4 out of 5

Directed by: Hugh David

While Patrick Troughton wisely moved the show away from historical episodes (according to the wiki page for this serial), The Highlanders is a lot of fun – an effective swan song, I suppose, for this type of ep – and benefits immensely from our still new whimsical Doctor, as well as the seemingly learned lesson of keeping the companions – Ben and Polly in this case – capable on their own terms and intelligent, such that everyone can carry their screen time in their own way.

The setup is generic, though, very much of the Hartnell area: TARDIS lands, wander outside and explore, get caught up in foibles before they can return.  It’s Cullodeen, it’s the 1700s, and the Who crew have the unfortunate luck to be taken prisoner by some retreating Scots.  …Who are then all taken prisoner by the English.  Don’t know your history?  Don’t worry about it, neither do I.  Thankfully, our writers (Elwyn Jones only not really, it’s all Gerry Davis, again according to wiki) aren’t going the lesson route, but rather using events from the time as dramatic fodder: namely the scuffles in the wake of The Battle of Cullodeen and those looking to profit off of the matter.  Thus does the mischievous Mr. Grey have his charge, the English Trask, swoop in and bundle up all our prisoners for some illegal money-makin’ off of slave labor.  But all our principles are well-equipped to thwart this plan.  The Doc humorously dons different disguises and accents to work his way out of incarceration and gather intel; Polly sasses an English officer into giving her money and keeping her escape a secret; Ben goes all rebel and gets his fellow prisoners ready for a rebellion.  These plotlines are all handled separately until they necessarily have to come together, and all of them are interesting (to listen to if not watch, since these are “reconstructed” episodes).

Drawing things together does take some time, though, and it’s a good job that Troughton is so much more entertaining than Hartnell – more eccentric than bumbling, something future popular Doctors would pick up on – as it gets the serial through the rough patches of Mr. Grey’s storyline, which just requires a tad too much exposition at points.

The Scottish Jamie draws the short straw and gets stuck with the TARDIS at story’s end, which only makes me sad in that it presumably means one of the other companions is soon to depart…