The Three Doctors
(10th Anniversary Special/Season 10, Drs 1, 2 and 3 with Jo and UNIT, 30/12/1972-20/1/1973, producer: Barry Letts, script editor: Terrance Dicks, writers: Bob Baker and Dave Martin, director: Lennie Mayne)
Rank: 77
'The Edwardian, The Clown and the Dandy can be friends
One of them keeps the rest in order
One of them has brought his recorder
One of them has a hovercraft that goes on water And though they've ended up in a world of antimatter that's about to annihilate us all that's actually a good reason why they should stay friends'
Happy Birthday Dr Who! Nine years and a twelfth years old today! Wait what? Yes, while everyone always calls this a tenth anniversary story, technically it’s not – The Doctor always says time is relative I suppose – apparently anniversaries doubly so. Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks were less interested in the date than starting the new season off with a bang and wanted a ‘gimmick’ at the start of a new season to get viewers the way they had with the new Doctor, the new Master and the return of The Daleks (the closest to an actual ‘anniversary’ story date-wise is ‘The Time Warrior’). Well, they certainly got one of those – a multi Doctor story, for a decade ‘the’ multi-Doctor story, and still (by a whisker) my favourite multi-Doctor story. Not least because it’s the first one, in a story that has to invent all the rules as to why: how brilliant a concept it is to have the current Doctor meeting his past selves at all, the sort of thing no other show in existence could do. So brilliant that many people have tried to take credit for the idea down the years: the (many) fans who wrote into the production office suggesting it, Letts and Dicks who banded around ideas for a ratings spike in a production meeting and even William Hartnell, who’s said to have dropped into the production office looking for work and asked for a way he could plausibly come back for a story (which seems unlikely given his health, but that’s what this story’s writers say they were told; he was certainly game for the challenge and relished being asked back again, which might surprise anyone coming here from the reviews for ‘The Celestial Toymaker’ or ‘The Tenth Planet’). Above all though there’s a reason for them to be together, something the other anniversary stories don’t quite pull off. Gallifrey is in danger (not that it has a name yet), their energy drained by an invasion of antimatter so they can’t send anyone to help and The 3rd (current) Doctor is trapped: there’s nothing for it but to send in his old selves to help out. And note that there are only two older selves to send in, no Jo Martin available (‘The Timeless Children’ arc makes even less sense if you come to it from this story).
This is also, as it turns
out, the one and only time we get to see the three actors who played the first
three Doctors on screen together and they’re brilliant. Bob Baker and Dave
Martin, with help from Uncle Terrance, really nail the complicated fact both
that these are three distinctive characters with their own characteristics and
quirks and that this is still, underneath it all, the same man (they act like
brothers here, triplets maybe, distinct but with a shared history, DNA and
drive, rather than clones or colleagues, the other ways they could have played
it). Pertwee is as he always is, dashing, heroic, straightforward. Everyone was
worried that the sensitive Pertwee might have his nose put out of joint by working
with his older co-stars and he was reportedly rattled in rehearsals (mostly by Patrick
Troughton improvising his way round the script when Jon kept everything to the
letter) but he ups his game here, the still reliable centre around which the
story revolves. Troughton is cuddlier than he was in the past, his comedy just
what he does rather than what he hides behind to bring the monsters down and he’s
never funnier than here now that he can be the ‘comic relief’ rather than the
hero who has to take things seriously along with it and the combination of
writing and acting make him feel as if he’s never been away. Note how Dr 2 is
much more patient with the Brig (who he met twice after all) and much more
indulgent towards Jo, to the point where Dr 3 gets most protective of her,
rather than having the same relationship with the people around him as the
‘other’ Drs automatically. Hartnell should have been an equal player and
eagerly agreed to be when the production team phoned him up, but his
arteriosclerosis meant that a full day standing around in drafty a recording
studio remembering lines was beyond him (his wife Heather is said to have
phoned back and explained her hubby got carried away and they’d have to make
allowances if they wanted him, because they’d happened to have caught him on a
good day – and on a bad day he couldn’t even remember being The Doctor) so
instead the 1st Dr gets a few key scenes over-seeing from the Tardis scanner,
