252 The War Games: Episode Nine

EPISODE: The War Games: Episode Nine
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 252
STORY NUMBER: 050
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 14 June 1969
WRITER: Malcolm Hulke & Terrance Dicks
DIRECTOR: David Maloney
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Derrick Sherwin
RATINGS: 4.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The War Games

"Don't worry. When the Time Lords get him, he'll wish you had killed him!"

The Resistance is taken away. The Doctor works out the War Chief needs him to work on his travel machines, guessing that the improvements the War Chief has made will shorten the life of the capsules and that he needs the Tardis. The Doctor convinces the War Lord he can improve the processing machines and is told to use them on the resistance. The Security Chief takes the Doctor to the resistance but leaves no guards. The Security Chief reviews recordings he made of the Doctor & War Chief conferring. The Doctor tells the resistance he betrayed them to save their lives from the planned Neutron Bomb drop. They attack him but he is saved by the War Chief. The Security Chief finds the evidence he's looking for. The Doctor demonstrates the reprocessing on Jamie who goes along with the Doctor's plan pretending to be in the Doctor's thrall. The War Chief is arrested by the Security Chief. Arturo Villa does not go along with the pretext nearly giving the Doctor away. Guards come for the Doctor but they are overpowered allowing the resistance to take the War Chief captive who tells them where the guns are. They attack the war room where the War Chief kills the Security Chief. The Doctor stops the fighting with help from the War Chief but they are unable to return the soldiers home because the capsules life has expired. The Doctor places a message to the Time Lords in a communications box he carries appealing to them for help. The War Chief escapes but is captured by the War Lord, who has heard the recordings, and killed by his guards. The guards are overcome by the resistance. The Doctor sends the message to the Time Lords. He intends to flee by himself but Jamie & Zoe insist on coming with him. Carstairs comes too to try and find Lady Jennifer. Villa tries to stop the Doctor threatening to kill him but he's held back from doing so. The War Lord says when the Time Lords find the Doctor he will wish he had been killed. An eerie wind fills the alien complex. Arriving in 1917 the Tardis crew bid farewell to Carstairs, but as they make for the Tardis they find it hard to move as if they are swimming through treacle: The Time Lords are arriving!

This episode wraps the main storyline up nicely with the aliens overcome. However there's still the matter of the humans on the planet:

ZOE: There's one thing I don't understand, Doctor. How are you going to get all these people back to their own time?
DOCTOR: Yes, I've been thinking about that.

His solution involves doing something he's never had to do before:

ZOE: What did he mean, Doctor? Who mustn't you call?
DOCTOR: The only people who can put an end to this whole ghastly business and send everyone back to their own times. The Time Lords.
JAMIE: Who are they?
DOCTOR: They're my own people, Jamie.
JAMIE: Oh, well, that's all right, then.
ZOE: But it isn't all right, is it, Doctor.
DOCTOR: No, it's not, Zoe. But I'm afraid that there's no alternative.

DOCTOR: It's a very special sort of box. It now contains all the information about what's been going on here, and an appeal for help.
JAMIE: Help? Who from?
ZOE: The Time Lords?
DOCTOR: Yes, Zoe.
JAMIE: Well, why haven't you asked them for help before?
DOCTOR: I've never really needed it before, Jamie, but this business of sending everyone back to their own times is, well, it's too difficult for me.

But the Doctor's paid a huge cost, he has surrendered his location to the Time Lords and they're coming for him. You feel he is genuinely scared of what they are going to do to him. He's pretty evasive about why he wants to get away and doesn't want to be there when the Time Lords arrive but as the War Lord ominously puts it:

WAR LORD: Don't worry. When the Time Lords get him, he'll wish you had killed him.

Both the Security and the War Chiefs die in this episode.

The Security Chief meets his death at the hands of the War Chief in the fight in the War Room.

WAR CHIEF: It's all right. It was a personal debt I had to settle.

