Doctor Who: The War Games

.

The War Games is the final serial of Season 6 of the classic Doctor Who series. Originally broadcast in ten episodes from 19 April to 21 June 1969. It was written by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks and directed by David Maloney. It stars Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon, Wendy Padbury as Zoe Heriot, Philip Madoc as the War Lord, and Edward Brayshaw as the War Chief.

The TARDIS arrives in what seems to be the First World War, but the Doctor and his friends find many battle zones from different eras, all run by aliens who use mind control and stolen soldiers to fight endless wars. With courage and quiet cunning, the Doctor uncovers the War Chief’s role and the truth behind the machines that move troops between zones.

The scale of the threat forces him to call on the Time Lords, who end the scheme but place the Doctor on trial, returning Jamie and Zoe to their own times and sentencing the Doctor to exile on

The War Games is a landmark serial in Doctor Who history. It is the last regular appearance of the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe, and it introduces the Time Lords for the first time, revealing the Doctor’s origins.

The story is significant as it concludes the Second Doctor’s era, reveals the Doctor’s home planet for the first time, introduces the Time Lords by name, and leads to the Doctor’s forced regeneration and exile to Earth. Spanning multiple historical and science fiction settings, The War Games is an epic, multilayered tale of deception, identity, and justice.

Episode 1

The TARDIS lands in a trench line in 1917 France. Shells burst, whistles blow, and the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are hauled before Lieutenant Carstairs and an ambulance driver, Lady Jennifer, as suspicious “spies.” Their commanding officer, General Smythe, vanishes into his study and speaks to someone on a hidden screen; when he returns, a strange device in his spectacles lets him hypnotise everyone around him.

The Doctor spots the trick but can’t stop the court-martial that follows. Sentenced to death, he stalls, escapes with Jamie and Zoe in Lady Jennifer’s ambulance, and races through a bank of thick, unnatural mist. On the far side the mud and barbed wire give way to a different world: a sunlit slope where armour flashes and Roman soldiers charge down at them. They swerve back into the fog and burst out again under machine-gun fire: the First World War once more.

Something is wrong with geography and time. Smythe, watching from his secret device, orders pursuit and steps into a humming cabinet that shouldn’t exist in 1917. With Carstairs beginning to doubt his own memory and Lady Jennifer trusting her eyes more than orders, the travellers turn toward Smythe’s chateau, certain the answers hide behind its locked doors.

Episode 2

Inside Smythe’s chateau, the Doctor finds a concealed communicator and a strange control panel behind a portrait: proof this general is part of something beyond the war. Smythe returns, hypnotises the room again, and the Doctor is marched away for execution. Carstairs and Lady Jennifer waver, then snap out of the trance at the last second and help him bolt.

The four flee in the ambulance, plunge into the mist, and emerge on a dusty road where a cavalry patrol in Civil War uniforms arrests them. Officers on both sides carry odd, futuristic sidearms and talk as if a script has been laid over their memories. The travellers spot a boxy transport hidden in a barn (no horse or engine) and watch a captain “report” through thin air. When a squad arrives, the box hums, its door opens, and men step in and vanish.

Carstairs tries to recall how he met Lady Jennifer and finds blank spaces where days should be. The Doctor sketches a terrible hypothesis: the battlefield is only one “zone” among many, separated by time mists and linked by these travelling cabinets. If someone is moving human soldiers between wars, then the generals are not generals at all: and the front line may be a maze.

Episode 3

The Doctor bluffs his way into one of the transport cabinets and the walls melt into a corridor of hexagons leading to a stark control centre. Banks of machinery hum; white-uniformed technicians monitor “zones” labelled with different wars. Captured soldiers file through reconditioning booths and come out with blank smiles, believing whatever orders they are given.

A hawk-faced Security Chief snarls about infiltrators. Above him, a cool, calculating figure called the War Chief watches, and recognises the Doctor with a flicker of surprise. Jamie and Zoe, separated from the Doctor, slip between patrols and free a handful of dazed men who remember flashes of other lives. Back in 1917, Carstairs and Lady Jennifer try to rally honest officers while Smythe calmly wipes minds and rewrites reports. In Control, the Doctor is questioned and answers with airy nonsense until the War Chief dismisses the guards and speaks plainly: they are not natives of this place.

He and the Doctor are of the same people. The Security Chief senses a plot and starts recording everyone. The Doctor is marched toward a reconditioning booth “for his own good,” pretends to stumble, and rewires a panel as he falls. Somewhere in a side corridor a door opens to a prison where resistance is beginning to breathe.

