The War Games
Doctor Who serial
The War Games is the seventh and final serial of the sixth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which originally aired in ten weekly parts from 19 April to 21 June 1969.
In the serial, an unnamed alien race led by the War Lord kidnap and brainwash soldiers from wars throughout Earth's history to fight in war games on another planet as part of the aliens' plot to conquer the galaxy. The time travelling Second Doctor and his travelling companions Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot form a resistance army to stop this plot and return the kidnapped soldiers to their correct times on Earth.
The War Games was the last regular appearance of Patrick Troughton as the Doctor and the last serial to be recorded in black and white. It also marks the last regular appearances of Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines as companions Zoe and Jamie, and the first appearances of the Doctor's race, the Time Lords, and their home planet, Gallifrey. The latter was not named until The Time Warrior (1973).
Plot
On an alien planet, the Doctor uncovers a plot to conquer the Galaxy with brainwashed soldiers abducted from Earth and forced to fight in simulated "war games", representing the periods in history from which they were taken. The aliens' aim is to produce a super-army from the survivors; to this end, they have been aided by a renegade Time Lord, calling himself the War Chief.
Joining forces with rebel soldiers who have broken their conditioning, the Doctor and his companions foil the plot and end the fighting. The War Chief is apparently killed when the leader of the aliens, the War Lord, realises he has been plotting against him.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1792977. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “The War Games” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.