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DOCTOR WHO is a British science-fantasy TV show which has aired weekly on the BBC since November 1963. The only regular character is "the Doctor" (he has no other name and the show's title is a joke at the character's expense. Every week he has to introduce himself as the Doctor. The inevitable followup question is: "Doctor who?"). He is an alien "Time Lord" from the planet Gallifrey and can travel in time and space in a machine called the TARDIS, which is bigger inside than outside.
In order to blend in with the culture where it lands, the TARDIS was designed to change its shape, but the Doctor's TARDIS is defective and is locked in the shape of a British police box. The Doctor is a renegade because, unlike most other Time Lords, he becomes involved with people's problems wherever he lands.
Time Lords can regenerate up to 12 times. This has allowed the role of the Doctor to be played by (so far) 10 different actors in the TV series, a situation unique in the annals of episodic television. The actors who have played the Doctor on TV are: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. In addition, two theatrical films were made starring Peter Cushing; and a London stage show had a 4-week run starring Trevor Martin. Finally, Paul McGann played the role for a Fox TV move in 1996. After a number of years when the show was not in production, Christopher Eccleston returned as the Doctor and he later transformed into David Tennant.
Each TV adventure the Doctor has is a serial of from 1 to 12 (but generally four) parts of 25-minutes each, with a cliffhanger at the end of each part. Accompanying the Doctor on his journey have been a series of companions (usually, but not always, Earth girls). These companions are meant to represent the audience and some have become as popular as the Doctor himself. One year's worth of shows (at least during Tom Baker's era) is typically 6 stories (or 24 parts). The longest running companions have been in about 20 stories (or 3 years).
DOCTOR WHO is worthy of scrutiny by virtue of its popular appeal worldwide, its long history dating from its 1963 premiere, and the enormity of its body of work.
Each 4-part story is equivalent to a 90-minute film; each 6-parter equals a 2-hour movie. Considering just Tom Baker's 7 years in the title role, 41 stories aired--the equivalent of 41 feature films, compared with such popular film series built around continuing characters as James Bond (20 films) and Sherlock Holmes (14 Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce films).
DOCTOR WHO has achieved a cult status rivaling STAR TREK, which ran only 3 years and aired 79 hours of episodes; in comparison, the 7 years of Tom Baker DOCTOR WHOs comprise 86 hours. DOCTOR WHO has become even more popular in America than it is in Britain, partly because--as with STAR TREK--it can be seen and enjoyed over and over in reruns; in Britain, the show is seen once; in many cases, episodes are never aired again.
This text covers the Tom Baker era. Baker is a talented and charismatic performer and, for many, the favorite of the seven actors who played the Doctor on TV. He also played the role longer than anyone; and the stories in which he appears are, if anything, more delightful on the tenth viewing than they are upon the first, largely because of the humor and eccentricity he injected into the role.
BACKGROUND
Looking at the early black and white shows now, it seems incredible the series ever survived its beginnings. It had few or no subplots, and many of the early stories seem very padded. Of course, the show was originally aimed primarily at children and only gradually, over the years, did it attain its substantial adult audience.
One reason for its success is the format. Right from the start DOCTOR WHO was a serial, composed of multiple parts with cliffhanger endings at the end of each 25-minute episode.
Also, it has an interesting premise: a mysterious traveler in time and space. The focus of attention is a photogenic prop--apparently a British police box, but in reality a TARDIS, an acronym for Time And Relative Dimensions in Space. In short, a time machine!
In addition, the show can accommodate any type of plot: comedy, fantasy, historical, science fiction, monsters!
The title role was originally played by William Hartnell; his character was not especially likable, at least in the beginning, and being elderly left a lot of the physical aspects to his companions. These included Carole Ann Ford as his granddaughter Susan; William Russell as her science teacher Ian Chesterton; and Jacqueline Hill as her history and english teacher Barbara Wright, from the Coal Hill School. When Ford left, the Doctor acquired Vicki--played by Maureen O'Brien--a space traveler living in a crashed spaceship on the planet Dido. Then Russell and Hill left and Peter Purves joined the cast as Steven Taylor, a spaceship pilot stranded on the planet Mechanus. Other companions included Katarina, Trojan slave girl, played by Adrienne Hill; Sarah Kingdom, a space agent in the year 4000 AD, played by Jean Marsh; Dodo Chaplet, a London schoolgirl, played by Jackie Lane; Polly, an assistant to a computer inventor, played by Anneke Wills; and Ben Jackson, a Cockney merchant seaman, played by Michael Craze.
