Alan Kistler's History of Doctor Who - Third Doctor

This is continued from my History of the Second Doctor and is a companion piece to my Third Doctor Chronology.

This post is part of my series of In-Depth Essays on the History of Doctor Who.

ENTER JON PERTWEE

Drama was in Jon Pertwee's blood. Not only was his father a screenwriter/actor but so was his cousin Bill. In fact, Bill gained notoriety on the sitcom Dad's Army for a role that Jon had been the original choice for.

That isn't to say that Pertwee's acting career was without hurdles. The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art expelled young Jon from school for writing "rude words" on the walls of the school washroom. I find this very fitting since I imagine the Doctor had every similar experiences during his days at the Academy of Gallifrey, where he admitted time and time again that he hadn't been the best or most well-behaved student.

After World War II, Pertwee made a career on stage, television, film and radio. He was known as a Danny Kaye look alike and years after playing the Doctor he would continue appearing in TV and film, on stage and on the radio. He hosted the mystery quiz show Whuddunit, became the comedic title character of the program Worzel Gummidge and even lent his voice to the character of Spotty on the TV children's program SuperTed (which I watched many times as a child, I might add).

But how did he become the third man to portray the Doctor?

Well, he was selected by Producer Peter Bryant when Patrick Troughton decided that he would be leaving the show. Pertwee was so well-known for being a comedic actor that many thought he might continue the whimsical, sometimes goofy portrayal that Troughton had brought to the Second Doctor. But wishing to have fun with the role and wanting to show he wasn't limited to purely comic characters, Pertwee went a different route. The Doctor, a man who enjoyed his wanderlust and had never been tied down, was now going to be exiled to Earth in one time period? Then he would not be goofy. He would be very put out indeed, very angry and bitter at his circumstances, at times even taking out his anger on those he considered his friends.

What's more, this Doctor would be more in the vein of James Bond. The First Doctor had been a mysterious mystery-hunter and the Second had been a goofy, if also brilliant, adventurer. This Doctor would be a crusader, dashing about with the visible arrogance of someone who knows he's smarter than you (much like the Hartnell) and would be a bit more no-nonsense than his scatter-brained predecessors. It's been said that Pertwee viewed the capes he wore as the Doctor as if they were the "wings of a mother hen" who was ready to watch over all the poor human beings who kept finding themselves the target of alien invaders and the like. He would be a charismatic (if reluctant) crusader, wearing frilled shirts and a Jimmy Hendrix-like wardrobe that would have many fans label him as "the dashing Doctor" or, more commonly, "the dandy Doctor."

Jon Pertwee was the first Doctor to appear in color (not counting the Peter Cushing films which do not exist within the show's continuity) and played the Time Lord hero for five years, the longest time in the role until his successor Tom Baker topped him.

Now, you may be asking, "Alan, why would the Doctor Who production team decide to exile our hero to one place and time when the whole premise was that he was a wanderer?" Simple. Money. The show was going to color now and while this and other changes were happening, the folks at the BBC decided that people watched the program to see the Doctor save Earth from aliens and thus it really didn't affect the story whether these battles occurred on Earth or in far-off worlds. So why not just have the Doctor meet up with U.N.I.T. again and that way you could make the series about him and the Brigadier defending the Earth from a different threat each story. No need for extra costs involving travel to other times and worlds.

Of course, they didn't realize just how limiting the writers and the fans would find this. Doctor Who Script Editor Terrance Dicks later stated that while a U.N.I.T. story could be very enjoyable, an entire SEASON of only U.N.I.T. stories felt too formulaic and was against the grain of the unpredictability that had made the show successful in the first place. So eventually, the exile status was changed.

Let's find out how ...

Dr. SMITH: UNPAID SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR TO U.N.I.T.

And began the adventure "Spearhead From Space." An undetermined amount of time following the Doctor's trial on Gallifrey, the TARDIS landed in a field somewhere in England. The Doctor stumbled out, having already regenerated into his third body, and collapsed unconscious to the ground.

We then cut to an old friend, Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart of the United Nations Intelligence Task Force. He was hiring Liz Shaw as his new scientist, explaining U.N.I.T.'s purpose to defend the Earth from alien and paranormal menaces, while doing their best to hush up such matters as well. When Liz asked why invasions seemed to only be happening now on a semi-regular basis when Earth has been fine for centuries, the Brigadier explained that it had only been in the last couple of decades that humanity had begun filling the sky with sattelites and transmitting noisy radio and television signals out into space. Thus, new enemies were here and U.N.I.T. was ready to meet them.

Liz Shaw joined U.N.I.T. just in time for the team to go after an invasion of a Nestene, an alien that could transmit mental control over plastic items and cause them to act as its soldiers. Nestenes could alter the molecular structure of these plastic things on a small level, such as when they would cause mannequins to act as their soldiers and would mentally reconfigure them so that the metal in their frames would create guns in their hands. These mannequin soldiers were called Autons and the Brigadier would have had a hard time fighting them if he hadn't stumbled upon the Third Doctor.

The Doctor had been found and taken to a hospital, as it seemed he'd slipped into a coma (in fact, he'd self-induced a healing trance in order to better recover from the trauma of regeneration). When the physicians caring for him realized that he had two-hearts, an incredible level of brain activity, and that his blood wasn't even recognizable as blood on first glance (a statement that would be repeated in the TV-movie years later), U.N.I.T. was called in.