in specially filmed inserts done early on, sitting up in a triangular chair
reading cue cards while stage hands prop him up. He still steals the show, with
his old mixture of grumpy goodwill and tough love we’ve seen used on so many
people over Dr Who’s first three years now used on his future younger-looking
but older selves, who he treats as a pair of slightly dense children (they both
look up to him and he seems to know more, both of which are weird if you
remember that despite appearances to the contrary the 1st Doctor is
the least experienced of the three of them). Yes it’s a shame we don’t see all
three Doctors together (the only time they were in the same room was to promote
the story, with photos taken in Hartnell’s Kent back garden where Hartnell is
all smiles but Troughton seems in a rare off mood). The plot never fully
explains why the 1st Doctor can’t be either (something better
handled when Dr 4 drops out of ‘The Five
Doctors’ a decade later) but they make the most of the scenes they put him
in. The scenes of the two or three together really sizzle: you wouldn’t know
from this that Troughton and Pertwee had never met (They’ll go on to be firm
friends, exaggerating their ‘rivalry’ at many a fun fan convention that often
ended in water pistol fights!), or that Hartnell-Troughton and Hartnell-Pertwee
had only ever met briefly (they were in the film ‘Will Any Gentlemen?’ together
in 1953, an odd film about a bank clerk who’s hypnotised into losing all his
inhibitions by a music hall magician now only remembered by Whovians, though
neither Hartnell’s detective nor Pertwee’ flamboyant friend are on screen for
very much of it). Most fans could watch these three together for hours. After
all, we have apart. There were fears that having them share screentime might
diminish them, the way too many copycat characters in Marvel superhero films
mean each one only has time to do their party pieces and nothing more, but not
a bit of it: ‘The Three Doctors’ works as well as it does mostly because of the
way The Doctors spark off each other in twos and threes.
Full marks to Baker and
Martin, then, for nailing such a difficult assignment on only their second go
at a Who story. However it was a close run thing: the pair were asked to write
in extra quick time to fit round Patrick Troughton’s busy schedule (though
screened first, this story was actually made third in the season (in the middle
of ‘Frontier In Space’ and ‘Planet Of The Daleks’ in fact, intended as a
pair, which is why they feel so odd seen back to back without many links
between the two) and so tight on broadcast they were still adding the effects a
week before – an unintended throwback to where this series all began in 1963). I’m
intrigued that Dicks gave this story to ‘The Bristol Boys’ to write though rather
than keeping it for himself or one of his closest pals like Robert Holmes or
Malcolm Hulke. At this point in time the two men had only delivered one Dr Who
script and while the much revised ‘Claws Of
Axos’ has a tonne of energy, ambition and imagination it’s not what you’d
call a milestone of the series. Giving this all-important first anniversary to
them, the junior super creative but inexperienced members of the writing team,
was like asking your three year old toddler to plan your aunty’s birthday: you
know everyone’s going to have fun galore but not that everyone’s necessarily
going to be in one piece by the end of it. Despite the tight deadline they have
a few false starts too that must have left the production team tearing their
hair out. You can read about the first of these in the prequels/sequels’ column
and it’s one of the maddest, darkest stories ever submitted to Who: The 3rd
Doctor dies and goes to hell to fight monsters, to be saved by his younger
selves who both sacrifice themselves for him so that he lives another day. In
the end though they come up trumps with
what’s easily their best script and one that adds a great deal to Dr Who mythos
without clashing with what we’ve come to know (it helps that so much of the
Dr’s past was still open-ended at this point). The two writers, still fairly
new to television, also had to cope with all the major changes that always
happen with big anniversary stories. As well as the 1st Doctor being a more
equal player, Jamie was going to be a full character before his new series
‘Emmerdale’ messed him around. It was still hoped to have a cameo right at the
end of the story when the 2nd Doctor is returned, Frazer Hines
asking ‘where the hell have you been then eh? Leaving me with all the work…’
but that didn’t happen either (It was intended Mike Yates would get most of his
lines but Richard Franklin, who’d booked stage work in the slot when it looked
as if it was going to be the UNIT free ‘Planet Of Daleks’ wasn’t available. Benton
got most of the lines but alas not the planned romance with Jo that Jamie then
Mike was meant to have). Baker and Martin had a deadline of their own too,
leaving Dicks to polish much of the finished draft.
