History of Doctor Who - Second Doctor
Tuesday, January 8, 2008 at 09:53AM This is continued from my essay on the History of the First Doctor and is a companion piece to my Second Doctor Chronology.
This is part of my series of essays concerning the In-Depth History of Doctor Who.
For three seasons, he'd been entertaining audiences. The gruff old grandfather who fought aliens, traveled through the stars, laughed in the face of danger and forced us to face the truths about ourselves, whether we wanted to or not. But he was gone now, his body finally worn out when the Cybermen drained his life energy. In his place there was now a "mercurial" figure with a strange grin and a habit of playing a recorder when he needed to think.
THE FIRST REGENERATION
Audiences were shocked. What the Hell happened? One second we've got our old, loveably grumpy "grandfather" Doctor and the next we have a short, middle-aged man with messy hair?
As the new man stood up, obviously in a daze, Ben and Polly shared the reaction of many audience members. Ben wondered if somehow the Doctor had been replaced by an impostor. The short man was desperate to find a mirror, curious about his new face. Looking in a mirror, the time traveler and the audience saw the First Doctor staring back. Then the image shifted and changed to reflect the new Doctor. The Second Doctor examined his face curiously, touching it and feeling how different its structure was.
Watching this, Polly recalled what the Doctor had said soon after the Cybermen had appeared.
POLLY: "Ben, remember what he said in the tracking room? Something about ... 'this old body of mine is
wearing a bit thin' ..."
BEN: "So he gets himself a NEW one?! ... But it's impossible!"
POLLY: "Not too long ago, we'd be saying that about a lot of things."
The new Doctor looked around his things, his memory hazy. A few times, he referred to his old self as if he'd been a separate person. When he held up a piece of Dalek armor, his face went pale and he whispered, "Exterminate!"
As his mind finally began to settle from the trauma of his transformation, the Doctor regained clarity and confidence. But it was clear he not only looked different but also behaved differntly now. His wit and playful nature was increased while his moodiness and patronizing nature had been lowered.
Although Polly believed this man was the same one as before, Ben needed more convincing. For starters, if this was the Doctor, why did his clothes and his trademark blue ring no longer fit him?
SECOND DOCTOR: "I'd like to see a butterfly fit into its chrysalis case after its spread its wings!"
POLLY: "Then you DID change!"
SECOND DOCTOR: "Life depends on change and renewal ... I've been renewed. It's part of the TARDIS. Without it, I couldn't survive."
POLLY (to Ben): "It's a very DIFFERENT Doctor, then."
It's possible that the Doctor's remark about the TARDIS helping him regenerate was referring to the fact that his body had been so damaged by the energy drain in "The Tenth Planet" that he'd needed the ship's power to jumpstart the process for him. This seems likelier when you consider that the Doctor needed help from equipment aboard the TARDIS when he suffered a very difficult regeneration from his fourth to fifth incarnation (in the story "Castrovalva").
The Second Doctor's first adventure "The Power of the Daleks" has been lost to us, but the audio reels survived. I suggest you get one of the reconstructions or go on Amazon and get the CD adaptation. It's a great adventure and quite interesting to experience the first regeneration, as the Second Doctor tries to adjust to his new persona and remember his previous life.
THE SECOND DOCTOR: COSMIC HOBO!
When Patrick Troughton was hired to portray the new Doctor, it was decided he had to act markedly different from Hartnell in order to prevent any criticism of the actor merely copying the original's performance. Troughton, known for some very serious roles, proposed that perhaps he could portray the Doctor as a pirate-like figure in a turban, commanding the TARDIS crew like a "tough sea captain." Doctor Who creator Sidney Newman spoke with Troughton about other ideas and suggested Charley Chaplain as a possible influence. Troughton then decided to portray the mysterious alien in the vein of what he called a "cosmic hobo" or a "space pixie."