At first, the Brigadier couldn't believe that this comatose hospital patient was the same man he'd met before when he'd fought the Yeti and the Cybermen. As the Doctor woke up and regained his senses however, he was able to convince Lethbridge-Stewart about the truth (and it certainly helped that he had the TARDIS with him as a form of ID). The Doctor also claimed he had gaps in his memory. Originally, this was attributed to the trauma of regeneration, but since the idea was later adopted that the Second Doctor had done several missions for the Time Lords before being forced to regenerate, I think it's more logical that the Time Lord High Council (or the Celestial Intervention Agency) placed memory blocks in our hero's mind so that he wouldn't recall certain delicate operations. 

One thing that the Time Lords were definitely responsible for was the condition of the TARDIS. The dematerialization circuit was no longer functioning. And the Doctor realized that he could no longer remember all he knew about the mechanics of time travel and how to fix certain things aboard his ship. The Time Lords were serious when they had sentenced him to an exile. With both his brain and his equipment failing him, it seemed our boy was stuck.

After helping U.N.I.T. fend off an invasion, the Doctor and the Brigadier made a deal. The task force needed someone familiar with aliens to help them defend the Earth and the Doctor needed a lab where he perhaps try to repair his ship, hoping that in time he would overcome the gaps in his memory. Thus, the Doctor became U.N.I.T.'s unpaid scientific advisor, using the group's resources when he wasn't busy helping the Brigadier on various missions.

Of course, the Brigadier wasn't going to tell his superiors that he was lending the lab to a nameless alien who occasionally traveled through time and space and could completely alter his physical appearance on occasion. So for the official records, he asked to at least give him his real name. The Doctor simply smiled and said "Smith ... Dr. John Smith." Thus, whenever the Doctor would encounter U.N.I.T. agents over the years or present U.N.I.T. credentials, it was under the guise of "Dr. John Smith, Scientific Advisor."

GADGET MAN

Since he spent every free moment in the lab, the Third Doctor often came off as an aristocrat scientist, constantly asking people to simply leave him alone in his lab to experiment with the inner workings of his TARDIS. And when evil was afoot, the Third Doctor often jury-rigged together some odd device to help save the day.

Though he enjoyed labwork and gadgets very much, the Third Doctor was also a man of action. A few times, he took down multiple enemies with martial arts skills, explaining on a couple of occasions that he was versed in "Venusian Aikido" or "Venusian Karate" (he might have been skilled in both or perhaps there simply is no English equivalent to the Venusian style of martial arts and so he just made up the term). He also displayed that he was an accomplished swordsman. In the Eighth Doctor audio play Seasons of Fear, the Doctor explained he'd undergone training in swordfighting simply becuase he was fascinated by how much humanity itself loved the sword and continued to use it and employ it in ceremonies even as more advanced weapons became the norm.

During "Spearhead From Space", the Doctor also became extremely found of driving cars. When he joined with U.N.I.T., one of his first requests to the Brigadier was that he be allowed to have an old style jalopy of his own, saying he liked the character of such a vehicle. Lethbridge-Stewart agreed and the Doctor was awarded Bessie. Of course, our Time Lord hero can't possess a machine for ten minutes before he tries to make it better, so Bessie quickly became tricked out in some rather bizarre ways. She was given boosters that allowed her to travel at race-car speeds and was modified so that she could be summoned via remote control.

The Third Doctor also later got a hold of a hovercraft vehicle that could also fly through the air like a plane. Although it wasn't named within the show, fans often referred to it as the Whomobile. And here are some fun facts. Not only was the Whomobile actually a fully functional car, but Jon Pertwee would often have fun driving it out onto the street when he went to run a few errands or offered to give someone a lift to lunch. But eventually, the police asked Pertwee to stop driving the Whomobile on public roads. Apparently, minor accidents were happening when other drivers would turn to stare at the vehicle they were used to only seeing on television and as a result would stop paying attention to their own driving. When the show ended, Pertwee owned the car and kept it. Years later, a man who's son was deathly ill wrote to Pertwee and requested to buy it from him, as his son was a big Doctor Who fan. Touched by this story, Pertwee gave the car to the man and his son, requesting only that he be allowed to call on them and borrow it whenever he wished.

THE DOCTOR'S COLLEAGUES

Back to the show. Hating the fact that a wandering soul such as he was now trapped, the Third Doctor was often times rather snarky and sarcastic to those around him. On top of being stranded, he was also constantly annoyed by the simple fact that he was a no longer seen as top dog but just one employee of a larger organization, a scientist who was now surrounded by military men who tended to view things in black and white and did not seem to understand the joys of pondering the universe or enjoying a good mystery for its own sake. Whereas the Second Doctor had gotten along splendidly with the Brigadier, the Third Doctor found himself annoyed by the constant presence of a military man who constantly criticized him for not being enough of a team player. Whereas the Doctor's first reaction to an alien creature that looked threatening was to study it and try and deduce its origin, the Brigadier was likely to try shooting it in the face if he thought it might attack. He wasn't bloodthirsty, but Lethbridge-Stewart didn't believe in taking chances either and so he and the Doctor clashed swords on several occasions. At one point, the Doctor was highly disgusted with the Brigadier for bombing a base of potential enemies. Still, as time went on, it became clear that they liked each other more than they would openly admit and the two developed an amusing sort of sibling rivalry.

In my opinion, the relationship between the Brigadier and the Third Doctor can be summed up by a scene in "The Mind of Evil." In the beginning of episode 6 of that story, the Doctor found himself and a friend facing a gun-weilding maniac who was about to fire on the Time Lord. Suddenly, a shot rang out and the maniac was on the floor. The Doctor turned to see Lethbridge-Stewart in the nearby doorway, holding his own smoking gun. The Doctor said, "Thank you, Brigadier. But do you think for once in your life you could arrive BEFORE the nick of time?!" Rather than act offended or defensive becuase of this ingratious remark, the Brig simply smiled widely and said in a very pleasant manner, "I'm happy to see you too, Doctor."

