Doctor Who: The Highlanders

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The Highlanders is the fourth serial of Season 4 of the classic Doctor Who television series. It was originally broadcast in four episodes from 17 December 1966 to 7 January 1967, and is notable for being the final purely historical story in the classic series.

It was written by Elwyn Jones and Gerry Davis, and directed by Hugh David. It stars Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, Anneke Wills as Polly, Michael Craze as Ben Jackson, and Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon, who would become one of the longest-serving companions in the show’s history.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, the TARDIS lands in 1746 Scotland, where the Doctor and his friends are drawn into the harsh world of defeated Highlanders hunted by Redcoats and threatened by corrupt schemers. The Doctor uses quick wits and disguises to protect a wounded clan and to free prisoners bound for transportation.

Polly and Ben show courage and resourcefulness against dangerous odds. The story blends history, peril, and sly humor, and it introduces Jamie, a brave young Highlander whose loyalty and spirit earn him a place aboard the TARDIS for adventures to come. All four episodes are currently missing from the BBC archives, but audio recordings and telesnap reconstructions exist.

Episode 1

The TARDIS lands on the smoke-stained moor just after Culloden. The Doctor, Ben, and Polly stumble into a ragged Highland party: a wounded laird, his brave daughter Kirsty, Jamie the young piper, and a few survivors clinging to honour and hope. While Polly tends the laird, Redcoats sweep the area and seize the men as rebels. In the confusion, the Doctor and Ben are captured too.

Polly and Kirsty slip away into the heather with a pistol and a purse, determined to help. At the encampment, a smooth London lawyer, Solicitor Grey, takes charge of the prisoners with suspicious eagerness. He is not after justice; he is after profit. The captives are condemned as traitors and quietly earmarked for transport to the colonies. Ben is hauled off with Jamie and the others toward the harbour.

The Doctor studies Grey’s papers and the soldiers’ routines with a glint of mischief. Polly and Kirsty lay low, plotting how to turn a Redcoat’s arrogance to their advantage. As night falls, the Doctor slips into a new role (an eccentric foreign physician) ready to bluff his way past sentries and into the heart of Grey’s operation. The fate of the Highlanders begins to hinge on deception.

Episode 2

Ben is shoved aboard a ship at Inverness, ruled by the brutal Captain Trask, who delights in breaking spirits with rope and belaying pin. Jamie is thrown in beside him, loyal and quick to act. On shore, the Doctor arrives at the prison compound disguised as a fussy German surgeon, all spectacles and officious chatter. He pokes and prods, diagnoses, and flatters his way past the Redcoats, quietly learning where the prisoners will be sent and how.

Grey, counting profits, barely looks up as the Doctor collects names and keys with polite bows. Meanwhile Polly and Kirsty bait a pompous officer, Lieutenant ffinch, into a tangle of brambles, then relieve him of his purse and signet. With this leverage they force him to pass messages and look the other way.

Back on the ship, Ben clashes with Trask and earns a beating, but he also spies the weak points: the armoury, the rigging, the sailors who hate their captain. The Doctor slips between camp and quayside, stitching a plan from bluff, stolen documents, and whispered promises. He sees Grey’s game clearly now (indenture dressed up as law) and sets out to turn Grey’s signatures against him while keeping his friends alive long enough to fight back.

Episode 3

The current runs faster. Ben and Jamie test the crew’s temper, sowing small acts of defiance that make Trask overreach. A coil of rope goes missing, a hatch “sticks,” a guard’s musket jams at just the wrong time. In the town, Polly and Kirsty press their advantage with ffinch, forcing him to carry notes and orders that funnel authority away from Grey.

The Doctor multiplies disguises: the German doctor with a bag of instruments by day, a shawled old woman with a basket by night, always slipping through checkpoints with an apology or a joke. He engineers a “medical evacuation” for the wounded laird to a safer house, then sends word to the ship’s hold that help is coming. Grey grows impatient and demands the cargo sail at once. Trask answers by tightening discipline with the lash, breeding mutiny in every shadow.

The Doctor’s papers begin to collide (orders that free a few men here, requisition supplies there) until the bureaucracy knots itself. On the Annabelle, Ben finds allies among resentful sailors, while Jamie quietly earns their respect. The moment approaches: a storm in the harbour, a change of watch, and a signal from shore. If they move together, the balance can finally tip.

Episode 4

Everything breaks at once. The Doctor arranges a final switch (Grey’s own documents turned into warrants for his arrest) then nudges ffinch to choose honour over pride. On the Annabelle, Ben springs the trap during the squall, cutting lines and freeing the prisoners. Jamie leads a charge across the slick deck; Trask roars and swings a cutlass, but the crew he has brutalised refuses to die for him. In the struggle, Trask is hurled overboard into the dark water.

Grey, fleeing to the wharf, meets ffinch’s drawn sword and the Doctor’s calm recital of crimes. His scheme to sell Highlanders as indentured labour collapses under his seal and signature. With the prisoners freed and the laird safe, the survivors decide their futures. Some return to the glens, some seek passage elsewhere.

Jamie, moved by the Doctor’s quick mind and kindness, looks at the blue box and chooses the wider world. The Doctor smiles and opens the door. Ben claps Jamie on the shoulder; Polly welcomes him as a friend. As dawn lifts over the Highlands, the TARDIS dematerialises, leaving behind a harbour of untied knots: papers voided, chains broken, and a young piper stepping into time and space. The rebellion of one ship reshapes many lives.

Themes

As a “pure historical,” The Highlanders lands just below the very top tier: shy of the elegance of The Aztecs and the sharp tragedy of The Massacre, but spry, witty, and humane. Its verve, the Doctor’s playful disguises, and the grim post-Culloden stakes make it a standout of Season 4.

Most of all, it’s pivotal: the story introduces Jamie McCrimmon, whose chemistry with the Doctor soon rivals the best pairings in the classic run. In the historical sub-genre it comfortably sits alongside Marco Polo, The Romans, and The Myth Makers, and it carries the mantle as the last true historical until Black Orchid.

Linking past to future, it follows The Power of the Daleks and tumbles the TARDIS team into The Underwater Menace, but its real legacy is the Jamie era it kick-starts. His presence reshapes the show’s rhythm through The Moonbase, The Macra Terror, The Faceless Ones, and The Evil of the Daleks, and on to later essentials like The Abominable Snowmen, The Web of Fear, The Invasion, and The War Games.

The Scottish thread echoes again in Terror of the Zygons, Tooth and Claw, and The Eaters of Light, while the Doctor’s taste for masquerade anticipates the duplicities of The Enemy of the World. In short, The Highlanders is less a cul-de-sac than a gateway: closing one tradition while opening a defining companionship and a run of classics.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Second Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Second Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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To view the list of other Doctor Who serials, please click this link

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