And so we got the Second Doctor, a puckish man who wore a loose bow tie, wrinkled clothes and a jacket that 
didn’t quite fit (he also wore a stove-top hat a couple of times). He had a messy Beatles-like haircut and was constantly grinning, excited by everything there was to discover and explore. He was subject to silly whims, such as when he would insist on wearing a fur coat or playing a recorder to help him think (or sometimes just to annoy his enemies). He was a mercurial fellow, often times pretending to be a cowardly nitwit in order to fool his enemies into a false sense of security. The Second Doctor was also never too proud to let his friends know about his fears and concerns when placing them in danger, yet despite this occasional fear he never backed down from fighting evil and saving lives. He was also quite haughty and defensive at times, raising his voice in anger when people dared to imply that he was not a perfect TARDIS pilot or that he may have made an error in judgment. Thus, he was markedly different yet enough like Hartnell that fans didn't feel cheated.
The First Doctor was the gruff grandfather, whereas this second incarnation was like your loveable uncle. It was a different Doctor, yes, but it was still the Doctor. Thanks to Troughton's wonderful performance and presence, TV audiences bought into the idea of what would later be called "regeneration", paving the way for other Doctors to come in the future.
In time, the TV show illustrated some other points about the Doctor's biology, such as the fact that he had two hearts. IIf you want to learn more about his biology and the mechanics of regeneration that were later revealed, check out my essay on the Traits of a Time Lord.
But back to the show. Our Second Doctor continued adventuring with Ben and Polly and he seemed possessed by a renewed vigor. He looked like a boy opening a christmas present as he worked the controls, not daring to imagine what wonderful place the TARDIS would take him to next.
During "The Highlanders", the TARDIS crew found themselves in the highlands of Scotland in the year 1746.
During this story, they were joined by a young highlander named James McCrimmon. Jamie was a piper for the Clan McLaren and was amazed by the wonders of the Doctor's ship and the strange sights he saw on their travels. He wasn't always the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was a fiercely loyal companion and a warrior at heart, always willing to rush into battle with his sword if there was evil to be fought. Portraying Jamie was Frazer Hines and he has the distinction of having appeared in more Doctor Who episodes than any other actor (barring those who portrayed the Doctor himself). This is partially because the show had higher episode counts each year back then.
In the 2006 TV adventure "Tooth and Claw", the Tenth Doctor would arrive in Scotland over a hundred years after he'd picked up Jamie and use the name "Dr. James McCrimmon" as his alias.
Eventually, the TARDIS wound up back in London on the same day Ben and Polly had left. They decided this was their best chance to re-enter their lives without disruption and left the Doctor.
But Jamie and the Doctor weren't alone for too long. During a battle with the Daleks, they met a young girl named Victoria from England’s Victorian era. After Victoria’s father sacrificed himself to save his daughter and the others from the Daleks, she joined the TARDIS crew and the Second Doctor became a surrogate father to her.
In her first adventure, Victoria asked how old the Doctor was and for the first time audiences got an answer. "Well, if we count in EARTH terms, I suppose I must be 400 … yes, about 450 years old." At first, the Second Doctor was pleased with his accurate calculation, but when he saw the look of shock on his companions, he became embarrassed and changed the subject, as if afraid he had now alienated his friends on some level. The Second Doctor proved sensitive about his age when it was brought up later, as did some of his later incarnations.
During a quiet moment, Victoria found herself thinking of how much she missed her father. The Doctor tried to comfort her.
THE DOCTOR: "... the memory of him won't always be a sad one."
VICTORIA: "I think it will. You can't understand being so ancient .... You probably can’t remember your family."
THE DOCTOR: "Oh, yes, I can. When I want to. And that's the point, really. I have to really want to – to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they sleep in my mind and I forget. And so will you. Oh, yes, you will. You'll find there’s so much else to think about, to remember. Our lives are different to anybody else's. That's the exciting thing! Nobody in the universe can do what we’re doing!"
Other than Susan, this was really the only mention we had of the Doctor’s family for quite a number of years.
In that same adventure, the Doctor, Victoria and Jamie fought a group of Cybermen who had been stationed on the planet Telos. We met the Cybermats, creepy metal worms that acted as scouts for the Cybermen.
