60 Years of Doctor Who. Part 3: The Third Doctor.

[David Flin]

@M_Kresal continues his series of articles on the Doctors. Comment here.

 

[Charles EP M.]

There's a recurring trend of 20th century TV writers who did huge amounts of stuff only being remembered for their one or two Whos; David Fisher remarked in one interview with DWM that it was basically just them coming to interview him in his old age

 

[RyanF]

Nice to see the respect shown to the Third Doctor era for helping to popularise the program again. It's a personal favourite of mine but think its often overlooked in favour of the ground-breaking 60s stuff and the long-tenured Baker era especially under Williams/Holmes.

With that in mind often feel that the era is underrepresented in novel and audio spin-offs. Especially the latter but that might be an unfortunate side effect of it being so long ago its Doctor has passed on but recent enough most of the other cast are still alive within fandom memory.

There's a recurring trend of 20th century TV writers who did huge amounts of stuff only being remembered for their one or two Whos; David Fisher remarked in one interview with DWM that it was basically just them coming to interview him in his old age

There's a nice gag of this in the Big Finish Unbound audio Exile, set in an ATL where Doctor Who was never produced and instead Juliet Bravo of all things has filled the niche of Doctor Who fandom. All the writer protagonist is remembered for are his few JB episodes, despite them apparently being considered amongst the worst according to his irate fan interviewer.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Even Burglary Most Foul! And that was his best!

 

[shadowofneptune]

Very happy memories of the novelizations of that time. The one with dinosaurs is uh... quite disappointing to actually see instead of imagine.

 

[M_Kresal]

There's a recurring trend of 20th century TV writers who did huge amounts of stuff only being remembered for their one or two Whos; David Fisher remarked in one interview with DWM that it was basically just them coming to interview him in his old age

And not just writers. I've got a memory that when director Derek Martinus passed away, what coverage there was noted rather heavily that he was "former Doctor Who director" to the slight dismay of his surviving family instead of some of his other credits, such as his various Classic Serials. Such is the power of a long-running show with the fanbase that Doctor Who has.

Nice to see the respect shown to the Third Doctor era for helping to popularise the program again. It's a personal favourite of mine but think its often overlooked in favour of the ground-breaking 60s stuff and the long-tenured Baker era especially under Williams/Holmes.

With that in mind often feel that the era is underrepresented in novel and audio spin-offs. Especially the latter but that might be an unfortunate side effect of it being so long ago its Doctor has passed on but recent enough most of the other cast are still alive within fandom memory.


There's a nice gag of this in the Big Finish Unbound audio Exile, set in an ATL where Doctor Who was never produced and instead Juliet Bravo of all things has filled the niche of Doctor Who fandom. All the writer protagonist is remembered for are his few JB episodes, despite them apparently being considered amongst the worst according to his irate fan interviewer.

I think it depends on where in the fandom you're looking at, because I've always seen the Third Doctor stuff held up in pretty high regard. Nor, especially with the Big Finish output, would I say it's underserved by the spin-offs, though there was a time between the passing of Caroline John and Nicholas Courtney and before Tim Trealor and the recasts came along where Big Finish struggled to do much with that era because they lost the surviving cast members in quick succession. Except, perhaps, in the novels, which might be a side-effect of the fact that the early 1990s when they kicked off was also the time when fandom really thumbed its nose at that entire era for a long-time, as Discontinuity Guide and some of the stuff in Licence Denied attests to. In hindsight, people like Paul Cornell who helped lead that thumbing have expressed some regret at how heavily they went after Pertwee and his era, especially given his enthusiasm for the series right up until his passing. Indeed, The Paradise of Death and Ghosts of N-Space audio dramas were among the things that paved the way for Big Finish to come along (and I know from Gary Russell at past Chicago TARDIS events that his biggest regret with Big Finish is that it didn't launch soon enough to get Pertwee involved).

I am also inclined to point out, having reviewed the Unbound range for the blog, that the Juliet Bravo bit was in Deadline and not Exile, good sir!