And while we're speaking of him, the Brigadier's coolest moment in many opinions? During the adventure "The Daemons," Lethbridge-Stewart and several U.N.I.T. soldiers found themselves facing a winged demonic being who resembled a living gargoyle. The monster charged towards the Brigadier and what did our boy do? Did he panic? Did he look frightened and tell everyone to scatter? Did he even reflexively reach for his sidearm to defend himself?

Nope. Without missing a beat, he matter-of-factly turned to the soldier nearest to him who had a gun out and said, very matter-of-factly, "Chap with the wings. Five rounds rapid." He then casually folded his hands as the soldier opened fire on the creature. This moment was so popular with fans and so telling of the Brigadier's simple courage and cool-under-fire attitude that many years later, actor Nicholas Courtney entitled his autobiography Five Rounds Rapid!

Other U.N.I.T. associates included Sergeant Benton, a reliable is somewhat stiff-necked soldier who more than once showed he was smarter than people gave him credit for. Benton had originally met the Doctor during the story "Invasion", back when he'd been a corporal, so he was the only other character on-screen aside from Lethbridge-Stewart who had worked with the Doctor in two different incarnations.

There was also Captain Mike Yates, a charismatic and carefree joker who was always eager for a good fight. When Yates later became convinced that a group called Operation Golden Age had better ways of helping the planet than U.N.I.T., he betrayed the team. He eventually realized he was wrong and went on retreat for a while to rethink his views of the world. Many months afterwards, Yates found out that a Buddhist retreat was being used as a front by aliens and helped U.N.I.T. fight them off, earning back some of his reputation in the process. What happened to him afterwards was never said.

After several adventures with U.N.I.T., Liz Shaw (who never seemed to be anything more dynamic than merely the Doctor's assistant) left to pursue her own career as a research scientist, leaving before she ever had a chance to travel through time and space with the Doctor. The Brigadier then hired a young woman named Jo Grant (Katy Manning) as the Doctor’s new assistant. The young Jo sometimes found herself overwhelmed by the Doctor’s tech and the power of his enemies, but she had a strong and sincere desire to prove her worth and do what had to be done to save lives.

Although a bit scatter-brained at times, Jo was no dummy and very quickly acclimated herself to being around a man who had lived for hundred of years and weilded devices such as "time sensors" and sonic screwdrivers. She was also quite comfortable with telling the Doctor when she thought he was not listening to her and she was sometimes the more sensible of the two when it came to dealing with other people. At the same time, she was very defferential to the man and was clear in her desire to learn from someone she considered smarter, braver and wiser than she.

Sadly, some writers didn't have an appreciation for Jo so in a couple of stories she appears to be a ditzy, if well-meaning, girl who kind of just tags along.

Overtime, the Doctor and Jo seemed to grow very fond of each other. Though some saw a possible romantic element in this, I personally think it had a strong father-daughter quality to it. One nice moment between the two was when they were in a prison cell during the story "The Time Monster" and Jo was quite scared about what would happen next. The Doctor spoke to her in a gentle, soothing way and told her a story about his own childhood and about the day he'd realized how to open up his mind to all the beauty and wonder around him (a story he was later recall again in "Planet of the Spiders"). Jo was very comforted by the story and she and the Doctor shared a warm smile between each other afterwards.

NEW CHALLENGES AND ENEMIES

Familiar foes returned to plague the Third Doctor. He fought the Ice Warriors of Mars and on multiple occasions he fought the Daleks. He even had one adventure that brought him back to the Dalek homeworld of Skaro, teaming-up with the Thals (the peaceful humanoids of the planet) to defeat the alien conquerors. But there were also a few firsts in the Third Doctor's career.

It was during Pertwee's career as the Doctor that we first met the Autons and the Nestenes. The Nestenes were an alien intelligence who were telepathically and could mentally manipulate plastic-like substances. They projected their power into various mannequins and dummies and brought them to life as their soldiers, which they called "Autons." The Autons evidently had some of their matter re-arranged as they were able to fully move while under Nestene control and also had their hands reconfigured into weapons. The Nestenes and the Autons would return to fight the Third Doctor again and years later would actually be the first menace the Ninth Doctor faced in the new TV series.

The Third Doctor was also the first to meet the Silurians (who are often referred to in the novels as "Earth reptiles"). The Silurians were a race of reptilian humanoids and it was revealed that they had actually been the first sentient race to evolve on Earth. When a geological upheaval occurred, the Silurians went into hibernation to wait it out. They wound up sleeping far too long however and woke up to find the new race of human beings overrunning their planet. The Silurians attempted to destroy humanity in order to gain back their planet but the Doctor defeated them. Recognizing that the Silurians were not unjustified in feeling that they'd had their homeworld stolen from them, the Doctor wished to broker a peace treaty with the race but the Brigadier ordered the Silurian base bombed rather than risk them making another attack.

This act was a sticking point between the two friends for quite some time. Ironically, in the audio play U.N.I.T., it was Lethbridge-Stewart who welcomed a Silurian ambassador and helped form a peace treaty with them. In the Sixth Doctor audio play Bloodtide, it was said that a Silurian scientist was actually responsible for genetically engineering humanity's "missing link" via forbidden experiments.

Following the battle with Earth's first intelligent race, the Third Doctor also met the Sea Devils, an aquatic reptile race that seemed to be cousins to the Silurians. The Sea Devils were originally supposed to be scary fish-like people with no clothing but the BBC felt that they looked possibly indecent and asked that they be clothed somehow. Not having time to make costumes, the Doctor Who production team gave them robes made of fishnets, which sadly had the effect of making the Sea Devils look a little ridiculous. But some kids were definitely still afraid of the creatures. Nicola Bryant (who would later play the Doctor's companion Peri) said that she was afraid to go to the beach after watching the Sea Devils, convinced that the creatures would come after her.

