Third Doctor
The Third Doctor was the third incarnation of the Time Lord known as the Doctor.
Biography
Regeneration and Exile
When the the Doctor was judged by the time lords, after he was caught, thanks to the events with the War Lords and the War Chief (DW: The War Games), the Doctor was sentenced to a forced regeneration and was exiled on Earth in the 20th century, with his memory blocked so he could not use his TARDIS to escape. He was later found, collapsed outside the TARDIS, and brought to a hospital with a coma, where his unusual anatomy confounds the medical doctors. At the same time, concurrent with the Doctor’s arrival, a swarm of mysterious meteorites falls on the English countryside, containing plastic polyhedron, which is in fact a power unit for a non-physical alien intelligence known as the Nestene Consciousness. Normally disembodied, it has an affinity for plastic, and is able to animate humanoid facsimiles made from that material, known as Autons. The Nestene takes over a toy factory in London, and plans to replace key government and public figures with Auton duplicates.
Finally UNIT, with the help of the new Doctor and his electroshock device, they are able to defeat the Autons and the Nestene. The Brigadier fears that the Nestenes might return and asks for the Doctor's help. The Doctor agrees to join UNIT in exchange for facilities to help repair the TARDIS and a car like the sporty antique roadster he commandeered during the adventure. At his insistence, Liz stays on as his assistant.(DW: Spearhead from Space)
Adventures with Liz
Summoned by the Brigadier to an underground research centre at Wenley Moor, the Doctor and Liz Shaw meet the Silurians for the first time and the truth about the first rulers of the planet Earth, who went into hibernation millions of years ago but have now been revived by power from the research centre. The Doctor strives for peace between reptiles and humans and manages to gain the trust of the old Silurian leader, but a rebellious young Silurian seizes power and releases a deadly virus that threatens to wipe out humanity.
The Doctor finds an antidote with the help of Liz, but the Silurians retaliate by taking over the research centre and preparing to destroy the Van Allen Belt, a natural barrier shielding the Earth from solar radiation harmful to humans but beneficial to reptiles. The creatures are tricked into returning to their caves when the Doctor overloads the reactor, threatening to cause a nuclear explosion. The Brigadier, to the Time Lord's disgust, then has the Silurian base blown up. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
The Doctor then helped radiation-dependent alien ambassadors after they were kidnapped by the xenophobic ex-astronaut General Carrington, who wanted to discredit the aliens and convince the world's to wage war against them. The Doctor and UNIT were able to thwart his plans and arrange the safe exchange of ambassadors for astronauts. (DW: The Ambassadors of Death)
Liz's last adventure with the Doctor happens when UNIT is providing security cover at an experimental drilling project designed to penetrate the Earth's crust and release a previously-untapped source of energy. Soon however the drill head starts to leak an oily green liquid that transforms those who touch it into vicious primeval creatures with a craving for heat. The Doctor is accidentally transported by the partially-repaired TARDIS control console into a parallel universe where the drilling project is at a more advanced stage and, thwarted by his friends' ruthless alter egos, he works to save both universes. The Alternative Universe is destroyed but gives the Doctor information on the course the project would take, allowing him to save his own universe. (DW: Inferno)
Liz's extensive training, however, still paled in comparison to the Doctor's own knowledge of the universe and scientific principles far beyond that of Earth's. Eventually, she resigned from UNIT and returned to Cambridge. She reportedly told the Brigadier that all the Doctor really needed was "someone to pass him his test tubes and tell him how brilliant he was." This feeling probably contributed to her decision to return to her own research. (DW: Terror of the Autons)
Enter the Master and adventures with Jo
A renegade Time Lord known as the Master arrives at a circus run by a man named Luigi Rossini and steals a dormant Nestene energy unit from a museum.
He reactivates it using a radio telescope and uses his hypnotic abilities to take control of a small plastics firm run by the Farrel family, where he organises the production of deadly Auton dolls, chairs and daffodils.
