 This story features the one-off return of Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines, in their respective roles as the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon. It also has the final appearance, in the original run of the show, for the Sontarans, in a special story written by veteran Doctor Who writer, and former Script Editor, Robert Holmes as well as being shot on location in Seville, Spain.
With the show becoming more popular in North America, since the mid-Seventies, Producer John Nathan-Turner had been keen to film stories abroad and had so far taken the show to Paris (for the 1979 Fourth Doctor story "City of Death"), Amsterdam (for the 1983 Fifth Doctor story "Arc of Infinity") and Lanzarote (for the 1984 Fifth Doctor story "Planet of Fire").
Initially John Nathan-Turner wanted to film in the United States and Lionheart, the BBC’s North American distributor had, when they were approached, even been keen to help with funding. The locale John Nathan-Turner chose was New Orleans in Louisiana.
John Nathan-Turner also wanted to use an American writer for the project, and so in 1981 he contacted Lesley Thomas, who was living in London at the time. However, Lesley Thomas’ storyline, called "Way Down Yonder", turned out not to be suitable and so this idea was shelved. Instead Robert Holmes, who had just completed the Fifth Doctor’s introductory story "The Caves of Androzani" was approached instead.
In addition to the New Orleans setting, John Nathan-Turner informed Robert Holmes that he wanted to bring back the Sontarans, which Robert Holmes had created a decade earlier, and he also wanted the story to feature the Second Doctor and companion Jamie. Both actors had taken part in the Twentieth Anniversary special "The Five Doctors", despite the fact that Frazer Hines had secured only a day’s release from his television series Emmerdale Farm. Luckily during 1984 Frazer Hines would be available for longer and so John Nathan-Turner was keen to have a full-fledged reteaming of these two characters.
John Nathan-Turner also wanted this story to stretch to three forty-five minute episodes (equivalent to a traditional six-parter), a length which had not been attempted since he had became Producer in 1980. The last planned six-parter being the aborted Season Seventeen Fourth Doctor story "Shada". The last broadcast six-parter was the 1979 Fourth Doctor story "The Armageddon Factor".
It has been revealed that Robert Holmes though was uncomfortable with being forced to include so many elements in his storyline. He was particularly wary of the New Orleans location, seeing little to draw from the setting. He was, however, keen to redress what he believed had been the poor characterisation of the Sontarans in their two most recent appearances ("The Sontaran Experiment" and "The Invasion of Time", neither of which he wrote himself). While writing the script he became more interested especially in his creation of an alien race inspired by New Orleans’ fame as a culinary centre. These were the Kraalons, inspiring the story’s initial title "The Kraalon Inheritance" (misprinted sometimes as "The Kraglon Inheritance"). Robert Holmes later renamed his creations Androgums and so the title was correspondingly altered to "The Androgum Inheritance". Other unconfirmed working titles include "Parallax", "The Seventh Augmentment" and "Creation".
Unfortunately, when it was discovered that Lionheart would not be able to provide the necessary funding, and despite BBC Enterprises also agreeing to provide some extra money, it was realised that this would not be enough to permit a long-distance trip overseas. John Nathan-Turner even approached the Head of Drama for an increased budget for the story, but this was declined. This meant that filming in the United States had to be abandoned. It was Production Associate Sue Anstruther who proposed Seville in Spain as an alternative.
This change in location filming meant that Robert Holmes was forced to rewrite parts of his scripts. Fortunately the settings were mostly easy to translate as New Orleans’ French Quarter became Seville’s Arab Quarter, a plantation house became the hacienda and the banks of the Mississippi became an olive grove.
It has though been revealed that Robert Holmes was particularly disappointed that much of the humour involving the differences between Britain and America was lost in the rewrite. The only hint of this humour remaining is in the first episode, when the Sixth Doctor looks at Peri and is heard to say that Columbus ‘has a lot to answer for’.
Because at the time Script Editor Eric Saward was heavily involved in the scripts for "Revelation of the Daleks" Producer John Nathan-Turner carried out, uncredited, some of script editing duties on this story.
Jacqueline Pearce, famous for her portrayal as Servalan in Blake's 7, guest starred in this story as Chessene (a role that was originally to be played by Elizabeth Spriggs, who would later play the part of Tabby in the 1987 Seventh Doctor story "Paradise Towers").
