The Two Doctors

The Two Doctors is the fourth serial of the 22nd season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in three weekly parts on BBC1 from 16 February to 2 March 1985.

The serial is set on an alien space station and in and around Seville. In the serial, the alien time traveller the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker), his former travelling companion Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and his current companion Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant) work to save the younger Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) from the biogeneticist Dastari (Laurence Payne), who intends to steal the knowledge of how to travel in time from the Second Doctor's genetic make-up.

This serial marks Troughton's final appearance as the Second Doctor before his death in 1987.

Plot
The Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon land the TARDIS on board Space Station Camera, where they talk to Dastari, the Head of Projects. The Doctor tells Dastari that the Time Lords want the time experiments stopped, but Dastari refuses. Also on board are the Androgums, a gluttonous alien species who are conspiring with the Sontarans to take over the station. The ship's Androgum cook, Shockeye, drugs the crew's dinner to give the Sontarans an opportunity to invade.

In the TARDIS, the Sixth Doctor has a vision of his second incarnation being put to death. He decides to consult his old friend Dastari to see if he can help. The Doctor and Peri arrive on the station and are taken prisoner by the Sontarans. The ship lands in Seville, Spain, where the Androgums and Sontarans take over a local hacienda to use as a base of operations.

Dastari reveals his plan to dissect the Second Doctor's cell structure to isolate his symbiotic nuclei and give them to Chessene, an Androgum technologically augmented to genius levels. Upon discovering there are two Time Lords on the ship, Chessene asks Dastari to turn the Second Doctor into an Androgum instead. They also intend to eliminate the Sontarans.

Dastari implants the Second Doctor with a 50 per cent Androgum inheritance. The Second Doctor and Shockeye go to a restaurant and order gargantuan amounts of food. When the restaurant's owner demands that they pay, Shockeye fatally stabs him, just as the Sixth Doctor and the others arrive. Shockeye leaves the Second Doctor, who slowly reverts to normal. Chessene and Dastari take them back to the hacienda at gunpoint.

The Sixth Doctor frees himself and kills Shockeye. Chessene sees the Doctor's blood and starts licking it. Dastari realises that no matter how augmented she may be, Chessene is still an Androgum, and decides to free the Second Doctor, Peri, and Jamie. When Chessene sees this, she shoots and kills Dastari. She tries to shoot the Second Doctor and Peri, but Jamie throws a knife at her wrist, making her drop the gun. Chessene goes into the module, hoping to escape, but the sabotaged module explodes, killing her.

Production
Robert Holmes, a vegetarian, wrote the serial as an allegory about meat-eating, hunting and butchering. "Androgum" is an anagram of "gourmand".

Holmes's original brief from producer John Nathan-Turner was to write a serial taking place in New Orleans, involving the Sontarans, the First Doctor portrayed by Richard Hurndall and the Doctor's granddaughter Susan Foreman, played by Carole Ann Ford, reprising their roles from "The Five Doctors". Hurndall's death in April 1984 saw the brief revised to feature the Second Doctor and Jamie, but the setting had to be changed to Spain instead when the expected funding for location filming in the United States fell through.

In his 1986 interview for Starburst, script editor Eric Saward said he thought this story was "poorly directed".

Cast notes
This story marked the final appearance of Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor and the final on-screen appearance of Frazer Hines as Jamie.

Broadcast and reception
The Two Doctors was one of several stories from this era to provoke controversy over its depiction of violence. In 1985, Australasian Doctor Who Fan Club president Tony Howe criticised the murder of Oscar with a kitchen knife as being an instance of "sick, shock violence" that was present for "cheap shock value only".

Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times awarded the serial two stars out of five, stating: "The Two Doctors wasn't dire, but the actors and audience deserved better." In Doctor Who: The Complete Guide, Mark Campbell awarded The Two Doctors seven out of ten, describing it as "a Doctor Who version of Last of the Summer Wine as sponsored by the Vegetarian Society."

In print
The novelisation of this serial, by Robert Holmes, was published in hardback and paperback in August 1985 as the 100th Doctor Who release by Target Books. This was Holmes's only complete novelisation and seeks to clear up some of the continuity errors in the original broadcast. With a gold foil-embossed cover, it was billed on release as the 100th novelisation and featured an introduction by John Nathan-Turner.

Home media
The Two Doctors was released on VHS in November 1993. It was released on DVD in the UK 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. The DVD contains a full-length commentary provided by director Peter Moffatt and actors Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Frazer Hines, and Jacqueline Pearce. The DVD was subsequently incorporated into the box set Bred for War, along with The Time Warrior, The Sontaran Experiment and The Invasion of Time. Following the sexual abuse accusations regarding Jimmy Savile, the DVD was withdrawn from sale but has since been rereleased with the offending sketch removed. The BBC has made the serial available for download on Apple iTunes. It was released in issue 45 of Doctor Who DVD Files.

It was released as part of the ‘Doctor Who The Collection: Season 22’ blu-ray box set on 20 June 2022. An extended cut of Part One was included as an extra on the set.