The Three Doctors Episode One

The one where the first three Doctors team up...

Doctor Who celebrated its tenth anniversary a whole 11 months before the actual anniversary, because the tenth season started in December 1972. Would it have been wiser to celebrate the anniversary at the start of Season 11, which started in December 1973? Or would that have been too late?

The idea of having more than one Doctor at a time starts here. There'd only been subtle hints and reminders of "earlier Doctors" before now (a glimpse of Hartnell in The Power of the Daleks, and the first two Doctors seen during the Dalek mind scan in Day of the Daleks), but this story was the first to acknowledge properly that there had been earlier Doctors - other actors - and to joyfully bring them back! Now that's pretty damn exciting, isn't it?

However, The Three Doctors starts so mind-numbingly slowly that it feels more of a wake than a celebration. For three extremely dull minutes all we really see is a fuzzy-haired man tinker with a weather balloon, and a jeep driving around. The most interesting thing to happen is that Mr Ollis, the warden at Minsbridge Wildlife Sanctuary, vanishes when he touches the cosmic ray monitoring device, but it's not clear why I should care about this.

The story continues at a leisurely pace when Dr Tyler (Pertwee wrongly calls him 'professor') takes the device to UNIT, much to the Brigadier's understandable consternation. As he points out, UNIT is supposed to be a top secret establishment, but if that's the case, how does Dr Tyler know about it, and more pertinently, how to contact them? And why have a sign outside UNIT HQ saying it's UNIT HQ if it's all top secret? The sign even tells people the name of the officer in charge, which is ideal research for any enemy agents looking for inside info!

The Doctor ascertains that some sort of space lightning (aka compressed light, or controlled super-lucent emission) has transported a dangerous organism to Earth which seems to have a hunting instinct... specifically, an instinct to hunt him! The special effect for the organism is, shall I say... creative, even if it's not aged terribly well. As a squirming mass of reds and blues it uses the sewer system of UNIT HQ to get from A to B, from laboratory to courtyard, searching for the Doctor. It mistakenly absorbs first Ollis (whose screaming face in the x-ray plate is really spooky), then Tyler, before trying to get the Doctor but actually only taking his car, Bessie. It's a lovely little touch that the Doctor tells Jo: "When I tell you to run, you run!", a subtle nod to the impending arrival of his previous self.

And then there's one of those classic Doctor Who WTF moments when one, then two, then three space jellies materialise in the grounds of UNIT HQ and tip-toe toward Corporal Palmer and his astonished men ("Holy Moses" indeed!). These nameless creatures are truly one of the worst monsters Doctor Who has ever concocted. They look like diseased marshmallows and wobble along in such a comical, non-aggressive way that the whole effect is laughable. They even make silly Mr Blobby-style noises ("blobble-obble-obble"). Lennie Mayne does direct the battle scene as effectively as he can, with plenty of explosions and gunfire, but when you're dealing with a bunch of giant orange space jellies, there's only so much jeopardy you can muster. These creatures - Gell Guards, never named on screen - are simply ridiculous.

We're then treated to a newly redecorated TARDIS interior (the pudding bowls of The Time Monster obviously didn't go down well) and it's great to have a new reaction scene, this time from Benton, who's never seen inside the police box before (has any of UNIT?). John Levene handles this well, looking up high and off camera, giving the impression the room is much, much larger and higher than we're seeing. The Doctor prompts him about it being bigger on the inside, to which Benton replies, wonderfully: "It's pretty obvious, isn't it?"

The Doctor calls for help from the Time Lords, which seems a little premature seeing as he's faced much worse situations than this before now. Also, he said that the creatures were after him, and nobody else, and told Jo that if she just ignored the organism, it'd leave her alone. To call in the Time Lords is a bit of a cowardly act, in my opinion. Is he not able to sort this bunch of space jellies out on his own?

After a very slow start, the episode really warms up halfway through when we're transported to the home planet of the Time Lords (still not named), a day-glo Perspex vista which is actually impressively large, considering its time on screen. It's the most amount of Time Lords we've ever seen at one time (previously limited to four, in The War Games), and here we meet the President and Chancellor (the latter played by Clyde Pollitt, who also played a Time Lord in The War Games - the same character?). Roy Purcell makes for an imposing President, but Pollitt struggles to inject any truth or realism into his lines and really lets the side down.

The Time Lords say that the space lightning is being projected out of a black hole, which in itself is impossible as nobody can live in a world of anti-matter, a force "equal and opposite" to theirs. Seeing as every available Time Lord is occupied combating the Time Lords' energy drain, they decide to allow the Doctor to help himself (just how few Time Lords are there?). They pluck the Second Doctor out of his timeline (at a point where he's busy running away from something in a quarry!) and send him to help the Third Doctor.