The space station’s computer was voiced, uncredited, by Laurence Payne.
The Director assigned to this story was Peter Moffatt, who had last directed, the Sixth Doctor’s introductory 1984 story, "The Twin Dilemma", at the end of the previous season.
Location filming took place in August 1984. However, the trip to Spain was plagued with problems right from the start when the case containing all the wigs and Androgum eyebrows went missing en-route. The high heat caused make-up to melt and then it was discovered that some of the material filmed, of James Saxon (who played Oscar) and Carmen Gomez (who played Anita) in the olive grove, had been ruined by a scratch on the negative. Unfortunately, both actors had already returned to England and so both had to be quickly brought back to Spain at considerable expense.
Also several crewmembers ended up having to make cameo appearances. Peter Moffatt and Costume Designer Jan Wright can be seen, as customers sitting outside the restaurant, in the final episode, while Spanish aristocrat Mercedes Carnegie (the wife of Donald Carnegie, Assistant at the British Consul), who had assisted with location scouting, played the woman who throws Dastari a flower.
Because Peter Moffatt had managed to film extra scenes on location, which had been scripted for the studio, the final studio day wrapped up unusually early.
Complementing Peter Howell’s radiophonic incidental music were a number of pieces played on Spanish guitar by Les Thatcher.
The opening sequence of this story, with the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon, begins in monochrome as homage to their earlier pre-colour involvement on the show with the (obviously) older actors portraying their original characters (complete with a mention of Victoria Waterfield, apparently gone off to study graphology). This sequence was filmed in colour and then, in post-production, was made to gradually turn to colour.
For this scene the old console, used until the 1983 Fifth Doctor story "The King's Demons", was pressed back into service.
This story though has achieved notoriety amongst Doctor Who fans because Robert Holmes decided to eschew established continuity and portrayed the pair as working directly for the Time Lords, with Jamie being aware of The Doctor's background - despite this only being revealed in the Second Doctor’s final story, "The War Games", where he is forced to regenerate as a punishment by the Time Lords.
In an attempt to explain this story’s severe divergences from the show’s continuity from the 1960s, and also to explain the visibly aged appearance of the two actors, many fans have placed parts of this story as having taken place during a hypothetical ‘Season 6B’. This hypothetical season takes place between "The War Games" (the final story of Season Six) and "Spearhead From Space" (the first story of Season Seven - and the first story for the Third Doctor). This idea was first postulated by Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping in their book "Doctor Who: The Discontinuity Guide".
Because this story contains the innovation that The Doctor was, at least on one occasion, sent out on a special mission by the Time Lords, it also could be interpreted to imply that The Doctor might have been able to have been able to get Jamie’s memories restored, and then somehow convinced an older Victoria Waterfield, who is mentioned in the opening scene of this story, to start travelling with him again.
Many fans have also suggested that ‘Season 6B’ has also featured in the spin-off fiction - most notably BBC Books’ The Past Doctors Stories novels "Players" and "World Game" - both written by Terrance Dicks.
The Sixth Doctor is heard to misquote Dr. Johnson and attributes it to Rassilon. His address book features Archimedes, Brunel, Columbus, Dante and Da Vinci (see "City of Death"). He is able to close his respiratory passages when he detects the poisonous gas (see "Pyramids of Mars"), and can telepathically contact his previous incarnation on the ‘astral plane’.
Ripples in time can be measured on the Bocca Scale (Kartz and Reimer’s experimentation measured 0.4) The Doctor talks of the holistic fabric of time, which might have been punctured by the Kartz Reimer experiments.
The space station was created by various Third Zone governments and it is stated that humans have not yet reached the Third Zone. It is revealed that the Second Doctor attended the inauguration of the space station before ‘falling from favour’ and somehow Dastari has heard that The Doctor is no longer ‘flavour of the month’ on Gallifrey.
The implication is that if a Time Lord is not in the TARDIS then time travel (even if the controls could be understood) is deadly. Time travel is therefore not possible without some form of molecular stabilization system. Kartz and Reimer used a briode-nebuliser, into which The Doctor copies the ‘Rassilon Imprimature’, turning their module into a fully functioning time machine.