The Silurians were named that by humans who believed they were from the Silurian Era. The Doctor said he believed they had actually lived during the Eocene Epoch of Earth's history. However, Silurians were said to have kept dinosaurs as pets and those creatures were long-dead by the Eocene period. So either the Doctor was off on his dates or the Silurians created domesticated dinosaurs thanks to their highly advanced knowledge of genetic engineering.

 

In "The Time Warrior", the Doctor first encountered the Sontarans. Despite having comically bulbous heads, the Sontarans were a race of fierce warriors who reproduced via cloning. They were counquerors who had a long war with a people known as the Rutons and who wished to extend their fascist rule to the cosmos. As they were clones who were bred to enjoy war and conflict, Sontarans obviously had no fear of death in combat and were viciously cool about having to sacrifice entire armies if it was necessary to win a war.

Along with these new enemies, the Third Doctor's career also marked the first time audiences found their Time Lord hero transported into a parallel universe. While attempting to fix the TARDIS yet again, the Third Doctor found himself hurled into a mirror reality where Britain was under a dictatorial rule and the Royal Family had been executed. Here, the Doctor found himself captured by the sinister Brigade Leader Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, a vicious man prone to paranoia and seemingly loyal only to the leader of the Republic of Great Britain. Seeing his friends acting as villains and killers was a disturbing experience for the Doctor and he was glad to make it back to his own universe.

In Paul Cornell's book Timewyrm: Revelation, it was revealed that the Doctor had recognized the image of the leader who ruled this Earth's Republic of Great Britain from a poster he saw. Apparently, the leader's face was exactly like one of the potential appearances the Time Lords had offered the Doctor during his trial and so our hero believed that it was a parallel version of himself who had created this awful dictatorship.

AN OLD FRIEND. AN ARCH-ENEMY.

The Third Doctor was unique in that because he was stranded on Earth he now had a larger supporting cast and a recognizable home setting. Wishing to continue with this theme, the BBC decided to create a new recurring enemy who could constantly appear to cause trouble for the Doctor, U.N.I.T. and all of the world in general. This character would be human (at least in appearance) so that fans could more easily connect with him and he was intended to be the James Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes. At last, the Doctor had an opposite number, a renegade Time Lord like himself but one who was dedicated to evil rather than exploration. Like the Doctor, this Time Lord criminal didn't reveal his real name, only the title he chose to use after leaving his planet behind. He called himself the Master.

THE DOCTOR: "He used to be a friend of mine once... a very good friend. In fact, you might almost say we were at school together."

The Master first appeared in "Terror of the Autons" (the same story that introduced Jo Grant). The Doctor was quite surprised when a Time Lord came to warn him that the Master had arrived on Earth. It was obvious from the way they spoke that the Master and the Doctor had some bad history together and that they'd been students together at the Academy. The Time Lord who warned the Doctor even reminded our hero that the Master had achieved higher degrees in science than he, to which the Doctor muttered "I was a late developer."

The Master was cunning and resourceful. Rather than attack people directly, he tended to act through agents or would manipulate different events to bring about circumstances that were beneficial to him, working from behind the scenes until the Doctor would finally detect his presence. To further his schemes, he not only used his great knowledge of science and advanced Time Lord technology, he also showed that he could telepathically command weak and undisciplined minds to follow his orders. On many occasions, fans would hear him say in a harsh and hypnotic voice, "I am the Master. And you will obey me!"

While the Doctor enjoyed exploration for its own merit, the Master obviously saw it as a means to an end. For him, knowledge was to be gathered for the sake of power. The universe was a random, chaotic mess and he would tame it, he would bring it under his rulse by whatever means necessary. As he once said, "One either rules or serves. That is a basic law of life."

In the Big Finish audio play Master, the Doctor tried to point out once more to his old foe that his ways were flawed and only led to evil.

THE MASTER: "Evil? No, Doctor, I refute your claim of evil. 'Evil' implies a malevolence, a desire only to destroy. I crave power, dominion … knowledge of the forbidden and the secret. So much more than just evil."
THE DOCTOR: "But don’t you see? Those things lead to evil. They lead to death, death for innocents and innocence."
THE MASTER: "... Those that deserved to die were denied life, yes, of course. The weak shall fall or follow. You should know all about having the weak follow, Doctor."
THE DOCTOR: "I have my companions to ease the loneliness, Master. Your loneliness is what has led you to this. A lifetime partnership with [Death]."
THE MASTER: "The universe NEEDS me and I need all that it has to offer. I am The Master. That is who I am, what I am and what I NEED to be!"

Like the Doctor, the Master took some joy and pride in what he did. He could often be seen smiling to his opponents when they surprised him, as this kept things more interesting. He even told the Doctor that he would miss our hero if he were forced to destroy him, as he was a worthy adversary and had a keen intellect. He even found amusement in watching Earth children's programming, such as a claymation animal show he used to watch when he was imprisoned for a time being. When someone asked what he was watching, he coyly feigned ignorance and said he was watching some very interesting primitive life forms (and he became quite annoyed when the other man didn't realize he was kidding). But despite these occasional moments of playfulness and godo humor, if you seemed like you were actually a threat, the Master's facade of diplomacy would drop and he wouldn't hesitate to kill you in the most vicious way possible.

The Master took a keen delight in causing fear and terror in others around him. In their first encounter on Earth, the Doctor realized the Master was helping the alien Autons by giving them the means to kill people at random without leaving any evidence behind. When the Doctor criticized this as simply violent and unimaginative, the Master countered that his plan had been very effective indeed since, "Death is always more frightening when it strikes invisibly."