 

[RyanF]

I am also inclined to point out, having reviewed the Unbound range for the blog, that the Juliet Bravo bit was in Deadline and not Exile, good sir!

Got my comedic single word titled Unbounds mixed up!

 

[Charles EP M.]

The 90s, as I understand it, had a pushback against the Pertwee era by the hungry young NA radicals as itvwas the ur-Who for a lot of fandon, but most of them had grown up with it so more from a place of "yeah I liked it as a kid but it was a bit lame and I'm cool now [nervously hides their autographed novelisations]" so you still got various callbacks. Now it's got all that retro-cool

 

[RyanF]

"yeah I liked it as a kid but it was a bit lame and I'm cool now [nervously hides their autographed novelisations]"

Ah, it's like modern social media discourse on historic pop culture.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Ah, it's like modern social media discourse on historic pop culture.

The only real sneering contempt for old Who with fandom seems to be directed at Wilderness Years and post-2005 spinoffs, which get the "who is this for" dismissal (and tbf War Time and a novelisation of War Time are for a very specific demographic) and "ha ha cheap" because they lack any Doctor & the old context is gone. I think if those very cheap videos from the 90s had the Doctor in them, they'd be retro classics without much change.

 

[RyanF]

The only real sneering contempt for old Who with fandom seems to be directed at Wilderness Years and post-2005 spinoffs, which get the "who is this for" dismissal (and tbf War Time and a novelisation of War Time are for a very specific demographic) and "ha ha cheap" because they lack any Doctor & the old context is gone. I think if those very cheap videos from the 90s had the Doctor in them, they'd be retro classics without much change.

Which is a shame because not only did those works keep the hearth warm whilst the BBC had no interest in producing new Doctor Who but also gave an early opportunity to many writers that would go on to write for the revival. The Virgin New Adventures did similar with some more famous names.

Amazing to think had the BBC still been producing Doctor Who in the 1990s you could have had stories from earlier screenwriters like Terence Dicks, David Banks and Marc Platt alongside others from people who didn't write for the televised adventures until 2005 like RTD, Paul Cornell and Mark Gatiss simultaneously.

 

[Arthur_Phuxache]

Which is a shame because not only did those works keep the hearth warm whilst the BBC had no interest in producing new Doctor Who but also gave an early opportunity to many writers that would go on to write for the revival. The Virgin New Adventures did similar with some more famous names

Would have meant John Nathan-Turner having an even longer stint as producer though, and more Pip & Jane Baker.

 

[M_Kresal]

Which is a shame because not only did those works keep the hearth warm whilst the BBC had no interest in producing new Doctor Who but also gave an early opportunity to many writers that would go on to write for the revival. The Virgin New Adventures did similar with some more famous names.

Amazing to think had the BBC still been producing Doctor Who in the 1990s you could have had stories from earlier screenwriters like Terence Dicks, David Banks and Marc Platt alongside others from people who didn't write for the televised adventures until 2005 like RTD, Paul Cornell and Mark Gatiss simultaneously.

Of course, we almost had that with RTD's Hodiac script and some of the early Virgin New Adventures were adapted from pitches to Andrew Cartmel. Not that it was originally a pitch to Cartmel, but the idea that something like Human Nature with McCoy might have been made remains an intriguing one for me.

Would have meant John Nathan-Turner having an even longer stint as producer though, and more Pip & Jane Baker.

More JN-T is a definite possibility. Less so for Pip & Jane Baker, who only got their latter two script commissions because JN-T was acting script editor after Saward left. Before that, they're very much mixed as there's one decent serial (Mark of the Rani) and one unmitigated disaster (Terror of the Vervoids) under their belts. Cartmel is on-record saying that if there'd been a chance to dump their Time and the Rani script, he'd have done so and he made a point of not commissioning them again both on the basis of how unimpressed he was with that script and how resistant they were to anything he suggested. It's possible JN-T might have talked a Cartmel replacement into commissioning them, but given they only had a few credits post Rani anyway, I don't think it's likely.