The Highlanders is an early Doctor Who series, the second series filmed by Patrick Troughton the second Doctor. The film version has been lost, destroyed by the BBC (according to the Wikipedia), but if you hunt around the bittorrent sites you'll find a DVD image containing the audio along with still images. It's really hard to follow this way and with the content of this story I'm not sure it's worth the bother.
The Wikipedia entry says this is the last of the purely historical Doctor Who serials. These were frequently shot during the William Hartnell era but not done very much later on. I must say that, to me, Doctor Who is about weird adventures with a space alien time traveling timey wimey atmosphere. This serial, The Highlanders, had none of those attributes.
Instead the story is simply about the Battle of Culloden. If I knew my Scottish/British history better I might better grasp the historical significance of this. Having traveled in Scotland I have a nice grasp on the depth of the historical strife between the Scottish and English. But as a Doctor Who story this doesn't make much sense, to me. The Doctor and his companions simply have a role as confused travelers accidently caught up in huge events and simply scheming to escape danger.
The real Battle of Culloden was about this: The Battle of Culloden (Scottish Gaelic: Blàr Chùil Lodair) (16 April 1746) was the final clash between the French-supported Jacobites and the Hanoverian British Government in the 1745 Jacobite Rising. It was the last land battle to be fought on mainland Britain. Culloden brought the Jacobite cause—to restore the House of Stuart to the throne of the Kingdom of Great Britain—to a decisive defeat. Yeah, a significant historical moment.
Re: The Highlanders (Doctor Who)
I just watched this again after having watched all the Hartnell episodes. I have a different appreciation for the historical Doctor Who stories. Doctor Who doesn't always have to be about weirdo timey wimey twists and turns through time and relative dimensions in space.
This episode is important for introducing Jamie McCrimmon, a Companion who will outlast Ben and Polly by a long margin.
I see a bit of a dissonance in the final battle scene where the Doctor and friends help the captured rebels to overthrow their captors. This battle is said to be taking place in Inverness harbor in late April, 1746. Inverness is in north Scotland, in the Moray Firth which leads to the North Sea. I visited near Inverness in June a couple years ago, it was chilly even then, and in April would have been even colder. Yet the people fighting on this ship are generally shown without shirts, bare chested, so how are they to keep warm? Yes that kind of attire might be useful in warmer climes, the ship is due to sail for the West Indies. But don't you think they would change clothes between their time in a frigid northern port, and by the time they arrive in the West Indies?