Patrick Troughton appears more than 18 minutes in (his first time in colour!), and when he does appear, he's obscured by the time rotor on the console. It's a truly appalling camera angle to choose, and although it's obvious it's done like that to create the effect of the Doctor appearing from nowhere, it's a pretty sorry way to herald the return of the Second Doctor Who!

Predictably, Troughton is wonderful, injecting a sense of fun and lightness of touch which has been missing from the programme since he left. Troughton's performance was always nimble, fluid and unique, quite different to Jon Pertwee's style, which is much more contained, studied and serious. The two Doctors couldn't be more different, which I guess is why they don't get on, and spend a lot of time bickering childishly. On the one hand, it's tiresome, but on the other, it's damn good fun to see two incarnations of Doctor Who having a row!

The Third Doctor seems to take an instant dislike to his predecessor, based on nothing in particular. It's interesting that each Doctor sees himself as distinct from the other, a different character or person, almost. The Third Doctor knows everything the Second ever will, but still deems him a fool (he believes his chances will be halved, not doubled, by the Second Doctor's involvement). Conversely, the Second Doctor doesn't really react to being confronted by his own future, barely passing comment on his third self at all. Writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin missed a trick addressing how the Doctors might feel seeing past and future versions of themselves.

Troughton may be the light relief here ("You see, Jo... I may call you Jo, mayn't I?") but he's still capable of the flashes of gravitas that he brought to his Doctor, notably when he tells the Third Doctor, gravely: "They are very worried, you know..." But it's the natural comedian in him which shines most, and I had to laugh when Jo mentions a Beatles song, and he quips: "Oh, how does it go?" as he readies his recorder.

And if all this wasn't exhilarating enough, the Time Lords decide to send the First Doctor to act as a balance and stop the Second and Third arguing. Sadly, William Hartnell was a shadow of his former glory, too ill to take any active part in the story, which is a crying shame. It had been just over six years since he'd been the Doctor last, but in that time his health had deteriorated profoundly. There had always been glimpses of the effects of his arteriosclerosis during his time as the Doctor, but here the illness has taken its toll, and Hartnell even looks like a different man.

Hartnell is reduced to addressing his successors sitting in a pyramid, seen via the monitor in the TARDIS, reflections partly obscuring his face. He is never seen full-screen, even when on the Time Lords' telly. Were no full-colour, full-screen camera shots of Hartnell ever considered? Hartnell is obviously struggling with his lines, and the interaction between Hartnell on TV, and Troughton and Pertwee in studio, is lame. While it's lovely to see William Hartnell again, dressed for the part and as crotchety as ever, it's saddening to see him like this, and in some ways I'd prefer it if he hadn't appeared at all. His involvement is minimal and limited, and feels almost as tokenistic as the way they squeezed Tom Baker into The Five Doctors.

Despite the First Doctor being the earliest, hence the least experienced and knowledgeable, it is he who tells the others that the space lightning is actually a time bridge ("...so cross it!"). But if the First Doctor knows this, then surely the Second and Third do too? The idea that the First Doctor has the superior knowledge and experience is a huge fallacy based on the fact the First Doctor is physically older, but actually the Second is more knowledgeable than the First, and the Third more so than both. And so it goes on, but the same mistake is made again in The Five Doctors when the First Doctor appears to have the upper hand of his successors, including the much more experienced (but younger-looking) Fifth.

The cliffhanger sees the Third Doctor and Jo zapped off to wherever by the anti-matter organism, leaving the Second Doctor with Benton in the Third Doctor's TARDIS. It's all so wonderfully jumbled! It's great to have Troughton back, but disheartening to see Hartnell reduced to a bit of tokenism in his own show (unavoidable, considering the circumstances). But the mystery of who or what is hunting the Doctor from the black hole remains...

First broadcast: December 30th, 1972

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Patrick Troughton enlivens Doctor Who all over again within moments of appearing. It's good to have him back.
The Bad: The Gell Guards. So embarrassing!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

"Now listen to me" tally: 20
Neck-rub tally: 11 - the Doctor rubs his neck at 19m 09s when trying to explain who the Second Doctor is.

NEXT TIME: Episode Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-three-doctors.html

The Three Doctors Special Edition is available on BBC DVD as part of the Revisitations 3 box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Revisitations-Cybermen-Doctors-Robots/dp/B006H4RB6O