DOCTOR WHO made an almost immediate impact with its second story, THE DALEKS. These villains practically became a cottage industry in themselves. Such was their popularity that--when the rights were sold to the movies--it was the Daleks who made the transition, not William Hartnell; the sequel film was even named for the Daleks, with no mention in the title of the Doctor. In these films (DOCTOR WHO AND THE DALEKS [1965] and DALEKS: INVASION EARTH 2150 AD [1966]), the Doctor is an eccentric Earth inventor, played delightfully by Peter Cushing. At that time the TV series had not revealed the Doctor's extraterrestrial origins.
Three years after Hartnell originated the role, he left the series for reasons of health. The producers decided to continue the show, recasting the lead with Patrick Troughton. They explained the transition as the Doctor's ability to regenerate. Troughton played the Doctor as a more likable character, but more apt to panic when monsters showed up. He seemed genuinely to enjoy the role and got on well with his companions. He inherited Polly and Ben from the first Doctor; when they left, he acquired Jamie McCrimmon, a piper at the Battle of Culloden, played by Frazer Hines; Victoria Waterfield, whose father was killed by Daleks, played by Deborah Watling; and Zoe Herriot, an astrophysicist from a space station, played by Wendy Padbury.
It was during the Troughton era, in the story THE INVASION, that UNIT was formed to fight alien invasion. The initials stand for United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. Nicholas Courtney, who played the head of UNIT, has the distinction of being the only actor to appear with all of the first 5 Doctors (he played Bret Vyon in the Hartnell story THE DALEK MASTERPLAN); John Levene also premiered as Sgt. Benton at this time.
Troughton played the Doctor for 3 years. In his last story, a 10-parter entitled THE WAR GAMES, it is revealed for the first time the Doctor is an alien from a race called Time Lords. His home planet of Gallifrey is briefly seen but not mentioned by name. The Time Lords punish the Doctor for stealing the TARDIS and using it to meddle in time, which is strictly forbidden. They change his appearance and banish him to Earth, removing from his memory all knowledge of how to work the TARDIS.
At this point the role was taken over by Jon Pertwee who, in a cape, velvet smoking jacket and frilled shirt, played the Doctor as more of a James Bond type of dashing spy smasher, complete with attendant hardware. He fought monsters and alien invaders, sometimes with the aid of a martial art not practiced by any other biped--Venusian Aikido. He had a continuing humanoid enemy--an evil Time Lord called the Master, played suavely by Roger Delgado in a satanic goatee.
His companions included Liz Shaw, an Earth scientist, played by Caroline John; Jo Grant, a bouncy birdbrain who had trained as a spy, played by Katy Manning; and Sarah Jane Smith, a plucky journalist, played by Elisabeth Sladen. Since most of Pertwee's stories took place on Earth, UNIT figured in many of them. Besides Nicholas Courtney and John Levene, an additional UNIT regular was Captain Mike Yates portrayed by Richard Franklin. Pertwee played the Doctor for 5 years before he too left, at which time the role was taken over by Tom Baker.
Baker's Doctor is more of a real person that any of his predecessors or successors in the role. All of these other actors tended to play the Doctor as very one note, but Baker varied his performance from show to show and conveyed a great deal of shading to the character. When he spoke, you never knew whether he would be sarcastic or friendly; whether his answer would make sense or be a nonsequitor.
Tom Baker himself felt the role's main characteristics were the Doctor was an alien who hates gratuitous violence and lacks greed for money or power. He saw the character as never becoming too emotionally involved with people--an innocent with a never ending capacity to be surprised. It is this ability to be surprised which Tom says is his sole trait in common with the Doctor.
His rendition of the Doctor appeared as a sort of Harpo Marx character, with bulging eyes, curly hair and toothy smile. Baker somehow managed to be both heroic and endearingly silly; and especially excelled in reeling off technical jargon in a believable manner. Although he never created any of the plot lines in the TV series, he and his costars frequently rewrote the dialogue, giving their characters the stamp of their own personalities. Tom himself admits to "tampering" with the scripts in rehearsals, incorporating bits of business suggested by children and trying to make the violence more bizarre and less naturalistic.
He and Ian Marter, in collaboration with director James Hill, developed a script for a theatrical film called DOCTOR WHO MEETS SCRATCHMAN, about the Doctor's encounter with the Devil, but were unable to obtain financial backing. In his autobiography, WHO ON EARTH IS TOM BAKER, Tom writes about a vacation to Siena in Italy he took with Ian to work on this. Ian and he were to prepare the storyline and write the dialogue and James Hill would shape it into a screenplay. Some children were staying with them and tried to teach Tom to swim although he was afraid of the water. Tom made some progress but then found himself in difficulties and started to drown. Ian thought he was fooling and didn't rush to help, causing Tom further panic. The children tried to help and eventually got Tom close enough to the edge where Ian, realizing that Tom wasn't faking, pulled him out.