During the Second Doctor’s tenure, fans met the Ice Warriors of Mars, a race of lizard-like creatures who were fierce conquerors and spoke in creepy rasping voices. Although they would only fight the Doctor in his second and third incarnation of the show, the Ice Warriors struck a chord with fans and years later would still be remembered. They were also used in a few novels and audio productions.
In "The Web of Fear", the Doctor fought the Great Intelligence, a creature he'd faced before in his first life. The
Great Intelligence was one of the "Old Ones" who would later be revealed to have inspired Lovecraft's creations of the same name. "The Web of Fear" also featured the first meeting between the Doctor and Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. At this point in his life, Alastair was a colonel in the British Army and was quite shocked when he met the strange alien wandered who helped him fight off several yeti who attempted to attack London. This would not be the last time we would see Lethbridge-Stewart.
Victoria only stayed for a few adventures, before deciding to settle with a family the TARDIS crew met on a trip to 20th century England. On their next adventure "The Wheel In Space", Jamie and the Doctor met young Zoe, a scientist aboard a satellite science station. Zoe was interesting in that she was smart enough and confident enough to actually clash scientific swords with the Doctor on more than one occasion over matters of science and analysis. While many companions simply accepted that the TARDIS used technology they didn’t comprehend, Zoe demanded explanations for the science behind it all. Like Susan and Barbara before her, Zoe was quite progressive for a 1960's family program.
ZOE: "You can't dispute the facts. It's pure logic."
SECOND DOCTOR: "Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority."
Zoe stayed with the Doctor and Jamie for several more adventures. One of the more memorable tales she was a part of was "The Mind Robber." In the first chapter of this story, the TARDIS suffered a malfuction in its liquid link relay (a malfunction he once caused himself during the first Dalek adventure), forcing an emergency landing that seemingly took them out of reality and into a white void, a nowhere place.
Zoe and Jamie soon found themselves pursued by robots and the heroes were ready to leave when the TARDIS
seemingly exploded, the blast sending them into a strange landscape. Jamie, Zoe and the Doctor each found themselves encountering creatures from fiction, such as the minotaur of Greek myth, a creepy-looking unicorn, Lumiel Gulliver, Rapunzel and others. They also found themselves in bizarre situations, such as when Zoe was trapped in a giant glass jar and when Jamie was seemingly shot and then transformed into a cardboard cut-out of himself. This seemed to be a world without rules or boundaries, which made it all the more alarming to the Doctor as he tried to find the answer of where he was and how to get out.
Eventually, the TARDIS crew found that this "Land of Fiction" was being 
manipulated by a human writer who had been pulled into it and forced to connect with a computer called the Master Brain, which controlled the fictional reality. The Master of the Land of Fiction said he couldn't free himself as the source of the realm's inabitants and ideas unless someone replaced him, thus he'd brought the Doctor here for that purpose. Not willing to spend the next several years (or possibly centuries) plugged into a computer, the Doctor fought the human writer and soon made sure the Master Brain was destroyed. The TARDIS reappeared (its destruction had been an illusion) and the heroes escaped.
Some funny notes about this particular adventure. First, to make the unicorn, the
production team asked for a white horse. But they recieved a brown horse instead. Some quick thinking led them to try and paint the horse white, but it didn't quite work out. Interestingly, it actually helped make the unicorn appear more surreal and threatening, so things worked out really.
Another odd thing about this adventure was that the first chapter was tacked on at the last minute. The previous adventure "The Dominators" wound up being an episode shorter than originally intended and so an opening chapter that was pretty sparse was quickly filmed in order to fill out the season's number of episodes. Likewise, this led to all of the chapters being noticeably shorter than the average Doctor Who episode, with the final chapter being the shortest Doctor Who episode to ever show up in the actual TV series (18 minutes).
