The Three Doctors

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065 - The Three Doctors
Doctor Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor)
Patrick Troughton (Second Doctor)
William Hartnell (First Doctor)
Writer Bob Baker
Dave Martin
Director Lennie Mayne
Script Editor Terrance Dicks
Producer Barry Letts
Executive producer(s) None
Production code RRR
Series Season 10
Length 4 episodes, 25 mins each
Transmission date December 30, 1972–January 20, 1973
Preceded by The Time Monster
Followed by Carnival of Monsters

The Three Doctors is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, first broadcast in four weekly parts from the December 30, 1972 to January 20, 1973. The serial opened the tenth anniversary year of the series.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

The home planet of the Time Lords is under siege, by an unknown force that by all accounts should not even exist. The only person who can help them is the Doctor, but even he will need assistance — from his previous selves.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Omega parades before two of the three Doctors and Sergeant Benton.
Enlarge
Omega parades before two of the three Doctors and Sergeant Benton.

A superluminal signal is sent to Earth, carrying with it an unusual energy blob that seems intent on capturing the Third Doctor. In the meantime, the homeworld of the Time Lords is under siege, with all the power sustaining it being drained through a black hole. Trapped and desperate, the Time Lords do the unthinkable and break the First Law of Time, allowing the Doctor to aid himself by summoning his two previous incarnations from the past.

Unfortunately, the First Doctor is trapped in a time eddy, unable to fully materialize, and can only communicate via viewscreen, but the Second Doctor joins the Third in investigating the origins of the creature and the black hole, while UNIT headquarters faces an attack by the gel-like alien creatures.

The First Doctor deduces the black hole is a bridge between universes, and the other two Doctors allow the TARDIS to be swallowed up by the energy creature, which transports them, Dr Tyler, Jo Grant, Sergeant Benton and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart into an antimatter universe created by the legendary Time Lord Omega. Omega was a solar engineer who created the supernova that powers Time Lord civilization, but was considered killed in the explosion. In actuality, he had been transported to the antimatter universe, where his will and thought turned the formless matter into physicality. Trapped, due to the fact that his will is the only thing maintaining reality, he vowed revenge on the Time Lords who left him stranded.

It is clear that the exile has made Omega quite insane. Along with his revenge, he has summoned the Doctors here to take over the mental maintenance of the antimatter universe so he can escape. However, the Doctors discover that years of exposure to the corrosive effects of the black hole's singularity have destroyed Omega's physical body - he is trapped forever. Driven over the edge by this discovery, Omega now demands that the Doctors share his exile.

The Doctors escape briefly, and offer Omega a proposition. They will give him his freedom if they send the others back to the positive matter universe. Omega agrees, and when that is done, the Doctors offer Omega a force field generator containing the Second Doctor's recorder, which had fallen in it prior to the transport through the black hole. Omega knocks the generator over in a rage and the unconverted positive matter recorder falls out of the force field. When the recorder comes into contact with the antimatter universe, it annihilates everything in a flash, returning the Doctors in the TARDIS to the positive matter universe. The Third Doctor explains that death was the only freedom anyone could offer Omega.

With the power now restored to the Time Lords, they are able to send the First and Second Doctors back to their respective time periods. As a reward, the Time Lords give the Third Doctor a new dematerialization circuit for the TARDIS and restore his knowledge of how to travel through space and time.

[edit] Cast

[edit] In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in November 1975. It marked the first appearance by the First Doctor in a novelisation commissioned by Target, although this is considered a Third Doctor-era story. Common practice by Target Books was to prepend the words Doctor Who and the ... to the story titles; since this was impractical for this title, this became the first Target novelization to use the title form Doctor Who - which would become the standard in the early 1980s. A Polish translation was published in 1994.

The novelization provides a rationale for Omega's realm to be set in a quarry while the televised version does not: the millennia of mental effort required to sustain his world inside the black hole has taken its toll, and once lush terrain has degenerated into mere rock and soil.

[edit] Continuity

  • The story sets up a mildly antagonistic relationship between the various incarnations of the Doctor, for humorous effect. The Second and Third Doctors bicker, compete and try to put each other down. Even the First Doctor dismisses the others by saying, "So you're my replacements — a dandy and a clown!" This kind of relationship between the Doctor's selves was seen again in subsequent multi-Doctor stories. Troughton and Pertwee in particular enjoyed the banter so much that they carried on the mock competition when they appeared together at science fiction conventions.
  • Omega would return in the Fifth Doctor serial, Arc of Infinity (1983), as well as in the Big Finish Productions audio play Omega and the novel The Infinity Doctors.
  • This story was released on DVD in the UK in November of 2003 as part of the Doctor Who 40th Anniversary Celebration releases, representing the Jon Pertwee years, with many extra features. Some copies came in a box set housing a limited edition Corgi model of "Bessie", the Third Doctor's vintage roadster.

[edit] Production

  • Working titles for this story included The Black Hole.
  • This serial was specially scripted for the tenth anniversary of the show although it actually began transmission only five weeks after the series' ninth anniversary on November 23, 1972. It was, however, the first story of the tenth season.
  • The script was originally supposed to feature all three Doctors equally, but William Hartnell was far too ill to be able to play the full role as envisioned. He was therefore unfortunately reduced to a pre-recorded cameo role, appearing only on the TARDIS's scanner and the space-time viewer of the Time Lords. It would be the last time he played the Doctor and his last acting role before his death in 1975. Hartnell's scenes were filmed at BBC's Ealing Studios and not in a garage or a garden shed as fan myth would have it. The serial's promotional photo shoot was the only time the three actors were shown together.
  • The production team also planned for Frazer Hines to reprise his role of Jamie McCrimmon alongside the Second Doctor; however, Hines was not available, due to his work on Emmerdale Farm. Much of the role originally intended for Jamie was reassigned to Sergeant Benton.

[edit] Video releases

  • This story was released twice on VHS, first in August 1991 and thereafter remastered and rereleased in 2002 as part of the W H Smith's The Time Lord Collection boxed set.

[edit] External links

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Target novelisation


UNIT television stories  v • d • e 
Second Doctor: (The Web of Fear) | The Invasion
Third Doctor: Spearhead from Space | Doctor Who and the Silurians | The Ambassadors of Death | Inferno | Terror of the Autons | The Mind of Evil | The Claws of Axos | The Dæmons | Day of the Daleks | The Time Monster | The Three Doctors | The Green Death | Invasion of the Dinosaurs | Planet of the Spiders
Fourth Doctor: Robot | Terror of the Zygons | The Android Invasion
Seventh Doctor: Battlefield
Tenth Doctor: The Christmas Invasion
Minor Appearances: The Time Warrior | The Seeds of Doom | The Five Doctors | Aliens of London/World War Three
See also: UNIT dating controversy
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