Yet despite their rivalry, it was clear that the Master wanted the Doctor at his side and that the Doctor was the one person he feared. In "The Mind of Evil", the Master was subjected to face a fundamental fear and found himself tormented by an illusion of the Doctor laughing at him, regarding him as pathetic. On a few occasions, he would actually ask the Doctor for aid in a particular scheme and would save his life to ensure the Doctor's knowledge wasn't lost. In the TV special "The Five Doctors" years later, the Master was told by the Time Lords that the Doctor's very existence was in the danger of being wiped out from all time and space. Rather than laugh with glee, the villain replied softly, "A universe without the Doctor scarely bears thinking about."

This complicated relationship added much depth to the war between the Doctor and the Master and fans were always eager for more details. They also enjoyed the rare occasions when the Doctor and the Master had to join forces in order to combat a shared enemy. During such moments, one could easily imagine earlier times when they had been friends and had worked together in a similar fashion. In one adventure, the Master actually offered the Doctor unvirsal rulership at his side, saying the Doctor could ensure that theirs was a just rule and that together they could "save the universe!" The Doctor countered "I wish to SEE the universe, not rule it!"

The Master fought the Doctor and U.N.I.T. many times and he quickly became one of the Doctor's major enemies, rivaled only by the Daleks and Cybermen in terms of popularity.

THE MASTER: "I only need two things. Your submission and your obedience to my will!"

In the Missing Adventures book entitled The Dark Path by David A. McIntee, it was said that the Master had originally been named Koschei and that during his first battle against the Doctor (which occurred during the Second Doctor's career), he and his TARDIS were hurled into a black hole and it had cost him most of his regenerations to escape. It also said that the Master had originally traveled with a human companion he'd grown feelings for, only to later discover that she was actually a Time Lord who'd been assigned to spy on him. This story gave the Master a definitive reason to hate the Doctor and the Time Lords in general but it has never been referenced in the audio plays or TV show.

THE THREE DOCTORS

After a full season of stranding the Doctor on one planet where every week he had no choice but to have an adventure with U.N.I.T., the BBC started realizing that people had problems with this new take on Doctor Who. They liked the Doctor and the Brigadier just fine but they missed the travels through space and time that had made the program different from others. So the decision came to shake it up a bit.

Although the Doctor was still exiled, he now found himself occasionally sent to another place and time in order to perform a mission for them. For instance, in the story "Colony In Space", the Doctor was inside the TARDIS with Jo, trying to make a new dematerialization circuit, when they suddenly found themselves on the planet Uxarieus in the future. The Time Lords had sent them there to stop the Master from finding a weapon of incredible power. Afterwards, the Doctor and Jo were returned to Earth, the TARDIS still immobilized. Though the Doctor was frustrated at having a taste of freedom, it was an eye-opening experience for Jo, who hadn't been completely sure she'd believed the Doctor's stories about traveling anywhere he pleased in his police box.

But this seemed like a tease to the fans. It wasn't enough, they wanted the Doctor to be a wanderer again. And some felt that he simply didn't feel right being at U.N.I.T.'s beck and call. Former Doctor Who producer Verity Lambert herself stated that, by being a member of U.N.I.T., Pertwee's Doctor had become "an establishment figure and I don't think the Doctor should ever be that." 

The next season would be the tenth anniversary of Doctor Who. An event was needed to kick off the anniversary season. Something big and dramatic? A story involving the Time Lords? Perhaps, but we'd already seen them once before and we'd become quite used to seeing the Master run around. A story that involved the Time Lords rewarding the Doctor with his freedom again? That could definitely be great and bring the closer to its roots. But it needed something else too.

And then the idea came. For years, fans had been writing in saying "Do you think William Hartnell could return?" or "Do you think Patrick Troughton could meet the new Doctor?" The BBC had constantly said no to these request. But with the anniversary now approaching, they thought "Hmmm. It is a show about time travel ... why not?"

And so we got a fan-boy's dream. A four-part story simply titled: "The Three Doctors."

This adventure not only brought in the Time Lords again but also explained some of their mysterious history. It was said that long ago a stellar engineer named Omega had detonated a star, whose power was harnessed to create the energy needed for time travel (in later years, it would be said that this led to the creation of the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey). Omega never got to enjoy his people learning about time travel however, as he apparently died in the same experiment.

But now the truth came out. Omega was not dead, he'd been transported to an anti-matter reality beyond the black hole left in the destroyed stars wake and there he'd been forced to live. Now, millenia afterwards, Omega had grown strong enough to try and attempt an escape and take revenge on the people who reaped the rewards of his benefits and never considered the possibility that he was alive and needed rescuing. Part of his plan involved sending the Time Lords into disarray by cutting them off from the rest of the universe and forcing their resources to weaken.

The Time Lords saw that the Doctor was the only person who would be able to act since he wasn't trapped on their home planet like the rest of them. But they also figured he would need help to fight Omega and the anti-matter creatures he was sending out. The Time Lords decided that if they couldn't come to the Doctor's aid, then the only person who could help him was ... another Doctor!

It was said that this broke the "First Law of Time", which forbid that anyone be allowed to meet themselves at a differen point of time, but this was an emergency and the Time Lords figured they'd fix any new problems afterwards. Using their technology, the Time Lords sent a transport beam back into the Doctor's own timeline and brought forth his second incarnation to help him out. Unfortunately, the Second and the Third Doctor found each other nearly unbearable and spent as much time arguing as they did trying to figure things out. Essentially, both felt that they should have been the one in charge and that their way to approaching the problem was best. The Second Doctor couldn't understand how he could become such a short-tempered man and the Third Doctor hated being reminded of how silly he'd used to be in his previous incarnation.