Although the Land of Fiction was never seen again in the TV series, it was never forgotten by fans and showed up again in the Seventh Doctor novels Head Games and Conundrum. In those stories, it was said that the Land of Fiction had been created by the Gods of Ragnarok, a race of powerful beings who enjoyed kidnapping people for their own amusement and whom the Seventh Doctor would fight in the TV adventure "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy." In a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, the renegade Time Lord known as the Master entered the Land of Fiction once and canibalized the technology of its control computer (though only after he'd murdered various fiction villains, such as Professor James Moriarty, whom fans often compared him to).
SECOND AND FIRSTS
He may have been the Second Doctor, but Patrick Troughton's career marked the first appearance of several things that would become forever associated with the Doctor Who series.
"The Wheel in Space" marked the Doctor's first use of his now default alias "Dr. John Smith." This is a suitable alias as this name is common in English speaking cultures, but it's also an interesting coincidence that Susan's favorite band (as stated in "An Unearthly Child") was "John Smith and the Con Men."
In "The Invasion", the Doctor discovered that after enough reports of aliens and creatures that couldn't be 
explained, the United Nations had officially created a special organization to deal with such threats. Thus was created U.N.I.T. (United Nations Intelligence Task Force). To the world at large, U.N.I.T. was believed to be an international security force that specialized in information gathering and counter-espionage. Few knew that they were meant to handle threats that couldn't be officially commented on. When the Doctor met this group, he found that his old acquaintance Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart had been promoted to the rank of Brigadier and had been put in charge of the England branch of U.N.I.T. In fact, it seemed that Lethbridge-Stewart was partially responsible for the organization being formed in the first place, recommending that the world needed such a group after his last experience alongside the Doctor.
Sadly, several video reels of "The Invasion" are now lost to us. But the BBC had them recreated for DVD through the use of animation. The animation isn't bad and captures the look of the characters fairly well, so if you want to check out this story, don't be put off by the fact that parts of it are a cartoon. Besides, the audio reels were kept safe so you still get Patrick Troughton's voice acting.
Another staple of the show that began with the Second Doctor was the introduction of the sonic screwdriver. Originally, this device was exactly that, a screwdriver that utilized sonic waves to accomplish its tasks. The Third Doctor would use it for a few other tasks though, and the Fourth Doctor evidently did some modifications as it began to have various uses such as opening locks and bypassing circuits. It was destroyed during the Fifth Doctor’s tenure but then reintroduced in the Fox TV-movie and since then various stories have depicted the Seventh Doctors as having used a recreation of the sonic screwdriver.
The novel Happy Endings said that this new screwdriver was given to the Doctor by the Time Lady Romana. This novel doesn't seem to mesh with the continuity of the new TV series (and certainly not with the audio plays), but sevearl Big Finish audio plays concerning the Fifth and Sixth Doctor have had our hero remark several times that he intended "one day" to rebuild the tool himself, so it's no great leap in imagination to assume that the Seventh Doctor (who loved working on gadgets much like the Third) would've gone and built himself a new one even if Romana never gave him one.
Although the Seventh Doctor stories and the Fox TV-movie (which introduced the Eighth) depicted it as still primarily a screwdriver and high-tech lock pick, the new TV series that began with the Ninth Doctor has shown a newly designed "sonic screwdrive" that is actually a multi-purpose device. This apparently happened during the Eighth Doctor's tenure and it has been mentioned in his audio plays that he wound up tinkering with it a bit to improve its usefulness.
CAUGHT AT LAST! THE DOCTOR ON TRIAL!
At the end of the Second Doctor’s tenure, the BBC aired one of the biggest Doctor Who stories: "The War
Games." It was a ten-part adventure that would change quite a few things and would be talked about for years.
In the adventure, the Doctor found that a group of people, led by a man called the War Lord, had transported soldiers from several different periods of Earth's history to all fight each other. The ones who survived would prove themselves to be the best warriors and would join an army that would set out to conquer the universe. The Doctor was greatly alarmed when he met one of the War Lord's colleagues, a man called the War Chief who was a member of his own race. And audiences finally learned the name of the Doctor's people: the Time Lords.
