Television 

12 Weeks, 12 Doctors: Five Thoughts on Doctor Who‘s “The Three Doctors”

By | July 27th, 2020
Posted in Television | % Comments

Welcome to your summer vacation through space and time, all from the comfort of your couch and TV.  We’re spending our COVID-19 summer winding our way through Doctor Who history, focusing on one episode from each Doctor’s tenure through to the Capaldi era. (Want to know what we’re watching? Here’s the schedule!)

It’s time to travel with Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor, and kick off the tenth season of (classic) Doctor Who with a reunion with William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton in “The Three Doctors.”  This aired in four weekly installments from December 30, 1972 to January 20, 1973. Of course, it’s been a long hot minute since this aired but here’s your warning: Spoilers!

1. Coloring Your World Close to Home

Whereas the first two Doctors racked up quite the frequent flyer miles on the TARDIS, budget constraints put the Doctor back on Earth.  We have a Doctor in exile punished for meddling in the affairs of other races, working with an agency that will become forever part of series canon: UNIT.

We’re also in an era where the series is being transmitted in color (which was started in January 1970 with “Spearheads from Space”).  Moving to color adds a whole new experience for everything from the opening credits (featuring the headshot of the Doctor that is a hallmark of the credits of the classic series), wardrobe (I would totally wear Jo’s furry blue coat as long as that was fake fur), and the rock creatures from what we will find out later is an antimatter world that invade Earth.  For the early 1970s, it’s all quite well done, right down to the overexposure and light tricks for special effects. (The sequence in Part 3 featuring a mid-air fight with Pertwee will certainly remind you of that famous Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Tunnel of Terror.)

2. Doctor. I’m The Third Doctor. 

The Swinging Sixties and James Bond certainly show their influence in Pertwee’s Doctor.  The close relationship with UNIT and with Jo allow him more of his intelligence and charm to come through, as well as temper that abrasive ego from past lives. It’s a marked difference from the scruffy more childlike worldview of Patrick Troughton.   The change in ego is something you see clearly in comparison to Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor as they bicker and argue over who is the superior one, with Troughton not backing down.

3. Awkward Family Reunion 

This family reunion isn’t exactly under happy circumstances.  The Time Lords pulled the First and Second Doctors out of their respective timestreams because the Time Lords themselves are under attack by a black hole and are in such desperate need of help that they will break their own laws to do so, as the First Law of Time says Doctors cannot cross their own time streams.

With the bickering between Two and Three, the Time Lords realize this is going to be a problem for their crisis and send along one more to keep the other two on task: William Hartnell’s First Doctor.  Appearing only on the TARDIS screen in pre-recorded segments due to Hartnell’s ill health (he would pass away a little over two years after the final installment aired, in April 1975), he’s here to play peacemaker for the “dandy and a clown.”

Worst. Group. Project. Ever.

And then whatever is attacking the Time Lords found its way to Earth as well, capturing the Third Doctor and Jo in its clutches and sending them to an alternate antimatter universe.

Owing to this complicated plot, and the existence of two Doctors simultaneously, there’s a lot of explaining and re-explaining in this episode: to Jo, to UNIT, to the other folks that find themselves inadvertently in the antimatter universe.  Audiences of today used to more than one Doctor in the same time stream simultaneously may find this tedious, but we must remember that this was a new phenomenon at the time it was aired.

4. Jo Grant

Here we have a companion that doesn’t spend half her time as a screaming damsel in distress.  What’s interesting is that, in spite of not being a blood relation like Susan and the First Doctor, there’s more fatherly affection between Pertwee’s Doctor and Jo.  Prior to Jo’s travels, the Doctor spent time with intellectual and scientist Liz Shaw, and that, coupled with exile and work with UNIT, has done well to soften some of his antagonism towards humans. It sets the stage for similar relationships that we see later, like the Seventh Doctor and Ace and even the Twelfth Doctor and Bill.

Continued below

In fact, it’s Jo that comes up with the solution, if only temporary to get them to the safety of the TARDIS: “if Omega can will up an entire world, surely you can will up a small door.” Leave it to a woman to put the blustering egos in place and teach the Doctors (and us) that Sesame Street solution of two heads are better than one.

5. The Alpha and the Omega . . . and the Recorder

The being that brought the Third Doctor, Jo, and several others to the antimatter world is the Time Lord Omega, a Time Lord The Doctor revered for his work creating the supernova that powers the Time Lords.  That work led to Omega’s banishment to the antimatter world (albeit accidentally), and he’s bitter against the rest of the Time Lord race thinking they left him there to die. He wants the Doctors to take over for him so he can exact that revenge, but there’s a problem: the antimatter world bound his body to it.  So he wants some friends to keep him company in exile.

But two heads are better than that one, and the Doctors outsmart Omega with the help of the Second Doctor’s recorder.  (Yes, that same blasted one I was complaining about last week.) The reward? The Doctor has his freedom, and can now travel through space and time again.  What a great tenth anniversary present.

TARDIS Trivia (our Afterthoughts section) 

  • Fan legend over the years has said that William Hartnell filmed his role from his back garden, but the BBC did confirm that he was in studio.  This legend may have started as a result of promotional photos for this episode of Hartnell taken at his home in Kent.
  • “The Three Doctors” marks the first time the First and Second Doctors were on screen in color.
  • This is the only story featuring William Hartnell and the first for Patrick Troughton to still exist on the original master videotapes they were recorded on.
  • Although this was intended to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Doctor Who, that actual anniversary (November 23, 1973) took place in the break between seasons 10 and 11.
  • Gotham fans should recognize the last name of our Third Doctor. You saw his son, Sean Pertwee, serve a young Bruce Wayne faithfully for five seasons as Alfred.  I do regret that the show never took the opportunity to insert a Doctor Who Easter egg in there to bring father and son together on TV in some way once more.

Next week, it’s time to tackle the Doctor that many say helped bring the series to America, the Fourth Doctor Tom Baker, in “Horror at Fang Rock.” (Which you will find also has a connection to an unsolved American television mystery!) Feel free to share your thoughts on this episode in the comments or on social media with our #12Weeks12Doctors hashtag.

If you want more classic Doctor Who, you can check out the streaming subscription service Britbox (available in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. at the time of this writing). If you’re in the U.S., Latin America, Puerto Rico, and Europe, you can also get your classic Who fix via the free streaming service Pluto TV, which has its own Doctor Who channel!


//TAGS | 12 Weeks 12 Doctors | 2020 Summer TV Binge | Doctor Who

Kate Kosturski

Kate Kosturski is your Multiversity social media manager, a librarian by day and a comics geek...well, by day too (and by night). Kate's writing has also been featured at PanelxPanel, Women Write About Comics, and Geeks OUT. She spends her free time spending too much money on Funko POP figures and LEGO, playing with yarn, and rooting for the hapless New York Mets. Follow her on Twitter at @librarian_kate.

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