However, The Doctor is heard to state that much of what he said about time travel was for Group Marshal Stike’s benefit and consequently not true. Therefore the following 'statements' should be taken with a pinch of salt: he says that the biological make up of Time Lords features symbiotic nuclei, affording protection from molecular break up (and the Blinovitch limitation effect?) and symbiotic control of the TARDIS and that this protection is extended to other travellers in the TARDIS.
The two Sontarans, who appear in this story, are Group Marshal Stike, who leads the Ninth Sontaran Battle Group, and Major Varl. Both are seen to use large rifles in addition to their usual wand-like guns. They have green blood, and are vulnerable to coronic acid.
Despite being a clone race, the two Sontarans who appear in this story are both over 6 feet tall and are therefore significantly taller than their brethren in previous and subsequent stories where the race is depicted as being shorter than the average human male. Additionally, one of the Sontarans in this story is significantly taller than the other.
In the 1973/74 Third Doctor story "The Time Warrior" (the first appearance of the Sontarans in the show), The Doctor demonstrated prior knowledge of the Sontarans, when he encountered Lynx, which would fit in with his second incarnation’s encounter with them in this story. This story therefore has chronologically the earliest point in The Doctor’s personal timestream that he has been seen to encounter the Sontarans.
‘Androgum’ is an anagram of ‘gourmand’, suggestive of their culinary habits, while ‘Dastari’ is an anagram of ‘A TARDIS’.
Shockeye calls humans Tellurians and his money (Narg notes) is redeemable on any of the Nine Planets - but, unfortunately for Oscar, not on Earth.
At the beginning of this story the Sixth Doctor is seen fishing where he reveals that Gumblejacks are apparently very tasty fish. However, by the end of this story the Sixth Doctor decides that he and Peri should turn vegetarian.
Save for sampling Marsh Minnows offered by Sil, in the 1986 Sixth Doctor story "Mindwarp" - part of The Trial of a Time Lord season - The Doctor is not seen consuming animal tissue before the end of the original run of the show in 1989. In the revived series the Ninth Doctor does, however, order steak and chips in the 2005 story "Boom Town" (although he is not seen to eat it on screen), the Tenth Doctor samples a buffalo wing in the 2007 story "Voyage of the Damned" with no apparent reservations, and the Eleventh Doctor samples bacon and then fish fingers (with custard) in the 2010 story "The Eleventh Hour". Interestingly in the 2010 story "Amy's Choice", the Dream Lord suggests that The Doctor is ‘probably a vegetarian’, while in the BBC Books’ The Eighth Doctor Stories novel "The City of the Dead" (written by Lloyd Rose), the Eighth Doctor off-handedly mentions giving up on vegetarianism.
When he seemingly faints, Peri offers The Doctor celery. The Doctor also talks of jelly babies and his recorder.
The Sixth Doctor adapts his outfit for the hot weather in Spain. His coat is left behind, his shirt is unbuttoned at the throat, his cravat is stuffed into a trouser pocket, and he wears a lighter waistcoat made of clashing orange and blue floral-patterned fabrics. This waistcoat is later seen in the TARDIS wardrobe in the 2005 Tenth Doctor story "The Christmas Invasion". The Sixth Doctor’s multicoloured umbrella also makes its first appearance in this story.
Elements from Robert Holmes’s aborted Twentieth Anniversary project "The Six Doctors" (which was replaced by "The Five Doctors") were carried over to this story. Namely: the concept of the Second Doctor being operated on with the intent of removing a unique Time Lord genetic trait. In the script, the Cybermen planned to extract a unique organic mechanism from The Doctor and place it in themselves, becoming ‘Cyberlords’.
Although there is dispute over whether The Doctor actually kills anyone in "Vengeance on Varos", there is no doubt that "The Two Doctors" is one of the most violent in the show’s history. This is reflected in this story’s mortality rate: Anita being the sole non-Doctor/non-companion character to survive its conclusion. This story features: multiple stabbings and knife wounds, blood spillage (Human, Time Lord and Sontaran), the attempted cooking and eating of humans, and The Doctor is even seen killing Shockeye (allbeit in self-defence) with cyanide. The violence in this story therefore added to the ongoing media criticism over the level of violence in the Sixth Doctor’s era.