With so much time travel being used for evil and the odds against him, the Doctor began to suspect the only way to set everything right was to call the Time Lords. He finally did this reluctantly after all other options were exhausted, explaining to Jamie and Zoe that he’d be in a lot of trouble if the Time Lords knew where he was. After the Time Lords stepped in and began correcting things, the Doctor did his best to escape but found his TARDIS forcibly stopped in mid-flight. After six years of seeing him portrayed as a renegade and an exile, the audience was shocked to realize the Doctor had finally been caught by his people. His TARDIS was stopped in mid-flight, leaving him unable to escape.
It was here that we finally got more details concerning the Doctor’s status as an "exile" (or perhaps the better term would have been “fugitive”). The Doctor explained himself a little more as his companions pressed him for answers.
JAMIE: "Why did you run away from them in the first place?"
DOCTOR: "Oh, I was bored! The Time Lords are an immensely civilized race. We can control our own environment. We can live forever, barring accidents, and we have the secret of space-time travel. Well, we hardly ever USE our great powers. We get sent simply to OBSERVE and gather knowledge."
ZOE: "And that wasn’t enough for you."
DOCTOR: "Of course not, with a whole GALAXY to explore? Millions of planets? Eons of time? Countless civilizations to meet?"
JAMIE: "Well, why do they object to you doing all that?"
DOCTOR: "Well, it …it is a fact, Jamie, that I … I do tend to get INVOLVED with things."
ZOE: "But you’ve helped people, Doctor."
DOCTOR: "Yes, but that’s no excuse in their eyes."
A voice filled the TARDIS then, saying, "There is no escape, Doctor. Return the TARDIS immediately to our home planet. You have broken our laws. You must face your trial."
The Doctor's TARDIS was forced to return to the heroe's home planet. The Time Lords emerged and the Doctor 
knew it was time to say good-bye to his two friends. There was no more running, no chance of escape. As he bid farewell to Zoe and Jamie, the Time Lords took the two humans away, returning them to their native time zones, mere moments after the Doctor had recruited them. The Doctor knew that their memories would be altered, as was the habit of the Time Lords. Returned to their home eras, Jamie and Zoe both only remembered the first adventure they'd each had with the Doctor and had no recollection of actually joining the TARDIS crew or traveling in it afterwards.
The Doctor spoke before a tribunal of Time Lords. They seemed to be considering his execution due to his years of interfering with many people in many time periods and planets. The Doctor argued that he had done a much good to preserve the safety of the universe, fighting evils such as the Cybermen and the Daleks who also possessed time travel. If he had interfered, it was only for the better and he'd done more good than harm.
After consideration, the Time Lord tribunal concluded that while the Doctor was a renegade, that did not make him a villain. They admitted reluctantly that there were certain evils in the universe that had to be fought and that he had done this well and could continue to do so effectively in the future. They also noted his particular interest in the planet Earth. As explanation, the Doctor simply said, "Earth tends to be more vulnerable than other planets."
For this reason, and perhaps because they were aware the Earth would soon be the target of many more
invasions now that they were sending up satellites and drawing attention to themselves, the Time Lord tribunal decided not to execute the Doctor but rather to exile him to Earth where he could act as its protector (a strange form of community service, if you will). The Doctor's TARDIS would have its time and dematerialization circuits removed and that the renegade Time Lord himself would have his memory of how to repair them erased from his mind. The tribunal told him that he would remain on Earth until they saw fit to release him and restore his knowledge of time travel mechanics.
The Doctor pleaded that a man like him couldn't be confined to one place and one linear time period. Furthermore, he was known on Earth by certain authority figures and enemies and things could be awkward for him if he was left defenseless and without a means to escape. The Time Lords ignored this and simply informed him that he wouldn't be recognized on sight because he would be forced to regenerate as part of his sentence. In a Fifth Doctor audio play called Circular Time, written years later, the Doctor stated that it was the policy of the High Council of Time Lords to always force a person to use up one of their regenerations before beginning a period of exile.