The Time Lords then used a bit more energy in order to grab the First Doctor as well. It was said that there wasn't enough energy to bring him fully into the Third Doctor's "time zone", so the original Doctor was forced to merely broadcast his image and voice to his two later incarnations. With his youth and inexperience, the First Doctor was the one most willing to face the problem at face value rather than get mired in details and theories and he acted as a mediator for the other two.

THE FIRST DOCTOR: "Oh, so you're my replacements. A dandy and a clown!"

And so the story kicked off. Fans got to see all three of the heroes they'd come to know and love and it was the first time that Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell were able to have a Doctor Who adventure in color.

In the end, the combined might of three Doctors was enough to save our universe. The Second and First Doctor were returned to their native time zones, with only the barest memories of having met their future counterparts. And the Third Doctor was rewarded when he found his TARDIS now had a new dematerialization circuit and that he now finally remembered how to work and repair the time circuits. He was no longer exiled to Earth, no longer a fugitive on the run. In return for this freedom though, and his status as being a tolerated rogue rather than a full-blown renegade, he would still have to do the occasional mission for the Celestial Intervention Agency. One good thing though was that since the Time Lords had outfitted the TARDIS with a brand new circuit, the Doctor had a lot more control over choosing his destination now (though even if he landed in England on Earth where he wanted to, it was still a crap-shoot whether or not he’d land in the year he wanted to as well).

In later episodes, the Doctor would be extremely nervous about letting someone meet themselves in the past because it could cause a time disruption. But it was also clear that because of their unique nature the same rules did not entirely apply to Time Lords. If the Fifth Doctor, for instance, went back in time and met himself five hours earlier, that could be very bad indeed. But if he went to a point where he met a previous incarnation, then there would not be the same danger of a great discharge of time energy if the two happened to meet. Of course, there was still the possibility of the older incarnation accidentally changing his own history by meeting the younger incarnation. Because of this, it was generally accepted by fans that after the events of "The Three Doctors", the Time Lords only returned the First and Second to their proper places in time after they'd had their memories altered, thus preserving history.

Originally, William Hartnell was to fight alongside the other two Doctors as a teammate. But by the time filming got close to starting, he had grown weaker all around and wasn’t able to make the trip to the studios. Thus, the story was rewritten that the First Doctor would be stuck in a pocket of space-time and only able to advise his future incarnations via communication through the TARDIS scanner. While he was filmed, William Hartnell actually had cue cards with his lines held in front of him.

Hartnell was able to attend a photo shoot with Pertwee and Troughton. The three had a lot of fun together and all enjoyed being able to work together for the 10th anniversary special. A year later, William Hartnell passed away. His role as the Doctor would always be remembered though. Years later in "The Five Doctors", Richard Hurndall took on the role of the First Doctor and did a pretty good job of it.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Although he enjoyed the role and loved being an action hero who did most of his own stunts (Pertwee actually knew a thing or two about martial arts), he was not often pleased with the scripts. He was very set in his ways as to how he thought the Doctor should act and disliked scripts that had too much "techno-babble" as it was hard for him to remember at times and he felt much of it was inconsequential. He often had disagreements with Terrance Dicks, one of the major script-writers. In one adventure by Dicks, Pertwee had to explain that he had "reversed the polarity of the neutron flow." He pointed out that he liked that line, how it sounded and rolled off the tongue, and suggested it appear again.

As a result, enough stories were done that had the Third Doctor saying "I just reversed the polarity of the neutron flow" or even just "reverse the polarity", that it became an on-going gag among fans. The line even continued to be used occasionally by succeeding Doctors. And as Franklin Richards pointed out in a Fantastic Four comic, the line was doubly-ridiculous because neutrons by their very nature actually have no polarity to speak of. Oops!

Here's another little thing about Jon Pertwee. While the Daleks were very popular with fans, Pertwee was not a fan of them as he considered them scene-stealers. Very different from most of the Doctors who followed. Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy and David Tennant all stated that they didn't feel as if they were officially the Doctor until they had finally fought a Dalek.

Enough of the Doctor. Let's speak of the Brigadier. During the show's run, the Brig displayed a dry wit and often gave a few great one-liners, have to keep himself sane in the face of incredible circumstances and half to remind the Doctor that he wasn't the only person in the room who held from authority. Well, a lot of those lines were written by actor Nicholas Courtney himself. Courtney found that playing a stiff military guy who just shouted orders and played the boss would be boring to the audience as well as to him. So he insisted on bringing in some humor to the role, though he was very clear that he didn't want to venture into Monty Python territory. He would make jokes but would maintain that the Brig was a pragmatist who simply found all the sci-fi stuff around him quite infuriating.

Although nothing about the Brigadier's personal life was ever shown, Nicholas Courtney created his own backstory and private life for the character, one that he always kept in the back of his mind. And so, years later when the Seventh Doctor TV adventure "Battlefield" showed that a (now-retired) Brig was married to a woman named Doris, Nicholas Courtney surprised many when he told them during interviews that Doris was actually the character's second wife. In the backstory he'd created years ago, Lethbridge-Stewart was married to a woman named Fiona during much of the Third Doctor's tenure.

"Of course you don't know this," Nicholas Courtney explained, "but his first wife was called Fiona. All the time I was playing The Brigadier I was forming in the back of my mind what sort of a man he was. There's a scene in 'The Daemons' where I'm woken up and I have to leave home and I remember Terrance Dicks saying at the time: 'I wish we had enough money to employ an actress' as she'd turn to me and say don't go, don't go. And in my own mind I came to the conclusion that she had said to him 'it's either The Doctor or me,' and he goes off on yet another adventure and his first wife leaves him. Then he marries Doris some years later, who he had a fling with in Brighton."

