The War Games

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe to the muddy fields of France during World War I. They are immediately suspected of being spies and subjected to a court martial, but the urgency behind the matters makes the Doctor suspicious and he realizes that the soldiers on both sides are being controlled by some outside force, its agents in leadership roles among them. But there is more to this than simple infiltration: this is not the real World War I and it is one of many separate time zones where wars from Earth’s history are being played out side by side. Presiding over the carnage are the cold War Lord and his chief henchmen the Security Chief and the War Chief – all waiting to see which groups of humans will survive the war games and emerge as the best soldiers for their own conquest of the galaxy. But the arrival of the Doctor turns things upside down quickly – he recognizes the War Chief as a member of his own race, the Time Lords, and when he realizes how far reaching this scheme is he may have no choice but to call them for help.

At last! It took the powers that be at the BBC almost 6 years to do it, but finally the Doctor’s background is revealed: he’s not simply out exploring the universe, he’s on the run from his own people. The TARDIS is not his – it’s stolen property. And over the years since he has been at liberty his actions have crossed the line as far as the Time Lords are concerned; they are not to get involved with the goings on of other species and planets, just observe and gather knowledge. Without the odd drop of the title of Time Lord in some of the expanded universe media, there has been no mention of this race at all in series televised canon, so it’s all first time reveals here. But the Doctor had been trying to adhere to the rules at first, trying not to draw attention to himself with his indifferent reaction to the plight of the Thals against the Daleks, and his scolding of Barbara for her own designs on changing history. As we have seen over the years, though, he can’t help but get involved with events, the turning point possibly being when he sets Nero’s plans for a new Rome on fire in The Romans. After that, it’s all in for the Doctor when it comes to stamping out evil and fighting the good fight. There was no real plan at the time to bring the series to this point so the Expanded Universe has taken it upon itself to drop the odd bit of foreshadowing about how the Doctor’s people would not look kindly upon his actions, and a bit of retcon has been applied to Susan’s departure in light of this: she would be just as guilty as the Doctor, and dropping her on Earth would have been his way of protecting her should the Time Lords ever catch up to them. It’s interesting to see how in An Unearthly Child the Doctor alludes to plans to one day get himself and Susan home, but once he starts to interfere with evil plans and thwart Daleks he realizes he can’t go back now; he’s gotten in too deep.

The Time Lord double-whammy in this one is the presence of the War Chief, another renegade Time Lord who has fled their planet but has allied himself with an evil regime to ascend to power in their ranks. The moment of revelation is fantastically tense, with he and the Doctor locking eyes across and room and the Doctor reacting in shock, dragging Zoe and running for their lives. The War Chief is not too different from the Monk in his aspirations, although the Monk’s means were not as bloody. The War Chief is perhaps more immediately dangerous in a physical sense; he’s not afraid to turn his guards loose on people and have them killed, and he’s slyly undermining the Security Chief (played with such finesse my James Bree) to gain favour with the War Lord himself. When the Time Lords themselves appear, they are portrayed as calm omnipotent beings, wise in their ways, but a bit on the high and mighty all the same. It’s no wonder the Doctor got out of there when he could.

This is the end for the TARDIS trio though; with the Doctor captured by the Time Lords the team is torn apart with both of the companions sent back to their original times with only their memories of their first encounter with the Doctor remaining. Zoe is returned to the Wheel and carries on as if nothing has happened, even dismissing a slight feeling of having forgotten something as nothing. Jamie is put back in Scotland in the same clothes he joined in, his hair even styled back the way it was, and as far as he knows he just said goodbye to the Doctor, Ben and Polly. This is the second time companions have been left behind against their will (if we do not count the unfortunate demises of Katarina and Sara Kingdom) with Susan being the other notable departure. Jamie and Zoe only leave when they are told because the Doctor tells them it is goodbye and they can’t fight what’s coming anymore. The Doctor is crushed; he knows his friends will not remember him, but he insists he sees that they have been returned home safe before his trial goes any further.

As far as trials go it’s not a very long one at all; the Doctor is read the riot act for his involvement in matters he should have left well alone, but the Time Lords do admit that he has been a positive influence where he has gone and they cannot deny the nature of the evils he has faced and stopped. The Doctor’s sentence is not death, but exile to Earth, which the Doctor thinks could be just as bad. And to make matters worse, the Time Lords are going to trigger another regeneration and block his memory of time travel theory so he cannot escape. The Doctor is outraged, but in the end he is powerless, sent spinning off into the darkness screaming defiance.

The first time I came across this story was in print form, specifically the Target novelization by Malcolm Hulke. It was the usual kind of Target fare with a vague cover and a promising blurb on the back and something like 150 pages of content. I did not get a full sense of the gravity of the trial and the Doctor’s adventures from this back then as I had not actually seen any of the black and white episodes, only a colour episode with the second Doctor crossing paths with the third (still to come). As I got further into fandom I gleefully discovered that The War Games was a mammoth 10 episode story and it was all held by the BBC Archine, so I eventually got to see it on television in two long episodes (1 to 5 and 6 to 10) and then on VHS when it was released properly. And let me tell you, 10 episodes is a lot to take in in one sitting. This time I did a couple episodes a day on the DVD release and enjoyed some of the supplemental materials as well, detailing the production and the story behind the story, including the very real notion that this may have actually been the last Doctor Who episode ever.

When the series did return in six months, there was a new man emerging from the TARDIS and in full colour to boot. The show was going to change along with the Doctor himself, but the Expanded Universe lore has been having fun with this gap between Doctors, exploring a lot of “what if” situations such as what if the Doctor did not immediately go into exile and was employed by the Time Lords as a covert agent? And what happened to Jamie and Zoe after they were returned home? There’s a lot of room for speculation, and that’s where we’re going to go next before returning to the televised series canon…

NEXT EPISODE: FEAR OF THE DALEKS