Why I love… Patrick Troughton’s Doctor Who: Five Favourites

Shabby, sheepish, and prone to panicking, at first glance Patrick Troughton’s Doctor seems nothing like his predecessor. He pulls faces, plays the recorder, and spills marbles everywhere. He’s more of a wacky uncle than the grandfatherly Hartnell. But look under the surface and you’ll see the same righteous authority, the same steely resolve, the same excitement to see the universe. It’s just that Troughton had to find an entirely different way to do it.

As Troughton himself later said, “William Hartnell was very serious and I had to be very serious too, but the way I made it serious was by being a clown to start with.” The same man, yet utterly different, and yet still the same man.

There’s a reason why he’s most often cited as a favourite Doctor by other actors who’ve played the role: he’s the one who showed it could be done, so long as you took it seriously in your own special way. Hartnell had taken the role of a grumpy old genius and added authority, charm, and humour. Troughton chucked in another essential ingredient: mischief.

He grins. That’s important. Hartnell’s Doctor smiled - even beamed on occasion - but he never quite grinned in the naughty way that Troughton does. There’s an overtly playful quality to Troughton’s Doctor, the epitome of the ‘wise fool’, running circles around exasperated authority figures, and making fun of the villains to put them off their guard.

It’s arguably under Troughton that the essential role of the Doctor is truly crystallised: a wanderer and an unlikely hero, facing down the most frightening foes while somehow muddling through. And, like Hartnell, I love him.

(Candidate for my favourite scene in all of Doctor Who)

Just watch this scene above: “Our lives are different to anybody else’s…” You’d struggle to find another moment from sixty years of Who that better encapsulates the sheer wonder and terror and joy of what this series can do.

When I was a child, I obviously loved the slapstick comedy and flailing limbs. (Seriously, Troughton turns the act of running down corridors into an art form worthy of academic study.) He’s the Doctor who’s on our level, the one who wants to play pranks and get into trouble. But what I always liked most in Troughton’s Doctor - and what I appreciate even more as a writer in my 30s - is that he doesn’t look or act like a hero at all.

He doesn’t glide into danger with an air of confidence. He shuffles into the room as if he has no idea what he’s doing there, and wins people over without them ever knowing how he did it. He’s Columbo in outer space. He’s a Doctor who reminds us that any one of us could be a hero too. You don’t need to be big and strong and unafraid: you just need to turn up, make friends, and do the best you can. And don’t forget the silly sense of humour - it’s more important than you think!

Troughton Who is loads of fun. Here’s five of my own personal favourites.

5 - THE INVASION

There’s alway been an air of mystery over the Troughton era, because so much of it is sadly missing from the BBC archives (many of the tapes were wiped in the 70s to reuse for newer programmes). Even those serials that do still exist were hard to get hold of when I was a child, before DVDs and online streaming. I scoured second-hand video stores to track them down; there was one on Albert Road in Southsea that basically became my second home. But the Holy Grail was The Invasion.

All I’d seen of it were some photographs and a few short clips, but that was enough for me to know - for certain - that it was the most impossibly exciting bit of TV ever made. Armies of Cybermen with flamethrowers! Cybermen bursting out of the sewers of London! Cybermen marching down the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral! I didn’t even know what St. Paul’s was; heck, I’d hardly ever been to London, despite my uncle living there (which therefore made him seem impossibly exciting too). Still, it all added up to the tantalising mystique of a bumper-length adventure where Troughton Who and the Brigadier teamed up to stop hundreds - nay, thousands - of Cybermen from launching an assault on the planet from Ludgate Hill.

But you couldn’t find a copy of it for love nor money. The video had been deleted for years: a chunky double-tape so heavy you could kill a man with it. I’d all but given up hope. And then, one Christmas in the late 90s, a young David barely into his teens received a very special present, flown all the way from Australia via an order from a London shop. My parents had done it: they’d found The Invasion! It was second-hand, but it was now in my hands. The best Doctor Who story I’d never seen.

And while, inevitably, it wasn’t the best Doctor Who story ever - heck, it’s not even in first place on this list - I spent a glorious month watching and rewatching it. I was enraptured with the second Doctor and his friends going head-to-head with the smooth villain Tobias Vaughan (an altogether more palatable evil tech genius than Elon Musk) while UNIT bazookas a few Cybermen. Even now, the action is thrilling, the comedy is funny, and there’s an awesome bit where a Cybermen goes insane and storms around the sewers, screaming in a mechanical voice and clubbing down its own comrades. Perfect telly for kids.

4 - THE MACRA TERROR

Mind control and giant crabs! The TARDIS arrives in a far-flung intergalactic colony where the cheerful surroundings mask an authoritarian regime. When the people tell him that everything’s wonderful, the Doctor instantly seeks out the one man who disagrees: a half-crazed colonist, cruelly oppressed, who claims that he’s seen monsters lurking in the shadows at night. But the authorities insist, almost to the point of hysteria: “There are no Macra!”

Well of course there are Macra, manipulating the colony to mine the gas they need to survive, though only the BBC would give us giant parasitic crab monsters who speak in the plummy voice of a TV newsreader. It’s perhaps fortunate that we can’t actually watch the original (though BBC Studios did animate it for DVD), as the sight of ungainly, static crabs waving their pincers aloft just might have drawn attention away from the subversive and intelligent script.

Because if you rely on the soundtrack alone, as I did for many years, this is an incredibly creepy tale of paranoia and the abuse of leadership. It’s Doctor Who’s most earnestly anti-authority story from its early years. You couldn’t get a better example of where this series positions itself politically than the following lines from the Doctor:

“It's just possible that you've been given a series of orders while you've been asleep. You know, do this, do that, do the other thing. My advice to you is: don't do anything of the sort. Don't just be obedient. Always make up your own mind.”

