Doctor Who A-Z #65: The Three Doctors (1972-3)

We catch our hero in the eye of the storm. After a career beginning in the 1960s, the new decade has been phenomenally good to him so far. A new incarnation has seen him soar to even greater heights of popularity, discarding some of the quainter fringes of his Sixties persona in favour of a colourful, camp, ultra-modern aesthetic. It has been an ascent so hectic that, for the first time, he takes stock, revisiting old personas and ideas. But what story could support that? It would have to be one about the end of the world, that much is non-negotiable. There’s another idea that keeps coming through the ether, though – something about a man living in a black hole, and the dimension-hopping creatures that bring other people in to meet him…

I am talking, of course, about David Bowie. Around the same time as Bob Baker and Dave Martin were writing the opener for Doctor Who‘s tenth anniversary season, he was working on an unproduced Ziggy Stardust musical whose antagonist was, by a bizarre coincidence, extremely similar to the Time Lord renegade Omega in this story. Given the timescale, there’s no way either project could have influenced the other. Best to read it as an example of how Pertwee-era Doctor Who was unusually tuned in to the mood and themes of its era. The Three Doctors is so glam-rock in style that its initial threat, a shapeless, ever-expanding ball of anti-matter, was created by overlaying video effects onto a feather boa being twirled on a stick. Rumours that a similar animation technique was used to create Jon Pertwee remain unconfirmed.

The feather boa ends up looking unidentifiably weird, which is good. The other monsters are less lucky; Omega’s Gel Guards are a just-about acceptable design ruined by their tendency to mutter “blub blub blub” as they waddle about, like an army of Mr. Blobbys at the service of Omega’s more sane variation on Noel Edmonds. There’s also a scene where Omega sics a projection of his dark side on the Doctor, a unprecedented threat that is visualised as Jon Pertwee wrestling with a man in a latex monster suit. That is a very, very precedented threat; moreover, the scenes of the Doctor wrestling the rubbery thing in slow-motion cry out for someone to dub ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’ over it.

Director Lennie Mayne is not one of those visionary Who helmers who can make a below-par effect work, but in this case it doesn’t matter. The Three Doctors is an anniversary celebration with the accent on celebration; it is jolly and carnivalesque with plenty of inter-Doctor bickering, witty one-liners and eye-rolling reaction shots from the Brigadier. This is the sort of thing that got the whole Pertwee era dismissed as safe, reactionary and sitcommish by the New Adventures generation of fandom, clearly far less mature and worthwhile than a 500-page novel about Dodo being erased from history by a time schism created when someone bums Kamelion or something. But if your aim is to entertain millions of casual viewers, rather than a captive audience of Who-starved fanboys, this is actually a very good tone to adopt. By playing everything with a cheeky wink, this era of Doctor Who is capable of absorbing the impact of an unconvincing monster or dodgy special effect in a way the 1960s serials never managed. 

Famously, the original plan to have a summit of all three original Doctors was scuppered by William Hartnell’s fading health. There is still something touching and right about the scenes where he appears on the TARDIS scanner to dispense advice, a kind of presiding deity of the show. The other effect this has is that it makes The Three Doctors into a two-man face-off between Pertwee and Patrick Troughton, which is an extraordinary delight. Perhaps no two actors have ever had such different takes on the character: Troughton’s shabby, low-key champion of the underdog, Pertwee’s gadget-loving, military-collaborating show-off. Behind the scenes, the relationship was almost reversed as Pertwee became frustrated with Troughton’s scene-stealing ad-libs. This emerges on screen as the Second Doctor being even more chaotic than usual, nakedly relishing the fact that he can win over all of his future self’s associates with little more than a handshake and a hello. As the most anarchic incarnation, it makes sense that the Second Doctor is a little bit different every time he comes back. This variant is a blast.

The birthday-party mood infects the rest of the cast as well. It’s a fault of the writers, rather than the wonderful Katy Manning, but Jo Grant didn’t always make sense in grave, serious stories; in this lighter register she’s ideal. Benton gets a wonderfully in-character quip about the TARDIS’s celebrated interior dimensions, and Nicholas Courtney has never been funnier than when he unflappably insists that a strange alien desert in an anti-matter universe is, in fact, Cromer. As Omega, Stephen Thorne understandably has less recourse for levity, but he still commands the attention with one of the all-time great bellowing megalomaniacs of Who history.

In the first draft, Omega’s name was Ohm, reflecting his status as the Doctor turned upside down. Classic Doctor Who is rarely about the Doctor in the way the new series routinely is, but an anniversary special demands some reflection. Here, it comes when the Doctors ask their friends to cross between dimensions. Again, the effect is simple, little more than a column of smoke. Again, it doesn’t matter. As the scene plays out at unusual length, we realise the challenge the Doctors are posing to Jo, the Brigadier and the others is actually a challenge to us. Do we trust the Doctors enough to accept that stepping into a jet of dry ice is a viable method of inter-dimensional travel? When the show is this confident in its capacity to entertain, you’d be a fool not to.

Next: Carnival of Monsters (1973)

Graham’s Archive – The Three Doctors

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