Sure enough, Jamie McCrimmon first appeared in yesterday's viewing. But really he had very little to do with the story, he was more than a background character but less than a guest star. With today's viewing, he finally came to the foreground - first in his determination on board the ship Annabelle and then later in his decision to throw in with the Doctor permanently. That's not surprising, given that originally he was not intended to be a companion. After filming had completed on The Highlanders, actor Frazer Hines got a call from producer Innes Lloyd asking if he wanted to join the show as a regular. "But I can't," Hines replied, "you've already filmed me waving goodbye." Lloyd replied back, "Oh, we can just re-shoot that bit!" And so he agreed, and went on to become the longest running companion ever in the history of Doctor Who (at least in terms of televised episodes.)

Let's talk about that.

The Highlanders - Episodes 3 & 4

The first episode was largely staged near the battlefield of Culloden, and the second was mostly set in a prison at Inverness. The third and fourth episodes are primarily nautical, taking place either at or near the Inverness docks, or else on board the slave ship Annabelle anchored in the harbor. The prisoners have been taken to the ship's hold, among them Ben, Jamie, and the recuperating Laird, Colin McLaren. There they are offered the choice of either being hanged as traitors, or else signing seven-year contracts to be sold into bondage in the West Indies. Most opt for the chance to live another day, but our three ship-board heroes refuse to sign along with one other prisoner who used to be the ship's captain. Ben in particular makes a vocal stand, and for his troubles he is bound in ropes and then tossed overboard to drown.

Fortunately he is able to escape the ropes and swim to shore, where he is promptly found by the Doctor (who is still doing the Master of Disguises thing, dressed as a wounded Redcoat.)  By this point the Doctor had already linked up with Polly and Kirsty and has begun to execute a plan to bring a dingy filled with weapons out to the Annabelle under cover of night and fog in order to arm the prisoners in the ship's hold and stage a rebellion. Ultimately the ship is returned to its rightful captain, and the crooked solicitor who had masterminded the entire sell-prisoners-into-slavery scam is arrested and sent to the dungeons at Inverness. Most of the captured Highlanders elect to stay with the ship when the new/old captain offers them safe passage to France to avoid further British prosecution, but Jamie elects to stay behind and guide the Doctor and companions safely back to Culloden and the TARDIS where he joins them on their travels.

There is just so much great stuff in this story. Of course, there is all of the Doctor's rapid changes of character and disguise, showcasing Patrick Troughton's acting skills. There is also a running joke with the Doctor trying on different hats (a joke that leads directly to the Eleventh Doctor's fez, by the way.) There are numerous great moments with Ben and Polly, who are repeatedly indignant about being lumped in with the British Redcoats just because they happen to be Londoners. There is also another fun running gag with a hapless Redcoat officer named Ffinch (much is made of the two 'f's), and with Polly and Kirsty repeatedly blackmailing him into helping them. On the whole the combination of the audio plus the well-edited Loose Cannon reconstruction images conveys the story very well, although I truly wish I could have seen the big action scene at the end. If the BBC were to continue doing animated reconstructions of the fully lost stories, this one would be very high on my wish list - below Marco Polo, certainly, but not by much.

This story really is a pivotal, defining moment in the show's history. At this point, all the pieces are in place for the next several years and the series is on a creative high. Sure, Ben and Polly will leave, first replaced by Victoria and later by Zoe, but for the next three seasons it is largely The Doctor and Jamie Show.

Frazer Hines once famously said that he and Patrick Troughton were having so much fun, they never wanted to leave. In an interview for Doctor Who Magazine he joked, "If it hadn't been for my agent saying, 'Darling, you've done three years, you need to do movies,' and Pat's wife tilling him he was just doing children's television, we'd still be there. You'd have never heard of David Tennant!"

I absolutely believe it.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Second
Companion(s): Ben Jackson, Polly Wright, Jamie McCrimmon
Episode(s): The Highlanders - Episodes 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 6,828 today, 493,805 total
Distance Walked:  3.50 miles today, 233.15 miles total
Weight: 284.34 lbs (five day moving average), net change -22.96 lbs