The Two Doctors is the fourth serial of the 22nd season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in three weekly parts on BBC1 from 16 February to 2 March 1985.
The serial is set on an alien space station and in and around Seville. In the serial, the alien time traveller the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker), his former travelling companion Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and his current companion Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant) work to save the younger Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) from the biogeneticist Dastari (Laurence Payne), who intends to steal the knowledge of how to travel in time from the Second Doctor's genetic make-up.
This serial marks Troughton's final appearance as the Second Doctor before his death in 1987.
Plot
The Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon land the TARDIS on board Space Station Camera, where they talk to Dastari, the Head of Projects. The Doctor tells Dastari that the Time Lords want the time experiments stopped, but Dastari refuses. Also on board are the Androgums, a gluttonous alien species who are conspiring with the Sontarans to take over the station. The station's Androgum cook, Shockeye, drugs the crew's dinner to give the Sontarans an opportunity to invade. They take the Second Doctor prisoner, with Jamie escaping.
In the TARDIS, the Sixth Doctor has a vision of his second incarnation being put to death. He decides to consult his old friend Dastari to see if he can help. The Doctor and Peri arrive on the station and are attacked by the ship's computer, before they meet up with Jamie. The Sontaran ship lands in Seville, Spain, where the Androgums and Sontarans take over a local hacienda to use as a base of operations, with the Sixth Doctor following with Peri and Jamie.
Dastari reveals his plan to dissect the Second Doctor's cell structure to isolate his symbiotic nuclei and give them to Chessene, an Androgum technologically augmented to genius levels. Upon discovering there are two Time Lords present, Chessene asks Dastari to instead turn the Second Doctor into an Androgum, who will be able to use the TARDIS-based time module that Dastari has been building. The Sontaran leader, Stike tries to double-cross Chessene by stealing the module for himself, but she unleashes an acid bomb on the Sontarans first, and then Stike unwittingly blows himself up along with his ship.
Dastari implants the Second Doctor with a 50 per cent Androgum inheritance, but Shockeye, angered that his blood was used for the procedure without his consent, breaks the Second Doctor out before his change can be made permanent, and they go to a restaurant in Seville and order gargantuan amounts of food. When the restaurant's owner, Oscar, demands that they pay, Shockeye fatally stabs him, just as the Sixth Doctor and the others arrive. Shockeye leaves the Second Doctor, who slowly reverts to normal. Chessene and Dastari take them back to the hacienda at gunpoint.
The Sixth Doctor frees himself and kills Shockeye. Chessene sees the Doctor's blood and starts licking it. Dastari realises that no matter how augmented she may be, Chessene is still an Androgum, and decides to free the Second Doctor, Peri, and Jamie. When Chessene sees this, she shoots and kills Dastari. She tries to shoot the Second Doctor and Peri, but Jamie throws a knife at her wrist, making her drop the gun. Chessene goes into the module, hoping to escape, but the sabotaged module explodes, killing Chessene and reverting her back to her Androgum self. Jamie and the Second Doctor depart in their TARDIS, whilst the Sixth Doctor tells Peri they're both going on a vegetarian diet from now on.
Production
Robert Holmes wrote the serial as an allegory about meat-eating, hunting and butchering. "Androgum" is an anagram of "gourmand".
Holmes's original brief from producer John Nathan-Turner was to write a serial taking place in New Orleans, but the setting had to be changed to Spain instead when the expected funding for location filming in the United States fell through.
In his 1986 interview for Starburst, script editor Eric Saward said he thought this story was "poorly directed".
Cast notes
This story marked the final appearance of Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor and the final on-screen appearance of Frazer Hines as Jamie. Veteran actress Aimee Delamain appears in a cameo role as the ill-fated hacienda owner the Doña Arana. Laurence Payne appeared in the Season 18 debut The Leisure Hive and the Hartnell story The Gunfighters.