Writing in THE NINE LIVES OF DOCTOR WHO (1999), Peter Haining reveals that after the success of STAR WARS, which included Peter Cushing as the Grand Moff Tarkin, Milton Subotsky, who had produced the two theatrical WHO films in the Sixties, had the idea of costarring Cushing with the current Doctor, Tom Baker, in a new film to be titled DOCTOR WHO'SE GREATEST ADVENTURE, which would once again involve the Daleks, but sadly this never got beyond the planning stage.
The heart of DOCTOR WHO is the Doctor's relationship with his companion(s). The best shows, therefore, feature the favorite assistants. Tom Baker's era was fortunate to have three of the most popular companions: Sarah Jane Smith, held over from the Pertwee shows; Leela, primitive warrior of the Sevateem, played by Louise Jameson; and K9, a mobile computer in the shape of a mechanical dog, voiced mainly by John Leeson. Sarah and K9 were so popular, in fact, they were spun off into a series of their own, K9 AND COMPANY, but although the pilot aired, no additional episodes were ever made.
Baker's other assistants included Ian Marter as Naval Surgeon Lieutenant Harry Sullivan; Mary Tamm played Romana, a Time Lord who underwent a regeneration of her own and was subsequently played by Lalla Ward, who went on in real life to marry Tom Baker. In his last year as the Doctor, Baker picked up 3 new companions--Matthew Waterhouse as Adric, an Outler from the planet Alzarius; Sarah Sutton as Nyssa, a specialist in bioelectronics from the planet Traken; and, in his last show, Janet Fielding as Tegan, an Australian air hostess.
To follow Baker's wildly popular and long entrenched Doctor, the producers chose Peter Davison, who played the role much as he did Tristan on ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL. The bickering between the Doctor and his companions, which began at the tail end of the Baker shows (with a resentful Tegan accidentally entering the TARDIS) became a primary theme throughout Davison's three years. While conflict is at the heart of all good drama, that conflict should be between the Doctor and the villain, not among the Doctor and his friends. Davison, a rather bland actor, tended to sit back and look pained while his overabundance of assistants quarreled among themselves. These companions included 3 carryovers from Baker's era--Adric, Nyssa and Tegan. He also acquired Turlough, an alien planted by the Black Guardian to kill the Doctor, played by Mark Strickson; Kamelion, an automaton from Xeraphas who could transform itself into anything, voiced by Gerald Flood; and the series' first American, a botany student named Peri, played by Nicola Bryant.
After 3 years Davison regenerated into Colin Baker. Ironically, Colin Baker appeared as the character Maxil in a Peter Davison story which took place on Gallifrey called ARC OF INFINITY. In it, he was in charge of executing the Doctor, at which he naturally failed. Colin Baker inherited from Peter Davison another adversary relationship with Peri. If anything, the quarreling had intensified. But whereas Peter Davison was mild, Colin Baker was sarcastic, obnoxious and aggressive; and the constant bickering, coupled with Peri's unattractive (to American ears) accent, made his early shows somewhat irritating to watch. After a year's absence from British TV, DOCTOR WHO returned with Colin Baker and a new companion, Melanie Bush, a computer programmer from Pease Pottage, Sussex, England, played by former British child star Bonnie Langford. Instead of 6 or 7 separate stories, this season went out under the umbrella title of THE TRIAL OF A TIME LORD. After the shortened 14 week season, Colin Baker's contract was not renewed, at the behest of BBC Controller Michael Grade, who decreed future incumbents could play the role only 3 years.
Lacking Colin to smooth the segue, Sylvester McCoy donned a ginger colored, curly Colin Baker wig to transform into the seventh incarnation of the Doctor in 1987. His approach was a return to the humor of the Tom Baker years, with more emphasis on physical shtick; and the show profits greatly from his personal charm. McCoy's Doctor traveled with Mel for 4 stories, at which time she left with Sabalom Glitz; and the Doctor offered to take along slang-spewing 16-year old Ace (nee Dorothy, played by Sophie Aldred), originally from Earth but swept away from there to an Iceworld where he found her working as a waitress. Michael Grade likewise left the BBC, leaving his edict about the 3-year term of the Doctor in doubt.
During Tom Baker's time as the Doctor, the show was in production approximately 43 weeks a year. Rehearsals for each story took 10 days, followed by 5 days production, which generally consisted of 2 days on location and 3 days in the studio.
