On first watch I wasn’t keen. I found the story confusing and all over the place and couldn’t even pick out who Jamie was! Some of that is the episodes fault, but it was largely because I was plunging myself straight into the second doctor after skipping to s4 and hadn’t found my footing with classic who yet. (Probably why I need to rewatch half of s4)
But now that I’ve read the novelisation and audiobook, I decided to give the narrated ver a shot while I was working, and I appreciate this story a lot more than I used to! The Doctor in Drag will never not be gold, and I feel that Ben and Polly are the stars of the show here. Of course, there’s also the elephant in the room that is Jamie. Oh James Robert McCrimmon how you’ve changed my life. He’s in this a lot more than I remember. He’s great. I can’t say too much I just love him so much. Oh of course his dads name is Donald that’s the most Scottish thing I’ve heard.
Frazer Hines’ narration is also great, but I’ll listen to anything with his voice. It does help a lot! Because without it this serial is VERY hard to understand for me with just telesnaps.
I definitely think I like this serial a lot more now than I used to. SCOTLAND FOREVERRERR
Oh i definitely agree!!! It’s one of those stories that you definitely need to see what’s happening unlike say Marco Polo where a lot of it can be inferred.
This is a serial I’m a bit surprised isn’t more well-regarded, having just done the audio recording. It’s quite an interesting period of history, each part moves the story forward rather than running in place, and the side characters are all pretty distinct and entertaining. Most importantly, this is a really good showing for our three regulars, each of whom get some memorable moments - Polly trapping and blackmailing “Algie”, masquerading as an orange seller, and having a go at Kirsty for giving up near the end of part 1, Ben ripping up the slave contract and doing a Houdini-esque escape, and then basically everything Troughton does as the Doctor (if anyone had any doubts about him after The Power of the Daleks, surely the fantastic scene in which he ties up Grey and then outwits his secretary had to be enough to quell them). If there’s one character who doesn’t get a lot to do, I actually think it’s Jamie, who’s largely just along for the ride until the final moments of the serial. If he’d only been in this story, he’d probably be a character I wouldn’t have paid much heed to.
A great serial which sends the classic “pure historical” format out on a high note, but pretty so-so as a companion introduction.
I really enjoyed this one it’s not as good as the Hartnell historicals but I still thought this was a really great story and hoping is one that is found/recovered soon
For me, this one also suffers from the same problem I had with Power, and that is I had yet to see Troughton actually acting the Doctor on screen. I wasn’t a huge fan of this at the time, if I rewatched it now after knowing all about Jamie I’d probably find it a lot more interesting.
I did find the bit where the Doctor plays a trick and locks a guy in the cupboard funny.
I also think as has been mentioned in this thread, that the recon isn’t that easy to watch, and who knows, maybe if we actually had the full thing of this it might be pretty good.
The first The Power of the Daleks animated edition had the tartan pattern on the Doctor’s pants. However, it was painted out for the special edition “to make the animation of the Doctor’s legs more fluid.”[1]
So a tartan pattern isn’t a problem in itself, but showing the pattern with motion is an issue. As Jamie wears a kilt I don’t think it would have as much of a motion issue.
The Power of the Daleks Special Edition production notes ↩︎
