The first disc comes in the usual layout, with clips from the story in the background. On the first disc is the story, complete with commentary, production subtitles, isolated music score and the Jim’ll Fix It extra. There is the opportunity to watch the whole thing from the start, view certain episodes or start watching from certain scenes within the episode. The second disc has one page of extras, which are accompanied by clips from the story in the background.
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| » THE PICTURE / SOUND ... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The picture quality is excellent, a vast improvement on the VHS release which looked rather nasty at times. The greatest justice I can do for the sound quality is that most of the Sontaran dialogue is audible, which is a tremendous improvement where you can barely make out what they’re saying on the VHS release. |
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| » WHAT ABOUT THOSE EXTRA'S ONLY DVD CAN PROVIDE? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Another experimental
commentary track, with lots of mixing and matching. Episode 1 starts
with Peter Mofatt being joined by Jacqueline Pearce and Frazer Hines.
Ten minutes in, Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant replace Jackie and Frazer.
About half an hour in, Frazer Hines joins Colin, Nicola and Peter.
Episode 2 starts with Colin, Nicola, Frazer and Peter. About a quarter
of an hour in, Jacqueline replaces Peter. Episode 3 starts with the
four actors, and a quarter of an hour in, Peter replaces Nicola. After
half an hour, Nicola joins for the full set.
With that complicated explanation over, I’m really not sure about this commentary. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, with Frazer Hines and Colin Baker in competition for who can make the best and worst joke. Nicola Bryant and Peter Moffatt are happy to make sensible and informative comments while enjoying the banter. Jacqueline Pearce might however win an award for the most annoying commentator, saying `darling` in response to anything. She does win an award for being unintentionally funny, by saying that she doesn’t understand science fiction, despite her making a career out of television science-fiction serials. The other big special feature is the documentary on Robert Holmes’ contribution. The idea is excellent, and there are some great contributions. Terrance Dicks, Barry Letts and Philip Hinchcliffe are very generous in their contributions. There is a comprehensive run down of more or less all of Robert Holmes stories, with the back-stories behind all of them explored. It was nice to get an idea of him as a person and his sense of humour. I particularly like the colour papered anecdote that Eric Saward. However, it would have been nice to hear more from Chris Boucher, about working with him on The Face of Evil, Robots of Death and Image of the Fendahl. It’s a shame that Anthony Read wasn’t interviewed, while maybe some convention footage of JNT talking about him existed somewhere. These are however minor complaints in what is a hugely entertaining documentary.
Other extras include;
Just a general point about the extras, most of them have decided to put the garish Colin Baker titles at the start of most of the extras. Great if you like them, annoying if you don’t. There is also an Easter Egg, which is rather amusing. Highlight below to find out what it is and how to find it; [Easter Egg] >>On the 1st disc, press left on your remote control at the episode selection part of the menu. Press enter to get a clean set of the Colin Baker titles. << [End of Easter Egg]
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| » THE STORY ... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This might be surprising for a Doctor Who fan to say, but I was dreading the announcement of the DVD release schedule. All because, I thought this story might be released, and I really didn’t want to re-watch it. Anyone who has seen my review of this story on the forum we’ll know I don’t like it and on seeing it again, my opinion hasn’t changed. The main problem is often-celebrated writer Robert Holmes. Given a shopping list of components to add to the story. It’s quite clear that Holmes has no interest in writing for this shopping list that John Nathan Turner had composed. He was asked to write in the 2nd Doctor, but all that the 2nd Doctor does initially is get trapped to a chair and argues with a Sontaran. It’s only really in the relationship between him and Shockeye do we get a true reflection of the 2nd Doctor. When it gets going, it’s one of Holmes famous double acts, but it’s a shame that this doesn’t happen in the first two parts. Holmes is asked to incorporate is Jamie, which he doesn’t really do. All that Frazer Hines ends up doing is running round with Colin Baker and wondering where his Doctor has gone. Admittedly, that was all that Frazer Hines seemed to do when he was with Patrick Troughton, but despite a very reliable performance from Frazer Hines, he just seems redundant.
Holmes is asked to include is the foreign location. Originally set to be New Orleans, then Venice before it finally became Seville. It’s noted in the production notes that Holmes did research into New Orleans, including jokes about speech differences of Americans and English, but all the jokes are lost for budgetary reasons. These jokes and the whole story would have made some sense if it were set in New Orleans. It might have done it proud, at least it would have been painted in a better light than Seville. I’ve never been there, but I fail to believe that in a very established city that those locations used in The Two Doctors were the most interesting locales available. All we seem to get is a barren house, followed by some fields and then a very brief look at what presumably is the centre of Seville in the middle of the chase scene. One could very easily question the use of Seville as a location, fair enough, it’s provides an interesting backdrop, but surely it would have been cheaper to go somewhere in the UK.
However, all this appalling acting is almost made up for entirely by the wonderful John Stratton. On watching this story, Shockeye is the stand out character; he’s fabulously grotesque and Stratton strikes the right balance between over the top and carefree making the character disgustingly delicious to watch. My personal favourite moment is where he’s eating the rat, a moment despised by most people, but it’s just so reflective of the character. The regulars are all excellent. Colin Baker is again excellent, despite being given some very dodgy material. Nicola Bryant seems to have finally nailed Peri’s character, while it’s always wonderful to see Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines back in their roles. You can clearly see that the both are enjoying recreating their roles, which is makes it delightful. James Saxon performs the part of Oscar Botcheby with excellent relish, despite the character being nothing more than entertaining padding.