The Time Lords took a little bit of mercy on the Doctor and offered him several options on what body he could have next. The Doctor dismissed each one for various reasons and when the Time Lords decided he was stalling the ended the discussion. The Doctor found himself surrounded by darkness and was overcome by a dizzying sensation. He cried out, demanding to know what was going on ... and the screen faded to black.
What happened next wouldn't be discovered until the following year, when the seventh season of Doctor Who began. In the seventh season premier episode, the TARDIS landed in England and the Third Doctor collapsed outside of its doors, having just regenerated into his new body. The Second Doctor was gone.
And yet, the story of this incarnation of the Doctor doesn't exactly end there ...
THE CIA YEARS
Patrick Troughton had decided to leave the show. He felt that staying as the Doctor for more than three years would be inviting the danger of type-casting. He would pass on this advice to a few other actors who would take on the mantle of the Doctor. On the flipside, he had actually convinced Frazer Hines (Jamie) to stay on the show longer than the young actor's agent had wanted him to. Hines' agent thought that the young actor needed to get himself out what was considered a children's program still so that he could get involved in more serious work. Patrick Troughton, knowing he would leave at the end of the next season, convinced Hines to stay so that they could leave the TARDIS in the same episode. He had so much fun with the young man he didn't want it to end too soon.
But Patrick Troughton's departure wasn't forever. A couple of years later, the Second Doctor showed up again when a manipulation of the timestream allowed him
to team up with his future third incarnation in the story "The Three Doctors." Yet when he spoke to the Third Doctor, he didn't seem alarmed at all that he had been fetched by the Time Lords and was forced to perform a mission for them with his future self. How was this possible if the Second Doctor had been avoiding the Time Lords all the way up to his final moments when he was captured and then forced to regenerate?
Years later, a TV special called "The Five Doctors" once again had the Second Doctor team-up with future incarnations. By this time, Patrick Troughton looked noticeably older, but fans were willing to ignore this. What was harder to ignore was when the Second Doctor made it clear that he was traveling on his own and that some time had passed since Jamie and Zoe had left his company and had their memories altered. Again, how was this possible? The Second Doctor never traveled alone and he'd been forced regenerate the same day that Zoe and Jamie had been taken from him.
The final straw came in the TV adventure "The Two Doctors" a couple of years later, where the Second Doctor teamed up with the Sixth Doctor. By now, Patrick Troughton had gray hair and for whatever reason he didn't dye it. What's more, he was traveling with Jamie, who was now noticeably older since many years had passed since actor Frazer Hines had last been a Doctor Who companion. What's more, the Second Doctor remarked that the Time Lords had control over his TARDIS and that he and Jamie were forced to perform a mission for them. Again, how was this possible when Jamie had never even heard about the Time Lords until his final adventure with the Doctor, minutes before he'd been returned to his home and had his memory altered.
Years later, fan writer Paul Cornell (who would later write several Doctor Who novels and a few TV episodes) offered an answer in his book The Discontinuity Guide. Cornell reminded readers that at the end of the Doctor's trial, we only saw the screen fade to black. We never actually saw him regenerate and when the next season began he was already wearing his third body. What's more, in his first adventure, the Third Doctor was in possession of equipment the Second and First Doctor had never possessed, such as a homing device that let him know where the TARDIS was. Paul Cornell suggested that there was a large gap of time between when the fade-out happened at the end of Season 6 and when the TARDIS landed on Earth in the Season 7 premier. For all fans knew, there could have years worth of adventures that had happened between those two episodes, adventures that involved him meeting his future selves and working for the Time Lords who gave him new toys to play with, which he dubbed "Season 6B."
Why would the Time Lords allow the Doctor to have more adventures when they said they were going to exile him? Well, in a few Third Doctor adventures and a couple of Fourth Doctor adventures, we saw that the Time Lords were able to occasionally force the Doctor to perform missions for them where they didn't want to get their hands dirty. Also, it was later revealed that there was a black ops division of the Time Lords known as the Celestial Intervention Agency, charged with taking extreme measures to maintain the safety of the "web of time" and to make sure no one ever threatened the power of the Time Lords.
