DOCTOR WHO - THE THREE DOCTORS (1972/73)

 A few days ago (on the 23rd of November) it was the 61st anniversary of Doctor Who. It's weird to think that it's a year ago that the Doctor hit the "big six O" and Doctor Who fans the world over where being treated to the (temporary) return of David Tennant as the fourteenth Doctor and the debut of Ncuti Gatwa as the fifteenth.

For all of last November it seemed like the world went Who-crazy all over again. This year it's a lot quieter as you'd expect with this year's birthday not being a landmark.

Still I always like to mark the good Doctor's birthday here in the backroom. So here's a review of the story that celebrated the shows first ever milestone anniversary - the tenth - way back in the heady days of the 1970's...The Three Doctors.

DIRECTED BY Lennie Mayne

SCREENPLAY BY Bob Baker & Dave Martin

STARRING - Jon Pertwee as The Third Doctor,  Patrick Troughton as The Second Doctor,  William Hartnell as The First Doctor,  Katy Manning as Jo Grant,  Nicolas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, John Levene as Sergeant Benton,  Stephen Thorne as Omega,  Roy Purcell as Time Lord President,  Clyde Pollitt as Chancellor,  Rex Robinson as Dr. Tyler,  Laurie Webb as Ollis.

PLOT - (NOTE - I normally write my own plot synopsis but for this review I'm going to directly quote the blurb on the back of the Target novelisation instead...)

"The most amazing WHO adventure yet, in which Doctors One, Two and Three cross time and space and come together to fight a ruthlessly dangerous enemy - OMEGA. Once a Time Lord, now exiled to a black hole in space, Omega is seeking a bitter and deadly revenge against the whole Universe..."

PERFORMANCES - Then current Doctor in residence Jon Pertwee is joined by his two immediate predecessors - William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton - for this tenth anniversary special.

I've talked about Jon Pertwee's Doctor before and the difference between his performance and the other two Doctors really stands out here. Pertwee's third Doctor was always portrayed as a smooth, suave man of action with an argumentative streak to his personality and never is that more in evidence than in this story, particularly in his scenes with Patrick Troughton who plays the second Doctor. Basically the second and third Doctor's are polar opposites to each other - where the third Doctor is immaculate and neat, the second Doctor is scruffy and shambolic. Where the third Doctor takes himself extremely seriously, the second Doctor is a much more jokey figure. The two actors are even physically complete opposites - Pertwee was tall and imposing looking, whereas Troughton was short and fairly stocky in his build. 

The differences between the two Doctors are played mainly for laughs but also - at points - for drama. The two Doctors constantly bicker and squabble like kids, each trying to score points over the other, each seemingly deeply embarrassed by thier other self.

Apparently the two actors didn't get on that well in real life either, Pertwee was the type of actor who very much saw himself as "the star of the show" (as he was to be fair) and didn't like it when he was upstaged. He feared that Troughton would do this. Troughton sensing Pertwee's angst naturally then went out of his way to do just that. I'd say he definitely succeeded because it's the second Doctor who completely steals the show in this story.

As time went on the rivalry between the two actors became friendlier, funnily enough this also happens in the story - the two Doctor's iceiness to one another gradually fades as they team up to battle Omega and they part on friendlier terms. A case of life imitating art and also the start of a grand Doctor Who tradition - whenever multiple Doctors meet, they as a rule NEVER, EVER get on. It's now Doctor Who lore and it all started here.

You'll noticed I've not mentioned the other Doctor much so far, well that's because William Hartnell is hardly in this story. Hartnell was,of course, the very first Doctor Who - the Doctor without who there would be no others. The reason for Hartnell's lack of screen time is both simple and sad - he was simply too ill to be onscreen running around with the other two Doctors.

It was Ill health which caused Hartnell to leave the role in the first place. Hartnell was suffering from Arteriosclerosis and when this story was filmed it was entering it's latter stages. Hartnell was only physically able to film a handful of scenes sat down in his garage at his home. The script writers got round this by saying that the original Doctor is trapped in a "Time Eddy" and so can only interact with his other selves via a psychic link to the TARDIS. Hence the first Doctor only appears on the TARDIS scanner screen a handful of times throughout the story. 

