Doctor Who Week: "The War Games" (1969)

“The War Games” is a ten-part, 243-minute epic Doctor Who serial that was broadcast from April through June of 1969.  It was written by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks, and directed by David Maloney.

This story finds our good Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his companions Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury) landing the TARDIS in what seems to be a World War I battlefield.

However, the group soon learns it has landed on alien planet filled with war zones from various Earth time periods, including the American Civil War, World War I, and the Crimean War.

In fact, fifty-thousand abducted humans are being made to fight in these wars at the pleasure of a deadly alien being known as the War Lord, a tyrant hoping to construct the ultimate army for his strategy of galactic conquest.

After much running around, the Doctor defeats the alien War Lord with the aid of human resistors, but comes to realize he cannot send all 50,000 humans home using the TARDIS It is an act simply beyond his capabilities.

The Doctor needs help, and so must summon the Time Lords -- the very people he ran away from -- for help.

In doing so, the Doctor exposes himself to his most fearsome enemies.

The Doctor is captured by the Time Lords, put on trial for interference, and before the tenth episode (a season finale...) ends, the Time Lords mete out a terrible justice not just to the War Lord, but to the Doctor himself

They force the Doctor to regenerate, and then exile him on Earth of the late 20^th century…

Although at ten segments it is undeniably over-long, "The War Games" is a beautifully-shot addition to the Doctor Who canon.   The original Doctor Who creative aesthetic -- highlighted during the black-and-white days of Hartnell and Troughton -- is here in spades.  To wit, the series compensated for its low-budget with some exquisite visuals and beautiful camerawork.  This serial, perhaps, takes the cake in that regard.

The first episode of "The War Games" opens with a long shot view of what seems a barren World War I battlefield. A slow tilt down by Maloney's camera reveals a pool of muddy water and flotsam, and then -- in the pool's reflective surface -- we see the TARDIS materialize.

Taken by itself, this is an artistic alternative to the "standard" opening of many a serial, a simple landscape shot with the TARDIS merely appearing suddenly. 

But much more than that, the pan across this battlefield and the appearance of the TARDIS in a kind of swamp uniquely expresses the isolation and desolation of this war zone. It's an artistic and beautiful way to commence a show, and it's appropriate we see a reflection of the TARDIS first, because in some senses, this serial is about a "reflection" of Earth; a simulation of Earth Wars, but not the real thing.

The War Games" also features a break-neck staccato pace, often to the cacophony of blaring German machine guns. When the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are assaulted by unknown enemies, there are fast cuts in the show, and every episode in the serial is like that, moving at cliff-hanger speed.

But then arrives the final turnaround in the ninth half-hour, and the reason this serial should be considered a classic.

After episodes and episodes of rapid-fire battles, hair-raising escapes, last-minute rescues and the like, we have hardly had time to catch our breaths. But then -- after the Doctor has summoned his people and is trying to escape so as to continue his adventures -- slow-motion photography is suddenly employed to denote the inescapable fact that the Doctor can no longer continue to run.

Now, his very enemy is time itself: the enigmatic Time Lords.

No matter how fast the Doctor runs, he cannot escape. The dramatic utilization of slow-motion photography in the closing portion of episode nine is made doubly effective by all the staccato editing in the previous portions of the serial. By this point, the audience has been through one fast-paced scrape with the Doctor after another, and so we are not prepared for the impact of the slow-motion interlude, or the fact that the Time Lords can and do intervene, and actually slow time to a crawl, hindering our hero's escape.

The slow-motion photography, in direct contrast to all the fast-cutting of earlier segments, hints at the inescapable fact that this is a battle the Doctor can't win.  

Dynamic visuals alone are not the only reason to remember the season closer for Doctor Who's sixth year. More importantly, "The War Games" tells a remarkable story (and one repeated on Star Trek Voyager many years later, featuring the Hirogen and holodeck simulations of World War II and other battle scenarios...). And it isn't just about endless war, either.

"The War Games" is one of the best examples of the Doctor's personal heroism. Here, his life and very future are at stake, but he puts that existential threat aside to help the human fighters. He contacts the Time Lords, even though he knows that for him that contact will spell certain doom.

And let us not forget that this serial came at a time in the series history when the Time Lords were a mysterious and frightening people.  Over the years, they were modified to become but another alien race, like Mr. Spock’s Vulcans.  But at first -- in “The War Games” -- the mysterious, draconian Time Lords were more menacing than the Daleks or the Cybermen. 

In fact, as depicted in "The War Games,” the Time Lords are the most frightening villains the series has ever dramatized. They are invincible and powerful, able to control time. And they have a cold, harsh sense of law and justice. They punish the War Lord (after torturing him...) by wiping his existence from the record of time, a horrendous and heartless fate.

Then -- in an act of vengeance almost totally unjustified -- these Lords of Time trap the War Lord's entire planet in a kind of stasis or force field. Cleverly, the final episode of "The War Games" shows us this evil, merciless "Time Lord" justice first, and then proceeds to the trial of the Doctor second.

Once more, the feeling that the Doctor has finally run out of luck, is inescapable.

As the Doctor's trial begins, audiences understand that there will be no mercy, and no last minute reprieve.  In the end, the Time Lords kill this incarnation of the Doctor, make his companions (Jamie and Zoe) forget their time with him and exile the new incarnation of the Doctor to 20th century Earth.  They do it all without remorse, or humanity, thus marking them as dangerous and as sinister as Dalek, Cyberman, Ice Warrior, or any other "alien" race.

At the end of "The War Games" it is quite sad and touching to see the forced separation of the Doctor from his companions, but still the Doctor knew that in saving the humans from the War Lord, he would face drastic consequences.  This serial is not just an anti-war story (presented during the Vietnam War), it is a statement about doing good even when there is a personal cost.

“The War Games” sends the Doctor into exile on Earth, and thus sparks one of the (many) major turning points in the mythos that Steven Moffatt sometimes discusses in regards to the upcoming “Day of the Doctor.”  After this serial, everything changed.  The Doctor was no longer fleeing his own people, and, in a sense, he was no longer free, either.

Visually dynamic, extremely frightening and serving as a crucial turning point in the legend, “The War Games" is the last gasp of the Patrick Troughton era. See it if you can….of for no other reason than Patrick Troughton's unforgettable goodbye to his companion Jamie, and his admonition to remember that "time is relative.”