Doctor Who: The Highlanders (TV Soundtrack)
BBC
Dec 2004 · BBC Digital Audio · Narrated by Frazer Hines, Full Cast, and Patrick Troughton
4.8star
4 reviewsreport
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1 hr 35 min
Unabridged
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Scotland, 1745. The Doctor, Ben and Polly arrive in Scotland after the Battle of Culloden and meet a band of Highlanders who are fleeing in defeat. Their Laird is injured and the three offer to help tend his injuries. Polly and Kirsty McLaren, the Laird's daughter (played in a guest appearance by Hannah Gordon) go to fetch some water but while they are gone the others are captured by Redcoat troops. Things become worse when the group is taken again - this time by the crooked Solicitor Grey, who is part of the West Indian slave trade. The prisoners, Ben amongst them, are bundled on board the Annabelle where the wicked Captain Trask issues dire threats of drowning. Meanwhile the Doctor is on dry land confusing all and sundry in a variety of disguises. However, his bumbling manner hides a sharp brain and eventually he, Polly and Ben are reunited in the TARDIS together with the young piper Jamie McCrimmon, who went on to become one of the most popular companions of the series.
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4.8
4 reviews
About the author
THE PROGRAMME: The two most notable features of The Highlanders are its introduction of Frazer Hines as Jamie and its status as one of the last fully historical stories of the series' original run. Writer Gerry Davis and producer Innes Lloyd were initially unsure how Jamie would work as an ongoing character. There was an option in Frazer Hines' contract on three more four-part shows, should Jamie prove popular with audiences, but nothing was confirmed. As it was, Hines' performance during the filming of The Highlanders convinced the producer and the writer that they had a potential regular on their hands, and an extra scene was filmed at the end of recording showing Jamie going into the TARDIS. Series producer Innes Lloyd was never that keen on historicals as a story type and was convinced by the Audience Research Report on The Gunfighters that they were unpopular with viewers as well. In addition, the romanticised element favoured by Davis took them away from the factual and educational element that was part of the show's original remit. Historical inaccuracy in The Highlanders was quickly spotted by a London viewer at the time who wrote in a letter to the Radio Times: 'In the recent adventure of Doctor Who the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 was once again represented as an Anglo-Saxon conflict. The 45 was in fact an attempt to restore the Stuart dynasty to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and although the supporters of Prince Charles Edward were from Scotland that country as a whole did not favour the Jacobite cause. At Culloden something like a quarter of the Duke of Cumberland's army consisted of Scottish regiments.' Historical inaccuracies aside, there is a strong comic element in the story that showed a new side to the Doctor. Though he plays little part in the main action of The Highlanders - it is Polly and Ben who are most active - his bewildering array of accents and costumes as he disguises himself from everyone he meets make him almost clownish. As Tim Robins wrote in Doctor Who - An Adventure in Space and Time in 1983, 'Troughton masterfully balances his role as a broody, bustling, bumbling, often absent-minded old "granny" with that of a knife-sharp, energetic, brilliant schemer.' In many ways The Highlanders is atypical of its series. However, the introduction of Jamie ensures it landmark status - deservedly so.
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