The first thing you notice about the Second Doctor is that Beatle haircut. Britain was going through a revolution in the late 1960s – the shagadelic summer of Pan when literally everyone was having sex with everyone else – and some of the swing found its way into the Tardis. Out went the Edwardian grandeur of William Hartnell and the bourgeois intellectualism of his companions (Ian and Barbara, all cardigans and history textbooks). In came a cosmic hobo with companions dressed by Carnaby Street.
Patrick Troughton, aka Doctor #2, was born in 1920 and enjoyed a prolific career as a character actor before being invited to pilot the Tardis. It's reported that his predecessor, Bill Hartnell, said, "There's only one man in England who can take over, and that's Patrick Troughton!" Whether that's true or not, history tends to be written with crystal clear retrospect, and people forget how uncertain things were at the time. The show's producers were taking a big risk replacing one actor with another; no one was sure how Troughton should approach the role. One idea he toyed with was playing the time lord in blackface with a turban. Thankfully, "Cosmic hobo" was settled on instead, and although Troughton's performance was unique it probably created the template for Doctor Who thereafter. A super intelligent being who disguises his brilliance with self-deprecating wit.
There was a definite template to the stories, too. It was in the Troughton era that the idea of a Monster Of The Week was invented, a series of big beasties to scare the kids. Cue the Ice Warriors (Martians with asthma), the Abominable Snowmen (their roar was produced by flushing a toilet) and a redesigned Cybermen (men in fetish suits). The running plot was Base Under Siege, wherein the Doctor, his companions and some human cannon fodder would find themselves trapped in a bunker while the aliens tried to break in. Invariably, the aliens would capture one of the humans and turn him against the rest. It was always obvious who, but the idiot cast never seemed to cotton on. Imagine the scene: an obviously hypnotised engineer called Bob bumps into an astronaut called Terry…
TERRY: You all right Bob? Only you're eyes are glowing red. Bit of a cold coming on, is it?
BOB: I … am … fine … thankyou … human. I … just … need … a … lie … down.
TERRY: Why don't you take forty winks in your room?
BOB: I … would … prefer … to … rest … in … the … nuclear … reactor. Remind … me … where … do … we … humans … keep … the … nuclear … reactor?
TERRY: Last door on the left. And make sure you see the nurse about those hands of yours. They're covered in scales.
BOB: I … am … fine … thankyou … human. I … just … need … a … lie … down.
TERRY: Why don't you take forty winks in your room?
BOB: I … would … prefer … to … rest … in … the … nuclear … reactor. Remind … me … where … do … we … humans … keep … the … nuclear … reactor?
TERRY: Last door on the left. And make sure you see the nurse about those hands of yours. They're covered in scales.
Five minutes later and the reactor goes critical.
Troughton remains very popular among fans and often quoted as the best Who of all. Certainly he was a great actor and his expressive eyebrows made for black-and-white TV. But while some of the stories were moody and effective (Fury From the Deep, The Invasion), others were silly and dumb (The Krotons, The Underwater Menace) and it's only because so many are missing that we've lost a sense of how poor the scripts became as the show lost some of its zip. The serials were, in Troughton's own words, exhausting to make: "Monday we read it, Tuesday rehearsed it, Wednesday rehearsed it, half day Thursday then you were on Friday. We filmed every fortnight, and in the end, Frazer and Wendy and I had a sit-down strike and said ‘We’re not going to film at the weekends, because we’re getting tired [and] irritable’." Yet he fell in love with the character and, precisely because he knew he was getting so closely identified with it, he had to reluctantly divorce himself from the show to save his career. In 1969, he bailed out and so established the unwritten "Troughton Rule" of Doctor Who: don't do more than 3 years or you'll get typecast and never work again. Jon Pertwee obeyed the rule (give or take a year) and went on to play Worzel Gummidge. Tom Baker broke it and ended up doing bit parts in Cluedo. Pat knew what he was talking about.
Perhaps the most archetypal Second Doctor story is The Tomb of the Cybermen, when the Doctors and Co find themselves trapped in a base under seige by some monsters of the week with voices like broken electric doorbells. And in among all the camp action (watching at home, the playwright Joe Orton noted in his diary that he wouldn't kick the boy playing Jamie out of bed), there's a moment of classic Who poetry – which you can watch in the video above. Companion Victoria admits to the Doctor that she misses her father, who was murdered by the Daleks. She asks if the time lord can remember his own family and he replies,
Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that's the point, really. I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they sleep in my mind, and I forget. And so will you. Oh yes, you will. You'll find there's so much else to think about. So remember, our lives are different to anybody else's. That's the exciting thing. There's nobody in the universe can do what we're doing. You must get some sleep and let this poor old man stay awake.
The scene brings a lump to the throat every time I see it.