Omega spares the Doctor, and calls this a warning shot. The Second Doctor tries provoking Omega some more, "testing the limits of his self control."
"I say, you mean all you've got to do is think of a thing, rub your magic lamp over there and shallamygallamyzoop there it is? That's jolly clever. That's jolly clever!"
To which Omega asks the Third Doctor
"Are you sure that you and he are of the same intelligence?"
Omegalolz! But the Second Doctor keeps pushing until Omega shouts so much he shakes the camera. After this the Doctors play along to find out what his plan for them is. Omega loudly monologues about how he is trapped in the black hole by a Catch-22 type scenario:
Omega: "So long as I control singularity, I can make it do my will. All these things exist because I will them to exist. Without me and the unceasing pressure of my will, the work of thousands of years would collapse into chaos in microseconds. I am, if you like, the Atlas of my world."Third Doctor: "So, the moment you abandon control you cannot escape, and you cannot escape without abandoning control."
He wants the Doctors to take over control so that he can escape, and although they don't like it, they have to go along with it. Omega starts by wanting to remove his mask, but when the Doctors raise the mask for him, they recoil in horror because...
"You exist only because your will insists that you exist. And your will is all that is left of you."
Omega reacts to this news with a cry and then a bit of a shout.
"It is not true. I am Omega, creator of this world! And I can also destroy! Therefore I must exist!"
The camera shakes more violently as Omega shouts "all things shall be destroyed! All things! All things!" and the Doctors, seeing how distracted Omega is in his ranting, run away.
The Doctors join the Brigadier, Benton, Jo, Dr Tyler and Mr Ollis back at UNIT HQ and then they all go into the TARDIS. Omega may be threatening to destroy the entire universe, but that doesn't mean we can't have a moment of comic relief now that the Brigadier is here:
Second Doctor: "If only I could find my recorder, I could play you a little something to pass the time."Brigadier: "We must be thankful for small mercies."
The First Doctor appears on the scanner and, seeing the size of the adventuring party that has been assembled over the course of this story, asks
"What's all this, a mass meeting?"
The three Doctors have a "telepathic conference" (as Jo calls it) to come up with a plan. Jo confirms to the Brigadier that the First Doctor is another Doctor, to which the Brigadier says
"Three of them? I didn't know when I was well off."
The Second and Third Doctors disconnect the TARDIS's forcefield generator, with the Second Doctor's recorder having got stuck in the middle of it, and then contact Omega using the TARDIS scanner screen. Omega allows the TARDIS to travel from UNIT HQ to Omega HQ.
The Doctors say they have found a way to free Omega, but he does not believe them, so they make a bargain for the Doctors to stay in the black hole with Omega if he will send the mannys back to Earth. Jo has to be specifically warned against self-sacrificing before they try this plan so that she doesn't fuck it up, and even then we see her visibly struggling with herself before she says to the Doctor
"You can't!"
Rude Jo!
The mannys all walk through Omega's singularity smoke one by one and are sent home. Even Jo, in spite of her inevitable protests.
The Doctors offer Omega the forcefield generator, but he doesn't want it, so they have to piss him off until he knocks it out of the Doctor's paws. The Doctors run into the TARDIS to escape the resulting explosion as the unconverted recorder, so still made of matter, reacts with the antimatter of Omega's floor.
UNIT HQ and the mannys (except Mr Ollis) arrive back on Earth, then the TARDIS appears a moment later with the Doctors in it. The First Doctor appears on the scanner one last time for a final goodbye, and then the Second Doctor also says goodbye and disappears.
A dematerialisation circuit materialises (er...) on the TARDIS console, sent by the Time Lords for the Doctor. He says
"The Time Lords! Look, they've sent me a new dematerialisation circuit. And my knowledge of time travel law and all the dematerialisation codes - they've all come back. They've forgiven me. They've given me back my freedom."
It's the end of the era of the Doctor's exile on Earth, an era when he was able to use the TARDIS to travel in only a third of his stories.
The last scene of the story has echoes of the first, to bring us full circle, as both show Mr Ollis. He arrives home and asks Mrs Ollis for some noms - a happy ending.
What's so good about The Three Doctors?
Not merely the template for all future multi-Doctor stories, among the most enjoyable of the many types of Doctor Who stories, The Three Doctors is a tremendously fun story in its own right - I would go so far as to say it is one of the best of its era.
Omega is a wonderful antagonist, both in how he is played by the bombastic Stephen Thorne and in the way he is connected to the Time Lords (and thus also the Doctor) and their mythology, which is expanded as a consequence.
There is not much real science in the way the black hole is used in the story, but there is just enough pseudo-science put into the dialogue to keep it on the right side of the science-fiction/fantasy divide - we viewers are never for a moment left thinking Omega is using magic, even though he might as well be. It is also just the right amount of real science to encourage curious viewers to learn more about it elsewhere, if they are so inclined.
The true heart of the story, though, is not in the setting or the plot, but in the character interactions between the three Doctors. William Hartnell, in his last appearance in the show that owes just about everything to him, sadly isn't in it all that much (because of his real-life illness at the time this was made), but he does manage to make an appearance in each episode, and he has what is possibly one of the best lines in all of Doctor Who in his "a dandy and a clown" speech.
It is the scenes between Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton's Doctors that really created the the-Doctor-doesn't-get-on-with-himself dynamic that is so fantastic to watch, and they carry the story between them. They also manage to perfectly balance the serious side of the plot with the many overtly comedic moments. The Brigadier's character may have been dumbed-down from what it once was, but it allows for some great lols - especially when he's combined with Troughton's Doctor - and all adds to the sense of fun in what is, after all, a celebration.
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