The Three Doctors

Season 10 is an interesting time for Doctor Who to be introspective. For all that Patrick Troughton's era has a different emphasis to William Hartnell's, superficially it's still just, 'But Doctor, where have we landed this week...?' It was noticeable as early as Spearhead in Space that the producers were courting a new audience, and we've made it through three seasons with no glancing back, no references to successes of recent memory (Yeti, Cybermen, Jamie's hairy legs). There was one encounter with the dreaded Daleks, and the one with the Ice Warriors saw them in a new light.

The format of the show has changed, of course ('But Doctor, who is it that's landed where we are this week...?'), but the much bigger difference is the complete reimagining of Doctor Who into Doctor Time Lord; the man of mystery becoming the man who ran away from Shangri-la, who grew up on a mountainside, talking to hermits, went to school with a kid who grew up to be the universe's most dedicated moustache-twirler, and now lives in exile, doing occasional cosmic courier work and driving vintage cars down country lanes at twice the speed of sound.

Quite strikingly, while it celebrates the past, this is a story it would be impossible for the show to have told in any previous era.

With this story, we get a potted history of his home world, not to mention an insight into Time Lord society: when their President foresees the loss of their 'time travel facility', he fears becoming 'as vulnerable as those we are pledged to protect'. They are the ultimate, the omniscient superpower, not 'intervening' but nevertheless 'Lording' it up. Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts have steadily developed this culture to the extent that practically everything the Doctor is or does is within its context. This cosmogony - a spectrum of enlightenment with the portentous President and Chancellor at one end, the Brig and Benton at the other, and Jo and the Doctor in the middle - seems bound to keep producing stories about magic, technology and god. What is the best way of seeing the world? What is the nature of power?

The result has been a new version of our hero with wants and cares. The First Doctor, for example, was never seen to think particularly of redemption of the Monk, as the Third  does of the Master. The Third Doctor is pained by Omega's impossible yearning to be free: for only a second, but a second longer than the Second Doctor ever considered his adversaries.

Omega is the Doctor seen through a CSO effect darkly: stranded on an alien world by the Time Lords, driven insane with resentment and pride, and Master of all he surveys. He is not content to be a hero, like Jon Pertwee. He quite fancies being a God. Perhaps the Doctor should tell another little anecdote, about Azal and the Daemons, and how they ended up.

There is a case for saying that these ideas remain under-developed in favour of daring escapes to inevitable dangers, and it's a strong case. I must say it would be good to see the Third Doctor envying his younger self's cavalier attitude to time travel, to see Jo disputing with the President of the High Council, or have the Brigadier say goodbye to his scientific adviser as if he means it ('Wonderful chap - both of him,' being more than adequate, I suppose). But equally, the show's treatment of all these ideas would be nothing without the lightness and irreverence they receive here. Troughton's performance is emblematic, but Manning and Courtney know their stuff too, and the whole shebang has genuine charm. Even Hartnell, perhaps my favourite Doctor, is included in the warm glow. I love the way he calls everyone into the Tardis at the end, sounding more 1970s grandad than 1890s grandfather: 'Everything okay?'

And then, in one tiny scene, the story arc of three seasons is resolved. The Doctor is given his Tardis back. Even though the script is rather awkward about it, Jon Pertwee knows what this means to his Doctor, and Katy Manning is on the same page. The show has been entirely rewritten, and the reward is a feeling of narrative progression, expansion of the Doctor's character along with his universe, and all in what could have been the most self-indulgent, self-regarding story of the series.

But Doctor, the question is, where next...?

The Mutants

I don't know how she does it.

Josephine Grant manages to make her job at the United Nations look frightfully glamorous, but I wouldn't want to be in her platform boots. Continual stresses, violations of health and safety, working with two of the most patronising men in Tarminster (three, if there's an 'r' in the month and the Master's dropped by). The hours are decidedly odd, too – some of them are in the future, and when she's there she witnesses the most miserable visions of life on Earth. Yet somehow she remains buoyant.

In The Mutants, she has her second glimpse of the future life of humankind (the dystopia of the Daleks doesn't count because – we assume – it doesn't happen). And it's shit. Earth itself is all concrete and car fumes. Its colonists don't even have the pioneer spirit of Gail Tilsley and co., who were making a fairly miserable job of farming a mudball, shortly before their ship was blown up by venture capitalists. 

At least Gail (and Tlotoxl) were co-existing peacefully with the inhabitants of the planet, even if they are all blown up a papier-mache gnome with a super-weapon at the end of that story. In The Mutants, the project of colonising the galaxy has inevitably begun to implode. The Marshall, expertly performed here by Paul Whitsun-Jones, is a variation on Morris Perry's similarly vile Captain Dent: adding to Dent's avariciousness over mineral rights, the crazed despotism of a business executive. Nevertheless, they are equally inhuman, equally capable of corruption on a galactic scale and cold-blooded murder.

If you were Jo, you might almost wonder if it was worth struggling to save the Earth of the present day. Despite the fact The Mutants evinces the strongest influence of 'Star Trek' yet, it paints a rather less optimistic version of the future.

But Jo just can't help herself. She heedlessly throws herself into the action, and does a good job of convincing the Marshall that she and the Doctor – together with the authorities – have got him on the run. This is before the authorities turn up, in their gold lame judges' wigs, and nearly dither the Solonians (and the audience) into an early grave.

She sees some amazing things, too. A firestorm viewed from the mouth of a cave. Giant flea people who lurch out of the shadows. A cave of pure Colour Separation Overlay which sends her into a slow motion spin. A mutant viking falling through a spaceship wall into the void. Last, but not least, a multicoloured butterfly man who can fly through walls and talk through his eyes.

It's a shame that the Time Lords, as a thank you for risking their necks over the planet's fate, couldn't take the Doctor and Jo to the future of Solos, where the air is presumably thick with butterfly people. But, no. Giant fleas and being locked in a radioactive fuel cell. Then home. You've had your fun.

This is a strange story for the Time Lords. It's never very well explained just what they're doing, and why the Doctor's doing it for them, which wouldn't matter if it wasn't a big part of the narrative. Everyone's behaving out of character, intervening in the affairs of Solos for no particular reason. Jon Pertwee sells it with all the star power of his Doctor, but sometimes you can feel him wondering – what exactly am I after, here?

Call me a fan wanker – you won't be the first – but one's imagination is tantalised by the appearance of George Pravda, Deadly Assassin's Castellan Spandrell. The headwear of the Earth authorities recalls that story too. Mad as it might seem, I long to write a revisionist Target novelisation where the dodgy Earth colonists are mixed up with shady Gallifreyans. I could hardly resist popping a Season 6B incarnation of the Doctor in there somewhere, too.

An alternate fantasy would be to hoover all the Time Lordy bits of the story out, hopefully reducing the whole thing down to four episodes. (No more six episode stories. No more.  I won't stand for this.) I think The Mutants, with its atmospheric locations, mad characters, eerie music, amazing monsters and unguarded political sentiment would be immediately taken to viewers' hearts. Pertwee's outfit is particularly nice this story, too. Like Quentin Crisp in space.

As it is, I don't quite know how Jo and the Doctor have the strength to crack a joke in the closing reel, but it's a hallmark of this era that they try. They're a class act, this team: stylish, playful and outspoken. Long may they reign.