We get several inventive firsts
here along the way that it still amazes me people actually sat down and
invented out of thin air: of all the ordinary turned extraordinary things in Dr
Who the idea of a family reunion – but with yourself from different eras – is
one of my favourite. It’s a masterstroke to make the multiple Dr reunion a
bitch-fest rather than a love-in, like a family reunion where they just clash
again and again – it would have been an obvious thing to do to make this a
superhero team-up, the sort of Marvel crossover that ought to be twice as
exciting but is only half, given how the limited screentime means the
characters only have time to do their party pieces and nothing more. It isn’t
just for laughs or for ‘tension’ either, it’s perfectly in character: The
Doctor has long been used to being the cleverest person in the room and the
fact that there are two other selves who think that too doesn’t faze any of
them. This is Future anniversary stories won’t quite get the mixture of
bickering and mutual respect right, but they do here. It’s a surprise if you
come to these stories in order, not least because usually the only people
showing disrespect are the baddies who come a cropper. Dr 1 has the best put
downs of his future selves as ‘a dandy and a clown’, but Troughton’s sly smile
and Pertwee’s look of exasperation are great too: it’s worth remembering that
all three men were known for their comedy at least as much as their drama
before taking the role and take it in turns being the straightman and
comedians. The biggest change of all by far, though, is that this is a
programme that’s finally remembered it has a past. For 9 years and a bit Dr Who
has been all about looking forward and reflecting the present, but now it’s
realised it has a past to celebrate it’ll never stop (indeed there’ll be
another large throwback to the past just three stories later with ‘Planet Of The Daleks’ and by the 1980s the
connections to the past will just get silly).
This being a Baker-Martin
script there’s a lot of scientific concepts being discussed, far more than
other writers would put in, even though the story makes less scientific sense
than usual. Still, while scifi plots about antimatter seem old hat now (Star
Trek: Next Generation did them every other week at one point) this was pretty
much the first TV scifi episode to address the idea, a world where the protons
and neutrons are ‘backwards’, a theoretically possible scientific invention
that probably wouldn’t like this. The same with black holes, perhaps the
biggest scientific breakthrough of the 1970s and a concept so new the Doctors
actually explain it to the audience instead of assuming they’ll know what they
are. Especially the business about light travelling faster than the speed of
light because of the way black holes suck in energy, which must have left a lot
of people in 1972 scratching their heads (but is an actual Einstein theoretical
equation). The reason they’re so significant for so many astronomers is that
they were a game-changer as to what the universe was actually designed for. Ask
most pre 20th century space gazers and they’ll tell you that the universe is
order, planned, big and unwieldy certainly but working to some sort of grand
cosmic plan as stars shot out from the centre of the big bang (see ‘Terminus’ for one example of this
idea). But black holes showed us that
the universe wasn’t like that: the universe might have been ordered once in the
very distant past but now it’s imbalanced, with stars folding in on themselves
and eating others up. They’ve taken a formula and shaken it which is what a lot
of this story does by presenting things that wouldn’t normally happen. It’s a
very clever backdrop to an anniversary story where the usual rules don’t apply.
What’s even more clever though is that something so abstract, other-worldly and
beyond the comprehension of most people is related in terms they’ll understand.
Basically Gallifrey is anticipating a giant power-cut in an era when energy
prices meant they were on the news a lot (when people had the power to watch it
or pint it anyway).
Don’t go looking for too
much accuracy though, with the 2nd Dr’s recorder from ‘our’ universe causing
the anti-matter universe to collapse one of the great ‘what the?’ plot moments
of Who. Who would live in a world like this? Well, hold on to your hats because
finally, after 9 and 1/12th years of asking where timelords got
their gift of time travel from, we finally know: their founder Omega created it
by harnessing the power of a black hole, only he fell into it by accident. He’s
given the wonderful job description of a ‘solar engineer’, as if he’s designed
where the stars and planets go, on the borders between magic and science. He’s
also The Doctor writ large, accidentally exiling himself for the good of his
people, but instead of being trapped on one planet he’s in a world held
together by nothing more than the power of his own imagination (a leftover from
the first ‘Hellish’ draft, where he’s ‘The Devil’, who creates Hell in just the
same way in the John Milton poem ‘Paradise Lost’, a very Dr Who tale of the
world being in balance. A keen theologian, Milton thought Christianity made
more sense if, instead of God creating a race of slaves who plainly didn’t like
being told what to do, they were offered choice between two contrasts). Baker-Martin
even invent the Doctor’s fondness for jelly babies, more normally associated
with the 4th Doctor but which start here as an odd additional detail
(The Doctor’s never had a sweet tooth before. Well, not except for all that
sugar he takes in his tea Maybe it’s the fact that the Gell Guards look like
jelly that reminds him he has them?)