The scene where the Sixth Doctor kills Shockeye is the first time that The Doctor is shown directly and intentionally killing a humanoid character (the Cybermen notwithstanding) since the 1978 Fourth Doctor story "The Ribos Operation", in which he deliberately switches an explosive, letting the villain blow himself up instead.
During the history of the show The Doctor has rarely taken a life face-to-face. Other examples have included the killing of Solon (also using cyanide) in the 1976 Fourth Doctor story "The Brain of Morbius", shooting several Sontarans with the demat gun in the 1978 Fourth Doctor story "The Invasion of Time" and the shooting of the Cyber-Leader in the 1982 Fifth Doctor story "Earthshock". In all cases, these were in self-defence - so confirming a statement originally made by the First Doctor when he claimed that he only took life when his own was sufficiently threatened.
This story contains a number of errors. Namely: In some scenes you can see the lips of Clinton Greyn (who played the part of Group Marshal Stike) moving independently of his Sontaran mask’s lips and in some scenes when Major Varl speaks, his mask’s mouth remains closed; Despite being a recluse, the Dona Arana is able to supply Shockeye with a current list of Seville restaurants.
Although being the third story recorded for Season Twenty Two, it was later decided to swap this story with "The Mark of The Rani" so as to achieve a more balanced schedule for this season.
It was during the transmission of this story that it was announced that Doctor Who would be put on hiatus for a year. Much controversy still surrounds this period and the action taken, with disputes over whether or not the show was facing cancellation outright at this stage, and the roles of various BBC officials such as BBC One controller Michael Grade and Head of Drama Serials Jonathan Powell.
This is one of only a few multi-Doctor stories and was the third during the original run of the show, including the Tenth Anniversary story "The Three Doctors" (1972) and the Twentieth Anniversary story "The Five Doctors" (1983). Excluding the Thirtieth-Anniversary Children In Need special "Dimensions in Time", in 1993, no new multi-Doctor story would occur again on screen until the 2007 "mini-story" "Time Crash", starring Peter Davison (as the Fifth Doctor) and David Tennant (as the Tenth Doctor).
"The Two Doctors" is the fourth story to include the Sontarans. It also became their final appearance for 23 years, until the 2008 Tenth Doctor story "The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky". "The Two Doctors" is also the last story to be filmed outside the United Kingdom until the 1996 Eighth Doctor film, "Doctor Who: The Movie", which was produced entirely in Canada.
Despite being designed as to have three 45-minute episodes this story, like many for Season Twenty Two, was sold to other countries, such as Australia and America, with its episodes edited into six 25-minute episodes with new cliff-hangers added. These are: Peri’s collapse on the space station, Anita leading The Doctor to Chessene’s hideout and the Sixth Doctor struggling against the Androgum genes infecting his timeline.
This story became the final story for both Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines. Although Patrick Troughton expressed the desire to continue an involvement in the show, including working inside a monster costume, this never transpired. Unfortunately, he suffered a fatal heart attack on the 28th March 1987, while attending a Doctor Who convention in Columbus, Georgia.
Patrick Troughton remains, to date, the only actor to reprise the role of The Doctor on three separate occasions on television.
This story marked Peter Moffatt’s final contribution to the show. He continued working in television thereafter, including such series as All Creatures Great and Small and EastEnders.
This story was released on DVD in September 2003 in a two-disc set as part of The Doctor Who 40th Anniversary Celebration releases, representing the Colin Baker years, with many extra features, including the Jim'll Fix It sketch A Fix with Sontarans. This story was also released in the Bred for War DVD boxed set, in May 2008, alongside all the previous Sontaran stories, "The Time Warrior", "The Sontaran Experiment" and "The Invasion of Time". The DVD is the same as the one sold separately.
The novelisation of this story, by Robert Holmes, was published by Target Books in December 1985. It had a gold foil-embossed cover and was billed on release as being the 100th release. It also featured an introduction by John Nathan-Turner. This was Robert Holmes’ only complete novelisation and it clears up some of the continuity errors in the original broadcast.
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The Firsts:
The first time that The Doctor is shown directly and intentionally killing a humanoid character since the 1978 Fourth Doctor story "The Ribos Operation".
The first Doctor Who story to be recorded in Spain.
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(Position = 50 out of 159)
(Position = 125 out of 200)
(Position = 138 out of 241)