Paul Cornell posited that during this "Season 6B", the Second Doctor was forced to perform a number of missions for the CIA for a period of years before they finally decided he'd done enough and could begin his community service exile on Earth in a new body. This would explain his remarks, knowledge and noticeable aging when he showed up in the later team-up stories.
Fans latched onto this idea and it became generally accepted. Later, Terrance Dicks, former script editor and writer for the original TV series, took this idea and published a novel around it called World Game. The book revealed to us that what we saw in the last few minutes of the Second Doctor's final TV episode was the "official record" of the Doctor's trial, as later edited by the Time Lords. The truth of the trial was a bit different. When the trial had concluded, the CIA had become aware of a disortion in Earth's history caused by beings known as the Players, time travelers whose power possibly rivaled that of the Time Lords. The Players needed to be stopped and the CIA decided that the Doctor was the most expendable and best suited for such a mission, especially since using a man known for butting into the affairs of others would mask the presence of the Time Lords directly interfering themselves.
The Doctor was given a new TARDIS and a Time Lord companion he did not want, the arrogant and naive Lady Serena. After ensuring that the Players did not change the course of the Battle of Waterloo, the Doctor did not immediately return home to report his mission a success. The very last chapter of the book states that, instead, the Second Doctor (now alone once again) took his new TARDIS and traveled on his own for a while before
eventually returning to the Time Lords to report on his mission. He justified this by saying that the majority of his time had been spent making sure that all the changes the Players had made to history were now corrected. By the time he did return, his hair was graying and it was attributed to the stress of his mission against the Players (and perhaps events that happened afterwards). So, we can assume that it was during this time that the Second Doctor wound up enjoying the adventure of "The Three Doctors" and then, soon afterwards, "The Five Doctors." That would explain his casual reaction to the presence of the Time Lords and how he knew that Jamie and Victoria were returned to their native eras with their memories altered.
Fun little side note. In World Game, the Second Doctor was given a some goodies by the CIA, including "psychic paper." Psychic paper had actually already appearead in the new TV series by this point so Terrance Dicks was retroactively revealing that it was a CIA invention.
Some of you are asking "Why did he return to his home planet at all then?" Well, as explained in the book, the Time Lords had installed this new TARDIS with devices to make sure that the Doctor wouldn't be able to stay gone for too long and our hero was smart enough to realize this. What's more, he considered it dishonorable to not return when he'd said he would.
Once the Doctor did return to the Time Lords, the CIA had a new mission to send him on. But the Doctor 
insisted on having an old friend join him this time. Jamie, specifically, since he was good in physical combat. The Time Lords went along with this, bringing forth an older versoin of Jamie McCrimmon and adjusting the highlander's memory so he'd believe that he'd never left the Doctor and that they were still travelling with Victoria, who'd been temporarily left elsewhere. The end of this book led directly into the Second Doctor's appearance in "The Two Doctors" and thus we finally got an explanation concerning a gray-haired Second Doctor and an older Jamie who are working for the Time Lords in that story.
We can assume that after the adventure of "The Two Doctors", the Second Doctor did several missions for the Celestial Intervention Agency, perhaps accompanied with the older Jamie for a few of them. Eventually though, the Second Doctor was alone once more. And after what may have been years of conducting missions for the CIA, he was finally exiled to Earth, forced to regenerate. Perhaps the Time Lords decided he'd done enough for the time being and didn't want him just hanging around the capitol city causing trouble until another mission came along. Or perhaps the Second Doctor tried to escape again and the Time Lords decided that he would
began his exile immediately as punishment for constantly being too difficult to control.
Either way, his run was over now. He was sent to the late 1960's on Earth, landing in the English countryside as his body changed into a taller, more athletic man with gray-white hair. The Second Doctor was gone, along with his playful recorder-playing and his frenetic energy. The Third Doctor had arrived, alone and trapped in his exile.
And now some defining Second Doctor quotes:
SECOND DOCTOR: "Oh, my giddy aunt!"