But by that point he has already sealed the War Chief fate by sending a recording he made to the War Lord:

WAR CHIEF: You've arrived just in time. There's been a revolt. The prisoners have escaped. How many guards do you have?
WAR LORD: Only the ones you see here.
WAR CHIEF: Then we must return to the home planet to bring reinforcements.
WAR LORD: Where is the Security Chief?
WAR CHIEF: The prisoners have taken over the War Room. They've killed him.
WAR LORD: No, no, you killed him, but a little too late. I heard the recording.
WAR CHIEF: He wanted to stop the War Games. He was a incompetent fool, jealous of my position. Surely you realise that? He forged that recording you heard.
WAR CHIEF: He wanted to stop the war games! He tried
WAR LORD: Kill him!

WAR LORD: Remove the traitor's carcass. We will return to the home planet and bring back an army to quell this revolt once and for all.

The constant bickering between the War Chief and Security Chief during the last few episodes was really getting on my nerves, but other than that I've enjoyed Edward Brayshaw's performance as the War Chief, a more obviously evil villain than Peter Butterworth's Monk who you felt was more mischievous than outright evil. The War Chief in many ways can be seen as a forerunner for a much more famous evil renegade Time Lord. Having seen at the start of the Second Doctor's adventures that the Doctor change form, like he did when his body wore out at the end of Tenth Planet, now we near the end of the Second Doctor the War Chief's death shows us that members of the Doctor's race can be killed.

With the War Chief & Security Chief dead, and the scientist returned to the homeworld, only the War Lord remains on the planet.

VILLAR: Out of the way, I shoot the dog! I kill him too!
DOCTOR: No, no, that won't be necessary. We'll leave him for the Time Lords to dispose of.

We will see the War Lord's fate next week as Philip Madoc is the only member of the credited guest cast from the first nine episodes to appear in the tenth episode.

Russel and Villar remain at the central control for the Time Lords to collect them. Only Carstairs goes any further with the Doctor, Jamie & Zoe.

DOCTOR: Right then, we must return to the 1917 Zone and find the Tardis, and make good our escape.
CARSTAIRS: Doctor, can I come back there with you? I'd rather like to try and find Lady Jennifer.
DOCTOR: Oh yes, very well.

Just as Jennifer's last words were of Carstairs, Carstair's departure is tied to Lady Jennifer.

CARSTAIRS: Fighting's stopped.
DOCTOR: Yes, well, goodbye, Lieutenant.
JAMIE: Eh?
DOCTOR: There's the Tardis. We've got to get on.
CARSTAIRS: Goodbye, Doctor.
ZOE: Oh, Doctor, wait! Goodbye!
JAMIE: Bye, Lieutenant.
CARSTAIRS: Bye.

The last we see of him here is fading as the Time Lords arrive, presumably scooping him up to return home. We never find out if he and Lady Jennifer are reunited. Both characters turn up in Terrance Dicks novel The Players where they're married.

Carstairs' actor, David Savile, is the only member of the guest cast to appear in all of the the first nine episodes of this story. It's a shame therefore that he doesn't appear in the tenth. Since the story has been so long there's been a large and continually changing guest cast with only the three regulars Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines & Wendy Padbury appearing in all ten episodes.

Here's all the credited cast who appear in more than one episode:

Actor	Role	Episodes	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Patrick Troughton	Dr. Who	10	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Frazer Hines	Jamie	10	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Wendy Padbury	Zoe	10	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
David Savile	Lieutenant Carstairs	9	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Edward Brayshaw	War Chief	7			3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Graham Weston	Russell	5					5	6	7	8	9
James Bree	Security Chief	5					5	6	7	8	9
Jane Sherwin	Lady Jennifer Buckingham	5	1	2	3	4	5
David Garfield	Von Weich	4			3	4	5	6
Noel Coleman	General Smythe	4	1	2	3				7
Philip Madoc	War Lord	4							7	8	9	10
Hubert Rees	Captain Ransom	3	1	2	3
Vernon Dobtcheff	Scientist	3				4	5	6
Rudolph Walker	Harper	2				4	5
Michael Napier Brown	Arturo Villar	2								8	9

