#two doctors

“STRANGE ATTRACTORS”

San Diego 20__, recovering from the loss of his second heart, the Doctor finds himself investigating a spree of disappearances connected to a sudden craze for Puzzle Cubes. While Fitz expands his horizons among the city’s sexual subcultures and Anji become increasingly involved with the machinations of the business world, the arrival of an unexpected figure brings newfound complications to the situation. The Doctor, pursued by shadowy handlers from a world that should no-longer exist, must work alongside himself to combat the mistakes of their world’s past. But with his future incarnation incapable of remembering his own history, let alone the history of his people the presence of two wildly contradictory versions of the same man threatens to destroy the Doctor before either of them can save the day. The lives of the Doctor rests in the hands of a woman neither of them know, bringing her own fractured history and pursuing an implacable foe, the three must navigate the dangers of their histories before San Diego finds itself consumed by the closest thing the universe has to a Hell 

My favorite Doctor Who story of all time is The Two Doctors. I defended it in Dreamwatch Bulletin once back when it was Doctor Who Bulletin and solicited "defense against clangers" articles from the readership. I’ve reprinted it to the internet at LJ (now moved to DW) and probably before that on Usenet, and now (when it might be that The Two Doctors is now tied for my favorite with Day of the Doctor) here it is for Tumblr.

Baker's characterization is right for the first and perhaps only time after Holmes'd last written him dialog, the last shot of Caves of Androzani.

It's Troughton's best return performance, the only reunion when any returning Doctor Who lead (pending Twice Upon a Time EDIT oh well) wasn't written as a caricature of the character he played when he was the lead. (And I'm happier to see him in his own, graying hair than in the Five Doctors wig.)

The two companions presented represent either end of the range of them all, from the able-if-uneducated warrior to the whiner/screamer. And the interaction between the Doctor and Peri is real arguing, not just mindless bitching (review Timelash for contrast). This is partly because of Baker's Doctor's improved characterization as noted above, and partly just because Holmes is writing the dialog.

The guest characters are memorably characterized as well. Oscar Bocheby is effective comic relief at the beginning and tragic relief at the end. The villains are well matched, with Chessene's convoluted deviousness and the Sontarans' paranoid xenophobia to provide plot twists as we go along. Shockeye is nicely over-the-top (in America we'd say he chews the scenery, but I wouldn't give Shockeye ideas) in contrast to Dastari's woodenness (not Lawrence Payne's first appearance on Doctor Who. What was his first? Answer below...).

The defense against accusations of "cannibalism" are probably already all well known to everyone here. Just in case though: The definition of cannibalism is the ingestion of one's own species. The ingestion of a character's own species isn't depicted at any time in The Two Doctors. There is dialog that suggests Androgums believe in the practice of cannibalism - i.e., Shockeye's surprise that humans don't have recipes for eating humans - but no such incidents are portrayed.

The defense against this particular complaint of Season 22 violence, the Doctor's killing of Shockeye, is that it was self-defense: Shockeye was so much stronger than the Doctor (which admittedly was not pointed up in the script and/or action well enough to be clear) that anything less than deadly force against Shockeye would have been insufficient.

The issues about continuity don't scare me. Robert Holmes always believed that the Time Lords manipulated the Doctor's travels from his first departure from Gallifrey with Susan along; this was just Holmes' chance to write it in. The trial at the end of The War Games, Holmes maintained, was just proof of how mindbogglingly hypocritical the Time Lords always were. Once you get that far, the only continuity bobble left is Jamie's usage of the words "Time Lords", and doctoring the memories of one unwashed primitive humanoid can't be any challenge to a people to whom the degenerative time loop is a judicial sentence. (Of course, you're free to subscribe to an alternate interpretation of your choice as you wish, e.g. “Season 6B”; I only maintain that no alternate interpretation's necessary.)

I said I was going to make a mega post with all the photos of the "Two Doctors" i have and here it is, two doctors my beloved 💜💜💜💜

6th Doctor and Dalek

6th Doctor, Peri, cyberman's and a woman that i don't know who it is of course on Bessie