Omega is meant to be The
Doctor’s mirror, a being so angry at being in exile that he turned his back on
his people, his jealousy at their living through his benevolent gift causing
him to become everything he was trying to help them prevent, a reminder if you
will about what The Doctor could yet become. Indeed in that crazy first draft
he’s called ‘Ohm’ (‘Who’ if you hold the word up to a mirror) and far closer to
him in personality. He’s as powerful as anyone we’ve ever seen in the series
and has better motive than most baddies we ever meet: jealousy. There’s the
wonderful concept that he’s created a world for himself out of sheer
belligerence, refusing to die out of spite, so he can get to live the life he
sees others having for himself. We’ve spent so long thinking of the timelords
as being noble and emotionally even (including The Master and to an extent the
Doctor) that Omega is a surprise: a shouty ranty being whose spent an eternity
raging at the injustice of being left behind while the people he ‘created’ live
their lives forgetting him. Omega is the antimatter Doctor, where all the
neutrons and protons are reversed if you will (or, another way of putting it, a
shoutier less charming version of The Master). Dicks renamed Omega for the last
letter in the Greek alphabet (which means ‘Great’, as befits his monstrous ego),
a hint the costume designers pick up for the Greek theatre mask too. Cleverly
Baker and Martin give us a story where the usual rules don’t apply (just as the
usual laws of physics don’t apply to black holes or antimatter) so for this
special anniversary we get lots of one-offs that viewers at the time assume
they’ll never see again. UNIT HQ has till now been the one place that’s safe
and impenetrable, so it’s a shock to see the familiar outline against an alien
sky (a bit of luck that: the building was really a YMCA youth hostel in Denham,
Buckinghamshire, which happened to have a nearby patch of empty ground just the
right shape for the ‘dematerialised’ version and only needed a single bush to
be planted to complete the effect). This
is, amazingly the first time that The Brigadier and Benton have been inside The
Tardis or seen an alien planet; The Brig is oddly in denial about the whole
thing (odd after the early Pertwee stories where he was the only one who
accepted everything about The Doctor where others didn’t, down to the face
change) while Benton is brilliantly accepting (The Brig has come to see The
Doctor as more of a ‘Human’ friend but Benton still sees him as a bit of a
magician?)
Then there’s the weather balloon: the sort of thing that always
means ‘aliens’ in every scifi series going after the most famous ‘cover up’ at
Roswell in 1947 (or so ufologists have it), but here it really is a weather
balloon (the first scene is very different in the script too: it was meant to
bob about on wind currents, like ‘Rover’ in ‘The Prisoner’, before we find out
it’s quite harmless, a scene sadly cut when the weather turned nasty). We even
see an alien using the ventilation shaft at UNIT to break in, not The Doctor
and co breaking out! Even seeing the timelords was quite a one-off back in
1972/73 when The Doctor was still exiled and it seemed a given we would never
go back to his home world after ‘The War
Games’. It’s very odd seeing the mysterious 1st Doctor and
shifty 2nd openly talking about their timelord heritage – almost as
odd as it is seeing the 1st Doctor (who loved being the centre of
attention) off to the sidelines and the 2nd (who loved observing
from a distance) in the middle of the action. The effect is that sort of nicely
disorientating feeling you have on birthdays Christmasses or anniversaries
where the usual routine goes out the window and you get a glimpse of how life
could be lives if you had no discipline, if you ate sweets for breakfast and
got to indulge yourself all day. It’s only once a decade (well, nine and 1/12th
years): no one making this story ever thought there would ever be anyone
(what series ever runs for twenty years?!?)
