Doctor Who #145: The Highlanders Part 3

"For those who wish to sign, over here. For those who wish to hang, over there. Make your choice!"TECHNICAL SPECS: Missing from the archives. A reconstruction was used to write this review. First aired Dec.31 1966.

IN THIS ONE... Ben and the Scots refuse to sign Grey's contract and the Doctor meets up with the girls and acquires a number of weapons.

REVIEW: In Part 3, I feel like the serial's lost its way a little bit. There's entirely too much pirate stuff - Trask shouting at his prisoners and such. In addition to the plight of the Scottish Laird, we now have the case of Willy McKay who's lost his ship to the likes of Trask, and whether or not the prisoners will sign away their lives to Grey. Lots of shipboard subplots, but at least Ben plays it smart and prevents the men from being divided by the issue by ripping up the contract. He'll get the equivalent of waterboarded for his trouble.

Of course, the episode suffers from the missing video. Seeing Michael Craze dropped in a fog-filled water tank was no doubt dramatic and atmospheric, but all we have left of the cliffhanger sequence are murky telesnaps and hissing audio. The missing visuals also cause some confusion as to what the Doctor was doing feeding a guard in the previous episode. I thought he was getting aboard the ship, but he wasn't. So what was the point there? And with him dressed as an old woman, there's bound to be room for physical comedy and surprised reactions, but that's all lost as well. The set pieces just aren't as funny this time around, because they're not as dialog-based. Polly teases/tortures Ffinch some more, and the Doctor puts a gun under Perkins' nose, but these seem pale echoes of previous altercations.

The sense that the episode is keeping time is represented in the Doctor's behavior too. While things seem desperate (for Ben), the Doctor just wants to go to sleep. It's the kind of inappropriate reaction that's making its way into the character's make-up (and which will be taken up by Tom Baker later, among others), but it's hard not to be as frustrated with it as Polly is. And it seems a needless pause when the next scene shows him with a wheelbarrow full of "liberated" weapons. How about showing us the theft instead? Nevertheless, things DO happen. Polly makes plans and they work out, Ben is a proper hero, and revelations about the signet ring come to light. It's just that on audio-only, it's the "ooh, arrh"s that you remember most.

REWATCHABILITY: Medium - Every time things start to get interesting, we cut back to the ship and it's a bad pirate movie. Can't hate it too much, but really does suffer from being a "lost episode".

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