Pucc-H:Physics:dub@CS-Mordred.UUCP (11/19/83)
< This is a reprint of an article that was submitted to the
< net about a year ago. I hope it helps clarify the Dr. Who
< situation to people "who" don't know about the good Doctor.
<
< Dwight Bartholomew
<UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,inuxc,harpo,uiucdc}!pur-ee!Physics:dub
<ARPA: dub @ pur-phy.UUCP
From: "TSC::COORS::VICKREY c/o" <DEC-SFL at DEC-Marlboro>
Date: 7-DEC-1982 20:28
Subj: The Doctor's regenerations
THE MANY FACES OF DR. WHO
In response to the not-100%-accurate stuff going around about Dr. Who:
I discovered the good doctor in early 1981 and latched on to the series with
the same fervent joy expressed when I discovered Star Trek in 1967. So, the
following is gathered from books, magazines, conventions, and miscellaneous and
I stand by its accuracy.
Dr. Who premiered November 23, 1963 on the BBC. The Doctor was played by
William Hartnell, a highly respected veteran actor. He had a granddaughter,
Susan, and kidnapped (yes, kidnapped!) two of her teachers (Ian and Barbara)
when they stumbled into the TARDIS. It was at this time that the chameleon
circuit broke, leaving the TARDIS stuck in the shape of a blue police box.
(TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space; police box is a
contraption that served as a sort of telephone booth for British police -
when the light at the top blinked, the nearest bobby was supposed to call in.
These devices are now obsolete.) The first Doctor was played as an anti-hero
and was a very grouchy old man.
Hartnell left the series in the middle of the fourth season due to ill health.
The BBC, which had already handled the problem of companions wanting to leave
the show by writing them out and writing new ones in, then came up with the
novel idea of the Doctor having to regenerate due to his bad health as the
"reason" for his change in appearance and personality. According to the
official canons (as I remember hearing it), this was the Doctor's first
regeneration.
The Second Doctor was Patrick Troughton, a veteran character actor who shows up
all over the British tube (spotted him in All Creatures Great and Small, with
Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor). His Doctor was a clown/hobo, who disarmed
people by being very silly, played the recorder, and was given to offering
people jellybabies, gobstoffers, and the like. The Doctor's second life came
to an end at the end of the sixth season when he ran into a situation too much
for him to handle and he was forced to call upon his fellow Time Lords for
help. Help him they did, and they thanked him for the information that made
them aware of that terrible mess - then they tried him for the crime of
perenniel interference and sentenced him to involuntary regeneration and exile
to Earth. (Two behind-the-scenes reasons for this: Troughton wanted to move
on, and the BBC budget shrank, so they needed cheaper sets. The next three
seasons are almost entirely on Earth - and on locations within 25 miles of
London.)
The Third Doctor was Jon Pertwee, a comedian and caberet performer. His Doctor
was very much the dandy and very into gadgets - he produced the sonic
screwdriver, the whomobile, a who hovercraft, a who helicoptor, and a whoed-up
Edwardian roadster named Bessie. It was Pertwee's Doctor who worked for UNIT
(although it was Troughton's Doctor who first met the Brigadier) and Pertwee's
Doctor who came across the Master for the first time. The Third Doctor spent a
lot of time protecting Earth from invading aliens and found himself on occasion
trying to protect the invading aliens from Earth. He also found himself at the
beck and call of Gallifrey, being sent on missions to provide his special brand
of interference.
As a tenth anniversary special, the Three Doctors were reunited to combat a
menace to their/his home world of Gallifrey, much to the chagrin of the
Brigadier, who had finally got used to the idea that his friend the Third
Doctor was also his friend the Second Doctor and now found himself confronted
with both at once and a third that he had never met! At the end of this story,
the Doctor's exile was lifted.
At the end of the eleventh season, Pertwee was ready to go. The story here was
that the Doctor had picked up something on his travels that he had to return,
and in doing so suffered radiation damage to the point of death. Another Time
Lord intervened, and started up a greatly accelerated regeneration. Hence the
Doctor's "erratic" behavior in Robot.
Tom Baker played the Fourth Doctor. Those who have seen his predecessors say
that he combines characteristics of all three of them. Features of the Baker
era are the scarf(s), pockets, jellybabies, K-9, the return of the Master, and
two trips to Gallifrey. Baker played the Doctor for seven years, making him
the current record-holder. These shows are all available in the U.S., from two
different distributors and trimmed down (**expletives deleted by automatic net
censoring program**) to fit half-hour viewing slots.
In the eighteenth season Baker began to feel that it was time to move on, so
his Doctor fell to his regeneration at the end of Logopolis (which is full of
truly marvelous backpointers to events and details all the way back to the very
first Doctor Who).
The Fifth (and present) Doctor is played by Peter Davison. He wears a sort of
cricketeer's uniform (which looks very preppy to me), the shirt with question
mark lapels that Baker wore in his last year, and a stalk of celery in his
coat lapel (because "it's civilised"). He is into cricket. His Doctor is less
reliant on gadgetry (hence the departure of K-9 with Romana, and the loss of
the sonic screwdriver in a Davison story called The Visitation). The Master is
still around. And, alas, no scarf. The Doctor unravels it to find his way
around the TARDIS during his latest regeneration, a fate he saved it from in
the labryinth on Minos (or was it Crete?). I've seen three Davison stories,
and he is good. (It seems to be an established fact that your favorite Doctor
is the first Doctor you see, no matter how much you like the others.) Some of
the events are given away in the Dr Who guide available to this list, but all I
will say is that one companion leaves the show, another seems to leave but will
be back, and a certain category of villains will return. The twentieth season
will have a former companion in every story - the Brigadier is confirmed. The
Black Guardian, whom the Doctor foils at the end of the Key to Time series, is
also back. And the Doctor will return to Gallifrey.
The nineteenth season, which is the first year of Davison's Doctor, will be
available in the U.S. starting January 1; the twentieth season will become
available in March, and the twenty-first season in March 1984. There is a
two-hour twentieth birthday special being planned - I'm not sure what the
distribution for that is. And a series called the Five Faces of Doctor Who,
featuring the very first Doctor Who story, a Troughton story, the Three
Doctors, a Pertwee story, and Logopolis, is supposed to be distributed as a
package. (Harass your local stations!)