Perhaps the best part
about ‘The Three Doctors’ is how much of an ensemble piece it is as it’s not
just The Doctors who get the good lines: everyone takes a turn to shine (which
rather puts paid to the idea, prevalent in 5th and 13th
Doctor stories, that characters are always going to suffer if you have too many
companions). Katy Manning is sweet as Jo, loyal to her Doctor but immediately
quite fond of the 2nd (who treats her as if he knows her well from
the first, even though they’ve never met – does she remind him of Victoria?)
and in awe of the 1st. Her Earthbound attempts to rectify what’s going on,
using snatches of Beatle song (for which the production team had to get special
dispensation from Apple – no problem given what big fans The Beatles were and
are, see ‘The Chase’) might be the ultimate
‘Jo’ moment. Thanks to the shuffling of parts around Benton gets more to do
than in any other story, uncharacteristically causing the problem (by feeding
sweet wrappers to the antimatter monster: surely intended as a ‘Jamie’ moment
originally) but also being the quiet reliable centre of an unstable world, the
way he is at home. The Brig is the one character who doesn’t seem quite right,
spending it in shock throughout, while the two moments everyone remembers from
this story are ad libs from Nicholas Courtney; his assumption that this alien
world ‘looks like Cromer’ doesn’t feel quite right. It seems ridiculous that
the man who believed the Doctor over the yeti the first time they met without
hesitation thinks he’s woken up in Cromer, not an alien planet. I mean, it
can’t be Cromer (a town in Norfolk that really doesn’t look much like
antimatter, honest - beside this planet’s far too dry to be mistaken for such a
rainy place). However, The Brig’s salute to all the Doctors as he takes charge
and risks his life first by going home through the ‘smoke’ is oh so very
Brigadiery. Usually The Doctor is the ‘extra’ in UNIT Earthbound stories with
different ideas, so it’s nice to have things reversed and have two soldiers on
an alien planet trying to work by The Doctor’s rules for a change. Like I say,
everything is topsy turvy, just this once.
It’s the new characters
who don’t fair so well. Ollis is another of this era’s stereotypical yokels, a
rather offensive idea of thick working classes in the country who spend their
day poaching and romancing fields. Though not as bad as Pigbin Josh from ‘Axos’
you do wonder why Baker/Martin wanted to write yet another character in so soon
after the one had gone down like a, well, lead weather balloon. Dr Tyler is
there purely to get the story moving in the opening, the first person to be
zapped to Omega’s lair, but honestly the story doesn’t need him. In the great
Dr Who pantheon of professors list he’s somewhere near the bottom, too boring
to match Professors Kettlewell or Chronotis and not clever enough to be
actually useful. In fact he’s quite thick at times, not doing anything early on
when it would have been useful then getting everyone in trouble when he flees
in episode three (even though he must know by then there’s nowhere to flee to
on an antimatter world). The story could have easily been re-written to work
without him as the antimatter was after The Doctor anyway. After all, there’s
three scientific advisors in this story already – we don’t need a fourth! It’s
Omega who might just be the most disappointing though. The Doctors behave as if
Omega is the greatest thing since sliced bread, with a brain equal if not
superior to their own, but all we see is a lot of ranting (and in one scene,
when asked for evidence of his special powers, a solitary chair, as if Omega
was working as a removals man when he ended up here, not a semi-God). His
motivation seems to vary scene by scene: sometimes he wants to destroy Gallifrey
in cold revenge; at other times he wants to regain a body and rejoin the world.
He can’t have it both ways of course – you can’t rejoin a world you’ve just
destroyed. The general consensus amongst fans is ‘well, that’s because he’s
gone mad’ but we’ve had other mad powerful beings in Who before; far more interesting
would have been to make Omega rational and sane. What’s more the timelords have
changed overnight, from the omnipotent observant race we know from all past
stories to one that actively encourage looking after other planets, something
that makes a mockery of The Doctor’s trial in ‘The
War Games’ which is lifted at the end of this story (it’s a shame, too,
they don’t make more of the drama of The 3rd Doctor being afraid to
contact them: after all, last time he saw them they changed his face and stuck
him on a backwater planet. Contacting them for help ought to be a last resort
not a first go-to choice). The script works hard to make Omega sympathetic and
there’s a great scene that helps sell the whole story, when Omega removes his
distinctive mask to reveal that his head’s gone missing, but for the most part
he’s just a shouty wannabe, a lot less interesting than The Master without any
special powers beyond antimatter.
