The first storyline in Doctor Who's tenth season was The Three Doctors, written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin and directed by Lennie Mayne and originally broadcast from December 1972 through to January 1973. The four part storyline was a 'tenth anniversary' special of sorts and as such, it teams up three of the men most closely associated with the series up to this point in its history.

When the first episode begins, an energy blob hurtles towards Earth where it manifests in a bizarre attempt to capture the Doctor (John Pertwee) while, at the same time, Gallifrey, the home world of The Time Lords, is victim to an energy drain from a mysterious black hole that has appeared nearby. With no other choice, The Time Lords decide that their only option is to break the highly respected First Law Of Time, that being the law that prohibits a Doctor to pull a previous version of himself through the timescape to help himself should the need arise.

The Doctor tries to summon the earliest version of himself, the First Doctor (William Hartnell), but something goes wrong along the way and he winds up trapped in a 'time eddy' and isn't able to physically materialize but the summoning of the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) is successful and so he helps the current doctor try to figure out exactly what is going on and what the correlation is between the energy blob and the black hole. Complicating matters further is an alien race bent on taking out UNIT's headquarters. Soon enough, all signs point to a Time Lord named Omega (Stephen Thorne) gone rogue and turned angry, but thankfully the current Doctor has his pal Jo Grant (Katy Manning) and the Second Doctor along for the ride to help him out, and the mysteriously trapped First Doctor able to offer sage advice from his bizarre time prison.

Not only would this serial turn out to be the last time William Hartnell played The Doctor, but it would prove to be the last acting role of his career. As he was in poor heath when this was being made, the decision was made to relegate his role to more of a supporting cameo than a leading part, which explains why his character gets 'trapped' in the time eddy. Hartnell's cameo was recorded in a BBC studio away from the other doctors, they never actually act together in the serial and he would pass away shortly after in 1975. A shame, really, as Hartnell brings a certain intensity and darkness to the character that Pertwee and Troughton do not and what we wind up with is a slightly silly, even by the standards of the series, four part adventure.

As silly as all of this is, however, it's hard not to have some fun with it. Pertwee and Troughton are quite likeable, playing off of one another quite well and seeming to be having a good amount of fun with the material on their own terms. Pertwee plays things a noticeably straighter than his time travelling companion, who is more or less onboard to provide the requisite comic relief that the storyline calls for, but they make it work where in the hands of less game performers it might not have. Katy Manning also gets some solid bits of dialogue here and plays a decent sized role in the action. Where in the past she wasn't given as much to do, here she comes into her own and the character is all the more interesting for it, particularly as she gets to play moderator to our two constantly bickering heros. Anthony Thorne steals each of his scenes, bringing a heavy weight to his sinister character and impressing more than you might expect.

Sets and costumes and creature effects are of fairly hokey quality here, and are definitely not the best that the series has had to offer over the years or throughout the seventies for that matter, but that's half the charm of a show like Doctor Who in the first place. You either love it, or you learn to live with it and appreciate the show's other qualities. Things are wrapped up a little more neatly than they probably should have and once or two Doctors figure out the cause of the mess, it seems far too easy for them to solve the problem at set things right. As such, there isn't all that much suspense here and the story is fairly predictable (it seems to have been written for little purpose than to team up the three Doctors in one storyline) - but the performances save The Three Doctors and definitely make it worth a watch for Who fans.

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Doctor Who: The Three Doctors arrives on DVD in its original fullframe aspect ratio taken from the best existing master tape elements. The image is muddier than a lot of the other releases in the line from the BBC and it's obvious that the elements that they had to work with were not in particularly amazing condition. The picture is consistently soft and detail is sketchy. Trailing is a problem and contrast is sometimes blown out. Again, for what it is, it's watchable enough andf those accustomed to earlier DVD releases from this era of the show will know what to expect and have no problems - but those expecting pristine quality will be disappointed. Sadly, we're not likely to see it looking better any time soon unless better elements somehow magically show up.