Doctor Who Regenerations: A Tribute To 11 Epic Changes

10. June 1969: Second/Third Doctor

Viewers would've had another WTF moment when Patrick Troughton's Doctor reached the end of his three season reign in June 1969, though whether it would've been for quite the same reasons as the one three years earlier is debateable. The Second Doctor's era was wrapped up in the closing minutes of the ten part adventure The War Games, a story long enough to make War And Peace look like a novella and which already felt interminable at the halfway mark. By episode eight its ratings had dwindled to a paltry 3.5 million and improved only marginally to five million by the last episode. It was a sad state of affairs for the departure of a Doctor who'd attracted nine million viewers only months earlier. At the end of episode ten the Time Lords exile the Doctor to earth as punishment for his roguish ways. They advise that his appearance will also be changed and graciously allow him all of twenty-four seconds to settle on one of five poorly lit and seemingly hand-drawn caricatures for his new face. Little wonder the Doctor finds it a tough choice. Nonetheless the Time Lords deem his inability to make up his mind in less than half a minute as a refusal to take the decision, so the decision will therefore be taken for him. With that, the Doctor disappears from the courtroom floor and re-appears on the same big screen that the five caricatures had just been displayed on, emitting a bizarre burp / hiccup / breaking wind sound as he did do, before engaging in some more spirited argy-bargy with the Time Lords. Eventually his body spins off into the darkness, calling out as he goes, "is this some sort of joke?". Poor Patrick Troughton - I rather suspect it was. What an undignified end. In and of itself The War Games was remarkable for numerous reasons - it was Doctor Who's fiftieth serialised story, it was the Second Doctor's last story and included the second regeneration, it was the last story to be recorded in black and white, it was the second-longest Doctor Who serial up to that time and, perhaps most importantly, it introduced the Time Lords. What was decidedly unremarkable was the placement of the second Doctor's swansong at the tail end of those ten episodes, particularly without yet having secured a new actor to step into the role. Compounding the situation was that the execution of the regeneration itself smacked of deus ex machina, though even by the weird and wonderful standards of 1960s Doctor Who it wasn't plausible deus ex machina, it was just a slightly rushed and illogical way of tying everything up in the last five minutes of a 241½ minute trial by televisual tedium. So did he actually regenerate? Or was it just the Time Lord equivalent of cosmetic surgery? In hindsight, it's hard to tell. The inference from the episode that followed six months later is that either option could have been possible. But whatever it was, in the end the Second Doctor just floated off into the middle distance and faded away. It must've left viewers wondering what was coming next, at least to some extent... but it was far from the most memorable of exits.