There are other big
problems too: a more common ‘black hole’ that was far scarier than an alien
world. ‘The Three Doctors’ might be an ‘anniversary special’ but unlike
occasions in 1983, 2013 and 2023 (1993 was a special case) there’s no extra
money forthcoming and ‘The Three Doctors’ has to be budgeted alongside the
others. Which is just mad: considering that this story was such a big event –
getting a Radio Times front cover and much loved pull-out souvenir and
everything; the last until the 20th (and it seems amazing in retrospect that
there wasn’t one for the whole of Tom Baker’s run) it’s shocking that this
story only got the same measly budget as the stories around it. A lot of this
story’s funds have gone on paying Hartnell and Troughton wages, so that leaves next
to nothing in the kitty. Omega’s magical world is just a quarry, perhaps the
most boring and basic quarry we’ve seen in the series so far (Harefield Lime
Works in London if you’re wondering, it was in the news five or so years ago
for the rather odd ‘dangling monkey from a crane’ statue that some workers had
left when the site was shut down. Those of us in the know figured it was just a
last gasp from Omega’s antimatter world). Terrance Dicks tries to rationalise
this in his Target novelisation, claiming that maintaining this world is such a
strain that Omega conjures up rocks and soil because it’s easier, but that’s
just silly. Why not make this planet smaller? He never seems to venture outside
and, say, imagine planting whatever the timelord equivalent of a carrot patch
is. The inside of Omega’s lair is similarly basic, entered through what looks
like one of those cheap tunnel entrances you see at carnivals (Omega is sold to
us as a ‘magician’ after all). It looks, in fact, like a bunch of greenscreen
covered in wrinkly foil paper, which is either the most basic cost saving move
of all time or a meta comment on how this is the usual Who story done inside
out (I’d like to think it’s the latter, but it’s almost certainly the former). Then
there’s The Gell Guards, some of the lowest budget monsters of the lot, who look
like Axons painted a slightly different shade of orange with extra blobby bits
and who don’t really need to be there at all (they’re Omega’s ‘spies’ looking
for The Doctor, but they’re not very good if they don’t go to UNIT HQ directly,
despite this ‘secret’ organisation having a whacking great sign above the door.
They also ought by rights have tracked the Doctor down to Coal Hill School,
which would have been an even more fitting place for a reunion).They don’t walk
they shuffle with a rolling gait that reminds you of ships on the sea, while
the UNIT reaction when they suddenly materialise one by one (‘Holy Moses!’) is
a candidate for silliest thing seen in this series. Typical, we wait ten years (well,
you know by now…nine and a bit) for a multi Doctor story and then they get put
against the flimsiest monster going. It’s a real shame because the rest of ‘The
Three Doctors is crying out to show off what this series can do, to celebrate
all the imagination and creativity that’s gone into this series’ first decade
(ish) and while at the time everyone thought they’d be lucky if they got a
single repeat (which they did, but not till 1981) and couldn’t have imagined home
releases, this story seems designed for hooking non-fans, for showing off to
them what this series can do and letting people get to know three Doctors at
once. However there are some shots in this story so very poor (maybe a good
half of this story to be honest) that watching this story with ‘non-fans’ is a
tug of war between wanting to boast ‘see?!’ and being so embarrassed you want
the ground to swallow you up.