Episode 4

A whisper of rebellion spreads. The Doctor and Zoe infiltrate the processing rooms and learn how the brainwashing works; with a few switches flipped they can break the spell on individuals long enough to talk. Jamie finds Carstairs in a holding area labelled “1917” and snaps him free before a white-coated technician can lower the visor again.

The Security Chief interrogates prisoners with a truth-scanner and builds a case that the War Chief is hiding something. The War Chief, smiling, corners the Doctor alone and lays cards on the table: he is a renegade who has given these aliens their travel machines: SIDRATs, grown and brittle copies of a better design. With them, the War Lords steal armies from Earth’s history and test them in time-sealed zones to forge a perfect fighting force.

“Join me,” he urges, “we’ll take control, end their bungling, and rule.” The Doctor keeps him talking and learns a weakness: the SIDRATs are short-lived, and only the War Chief can keep them running. In 1917, Lady Jennifer smuggles soldiers through the mist to a farmhouse that becomes a rebel post. General Smythe tightens the net. The Doctor uses a reconditioner in reverse, restoring a Scots sergeant’s memories: and gains his first committed ally from the ranks.

Episode 5

The resistance takes shape across zones: a British sergeant from the trenches, a Confederate scout haunted by flashes of his enemies’ faces, a Mexican fighter with the reflexes of a legend: all with the conditioning shaken loose. The Doctor teaches them how to avoid the mists and ambush the cabinet patrols. In Control, the War Lord himself arrives: grave, bespectacled, and utterly certain of victory.

He pits his Security Chief against the War Chief and demands results. The Security Chief produces recordings that prove the War Chief has been dealing secretly with the Doctor. The War Chief responds with icy contempt and a reminder that without him the SIDRATs will fail and the entire project will collapse. The War Lord allows the feud to simmer: useful, for now. Zoe slips into the records room and maps the distribution of cabinets.

Jamie leads a raid to seize one and ferry rebel leaders to Control for a coordinated strike. The Doctor, surrounded by blinking schematics, realises how wide the thefts from Earth have been and how many soldiers are trapped out of their time. He can break the system, but returning everyone to their rightful place will take power he does not have. For the first time, he thinks about the people he ran away from.

Episode 6

Fronts erupt. The Doctor directs synchronised attacks from within Control as rebel bands hit reconditioning posts and smash the headsets that steal memories. In the 1917 zone, General Smythe calls a drumhead court and tries to hypnotise the room again; Carstairs knocks his device away and shoots him in a sudden, brutally human moment.

The “German” sector falters when its matching alien officer loses his control box; soldiers on both sides blink at each other and lower rifles. The War Chief seizes the chance to prove his worth, dispatching SIDRATs to isolate breakouts and offering the Doctor “order” in exchange for loyalty. The Doctor plays along just long enough to pull more men out of the spell. Jamie commandeers a cabinet and shuttles Lady Jennifer, Carstairs, and a dozen fighters into Control, where blank corridors become battlefields.

The Security Chief, now certain of treachery, taps every wall and mic. The War Lord grows impatient and orders that the strongest human specimens be preserved while the rest are recycled. The Doctor hears this and makes a choice: even if they win today, these millions cannot get home without help from those who exiled him. He pockets a small, forbidden calling device he swore he would never use.

Episode 7

Paranoia eats the enemy. The Security Chief confronts the War Chief before the War Lord with his recordings; the War Chief, cornered, turns his own guards on his rival. The Security Chief dies mid-accusation, and the War Lord accepts the explanation with a smile that promises later payment. The Doctor uses the chaos to seize the central transmat and feed false orders into the zone network.

Patrols are diverted, cabinets recalled, processing halted. Zoe and Jamie shepherd freed soldiers into Control and hold corridors with furniture and determination. The War Chief, bleeding from a wound no one is meant to see, admits to the Doctor that he is dying and begs for a measure of trust: he can still help get the humans out. The Doctor tells him the truth: without the ability to navigate time safely, they will only make things worse.

Around them, alarms stack like storm clouds. The War Lord orders the project terminated rather than captured. Cabinets begin to self-destruct. The Doctor starts moving civilians toward stable zones and warns his friends to brace for the hardest decision. He looks down at the smooth device in his hand and hates what it means to call the only people powerful enough to set history right.

Episode 8

Control turns into a fortress under siege. The War Lord’s black-clad guards flood stairwells while the last intact SIDRATs hum and flicker. The Doctor makes his plea to the War Chief one final time: give up the pretence, help evacuate as many as possible, then face judgement together. The War Chief laughs at the word “judgement,” coughs blood, and staggers away, still certain he can salvage power.

