How many Doctors have you seen today?
The Three Doctors is the first story of season 10 of Doctor Who. It stars Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell as the three Doctors, along with Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, and John Levene as Sergeant Benton. Although it is widely considered to be the series' 10th anniversary story, it was actually broadcast from December 1972 to January 1973, closer to the show's ninth anniversary (in November '72) than to its 10th.
It starts with Arthur Ollis finding Dr Tyler's weather balloon and getting disappeared by it. This quickly establishes a mystery of what could have caused this disappearing act. Dr Tyler makes a confused face and, in keeping with this story's already established desire to get straight to the main plot, contacts UNIT to get the Doctor's help.
It isn't just Mr Ollis's disappearance (nor even the disappearance of the letter H from his name between the Target novelisation of this story and the TV version) that brings Dr Tyler to UNIT. He also has some unusual-looking cosmic x-rays he wants the Doctor's opinion on, having already showed it to "yanks, and the other lot."
The Brigadier doesn't understand what Dr Tyler... wait, if Dr Tyler is a doctor, is he one of the "three doctors" referred to in the title?
The Brigadier doesn't understand what the two doctors are talking about, but Jo shows how much she has been learning since her first appearance when she translates their jargon for his, and our, benefit.
"He means it travels faster than light."
The Brigadier is, in this story, more of a comic relief caricature than ever before, and this is arguably the furthest he ever got from his original, more serious characterisation that we saw back in season seven. The first example of this is when he gets exasperated with the Doctor allowing Dr Tyler to use his equipment, saying
"Make yourself at home. We're only supposed to be a top secret security establishment. Liberty Hall, Dr Tyler. Liberty Hall."
But there will be plenty more of this sort of thing to follow.
Dr Tyler just has time to develop the x-ray that has Mr Ollis's face on it before he too gets disappeared. Then we see a monster made entirely of SFX appear and slither about for a bit until it goes down the sink. It comes out of the drains and the Doctor and Jo run away from it, so it only gets to disappear Bessie.
In the lab, the Doctor sees the x-ray with the face on it and quickly deduces a lot of what has happened - the SFX monster was after him, and only disappeared the other mannys and things by mistaik.
Some other creatures appear outside. They are costumes rather than just special effects, and are quite alien-looking and effective... until they start moving, at which point their waddling makes them laughable. Benton and the other UNIT soldiers try shooting at them but bullets have no effect (as usual), which annoys the Brigadier (also as usual).
While the soldiers are distracted by the aliens, the SFX monster noms part of a wall to try and get to the Doctor, leading to the Doctor, Jo and Benton all running into the TARDIS, hoping that it will be safe with the "forcefield on."
This is the first time Benton has been inside the TARDIS, leading to some of the best evar dialogue about how it is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Doctor: "Well, sergeant, aren't you going to say it that it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside? Everybody else does."Benton: "It's pretty obvious, isn't it?"
LOL!
This brief moment of comic relief is followed by an escalation in the dramatic tension, since the Doctor is unable to dematerialise the TARDIS. He decides the only thing he can do is to send an SOS to the Time Lords, while Jo tells Benton (and us) that "things are pretty serious."
The scene then transitions to the planet of the Time Lords, still a very rare occurrence at this point in the series - aside from its first appearance at the end of The War Games, we have only visited it for a single scene of exposition at the beginning of Colony in Space.
The Time Lords also think things are pretty serious. There is a black hole that is noming their energy.
"Unless the energy loss is stopped the whole fabric of spacetime will be destroyed."
They want to help the Doctor but "no one can be spared." One of the Time Lords suggests the Doctor "can help himself" by them sending an earlier Doctor to join the present Doctor. The Time Lord Chancellor doesn't like this idea (presumably because it will be expensive), and says
Chancellor: "You can't allow him to cross his own time stream. Apart from the enormous energy it would need, the first law of time expressly forbids him to meet his other selves."Sensible Time Lord: "I am aware of that, your excellency, but this is an emergency."Chancellor: "But you can't!"
I know you don't like the idea, Chancellor, but there's no need for rude language like that!
In the TARDIS, the Doctor is confused when he finds a recorder on the console. He is even more confused when his previous incarnation reaches out and takes it.
Almost immediately the two Doctors don't get on with each other, starting with the second Doctor's
"I can see you've been doing the TARDIS up a bit, hmm... I don't like it."
The first hint of this was dropped back in Dave the Daleks, when the Doctor was irritated by meeting another version of himself for only a few seconds, but this is the first true example of it happening, and it is such a wonderful idea, that the Doctor just can't get on with himself whenever he meets himself. This was used to great effect in The Five Doctors, where there were even more combinations of Doctors to keep the concept interesting, as well as in Dave the Doctor, the 50th anniversary special, helping to make that one of the very best episodes of the modern series.
Benton recognises the earlier Doctor, because they met during The Invasion, but Jo doesn't know who the newcomer is. The two Doctors argue over how best to explain it to her, and end up only confusing Jo even more.
Third Doctor: "Jo, it's all quite simple. I am he and he is me."Jo: "'And we are all together, goo goo ga joob?'"
Jo gets the explanation eventually, although it needs Benton's help to convince her. The second Doctor then explains why he is here:
Second Doctor: "Your effectiveness is now doubled!"Third Doctor: "Halved, more like."
The Time Lords see that the two Doctors "refuse to co-operate" and naturally conclude that the way to solve this is to send in yet another Doctor, mew.
The First Doctor* interrupts the Second and Third's argument when he appears on the monitor. He puts them in their place with the utterly wonderful line
"Oh, so you're my replacements, hmm? A dandy and a clown."
He tells them that the SFX monster is "a time bridge" and that they should "stop dilly-dallying, and cross it!" before he fades away.
Neither Benton nor Jo have seen the First Doctor before, so Jo asks who he was. Both Doctors reply "me," and then each gets angry with the other and insist it's really "me!"
The Second Doctor tosses a coin for which one of them has to cross the time bridge, and he almost certainly cheats because he says "hard luck" to the Third without letting him look at it. They open the TARDIS doors and the Third Doctor goes out, but Jo runs out with a big
and so both of them get disappeared by the SFX monster - cliffhanger!
* He's technically the fourth doctor we have seen in this episode, because Dr Tyler is also a doctor, but I will use the convention that the Doctor played by William Hartnell is the First Doctor, Patrick Troughton is the Second Doctor, and Jon Pertwee is the Third Doctor. Or, when one Doctor is on his own, he can be just the Doctor. And Dr Tyler remains Dr Tyler. All clear?
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