My final point is criticising the choice of Peter Moffatt to direct this one. Moffatt has had some notable successes in the past with stories such as State of Decay and The Visitation, both of which are excellently directed. However, the appeal of those two stories is that they are gently gripping without needing to resort to bangs and flashes, which aren’t his strength. In this story, he is asked to direct a story that doesn’t really play to his strengths. All the explosions and big dramatic moments never look good on screen. Graeme Harper or Matthew Robinson would have been a much better choice resulting in a better-directed story. Moffatt does try to cover the embarrassingly poor Sontaran costumes. They have loose fitting collars, which flap about all over the place; it thus spoils their alien appearance. If they had been tight collars, it would have been a more convincing alien costume. Moffatt attempts to shoot the Sontarans with long shots and it doesn’t look dramatic and looks like he’s trying to cover other people’s inadequacies, which surprisingly enough he is. After I have re-watched The Two Doctors, that all the good bits are devalued by some fundamental mistakes, which undermine the quality of the story as a whole. |
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| » SUMMARY ... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Overall Score : 8/10 A DVD set that features a story that some people will like with excellent special features and good picture quality means this maintains the high standard of Doctor Who DVDs. You can order The Two Doctors from Blackstar.co.uk by clicking here. |
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| » TECHNICAL DETAILS ... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All screen grabs and images appearing
in the above review are Copyright (C) BBC Worldwide Ltd 2003 |
John
Nathan Turner wanted to shoot a Doctor Who story in America, to
take advantage of the series growing popularity. Veteran writer
Robert Holmes was approached to write the script where due to Patrick
Troughton and Frazer Hines wishing to reprise their roles, the 2nd
Doctor, Jamie, the Sontarans and New Orleans were asked for.
Another
blast from the past is the Sontarans and Holmes has seemingly little
interest in using them again. They are reduced to a minor role in
the same way that the Daleks were whenever Davros appeared. If Holmes
had any real interest in writing a Sontaran story, then I would
imagine that towards the end of the story, the Sontarans would have
usurped the Androgums. All the room for Holmes’ creative energy
is taken by the Androgums. Therefore, the Androgums come off far
better than the Sontarans, with nothing new being added to the latter.
Due
to Doctor Who’s famous budgetary inadequacies, you have to
rely on some good acting and a decent set of scripts to make a watchable
Doctor Who story. I dread the name Laurence Payne coming up on the
guest list. I remember criticising him when I reviewed The Gunfighters
for the video release and I hate to say it, but I’m going
to criticise him again. Dastari, the character comes across as a
strong-willed scientist who really believes he’s doing the
right thing on the page. On screen, Payne fails to convince, coming
across as weak instead. Due to production problems, Clinton Greyn
as Stike and Tim Raynham as Varl are inaudible. Every time I have
put myself through the agony of watching this story, I can never
make out what the Sontarans are saying. Their performances are perfectly
acceptable, they do what is asked of them in the script, but it’s
not a patch on Kevin Lindsay’s Linx and Styre in The Time
Warrior and The Sontaran Experiment. 
No
review of the acting in this particular serial is complete without
me having something to say about Jacqueline Pearce. I’ve hardly
ever watched Blakes 7, but on the few occasions that I have, she
always manages to make Servalan look like a pantomime villain, and
she adds the same quality to Chessene. Making a potentially fascinating
character into one of the most clichéd villainesses that
Doctor Who as ever had, wasting all the good qualities that Holmes
had put into the character. It’s a harsh thing for me to suggest
to an actress, but I would argue that Pearce would make the ideal
panto villain, with the crowd booing and hissing derisory insults
at her. I’m not sure she can really do serious acting. 
I’m
getting dangerously sidetracked here, I'm not supposed to like The
Two Doctors, however the plot is an absolute nonsense.
The worst moment is where Chessene suddenly decides for no reason
to change the 2nd Doctor into an Androgum rather than dissect the
symbiotic nuclei from the 2nd Doctor. But there’s are other
problems, for instance, what on Earth are the Sontarans doing in
this story. It’s mentioned that they want time travel technology,
but they were seen to be able to do this in The Time Warrior. The
other plot related problem is how the 6th Doctor has no memory of
the 2nd Doctor’s adventure. There is the obvious continuity
problem of where this adventure is supposed to take place during
the 2nd Doctor’s travels. It’s explicitly stated in
the script that it might take place within Season 5, but in the
same scene, the Time Lords are mentioned. It’s mentioned in
interviews with Robert Holmes that the Season 6B theory is true,
but it’s never seems to be clarified. 
I
don’t like this one for the level of needless violence. I
can understand the need to kill Shockeye, but was it necessary to
use the cyanide method? Did we really need to see a Sontaran blown
up, first by coronic acid (a convenient plot device) and then blown
up by the Cartz/Reimer time machine (how does that happen)? Did
we really need to see Chessene lap up the Doctor’s blood and
did we need to see the killings of Dona Arana, Oscar Botcheby and
the lorry driver? I would strongly argue that most of these scenes
could have been kept to a minimum. » All reviews are © to their respective authors and may not be reproduced elsewhere without prior permission