In the United States, DOCTOR WHO first surfaced in 1973 with the Pertwee stories on PBS in Chicago, Philadelphia and LA to almost total apathy. Then in 1978 the first 4 years of the Tom Baker stories were syndicated to local independent stations. The shows were chopped up by the distributor, Time-Life, with mostly unnecessary opening narration by Howard DaSilva; and occasionally shown out of order, going not by the original BBC air date but by the story number (4A, 4B, etc., which reflected the order in which scripts were assigned, but not necessarily aired).
Subsequently, the series--now including all 7 years of Tom Baker as well as three of his successor, Peter Davison--was turned over to Lionheart and distributed only to PBS stations, where they have proven a popular draw for public TV membership drives, with an inbuilt fan club to man the phones during pledge breaks.
Currently the series, consisting of all surviving stories (17 of the 29 Hartnells, 5 of the 21 Troughtons, 24 Pertwees, 42 Tom Bakers, 20 Davisons, 8 Colin Bakers and 12 McCoys) is playing continuously in PBS syndication. American audiences are now able to see each one many times, sometimes on as many as 3 stations in the same night, and often in a continuous 90-or-more-minute whole story (without the cliffhangers); or in 25-minute episodes in the same market.
On November 26, 1993, the BBC created a short, 3D reunion episode with all the surviving Doctors and many of the actors who played their companions. This was part of a charity event for Children in Need and incorporated the cast of the long running British soap, EastEnders, taking place in Albert Square.
In May 1996 Fox TV aired a 2-hour TV movie/pilot as a co-production with the BBC starring Paul McGann as the Doctor. It committed major faux pas such as making him half human and getting him romantically entangled with a female doctor; but the cardinal sin was that there was virtually no plot and the sparkling dialogue which was one of the outstanding traits of Tom Baker's term as the Doctor was completely absent.
In 2005 a new version of DOCTOR WHO showed up on the BBC with Christopher Eccleston (with a Northern accent) in the title role and Billie Piper as his companion Rose Tyler, a London teen. This version had dynamite CGI effects, and a huge and alien looking TARDIS interior, but the stories were more satiric than straightforward, especially those written by script editor Russell Davies, who also showed a lack of interest in any of the show's history. For instance, when aliens show up in 2005 London and destory Big Ben, the Doctor excitedly thinks this may be "first contact", forgetting the years of aliens who landed on Earth during his time with U.N.I.T.
Gone was the reticence and reserve between the Doctor and his previous companions; the dialogue regretabbly lacked subtext between them; the Doctor just burbled whatever he felt like to anyone, frequently telling people to shut up (including Charles Dickens). Five of the first six episodes were set on Earth and four of these in the U.K. This new version seemed aimed at American TV with 44-minute episodes, ideal for fitting into 60-minute network slots with the addition of 16 minutes of commercials, and a "teaser" before the opening credits; the end credits were now a crawl instead of the one-screen per performer style of the earlier series. Hardly had the new series begun broadcast, before the BBC announced that Eccleston, for fear of being typecast, would not return for a second season. David Tennant was been announced to replace him and lasted for several season, with a variety of companions, the most likable of whom was Dr. Martha Jones. A new Doctor will be announced for the 2010 season.
Following is an story by story commentary on Tom Baker's stories.
01 ROBOT
02 THE ARK IN SPACE
03 THE SONTARAN EXPERIMENT
04 GENESIS OF THE DALEKS
05 REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN
06 TERROR OF THE ZYGONS
07 PLANET OF EVIL
08 PYRAMIDS OF MARS
09 THE ANDROID INVASION
10 THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS
11 THE SEEDS OF DOOM
12 THE MASK OF MANDRAGORA
13 THE HAND OF FEAR
14 THE DEADLY ASSASSIN
15 THE FACE OF EVIL
16 THE ROBOTS OF DEATH
17 THE TALONS OF WENG-CHIANG
18 THE HORROR OF FANG ROCK
19 THE INVISIBLE ENEMY
20 IMAGE OF THE FENDAHL
21 THE SUN MAKERS
22 UNDERWORLD
23 THE INVASION OF TIME
24 THE RIBOS OPERATION
25 THE PIRATE PLANET
26 THE STONES OF BLOOD
27 THE ANDROIDS OF TARA
28 THE POWER OF KROLL
29 THE ARMAGEDDON FACTOR
30 DESTINY OF THE DALEKS
31 CITY OF DEATH
32 THE CREATURE FROM THE PIT
33 NIGHTMARE OF EDEN
34 THE HORNS OF NIMON
35 SHAD
36 THE LEISURE HIVE
37 MEGLOS
38 FULL CIRCLE
39 STATE OF DECAY
40 WARRIORS' GATE
41 THE KEEPER OF TRAKEN
42 LOGOPOLIS