The actual story, too, means
well and has some great ideas behind it, such as the black hole and antimatter,
while the idea of actually meeting the timelord founder is enough of a thrill
to just about make it work. Like the other reunion stories it’s a lot more
original and ambitious than perhaps it needs to be when most fans would have
been happy just watching our heroes talk and bicker in the Tardis. It’s
actually pretty simple though when you get down to it: this is a ‘capture and
escape’ story that lasts across four stories and has The Doctor(s) stuck on an
alien planet rather than a cell on Earth (again, inside out). The end, when it
comes, is a copout: The 2nd Doctor’s recorder jamming up Omega’s
works wouldn’t cause that big an explosion and just sort of happens: there’s no
big moment of cleverness, no fantastic moment of buildup, just Baker and Martin
looking round for a prop they can use and half-remember. Notably it’s a very
3rd Dr plot (science-based, with an individual whose up to the Doctor’s level
and tries to out-think him – in between all the shouting – with the Dr an
authority figure battling to make people believe him), rather than a battle
under siege like the 2nd Dr stories or a world to explore in search of a plot
like Dr 1, which might have been fun to return to just for once. To be honest
there’s a bit too much plot and it gets in the way of the banter and the story
falls apart slightly when the Doctors get separated (though check out the
visible relief on Dr 3’s face when Pertwee’s back with Jo again and on more
familiar ground, which could be great acting but is probably more personal
relief at being back on solid ground).Apart from the Doctors themselves there’s
some truly atrocious dialogue at times, with this in many ways the most ‘B’
movie of Pertwee stories just at the time when the extra attention of such a
big occasion means the series desperately needs to show its ‘A’ game, with some
clumsy exposition, some wonky science, some clumsy lines and some very out of
character scenes that feel like a waste (the Brigadier being whisked through
space for the first time should be a big moment for instance; instead it’s
played for a cheap laugh). Plus perhaps the silliest Pertwee action scene of
them all, the usual ‘rumble in the
jungle’ that becomes a ‘splatter in antimatter’ as Pertwee rolls over on the
ground in slow motion, like we’ve just switched over to the wrestling. A
hangover from the ‘dice with death’ of the first draft it was kept to give this
story some belated action but this is not the way to do it. There are times in
the middle, too, when this story slows down to a crawl – and if you can’t
maintain interest in an episode about multiple Doctors passing through a black
hole into a world of antimatter you know you’ve got scripting problems. When
you get down to it this story is a man talking to himself in a locked room for
100 minutes, even if it is a man who comes in three parts and the locked room
is on an alien planet. In some ways this a programme worthy of those near-enough
ten long years of invention and ambition with new pioneering ideas about
antimatter – and at other times its so cheap and nasty it looks as if it doesn’t
matter.
For all the problems
though, most of them caused by the usual bugbears of time and budget a hundredfold
given the circumstances, ‘The Three Doctors’ is still a delight fondly
remembered by many who saw it on first broadcast when it rewrote all the usual
rules and by people who discovered this series through a repeat or a
bargain-bin knock off when it was their introduction to all these rules in the
first place. Set against all the ways this story could have gone wrong and how
many new concepts are being whistled up out of nowhere here, it’s amazing how
much of this reunion story works and how much of it gets by on sheer bravado.
It was a brave move getting two of Dr Who’s newest writers to create it It was
a brave move throwing in so many new plots and concepts rather than simply
involving The Master, The Daleks Or The Cybermen (at least two of whom are in
the 20th, 30th and 50th stories each). It was a brave move giving so much of
the plot over to what’s actually quite a complicated story. It was a brave move
revisiting the past and getting ex Doctors back to remind people that the show
isn’t what it was like in the olden days, while having them be so rude to each
other. This show could have gone wrong so many many times. Yet it works: no
‘The 3 Doctors’ isn’t perfect, the middle sags even for a four parter and some
of the effects are poor bordering on atrocious, even taking its age into
account (the rest of series 10 looks pretty good by comparison, give or take
the Drashigs). But despite all the things working against it this story is a
triumph, with just the right mixture of laughs, gasps, spills, thrills and
everything that made Dr Who gathered together in one place. It was popular with
old fans and the fuss brought in some curious new fans too: there’s a big jump
in the ratings across the whole story (episode four was seen by 11.9 million, the
highest viewers since ‘The Web Planet’
episode five, seven and a bit years earlier) and a lot of them stayed for the
rest of the year, so much so that doing this sort of thing again some time in
the future (or past depending on The Doctor) seemed a certainty. Like many a
reunion, you watch it hoping it’s going to go well but secretly you’re crossing
your fingers till it’s over hoping that nothing goes seriously wrong – and there’s
nothing that a few extra quid and a few less Gell Guards couldn’t have solved –
it’s only later you properly enjoy it. Especially the parts that the later
anniversary stories skip, with an actual gripping story and a credible threat,
rather than a plot that’s really just scenery for old friends to reunite. Time
has robbed this story of a lot of its raison daitre for a lot of later viewers though:
if you come to it now ‘The Three Doctors’ is a first half-hearted go at a lot
of the timelord folklore and multi-Doctor stories to come, business as usual rather
than something never ever to be repeatedHow amazing it was, back in 1973, to
even have a show that had been running ten years (approximately half the life
of UK TV at that stage). With stories and concepts as strong as this one, though,
you’re in no doubt it will go on for a hundred. Bring on the next anniversary!
POSITIVES + Before this
story was shown fans wondered if the multi-Dr meeting would be noble and sweet.
