‘The War Games’ is a beloved Doctor Who serial from the show’s sixth season… and one of the most game-changing stories ever written.
Before ‘The War Games,’ the Doctor really was an enigma. Details about his personal history were scant; people knew that he had a strange space-time machine called the TARDIS that he couldn’t really control, and that he was “cut off from his own people, without friends or protection.” They also knew that he had a granddaughter called Susan (possibly) and that he had the ability to change his face – a sort of “renewal” that was “part of the TARDIS,” and “without it he couldn’t survive.” For many years, this was all anybody knew about the Doctor.
But by 1969, Doctor Who was heading for a renewal of its own. Patrick Troughton was leaving, and the BBC wanted to slash the show’s budget. And so, for the Second Doctor’s final story ‘The War Games,’ the writers Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks came up with an adventure that would end with the Doctor being exiled to Earth in the 20th century, with the “secret of the TARDIS” being taken from him. They would also change his appearance, and force him to part ways with his companions Jamie and Zoe, who would lose most of their memories of him. As changes go, ‘The War Games’ hastened a big one.
But ‘The War Games’ had a few more surprises up its sleeve. It was finally going to introduce the audience to the Doctor’s people, the Time Lords, and take them to his home planet. It was going to explain the origins of the TARDIS (somewhat), detailing how the Doctor fled his own people out of boredom; the Time Lords had a strict code of non-interference in the affairs of other planets, and the Doctor wanted to see the universe.
Now, for a show called Doctor Who where the question of the identity of the main character is literally in the title, this was a bold move. ‘The War Games’ gave answers to questions that had been on viewers’ minds from the very beginning. Many people wouldn’t have wanted the Doctor’s backstory to be laid-out in such detail. Like it or not, ‘The War Games’ removed a sizeable chunk of the main character’s enigma.
In modern times, it’s easy to be unaffected by this; many Doctor Who fans have grown up knowing full well that the Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, and that he stole a TARDIS and deliberately fled his own people, and that for a few seasons of the show he wasn’t able to pilot his own craft. These days, it is all part of the rich lore and its impact is diminished – a bit like Darth Vader revealing that he is Luke’s father (sorry, spoilers.) To some extent, it’s ‘old news.’
But back in 1969, the final episode of ‘The War Games’ must have been quite a challenge for some viewers. The Doctor’s origins had finally been explained. He lost Jamie and Zoe. He was about to lose the TARDIS. Patrick Troughton was on his way out. The following year would see a brand new cast, a new Doctor, a new format, a new production team… It was about to become a quite different show.
Now, you may think that ‘The War Games’ is safe from any further controversy, given that it’s been some 57 years since its broadcast, but this is Doctor Who – new discussions forever loom. Indeed, ‘The War Games’ enjoyed a new lease of life in 2024 when the BBC released a special 90 minute re-edit of the adventure, complete with new music, new visuals and (impressively) colourisation.
However, this was not simply a condensed, high-definition rendition, and this is where the ‘controversy’ starts. This version of ‘The War Games’ contains new material that isn’t necessarily to every fan’s taste, such as when the Time Lord prosecutors give the Doctor an opportunity to choose his new face and display pictures of his future incarnations – namely, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Jodie Whittaker and Matt Smith. So if you’re not a fan of any of these particular Doctors, you might want to avert your eyes.
And if you can already feel your mouse drifting to the ‘new thread’ button on Gallifrey Base, there’s something else to make your head spin. In this version of ‘The War Games,’ it is strongly implied that the War Chief (one of the villains of the piece) is in fact an incarnation of the Master. His theme tune plays out when he is conversing with the Doctor, and when he dies towards the end of the film, he starts to regenerate as he is carried off.
Of course, there is no single moment in ‘The War Games’ where the War Chief holds up his hands and admits his identity, but it’s clear that the production team wanted to portray him as the Time Lord’s arch enemy. And in fact, this substantiated a long-held fan theory, given the Master’s similarities with the War Chief: they’re both renegades from Gallifrey, they both have TARDISes, they both know the Doctor, they have similar goals, they have beards… Even in the original version of ‘The War Games,’ the idea that the War Chief could be the Master holds water.
Not everyone likes this theory, though, and that’s one of the things that makes the colour version of ‘The War Games’ controversial in that it (gently) messes with Who lore, and if you’re a purist, this is the kind of detail that will get your twin hearts racing.
The good news is that this version of ‘The War Games’ isn’t intended as a replacement for the original, but rather as an alternative. So if you really, really don’t like all the edits and the music and the ‘inclusion’ of the Master (or even the inclusion of David Tennant for that matter) you can pretend it never happened and settle down with the epic 10 part original. And you should probably do this anyway, to be fair; it may be four hours long, but ‘The War Games’ is a masterpiece. So dive into the Whoniverse and start streaming.
Tell us, reader: how controversial do you find ‘The War Games‘? And how do you feel about the War Chief? Is he really the Master, or simply an errant Time Lord? Let us know in the comments below.
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