It’s one of my favourite little speeches from the whole series. And you know what, who cares about bad special effects - I’d give anything to be able to watch The Macra Terror, just so I could see Patrick Troughton delivering those lines.

3 - THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD

Spies! Guns! Helicopters! Henchmen! Yes, it’s Doctor Who’s take on the James Bond movies, made on a fraction of the budget. We’re on Earth in the futuristic year of 2018, where the Doctor is captured by secret agents. He’s tasked with helping them bring down Ramón Salamander, politician and evil tech genius (yep, another one), who’s using sinister means to establish a global dictatorship. And - oh my giddy aunt - Salamander is an almost exact physical double of the Doctor!

For many years, this story was mostly missing from the archives. All we had was its third episode, and nobody liked it. It seemed that all the exciting stuff was in the episodes we didn’t have, leaving us with 25 minutes mostly set in a corridor and a kitchen. The closest thing to an action sequence is a hired goon smashing up some crockery. But even this leads to a lovely lament from the Doctor: “People spend all their time making nice things, and other people come along and break them.”

And it was those little moments that really engaged me, because even the ‘pedestrian’ episode 3 of The Enemy of the World is crammed with memorable supporting characters! There’s Salamander’s food-taster Fariah (played by Guyanese-born Carmen Munroe), who hates the man she’s forced to protect every day; spineless bureaucrat Fedorin, blackmailed into falsely testifying against a friend in a kangaroo court; glum and sarcastic Griffin the chef, who longs to face a firing squad so he “won’t need to worry anymore"… The Enemy of the World has one of the richest collection of characters in Doctor Who’s long history, many of whom only last an episode before they’re poisoned or shot in the back.

All of this was apparent from the narrated soundtrack CD release, which allowed me to enjoy the five episodes I’d missed. Then by a miracle of fate, in 2013 those missing episodes were found and returned, and at last we could actually watch the whole thing - and honestly it’s a serial that just gets better and better. It’s got action, twists, crackling dialogue, and Patrick Troughton playing both hero and villain (who then impersonate each other). An unusual Who, but a great one too.

2 - THE MIND ROBBER

Most Doctor Who stories are a bit weird on some level - but The Mind Robber really shows them how it’s done.

After a strange encounter with White Robots in a featureless void, the TARDIS explodes into pieces! Upon waking up, the Doctor and his friends Jamie (from the past) and Zoe (from the future) find themselves in a world of literature, menaced by sinister clockwork soldiers, mythological monsters, and a superhero from a children’s magazine. Their guide in this realm is Lemuel Gulliver, but he can only say the words that Jonathan Swift gave him to say. Things go from bad to worse when Jamie loses his face. The Doctor tries to fix it - but accidentally gives him the wrong one!

I love whimsy with a side of death, and this serial is perfectly pitched for Troughton’s unique take on the Doctor. His joy, dismay, fear, and wonder are like those of a great big kid; in a way, he really belongs in a world where Cyrano de Bergerac does battle with D’Artagnan, and where Rapunzel lets our heroes climb up her hair because “everybody else does, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t.” With Jamie and Zoe at their “bickering siblings” best, we have a TARDIS crew who seem to have stepped straight out of an Enid Blyton book - so it’s darkly funny when their potential fate is to get sucked back into one.

The narrative justification for all this is fairly conventional, but it gives the Doctor another opportunity to rail against conformity (“Man will become like a string of sausages: all the same!”) In the final showdown he uses all his guile and imagination to defeat his foe, giving Troughton some of his best material in the role as he conjures up literary heroes to come to his aid. In many ways this serial is just a load of stuff happening, with the breathless ‘and then…’ quality of a child’s story. The ending is wholly inconclusive too. Maybe the whole thing is a dream? Well, if so, it’s a very entertaining one.

1 - THE WAR GAMES

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe land in the trenches of World War I - but things are not exactly as they seem. So begins an epic journey through some of humanity’s bloodiest conflicts, to uncover the heart of an alien conspiracy so massive in scope that the Doctor must - for the very first time - call upon the help of his own people, the Time Lords…

The War Games is a ten-part serial with an enormous cast and a smorgasbord of costumes and props from the BBC period drama storeroom, heaping twist upon twist, and throwing in all number of villains to keep us entertained. It’s also Patrick Troughton’s last story, and makes extensive use of his talents. Flustered, angry, triumphant, terrified, and finally reconciled to his fate: it may be the finest (and certainly the most extensive) examination of the Doctor we’ve ever had, demonstrated not just through his words but through his actions. What we notably don’t get is a regeneration scene, as his successor Jon Pertwee hadn’t been cast yet, but actually I find this Doctor’s final moments far sadder than those of any other.

And at last, we get some lore! After six seasons, we’re given the answer as to why the Doctor fled his home planet:

“I was bored!”

That’s it. The Doctor wanted to explore the universe, and the Time Lords didn’t, so he ran away. That’s the lore.

I adore it. It’s simple and it works. He didn’t set out to right wrongs and save worlds, he just wanted to meet people and see wonderful things. Being a hero was a responsibility he picked up along the way. Not only does it make sense as a motivation for the two Doctors we’ve known, it also suits every Doctor yet to come. It’s an explanation so simple - so strikingly devoid of self-consciously “epic” pomp and twaddle - that you can apply it to every Doctor Who story now and forever. We understand it, we empathise with it. We all get bored. It’s just that few of us have the opportunity to steal a time machine.

The Doctor didn’t run away from home because he was scared. He ran away because he knew there was so much more to experience. Because sometimes running away is the bravest thing you can do. (Especially if there are lots of corridors involved.)

Mandatory plug: I’ve written a few Doctor Who audio stories for Big Finish Productions, including one set during this era of the show. You can find ‘em here, including free downloads of their first episodes!