*End-of-serial spoilers.*
This is unfortunately a lost classic Who story—all four episodes are missing. On the bright side, there’s of course the audio track, and it’s one of the first lost serials to be fully telesnapped. There are decent reconstruction videos out there that sync the photos to the existing audio.
“The Savages” finds the First Doctor, Steven, and Dodo arriving on a world that seems at odds with itself. They come onto a wild scrubland inhabited by primitive people dressed in animal skins, and Steven at first thinks they’ve landed in the distant past. However, a decidedly more tech-savvy security patrol picks up our heroes and finds them to a glittering modern city populated entirely by learned, creative, physically fit individuals; no “savages” here. It’s a utopia of scientific, technological, and artistic advancement that seems too good to be true. (Guess what? It’s too good to be true.) The Doctor and his companions peel back the glossy veneer to find the dark truth behind the city’s achievements.
I think this story is just a terrific sci-fi concept. I love the setting, the tech, and the grim implications of what the city is doing. I enjoy the city vs. savages angle, and I like the way the TARDIS crew’s assumptions about both groups are gradually stripped away as the truth is revealed. There’s some nice action, inventive twists, and interesting thematic ideas. Solid storytelling all around, and even watching a photo reconstruction video, it moves along at a good pace without much drag.
Dodo isn’t one of my favorites (I think it’s her unimpressive first showing in “The Ark” that does it,) but going through some of her adventures a second time, she’s really not bad. Here, her general curiosity and disregard for “keep out” signs provide the first steps toward realizing that not everything in the city is on the up-and-up. Although the Doctor is put out of commission for part of the serial, he comes off pretty good as well. His general thirst for knowledge (and rather stubborn adherence to the pursuit of it) is on display early in the story, and he’s initially quite taken with the city’s intellectual bent, but once he realizes what they’re up to, he makes it clear that his conscience comes first, no matter how fruitful the results or how lofty the discoveries. It’s just one way to show how far the Doctor has come since series 1, when his top priority was often satisfying his own inquiring mind and he had no great love for getting involved in the conflicts of seemingly “lesser” beings. I think it speaks to the effect his companions have had on him, that he’s become so much more a champion of the oppressed and puts justice above his personal interests. (Side note—there’s not exactly a body-swap situation in this story, but there is a plot point that involves another actor behaving Doctor-like, and while he’s recognizable as One, it proves that no one did it quite like Hartnell. Good ol’ Bill.)
Steven gets arguably the most to do, which, considering that this is his last story, is a good thing. A lot of it is kind of generically action-oriented, but amid the fighting, he shows off his smarts, coming up with a clever way to avoid the tractor-beam-esque “light guns” used by the city guards, and he additionally does a lot to rally the savages and convince them to stand up to the city. I wouldn’t say his exit is the most memorable, but I always enjoy the staying-behind-to-help-with-the-fallout motivation for companion departure, and his farewells to the Doctor and Dodo are nice.
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