An idea dismissed by the 2nd Dr’s more-or-less opening line: ‘I can see you’ve
been re-decorating. I don’t like it!’ This is one of the laugh out loud Dr Who
lines from one of the best of all Dr Who scenes, perfectly delivered by
Troughton with the perfect huffy look in response from Pertwee. It’s such a
clever line, offering up so much character in one go (and allowing an old era
to comment on a current one, something only Dr Who could do) that it’s been
repeated pretty much every time more than one Doctor gets together, as recently
as ‘The Reality War’ in 2025. Fifty
years on plus and it’s still funny!
PREQUELS/SEQUELS: ‘The
Tardis never really lets go – and in here everything is possible’. The tenth
anniversary tale was an obvious choice as the 3rd Doctor pick in the
sixtieth anniversary series ‘Tales From The Tardis’ (2023), in which various companions
enter a ‘memory Tardis’ and talk about their old adventures (something that’s
finally explained plotwise just about anyway - by ‘The Legend Of Ruby Sunday/Empire Of
Death’ the following year). Only there’s a problem: alas
we’d lost the whole cast from the 3rd Doctor’s era by 2023, with the
exception of John Levene (who was always reluctant to come back), Richard
Franklin (who was dying and just about to enter a hospice at the time this clip
was recorded – he died on Christmas Eve) and Katy Manning, who excels in her
highest profile return to Jo Grant since leaving the show forty-nine years
earlier. Even Jo can’t speak to herself
though – luckily she did meet up with the Sarah Jane Adventures crew in their
series highlight ‘Death Of The Doctor’ so Katy gets paired with Daniel Anthony,
who played Clyde in the spin-off show. Most fans were horrified at the clash of
styles and generations but as fans of both characters I like it a lot: Jo has
retained much of her innocence even though she’s a wise old matriarch now,
whilst Clyde was the cynical streetwise kid who thought he knew everything till
he met Sarah Jane and still young enough to need help and advice in love.
They’re both the goofy oddball romnantics of their respective eras and they
work well together. Of course having all of time and space turn into a lecture
on relationships and heartbreak does seem a bit of a waste when you have a
whole ‘memory Tardis’ to play with and pairing Clyde off with Rani (or rather having
him mope after her now she’s a busy career woman and he’s not) seems a) a bit
safe b) deeply unlikely and c) a bit rude given how the careers of Daniel and
Anjil Mohindra have worked out in the years since. Clyde’s not the type of
character to mope, at least out loud – if he’d accidentally pushed Rani away
with some dumb joke at just the wrong moment when they were supposed to be
mutually hooking up it would have been more in character. However writer Phil
Ford is skilful enough to get round it and adds in that idea of ‘seizing the
day’ and making the most of opportunities that come your way that kind of works
too in a Dr Whoy type way. Jo going gaga for the Doctor’s old sonic
screwdrivers and pressing random buttons while Clyde panics before they squabble
over who gets to press the next one is totally in character though, as is Jo
‘sensing’ all the Doctors and companions around them in a spiritual hippie way.
There are sweet nods to their mutual friends Sarah Jane and the Brigadier and a
line, a little more clumsily inserted, about how Cliff has died (actor Stewart
Bevan having only passed away on the eve of writing this; would Cliff really
have ‘loved all this?’ He was always far more interested in the nitty gritty on
Earth compared to outer space). For all the occasional clumsiness and the fact
that these two never really get on to discuss what happens in ‘The Three
Doctors’ itself, though, it’s a lovely bit of writing and a brilliant bit of
acting as an older Jo sighs over how ‘the older you get the more you seem to
miss’ and longing to see ‘her’ Doctor again, plus the oh so Clyde joke ‘Don’t
play games with me’ ‘Why not? I play a mean Hungry Hungry Hippos!’ and the
vulnerable scared little boy behind Clyde’s bluster as he faces the most
terrifying thing he’s ever done: tell Rani he loves her. What happened next? I
hope we find out one day and it seems odd we don’t get a shot of Clyde asking
Rani out (even without her there). We do, at least get the perfect ending for
Jo as a Pertwee-like shadow falls across the Tardis and she looks up with such
sheer joy etched in her face at seeing her dearest friend one last time. Sniff,
I always cry at anniversaries!
Previous ‘The
Time Monster’ next ‘Carnival
Of Monsters’
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