The Deadly Assassin The Menagerie Timewyrm: Exodus |
BBC The War Games |
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| Episodes | 10 |  |
| Story No# | 50 | |
| Production Code | ZZ | |
| Season | 6 | |
| Dates | Apr. 19, 1969 - Jun. 10, 1969 |
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With Patrick Troughton, Frazier Hines, Wendy Padbury.
Written by Terrance Dicks & Malcolm Hulke. Script-Edited by Derrick Sherwin. Directed by David Maloney. Produced by Peter Bryant. |
| Synopsis: The Doctor and crew land amidst a myriad of wars from human history, run by aliens for their own purposes. |
Two Episodes Too Short by Jason A. Miller 1/12/25
One of my least favorite objections to Classic Doctor Who serials is that they're "two episodes too long". Intellectually lazy reviewing. For example, The War Games is perfectly suited to its length, introducing some new concept or wrinkle in nine out of the ten episodes. It starts with the TARDIS crew giggling in the mud and ends with them permanently separated, the Doctor helplessly spinning off into the time vortex in agony. That's a massive distance from Point A and B; ten episodes gets you there fast.
Episode One is a 25-minute cutdown of Paths of Glory, nearly as powerful as the Kubrick film. It starts with the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe laughing in the mud of No-Man's Land. Director David Maloney shows the TARDIS materialize by its reflection in a puddle. The on-location shell barrage and the in-studio trench scenes are shot up close, with unsettling realism. General Smythe hypnotizes his underlings via glasses, none of the soldiers can remember where they're from or how long they've been at war, and there's a TV monitor in Smythe's private quarters. Esmond Webb as an orders-barking Sergeant Major is wonderful. Troughton, much more serious here than in Season 6 generally, grows increasingly frustrated with the farcical court martial; from giggling in the mud to resignedly giving Zoe a farewell kiss, and the firing-squad cliffhanger actually ends with the sound of a bullet. You could remake it today with hardly any change. One of the best single episodes of the '60s.
Episode Two begins with a TARDIS noise, and the cabinet with a sliding door in Smythe's quarters later dematerializes. Two anachronistic developments: a British Redcoat from 1745, locked in a cell with Jamie (the two of them instantly hit it off and plot an escape attempt) and, at the cliffhanger, an entire Roman legion charging towards the cameras. Even the capture/escape/capture loops are cleverly embedded within one another --- Jamie and the redcoat breaking out of their cell and being recaptured, wrapped inside the larger story of the Doctor and Zoe's escape from Smythe's chateau... before they're all three recaptured. But the padding advances the plot and deepens the mysteries, and Troughton gives a tour-de-force performance berating the commandant of the military prison. What a swansong for Pat.
Episode Three is more capture/escape/capture, in Roman times, in the British and German sectors of the WWI zone and the American Civil War zone. But we now go inside the futuristic alien HQ, where British General Smythe and German Captain Von Weich plot out their battles with superbly cynical Malcolm Hulke dialogue ("It will be an excellent test of your morale").The War Chief is introduced (Edward Burnham, the same genteel villainy from The Reign of Terror) and soliloquizes that he might know the Doctor. At the end, the SIDRAT dematerializes with the Doctor and Zoe. Even as a runaround, Episode Three pivots the story from WWI morality play to time-travel epic.
Episodes Four through Seven blur together a bit, with the cliffhangers to Four and Six not even featuring in the novelization. But there are distinct moments of drama in each. Episode Four cleverly casts Afro-Caribbean actor Rudolph Walker as a Union soldier, the first character aware that he's not on Earth in 1862; it's a nice frisson of historical accuracy when he's surrounded at gunpoint by Confederate soldiers. We also get introduced to Alien HQ via Vernon Dobtcheff (who's been in everything), terrific as the alien Scientist bamboozled by the Doctor. The Doctor flees in abject fright when he and the War Chief recognize each other. It's not often that we see the Doctor scared, so the War Chief must present some pretty confounding problem indeed...
Episode Five introduces the Security Chief. Isn't James Bree wonderful? He's shot from low angles with the studio lights reflecting off his glasses and delivers his dialogue in a high-pitched monotone; he is, in short, riveting. Episode Six is driven by twin revelations: the Scientist's identification of the War Chief's people as the Time Lords and Zoe's sharp questioning as to how the Doctor is able to operate the aliens' time capsule technology so easily, to which Troughton replies with signature bluster and transparent evasiveness. Episode Seven starts and finishes with the Doctor in the clutches of the Security Chief but getting his 10,000 steps in, in between. What stands out is Philip Madoc as the War Lord, the last of the four principal aliens to be introduced. I've been critical of Madoc's hammy, blustery Who work (The Krotons, The Power of Kroll and especially The Brain of Morbius (on the floor!)). But here he's a study in icy minimalism, with chilling fake smiles. He short circuits the endless bickering between the War Chief and Security Chief and proves why he's Lord.
Episode Eight adds the funny accents of resistance leaders Ivan Petrov and Arturo Villar. The Doctor is seen to betray his friends, in what may be the first Doctor Who cliffhanger where the Doctor plays the antagonist, a notion that The Evil of the Daleks fumbled, and fulfilling a promise made in The Enemy of the World, where we learned that Troughton was at least as entertaining as a baddie than as a goodie...
Episode Nine is perfection, no padding. Adjusting for changes in acting styles and TV-studio production in the last 50 years, you're not going to find a leaner production. This is a mature script, with most characters lying or dissembling. The Doctor's rapier-sharp dismantling of the War Chief's crumbling scheme is a glee to watch: "That particular problem is impossible to solve. How did you solve it?" And Madoc's mirthless smile when he says "Of course they are," in response to the Doctor's protestations that his Resistance friends are now his enemies. The Security Chief's riposte to the War Chief, "What a stupid fool YOU are", is infamous; I've heard that James Bree would include that line in his autographs to Doctor Who fans, which, oh, my heart. The War Chief's brutal slaying of the Security Chief, with Bree writhing around the set in a vain effort to dislodge his signature glasses, is uncompromising... matched, a few minutes later, by the War Chief's own death screams, bleeding over across the studio into the next scene. Troughton realizing that he has to summon the Time Lords and run far, far away is a master class in your hero losing control of a situation. But amidst the drama is comedy: the Doctor pretending to process Jamie and Zoe is one last round of comedy gold from this expert trio, and Michael Napier-Brown's over-the-top portrayal of Arturo Villar --- witness the way he has to be physically restrained multiple times from shooting the Doctor --- stands out. At the cliffhanger, the Doctor is trapped not by monsters or enemies, but his own people...
Episode Ten is, even more so than Episodes One and Nine, perfect, possibly the single best episode of the 1960s (An Unearthly Child 1, Daleks Masterplan 12 and Web of Fear 4 are also high in the running). But you didn't need me to tell you that. I won't do it the indignity of even trying to summarize it.
It's worth taking The War Games episode by episode. Yes, there is padding: capture/escape/capture loops, circular arguments. But the writers cleverly add one new twist or wrinkle or additional villain or hero in nine of the ten episodes, as the story builds to its inexorable conclusion. It's long but masterly. One might say, it's not even long enough.