Sadly Hartnell's Ill health becomes apparent as you watch his performance. He's a shadow of his former self in this. No longer does he have the commanding presence that made the first Doctor such a formidable character. He just comes over as frail and tired, even his voice isn't the same. It's nice to see him back, it really is... but also upsetting to see him in such a state. He gets a few iconic lines ("So you're my replacements - a dandy and a clown" being the most famous) but unfortunately Hartnell's performance has no option but to look like exactly what it is - a sick old man reading lines off an autocue. A shame. The Three Doctors was to be the final time that Hartnell ever played The Doctor and was also his last role as an actor. He died a few years later in 1975. He deserved to go out a lot better than he did here.

A really bizarre thing about this story is how in thier few scenes together the other two Doctors both defer to the first Doctor as if he's more knowledgeable than them, and whilst the first Doctor may look older than the other two technically he's actually the youngest. That would be like my fifty year old self meeting up with my thirty five year old self and my fourteen year old self and the fifty year old and the thirty five year old letting the fourteen year old call the shots when in reality you'd just tell him to shut his mouth, leave the grown ups to do the grown up stuff and come back when his balls had dropped ! I know that it's just a way of giving Hartnell his due as the original but narratively (and in-Universe) it makes NO SENSE !

Stephen Thorne plays Omega who's an interesting character. He's the villain of the piece but you get the impression he's not necessarily that evil.

Omega is a member of the Doctor's race - The Time Lords. In fact - he's not only one of the very first Time Lords, he's also the man responsible for them being able to time travel in the first place. Unfortunately his time travel experiments also led him to be trapped in an alternate anti-matter universe that lies at the event horizon of a Black Hole. As a result of this he's been trapped for millions of years, his mind and body eroding away in the process. His people revered him as a hero but also never bothered to attempt to rescue him, as a result Omega has become both insane and bitter. You can hardly blame him really, the Time Lords have ALWAYS been total dicks.

Thorne plays the role very well - with his imposing stature, booming voice (that's always just on the right side of losing it and going completely hysterical) and his cool looking space armour and helmet combo Omega almost comes over as a prototype Darth Vader figure - like Vader he's a tragic hero who fell from grace and ended up going down a darker path. Omega returned in a later Doctor Who story "Ark of Infinity" in 1983 but he was never more effective than he is here.

The regular supporting cast don't get that much to do this time round, hardly surprising as they're completely upstaged by the Doctors and the deep dive into Time Lord history. Nicolas Courtney is quite funny as the Brigadier. This time round he seems to completely disbelieve literally EVERYTHING that's happening in front of his very eyes. He's been hanging out with the Doctor for several years by this point, so why is he so skeptical about everything ? Surely he should be used to seeing bizarre aliens and weird phenomena every day by now ? It makes absolutely no sense but as it's largely played for laughs I'm guessing this was intentional.

SFX - 70'S Who was done on a very low BBC budget (a far cry from what we get today) so obviously there's some points where the ambition of the script far outstrips the means they had available to actually put thier ideas onscreen.

The monsters are pretty decent looking - they're obviously men in rubber suits but I like the design all the same...

They're supposed to be "blob men" made from anti-matter. Received wisdom is that they're known as "Gel Guards" but they're never referred to as such onscreen. These creatures also have an "infant" form which for some reason is achieved by a dodgy 70's early video effect.

Omega gets a creepy looking servant who has a punch up with the Third Doctor at one point.

It's when the show starts trying to do things other than monster effects that the rot sets in - here we have the BBC version of the singularity of a Black Hole...a vent in the floor with a bit of steam coming out of it.

To make matters worse every character that sees it acts like they're completely in awe of it - like it's some kind of collum of flame or something. This is one story that would definitely benefit from a modern day CGI re-edit.

VIOLENCE - Get ready for UNIT troopers versus Gel Guards with lots of explosions that nobody gets killed by. Both the UNIT troops and the Gel Guards are lousy shots, they honestly seem like they wouldn't be able to hit a barn door with a blunderbuss at point blank range. In fact they're such lousy shots that they'd make a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers look like William Tell in comparison.

RATING - The Three Doctors is a story with a hell of a lot of charm. There's huge chunks of it that don't really work or are incredibly shoddy looking but that's all part of it's charm.

It stands as a decent little celebration of Doctor Who's tenth anniversary and also lays the groundwork for many future stories and traditions in the show. It's not top drawer classic Who by any means but it still hits the spot.

3 and a half Doctors out of 5.

ART - 

Below - the various covers for the Target novelisation of the story. Note how the first edition has blatantly ripped off a cover from an early issue of The Fantastic Four...