SECOND DOCTOR: "BAD laws were meant to be broken."
SECOND DOCTOR: "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things that act against everything we believe in. They must be fought."
SECOND DOCTOR: "I am not a student of human nature. I am a professor of a far wider academy of which human nature is merely a part."
SECOND DOCTOR (after destroying cybermats): "The power cable generated an electrical field and confused their tiny metal minds. You might also say they had a complete METAL BREAKDOWN."
JAMIE (groaning): "Oooh!"
SECOND DOCTOR: "Sorry."
JAMIE (when facing a monster): "Have you thought up some clever plan, Doctor?"
SECOND DOCTOR: "Yes, Jamie, I have."
JAMIE: "What are you going to do?"
SECOND DOCTOR: "Bung a rock at it."
SECOND DOCTOR: "You're leader will be very angry if you kill me! I'm a GENIUS!"
BRIGADIER LETHBRIDGE-STEWART: "So, what's this stuff then?"
SECOND DOCTOR: "Anti-matter."
BRIGADIER: "But I thought you said that matter and anti-matter couldn't exist without an explosion."
SECOND DOCTOR: "Yes, that's right."
BRIGADIER: "So ... it shouldn't exist, but it does."
SECOND DOCTOR: "Yes ... Awkward, isn't it?"
SARDON (a Time Lord of the CIA): "Doctor, you are scarcely in a position to make terms-"
SECOND DOCTOR: "Oh, but I think I am ... You need me as much as I need you. Possibly more ..."
SARDON: "You're very confident."
SECOND DOCTOR: "I'm a genius."
NAPOLEON: "Who are you?"
SECOND DOCTOR: "I'm a wandering scholar, sire, and I have travelled extensively. Over the years, I have acquired much knowledge of men and fate. I am usually known as the Doctor."
You can check out the Second Doctor Chronology
OR
You can go read an in-depth History of the Third Doctor.
Reader Comments (3)
However, this era did explore some interesting companions. Jamie is, quite rightly, beloved by many as the best companion of all and his bumbling, good-nature and incomprehension stay just far enough away from pure farce to be truly enjoyable.
Victoria, the orphaned Victorian, was never really used to her full potential, though she could have been one of the greatest companions.
Zoe, the girl from the future, was a stronger character, and well used, especially with her pioneering use of the catsuit in "Mind Robbers", three decades before Seven of Nine! :-)
Unfortunately, it is here that the commercialisation of Dr Who began. The experimental story telling was replaced by generic "monster of the week" and "base under siege" stories. Some of these were wonderfully atmospheric ("Tomb of the Cybermen") whilst others were just pure tedium ("Seeds of Doom"). Think how bad these stories would be without Jamie's light humour...
Only the surrealism of "Mind Robbers" harks back to the earlier era.
The rot really sets in with the UNIT stories and it is all downhill from here for future doctors with tedious aliens-of-the-week and high camp replacing good drama for the most part. :-(
I found the scripts in the JNT era really poor for the most part, though there are good aspects to each Doctor (for instance, the boyishness and vulnerability of Peter Davison's interpretation.) Sophie Aldred (Ace) was also a terrific companion. At first a little cartoonish, episodes like Ghostlight and Survival added a lot of depth to her character and made the series end on an unexpectedly strong note.
I haven't enjoyed the modern revival, unfortunately. The camp factor is far too high, and some episodes (mostly those scripted by RTD himself) have been simply awful. There were some high points, though: Billie Piper was unexpectedly good as Rose and "Girl in the Fireplace" was one of the best Who episodes ever. Unfortunately, along came "Love and Monsters" which was so inane it was just insulting to the intelligence audience, and I stopped watching altogether.
Anyway, as you say, this is just largely my opinion but try watching a classical Hartnell like "The Aztecs" back-to-back with a typical Tennant episode and you will see how far the show has drifted from its initial premise and the earnest quality of those original 1960s episodes.
Thanks for your detailed responses to all my other comments - I have really enjoyed browsing through your site. I will keep an eye on future updates as you add them!