Nicholas Courtney was so beloved by fans that he showed up again to team-up with the Fourth, Fifth and Seventh Doctors, teamed-up with the First Doctor in "The Three Doctors" and "The Five Doctors", and recorded audio plays where the retired Brig went back into the field (undercover) and fought alongside the Sixth and Eighth Doctors. Thus, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart has become the only person to team up with all of the "Classic" Doctors of Doctor Who.

One final behind-the-scenes note. Roger Delgado, who did a fine job of playing the Master, sadly suffered a fatal car accident before he could return to the show in an adventure that was meant to solve some riddles about his connection to the Doctor. There was one idea that he may have been revealed to be the Doctor's brother. But with his death, the show moved on and that idea was dropped. It would be some time before we saw the Master again.

Delgado was and is greatly missed by many, particularly by those Doctor Who actors who knew just how gentle, sweet and charming the man actually was in real life, in stark contrast to his villainous alter ego. 

BACK INTO TIME AND SPACE ... SORT OF

Following the events of "The Three Doctors", our hero was finally able to once again roam time and space as he pleased. What's more, thanks to all his tinkering over the past few seasons, the TARDIS now had better directional control. Whereas the First and Second Doctor had never been able to predict where they would land next or able to map out a return trip to any previous destination, the Third Doctor could program a specific destination. Of course, sometimes he'd still go off-course, but at least he now knew he'd get to the place after a couple of tries.

Yet despite his freedom, the Third Doctor still felt an obligation to U.N.I.T. after all their help and continued to work with them on several missions. Eventually, in the story "The Green Death", Jo Grant decided to leave the Doctor's employ, having met a scientist she'd fallen in love with and would one day marry. The Doctor was very saddened by this and although he wished Jo well, he did not stay to hear the announcement of marriage, preferring to quietly leave instead. It was clear that he'd come to love Jo on some level and the Third Doctor displayed what appeared to be jealousy towards Jo's suitor. Actress Katy Manning herself has said that she believes the Doctor did come to love Jo, even if he couldn't admit it.

But while she never returned to the role of Jo Grant, Katy Manning wasn't done with Doctor Who quite yet. She also did a rather provocative photo shoot in which she paraded around nude with a Dalek. Years later, the novels would introduce a renegade Time Lord named Iris Wildthyme.

 

Iris was a comedic charater introduced solely for laughs. And interestingly, she was, in many ways, a foil for the Doctor. While the Doctor made cryptic or odd remarks here and there, Iris was genuinely nuts most of the time and often non-sensical. While the Doctor never really touched on the subject of sex, despite usually traveling around with attractive female companions, Iris traveled around with strapping young homosexual men and had torrid affairs. Iris’s TARDIS was a bit too rundown, as its Chameleon Circuit was trapped on looking like a double-decker London bus and the interior was now a bit smaller that it looked like it should have been from the outside.

When Big Finish brought Iris Wildthyme into the radio shows, Katy Manning took on the voice of the character and has done a fine job. Iris has become almost as much of an enigma as the Doctor. Her original name is unknown and the Doctor can find no evidence of her life on Gallifrey. She has, at times, taken credit for adventures that the Doctor actually experienced and has retold these stories with details it seems unlikely she could've found out about except from our hero himself. Although she seems perpetually drunk or high, she has occasional moments of sudden lucidity that imply she may be play-acting half the time.

"I'M A JOURNALIST. SARAH JANE SMITH."

Soon after Jo's departure, the Doctor stumbled upon a young journalist named Sarah Jane Smith. She would become one of the longest-running and most popular companions of the program.

Sarah Jane met the Doctor when she snuck into a U.N.I.T. research project, masquerading as her older aunt, a scientist named Lavinia Smith. The Doctor quickly saw through the young woman's deception and seemed quite amused by her guts. When Sarah Jane stowed away on the TARDIS and followed the Doctor into the past where he fought a Sontaran warrior, our hero further found Sarah Jane to be quite a brave, intelligent and perceptive person. After a couple of years of being used to the sweet and diplomatic Jo Grant, here was a woman who was quite willing to tell a medieval king that he was being stupid if he simply bowed down to the odds being against him. After this adventure, Sarah Jane decided to stay with the Time Lord, figuring she would get to see things no other journalist could ever imagine.

It's important also to note that Sarah Jane was the first person to stay with the Doctor by choice really. Every person who'd joined the First or Second Doctor on a trip found themselves bound to him for a while simply becuase those incarnations had no control over their time ships and were unable to bring the person back home except maybe by sheer luck. So unless they found a better life somewhere out in the stars, where else would they go? When the Third Doctor got his freedom again, he now had more control over his TARDIS, so Jo was certainly free to leave whenever she wished. But note that Jo joined with the Doctor because she was a member of U.N.I.T. and had been assigned to be his official assistant. Yes, they became close, but it was still her job to be at his side, really.

But Sarah Jane was different. She had no official or legal obligation to stay with the Doctor. And at any point she could have said "I'm done, drop me off home now." But she didn't. She joined of her own free will and stayed of her own free will. She was your equal and would tell you so, whether you liked it or not. Many of the previous TARDIS crewmembers had usually been referred to as the Doctor's assistant. Sarah Jane was no one's assistant. She was a traveling companion.