In addition to the credited guest cast there's a large number of extras used in this story, some of whom play more than one role. Now obviously the information on IMDB isn't 100% accurate but here's all the extras in more than one episode and what think they're playing when:

Actor	Role	Episodes	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Alastair Meldrum	1 Trench Solider / Chateau Guard 7 British Soldier 9 Resistance Man	3	1						7		9
Brian Nolan	Resistance Man	3						6	7	8
David Billa	1 German Soldier 4 German / Roman Soldiers / Alien Technician 10 Time Lord Technician	3	1			4						10
David Melbourne	1 Carstairs' Man 4 Resistance Man 7 British Soldier	3	1			4			7
Dennis Balcombe	3 German Soldier 4 German / Roman Soldiers / Alien Guard 10 Redcoat	3			3	4						10
Gerry Wain	3 Confederate Horseman 6 Alien Guard 9 Alien Guard	3			3			6			9
Jim Delaney	4 1862 Confederate Soldier 7 Resistance Man 8 American Soldier	3				4			7	8
Patrick Milner	3 Foot Soldier 7 Resistance Man 8 German Soldier	3			3				7	8
Tom O'Leary	1 Firing Squad Member 2 Prison Sergeant 4 German / Roman Soldiers / Austro-Hungarian Officer	3	1	2		4
Alex Hood	1 Firing Squad Member 7 British Soldier	2	1						7
Allan Travell	1 Trench Solider / Chateau Guard 4 Resistance Man	2	1			4
Barry Kennington	4 German / Roman Soldiers / Alien Student 6 Resistance Man	2				4		6
Bill Richards	3 Alien Guard / Union Recruit 4 1862 Union Soldier	2			3	4
Bob Wilyman	4 German / Roman Soldiers / Alien Student 7 British Soldier	2				4			7
Clive Rogers	2 Sniper 5 Resistance Man	2		2			5
Del Watson	6 Alien Guard 8 Crimean Soldier	2						6		8
Derek Calder	7 Alien Technician / British Soldier 10 Time Lord Technician	2							7			10
Derek Hunt	1 Carstairs' Man 7 British Soldier	2	1						7
Eden Fox	1 Firing Squad Member 2 Machine Gunner	2	1	2
Esmond Webb	Sgt. Major Burns	2	1						7
Harry Tierney	Resistance Man	2				4			7
John Spradbury	3 Foot Soldier 8 Alien Technician	2			3					8
Les Conrad	4 1862 Union Soldier 7 Alien Guard	2				4			7
Leslie Bates	1862 Soldier	2			3	4
Martin Lyder	3 Foot Soldier 5 Alien Guard	2			3		5
Patrick Scott	1 Machine Gunner / Sentry 2 Roman Soldier	2	1	2
Peter Diamond	3 Confederate Horseman 9 Alien Guard	2			3						9
Roy Brent	1 Firing Squad Member 2 Prison Sentry	2	1	2
Terrance Denville	4 Foot Soldier 7 Alien Technician	2				4			7
Terry Munro	3 Alien Guard / Union Recruit 5 Resistance Man	2			3		5

At 10 episodes the War Games is one of the longest Doctor Who stories. The Longest is Trial of a Timelord at 14 episodes though you could argue that this is three 4 parters and a 2 parter put together. Dalek Masterplan is second with twelve, effectively 13 parts if you count Mission to the Unknown. War Games is third with ten, and The Invasion, earlier this season, is fifth with eight. From then on there are several stories with most of the different episode counts:

EPISODES	STORIES
14	The Trial Of A Time Lord
13
12	Dalek Masterplan
11
10	War Games
9
8	The Invasion
7	The Daleks Marco Polo Evil of the Daleks The Silurians The Ambassadors of Death Inferno
6	numerous
5	The Daemons
4	too many to name
3	Planet of Giants Delta and the Bannermen Dragonfire The Happiness Patrol Silver Nemesis Ghost Light Survival
2	Edge of Destruction The Rescue Sontaran Experiment Black Orchid King's Demons The Awakening
1	Mission to the Unknown

One episode to go for both this story and the Second Doctor!