Written by
Ian Stuart Black
Broadcast 25th
June – 16th July 1966
Season 3
“DOCTOR….WHO…. Is ….
REQUIRED”
It’s the swinging Sixties and London
is a buzz. The hottest club in town is
The Inferno and that is where The Doctor meets two new friends. The lovely and swinging girl of the 60’s
scenes Polly and her soon to be boyfriend the grumpy sailor Ben soon to be
travelers in the TARDIS. Well soon and
unexpected and quite soon as the pair gets entangled with The Doctor and WOTAN.
WOTAN is a super computer who thinks
humans are inferior and should be ruled by machines. Thus WOTAN uses hypnotic influence to get
humans to assemble The War Machine to use in taking over the world. What is
funny about WOTAN is that he calls The Doctor Doctor Who. One of his instructions is Doctor Who is
required. For such an intelligent computer you would have thought it would know
The Doctors name.
Not to be overlooked is the fact that
The War Machines has one of the strangest companions leaving ever. In fact you hardly see it. After The Doctor
frees her from WOTAN’s control he sends her off to the country to
recuperate. The Doctor finds out later
by a letter that Dodo has decided to stay on Earth and not continue traveling
with The Doctor. Indeed a very strange
parting of the ways in Doctor Who’s history. Almost as strange as when she
arrived by running into the TARDIS at the end of The Massacre.
The War Machines is one of the few
Hartnell stories that take place during modern time in fact it is the only one
besides a few moments of episode 1 on An Unearthly Child. It takes place in
1966 in London and it is a really different turn for The Doctor so far. Mainly Hartnell’s Doctor visits alien planets
or goes back into the past of earth’s history.
For them to be in contemporary London during 1966 is a risk that pays
off.
It is a pretty cool science fiction
story that has a lot of really good moments.
One of those moments is the cliffhanger to episode 3 where The Doctor is
facing down the oncoming war machine. He
is just standing there hands on lapels starring defiantly at the War
machine. The Doctor demonstrates such
arrogance and no fear that it’s chilling at how much command he has and the
confidence he exhumes that it sends chills up your spine.
The War Machines has a UNIT story feel
to it. With The War Machine terrorizing
London the army is there trying to stop it with The Doctor putting together a
contraption to stop the War Machine. It
was very like a Jon Pertwee story in that sense. It just had that science fiction feel to it
with the super computer trying to take over the world. It just was cool to see the present be
menaced for a change instead of watching a story in the future or the past. The
War Machines was something different for a change.
The War Machines is one of my favorite
William Hartnell Stories and it is also one of my favorite Doctor Who stories
of all time also. I think it has to do
with it feeling like a Doctor Who story that we are familiar with. You get the feeling something different is
happening and the show is going in another direction. Which it was since The War Machines ended
season 3 and season 4 heralded some mighty big changes. The War Machines is that rare gem that just
happens to be a really great story with a strong science fiction feel to it.
Grade A
No comments:
Post a Comment