The Doctor and Zoe smash the central reconditioner and free a final wave of stunned recruits; Jamie holds a chokepoint with a stolen rifle that nearly knocks him over every time it fires. Lady Jennifer and Carstairs guide civilians into the mists toward calmer zones. The War Lord appears in the control room as if he’s always been there and offers the Doctor terms.

Share the technology, help rebuild the project properly, and no one else needs to die. The Doctor answers quietly that the experiment ends now. He activates the device. Somewhere beyond sight, something vast turns its head. Time thickens. SIDRATs stall mid-fade. The War Lord orders the Doctor seized; the Doctor tells his friends to run. He has summoned the Time Lords. There will be no arguing his way out when they arrive.

Episode 9

The mists part for a court older than any empire. The War Lords attempt to flee in their cabinets and are plucked back as if by invisible hands. The Doctor gathers Jamie and Zoe and bolts for the TARDIS, desperate to escape before the summons lands. For a breath it works (the blue box wheezes into the vortex) then the walls ripple, and the TARDIS slows as if caught in syrup.

Images of their own faces smear across the roundels. The doors open by themselves onto a white, endless hall. The Doctor steadies his companions and walks out to meet robed figures who do not need introductions. He argues his case: the War Lords must be stopped and the stolen soldiers returned to their proper times; he intervened because someone had to.

The Time Lords accept the evidence and pass sentence on the War Lords—they are sealed in a dematerialisation box, trapped forever in a loop of their capture. Then the questions turn to the Doctor. Why did he leave? Why does he interfere? He admits the truth: he was bored, he was curious, and he could not bear to stand by. The Time Lords listen, grave and silent, and tell him there will be a reckoning.

Episode 10

Judgement day. In a vast, calm chamber the Doctor is put on trial by his own people. To justify his wandering, he shows them the monsters he has fought and the worlds he has saved (the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Yeti) arguing that non-interference can be a kind of cruelty. The Time Lords agree the War Lords must be undone. They return every stolen soldier to the moment of their abduction with their memories smoothed, and time heals.

Then they turn to the Doctor’s sentence. He will be exiled to twentieth-century Earth, where trouble seems to find him anyway. His knowledge of the TARDIS will be blocked; the ship’s controls will be altered so it cannot leave. His appearance must change. Jamie and Zoe plead, but the Time Lords rule that they, too, must go back to their own times with the memories of their travels erased, save for their first meeting with him.

One by one, they fade: Zoe to a quiet smile on a space station, Jamie to a grin on a Highland hillside. Alone, the Doctor rails, bargains, and finally submits as the room spins and his features begin to blur. On Earth, somewhere ordinary, a man will wake with a new face and no way home: and the story will start again.

Themes

As a ten-part reckoning, The War Games stands near the very summit of classic Doctor Who. It is more expansive than The Invasion, fiercer and more elegiac than The Web of Fear, and as era-defining as The Tomb of the Cybermen.

Its audacity (shifting war zones, moral brinkmanship, and the unmasking of the Doctor’s people) earns it a place beside later touchstones like Genesis of the Daleks for sheer consequence. As a farewell, it gives the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe a poignant, unnerving curtain call, closing the wandering 1960s with a gravity few serials match.

In the tapestry of the show, it follows The Space Pirates and detonates the future: the Time Lords’ judgment and the Doctor’s exile lead straight into Spearhead from Space and the UNIT years.

The revelation of Gallifrey resonates through The Three Doctors, The Deadly Assassin, The Five Doctors, and the courtroom labyrinth of The Trial of a Time Lord, while the Time Lords’ manipulative interventions prefigure Genesis of the Daleks. Even the War Chief’s shadowy kinship anticipates the Master’s arrival in Terror of the Autons. In short, The War Games doesn’t just end a season: it redraws the map the series will travel for decades.

.

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.

.

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

Doctor Who Episode Guides for Sale on Amazon

Step aboard the TARDIS and journey across the universe with every incarnation of The Doctor in this series of unofficial Doctor Who episode companions.

This collection of twelve books explores every televised adventure of the Time Lord’s lives.

Each volume in the series delves into a different Doctor’s era, offering detailed episode guides, behind-the-scenes insights, character profiles, and story synopses.

Once you have clicked the link, choose which book you want, and then whether you want to buy the Kindle (eBook) or Paperback versions.

Previews are available before you buy.

Visit the Australian Book and Language Studio

www.abls.com.au