Sarah Jane was with the Doctor for several adventures, fighting Daleks, dinosaurs and other menaces. Finally, there came the adventure "Planet of the Spiders" in which alien arachnids from the planet Metabilis III were attacking Earth. During this story, Sarah Jane learned all about regeneration from another Time Lord named K'anpo Ripoche (or at least that was the name he answered to), who was living as a Tibetan monk. It was K'anpo who finally revealed to Sarah Jane and the audience that the Doctor's TARDIS was not actually his own but had been permanently "borrowed" when he'd chosen to leave Gallifrey.

It turned out that K'anpo was an old friend of the Doctor's who'd had quite an influence on him. While speaking to Jo Grant during an earlier adventure "The Time Monster", the Doctor had spoken about K'anpo as a "hermit" who would sit at a tree behind his family home, a house that was "halfway up a mountain." The Doctor told Jo then and the Brigadier later that K'anpo was the first man who taught him how to open his mind properly. Years later, the Fourth Doctor would refer to K'anpo as a monk who lived in Southern Gallifrey (thus, the Doctor must have also lived in that region) and who told stories of ancient Time Lord history, stories so old that many contemporary Time Lords had thought they were only legends.

Like the Doctor, K'anpo found the Time Lord society too stifling with their rules and traditions and left. K'anpo seemed to be an exile rather than a fugitive and mentioned that he'd regerated just before beginning this exile on Earth, much like the Doctor had done. In the audio play Cingular Time, the Fifth Doctor stated that it was the standard practice to make a Time Lord regenerate before sending him to an exile. He evidently became a Tibetan monk becuase he'd served a similar role on Gallifrey. Interestingly, in one of his audio plays, the Eighth Doctor would remark years later that Time Lords and Tibetan monks often got along due to their shared views concerning the nature of the universe, particular on rebirth and reincarnation.

During the adventure, K'anpo regenerated, helped by a man called Cho Je. Cho Je was apparently a "projection" or an "echo" of K'anpo's future self, kind of like a ghost but in reverse. If that sounds odd, remember we're dealing with people who almost literally have time travel in their blood.

At the end of the adventure, the Doctor went to Metabilis III to defeat the Queen Spider. Although this worked, the Doctor was severely poisoned by radiation he was exposed to in the spiders’ caves. He returned to the TARDIS and finally made his way back to U.N.I.T. HQ. For him, the journey took a few moments, but for Sarah Jane and the Brigadier it had now been weeks since they had seen the Doctor.

The Doctor stumbled out of the TARDIS, saying he’d been lost in the vortex but was back now. In the Seventh Doctor novel Love and War by Paul Cornell, it would be revealed that the Third Doctor had spent ten years dying of radiation while he was lost in the vortex, before finally returning to Earth.

Sarah Jane wept as her friend collapsed in front of her. The Doctor reached to her face, trying to console the young woman.

THE THIRD DOCTOR'S LAST WORDS: "Tears, Sarah Jane? No, don't cry. While there's life, there's ..."

And then the Third Doctor died. It seemed the radiation had caused too much damage to his body for it to regenerate on its own, so K'anpo arrived and used his own great mental powers to jumpstart the process (much in the same way the TARDIS seemed to jumpstart the process when the First Doctor expired). K'anpo then explained to the Brigadier (and to the audience finally) the regeneration involved the brain cells getting a bit jumbled and that this was why each Doctor behaved differently and were very erratic during the first few hours. But he assured the Brig and new viewers that this was still the same man underneath the new face. Same memories, same heroic spirit.

The regeneration started finally and K'anpo vanished, never to be seen on the TV show afterwards. The Brigadier watched as the Doctor’s face began changing and remarked, "Well ... here we go again!"

And now, some memorable Third Doctor Quotes:

LIZ SHAW: "What exactly are you a doctor of?"
THIRD DOCTOR: "Practically everything, my dear."

THIRD DOCTOR: "What’s WRONG with being childish? I like being childish!"

THIRD DOCTOR: "You know Jo, I sometimes think that 'military intelligence' is a contradiction in terms."

THIRD DOCTOR: "My dear Mr. Chin ... If I could leave, I would. If only to get away from people like you AND YOUR PETTY OBSESSIONS! 'England for the English.' Good heavens, man!" 
MR. CHINN: "I have a duty to my country!"
THIRD DOCTOR: "Not to the WORLD?!"

THIRD DOCTOR: "I refuse to be worried about a renegade like the Master! He's an unimaginative plodder!"
A TIME LORD: "His degree in cosmic science WAS of a higher class than yours."
THIRD DOCTOR: "... Yes, well .... I was a late developer!"

ROSSINI (a villain): "Come, come, Doctor. Gentlemen don’t discuss money."
THIRD DOCTOR: "Nonsense. Gentlemen never talk about anything else!"

THIRD DOCTOR: "I'm a Time Lord ..." 
SARAH JANE: "Oh, I could murder a cup of tea. You're serious?!"
THIRD DOCTOR: "About what I do, yes. Just not necessarily the way I do it."

SARAH JANE: "We're lost!"
THE DOCTOR: "Mislaid, possibly."
SARAH JANE: "Oh, why don't we just go back to the TARDIS?"
THIRD DOCTOR: "Well, for two good reasons. One, that I don't want to leave Peladon without having a word with my good friend the king -"
SARAH JANE: "Name-dropper."
THIRD DOCTOR: "- and second ... we ARE lost."

THIRD DOCTOR: "Brigadier, a straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting."

THIRD DOCTOR: "Everyone will want to hear of your adventures. So be careful how you tell that story. Don't glamorize it. Tell them about the fear. Otherwise your people may come to relish the idea of war. We don't want that."

THIRD DOCTOR: "Courage isn't just a matter of not being afraid. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway."

Continue on to the History of the Fourth Doctor 
OR
Read the Third Doctor Chronology.