Other Doctor Lives: The Crown: Season 2, Episode 2 – “A Company of Men” (2017)

Wait – two episodes of The Crown in a row where Philip doesn’t spend the whole time aggravating me? What’s going on here? Is there actual hope? Time will tell how this bears out, but at the moment, I’m crossing my fingers that this is forward progress and not just a momentary lapse from toolishness.

We’re still at a point earlier in time than the opening scene of the season premiere, in part covering the same time frame as much of the last episode. While, last week, we looked mostly at what’s happening with Elizabeth while Philip is away, today we catch up with Philip and what he’s up to. Dispatched to Australia for the Olympics, Philip fulfills his necessary diplomatic duties but is much more interested in the time he spends getting to and from Australia, surrounded by sailors on a naval yacht and stopping off at a number of the remotest parts of the commonwealth.

Elizabeth isn’t absent from this episode, although we definitely see a lot less of her. There’s a nice thread here of her marriage with Philip and how their separation of several months affects that, for both better and worse. I enjoy a scene of the two of them indirectly managing to connect with one another from across an ocean.

But really, this episode is all about Philip. I don’t know if the increased focus is helping to flesh him out more or if the show knew people wouldn’t want to watch him being an ass for an hour and adjusted accordingly, but either way, it really works. I hope Philip doesn’t come home and gripe anymore about Elizabeth’s mother sending him away to “manage” him, because the trip seems to have done wonders for his character.

This occurs on several levels. First, we simply get more details on Philip and his background – there was a lot that I learned here. Next, we get to see more of him in the element he’s most comfortable with, away from standing on ceremony and off on adventures. Philip is a character whose behavior is very much at the whim of his moods, and it often appears much easier for him to do what’s right when he’s comfortable. It’s clear that he feels right at home on the yacht, and it becomes a little more understandable about why he misses being part of the navy and is having a hard time without it. I enjoy seeing him relish visiting new places, meeting tribes from different Pacific Island nations and fostering his own mini-Olympics with each one (although the bit about the Brits beating Papuans at cricket, the Papuans never having seen cricket before, was eye-rolling – we are still talking about a mid-century western aristocrat here.)

On a personal level, we see Philip performing some genuinely good acts for the right reasons, and he also has a chance to reflect a little on his life back home. (Weirdly, I’m reminded of the Baker’s Wife from Into the Woods: “Just remembering you’ve had an ‘and’ / When you’re back to ‘or’ / Makes the ‘or’ mean more / Than it did before.”) This isn’t to say that he’s a paragon the whole time and will definitely come back with his head on straight, because we do see him behaving badly too. The difference is that, here, we get to see him recognize what he’s doing as it’s happening and make a conscious choice about whether or not he’s going to keep it up.

Needless to say, it’s a great episode for Matt Smith. I enjoy Philip’s easy comfort among the Pacific Island tribes, and he handles light, forceful, and contemplative moments equally well. There’s an especially great scene of him talking to a reporter that doesn’t turn out the way he expected it to. We see so much of Philip in this scene: how he presents openness while keeping things close to the vest, how he discovers what he’s gotten himself into only after he’s in it, and how he tries to find his way out again. One thing I always loved about Smith as the Doctor is Eleven’s ability dial up or down on a dime, going from animated flailing one moment to a quiet stillness the next, and it’s that stillness that really serves Smith well here. It’s a charged kind of stillness, one where you can clearly see all the wheels turning underneath it, and Smith wields it beautifully. More of this Philip, please!