User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Reference Desk/@comment-24.247.115.223-20130121231327/@comment-188432-20130122060530

Shambala108 wrote: Two actually played the recorder in 3 stories of his second season as well, so it's a bit more ubiquitous than you might think. Well, after Macra, there are three very brief scenes in Evil, Abominable and Web of Fear totalling maybe 10 seconds. He's virtually done by Macra. Neither Victoria nor Zoe ever hear him play the recorder. In the first three stories, and particularly in Power of the Daleks, the recorder play is profound. It's a major part of his character.

By The War Games part 10, it's been 57 episodes since he last played the recorder — however briefly — in Web part 6. That's one more than the number of episodes made in the old show's final four seasons. Or, looking at it a different way, Troughton was sans recorder for 14 episodes longer than McCoy was the Doctor (excluding Two's colour escapades).

And if you consider that Tom Baker had a scarf, Peter Davison had celery, Colin Baker had a cat badge, and Sylvester McCoy had that stupid umbrella for all but a handful of episodes of their runs, the recorder is a much lesser feature of the Second Doctor's era. He had it for most of The Power of the Daleks, a decent amount of the next two serials, and then only about one episode of Macra, Evil, Abominable and Web.

It's much closer to being barely present than ubiquitous.