The War Games - Episode 8

This episode was watched by 3.5 million people which is average viewing figures by today’s standards but this remained the lowest rated episode for 20 years. I was rather disappointed with the cliffhanger to the previous episode because after all the interesting and grim endings, it seemed like episode seven’s cliffhanger was a bit flimsy. Thankfully we get past that rather quickly and a large portion of the story seems to take place in the centre of the alien’s base where there is more bickering with the Security Chief and the War Chief.

We finally get a meeting between the War Chief and the Doctor. There is an intriguing reference about the War Chief having met the Doctor when he looked like William Hartnell. We learn that the Doctor stole the TARDIS. I like how there seems to be a possible way of ending all this and that’s by getting help from the Timelords but he doesn’t want to do this though it’s never mentioned why. Patrick Troughton has been on fine form during these eight episodes. Apart from The Space Pirates, he’s been on terrific form and both Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury are also on good form as they help lead the resistance.

I like how there are wars involved in the war games that I hadn’t heard of before such as the Russo-Japanese War and the Peninsular War. A quick look of Wikipedia says that the Russo-Japanese War occurred between February 1904 and September 1905 and described as the first great war of the 20^th Century. The Peninsular War was between 1808 and 1814 and was a battle between France and Spain. It would have been nice to see something from these periods but I suppose their not really relevant to the story and they cant stop at this stage of the story to take us there.

This is the episode where the resistance starts to act like a resistance and it’s where the Security Chief starts to look a bit silly and incompetent. They start to attack different zones in an attempt to have the main alien base as empty as possible. The Security Chief takes great delight from this and the War Lord seems to be getting tired of this and I don’t think that Philip Madoc is as good as he has been. There are a few moments where he seems to be like he was when he first appeared but this wasn’t his best episode.

The cliffhanger to this episode was much better than the last one as the Doctor seems to have turned on Jamie, Zoe and the Resistance. The whole episode seems to have picked up the pace after the rather slow previous episode. It feels like there is more questions forming as we learn about the aliens, the Doctor and the Security Chief. Even after eight episodes I am still gripped with this story and despite this getting three and a half million episodes, I think that that number rather implies that the story and the episode have gone stale and I don’t think that this is the case. With two more episodes it feels now like things are going to heat up.