N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

It’s strange to think that the Doctor has carried that little box with him throughout these adventures – always having the means to contact his own people and ‘go back’ one day if he ever needed to (although of course, in The War Games, it becomes clear why he didn’t want to).

The War Games is a story of many milestones. It’s the last story of the Second Doctor’s run, the last story to feature Jamie and Zoe, the last story of the 60’s, the last story to be produced in black-and-white. It’s the fiftieth story (containing the 250th episode) and the first story to mention the Doctor’s race, the Time Lords, by name (in Episode Six). It may be six episodes longer than intended but that only serves to make it feel even more of an epic end-of-an-era tale. Some might say it’s padded. Me, I didn’t want it to end.

“But who else would have space time machines like the TARDIS?”

Zoe, The War Games: Episode Four

Episode Ten is without doubt the most significant Doctor Who episode since An Unearthly Child, some six years and 252 episodes previous, but even before you get to its revelations, there’s much to enjoy.

From the moment the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive you’re hooked. Even if the scenario were not a gripping one, there are many memorable supporting characters in the time zones: Carstairs, Lady Jennifer, Ransom, then later Lücke, Russell and Arturo Villar. And of course there’s the aliens behind it all – first the slimy General Smythe and Von Weich, but later of course the Security Chief, the War Chief and War Lord. Indeed, the petty bickering between the Security Chief and War Chief is worth the price of entry alone and, once he arrives, completing the villainous triumvirate, Philip Madoc is stone-cold immense as the War Lord.

“You may have changed your appearance, but I know who you are.”

War Chief, The War Games: Episode Eight

But for me, it’s the War Chief who’s the most outstanding of the guest characters. That look of recognition between him and the Doctor in Episode Four might be my favourite moment in the whole of 60’s Doctor Who.

But who is the War Chief? Obviously, he’s not the first Time Lord we’ve met (the Monk – another of my favourites), but that moment of sheer panic in his and the Doctor’s eyes … well, it’s astonishing! The exchanges between them in Episode Eight are particularly compelling – the classic ‘we are not so different, you and I’ scene – in which the Doctor makes the claim that he had ‘every right to leave’ their shared home planet, a claim it’s hard to argue with after the events of Episode Ten.

It’s tempting to hypotheticate that, had the production team conceived of the Master a year earlier, it might have been that character instead of the War Chief in The War Games. (Whether the War Chief actually is the Master is a course a whole other topic of discussion!) As it is, it’s a shame we never saw Edward Brayshaw return to the show. Presumably though, given he’s a Time Lord, the War Chief regenerates somewhere off-screen after he’s shot towards the end of Episode Nine.

“Well, It is a fact, Jamie, that I do tend to get involved with things. “

The Doctor, The War Games: Episode Ten

The Doctor finally resigns himself to the fact that he cannot resolve the situation on his own and reluctantly contacts the Time Lords. Seeing the fear this arouses in him, we realise how little we’ve learned about him to date. ‘We can live forever, barring accidents’, he comments, but of course his willingness to get stuck in wherever the TARDIS lands (and this is something that becomes more-and-more apparent with every subsequent regeneration) compromises that likelihood, especially since here, ultimately the Time Lords try him and enforce a change of appearance, using up one of his lives.

Finally, I couldn’t leave The War Games without mentioning the Doctor’s companions. The return of Jamie and Zoe to their own times with but a single memory of their adventures with the Doctor is a sad one. Both have grown in their time with him and in their haste to punish the Doctor the Time Lords perhaps unwittingly punish his companions more than they do the Doctor. Indeed, Jamie has been with us almost as long as the Second Doctor so it’s particularly keenly felt. He and Zoe have formed an excellent duo and it’s an awful thought that Jamie will not remember their friendship.

Given their fondness for the show, I’m sure it wouldn’t take much persuading to get Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury back. And with a Scottish actor currently playing the Doctor perhaps a visit to the Laird of McCrimmon is in order (Steven Moffat, if you’re listening)?

I’ve merely touched on the reasons here, but The War Games remains my favourite Second Doctor story; indeed it’s my favourite story of the 60’s.

One final curiosity though – and this of course can only be the power of suggestion – in the final moments I always imagine I see Jon Pertwee’s face spiralling into oblivion in amongst the many Patrick Troughtons …