The Master has an evil scheme to destroy humanity and silence the Doctor forever using the Nestene. Aided by the Brigadier and his new companion Jo Grant, the Doctor ends the Master plans but its not the end of his schemes.(DW: Terror of the Autons)
The Doctor and Jo visit Stangmoor Prison for a demonstration of the Keller Machine -a device claimed to be capable of extracting negative emotions from hardened criminals, until he discovers that the Master is behind all of this and himself losses the control of his own machine.Finally, the machine is destroyed but the Master escapes again. (DW: The Mind of Evil)
After the arrival of the Master on Earth, the Time Lords began to allow the Doctor limited use of his TARDIS, but always compelling it to return him to 20th century Earth when his missions were completed, essentially turning him into "some sort of a galactic yo-yo".It started after the invasion the Axos on Earth thanks to the Master. Axos is defeat and the Doctor starts to travel with the Time Lords permit. (DW: The Claws of Axos)
The Time Lords discover that the Master has stolen their secret file on the Doomsday Weapon and decide to send the Doctor to retrieve it for them. The Doctor travels for again after his exile and Jo leaves the planet for the first time. They help the colonists to stay in the planet but the Master escapes again. (DW: Colony in Space)
The Doctor discovers that in Devil's End, a old evil his asleep and tries to stop his awakening, but the Master, posing as a rural vicar, shows at first to summon the last of the Dæmons kind, Azal, for his personnel gain. Almost in the end, Azal finally decides to give his power to the Master, and fires electricity at the Doctor to kill him. However, Jo, steps in front of the Doctor, asking Azal to kill her instead. This act of self-sacrifice does not make sense to Azal, and the confusion sends him into an agony. He shouts for all of them to leave as he is dying. Bok reverts to his stone form, and as everyone runs out of the church, it blows up. The Master tries to escape in Bessie, but the Doctor's remote control brings the car back, and the Master is taken at last into custody, to be put in maximum security. (DW: The Dæmons)
The Doctor finds the Daleks again after a long time, thinking that they were dead ruling in a near future, and Freedom fighters from the future try to attempt to thwart the Dalek invasion by coming back in time to assassinate a delegate at the second World Peace Conference.Its later explain that they are attempting to kill Styles because he caused an explosion at the peace conference, starting a series of wars that left humanity vulnerable to Dalek conquest - a history that they wish to change. The Doctor realises that the explosion was actually caused by Shura in a misguided attempt to fulfil his mission. Returning to the 20th Century with Jo, he has Styles' house evacuated. Daleks and Ogrons arrive in pursuit, but are destroyed when Shura detonates his bomb.(DW: Day of the Daleks)
The Doctor and Jo make a test flight in the TARDIS and arrive on the planet Peladon. Seeking shelter, they enter the citadel of the soon-to-be-crowned King Peladon, where the Doctor is mistaken for a human dignitary summoned to act as Chairman of a committee assessing an application by the planet to join the Galactic Federation. A great conspiracy is in fact alive between everyone and only the Doctor and Jo are able to help the King. In the end the traitors are killed the Federation and the Peladon Kingdom return to normal, and the Doctor and Jo leave. (DW: The Curse of Peladon)
The Doctor and Jo visit the Master, now held in captivity on a small island prison, after being captured by UNIT (DW: The Daemons). The Master is being held indefinitely and is the only prisoner. He claims to have reformed but refuses to reveal the location of his TARDIS. As they depart, the old-school patriotic governor, Colonel Trenchard, tells them that some ships have been mysteriously disappearing. The Doctor cannot resist investigating and he and Jo are soon attacked, while examining a Sea Fort, by an underwater Silurian.
This man-sized bipedal lizard is called a 'Sea Devil' by a crew member who's been driven half mad. The Doctor meanwhile discovers that the Master, assisted by a misguided Trenchard, is stealing electrical equipment from the naval base to build a machine that will control the Sea Devils. The evil Time Lord intends to use the reptiles as an army to enable him to conquer the planet, and he begins by using the machine to summon some of them from the sea. The Doctor enters the Sea Devil's base and tries to encourage peaceful negotiation, recalling how he had failed to broker an agreement between mankind and the Silurians, but matters are left unresolved when the base is attacked by depth charges. The Sea Devils are defeated and the Master escapes again. (DW: The Sea Devils)
The Doctor is summoned by the Time Lords the deliver a special delivery to a unknown person and is taken to the 30th century, near the end of the Earth Empire. On the colony world of Solos, something is transforming the human population, turning them into hideous mutants. But as the Third Doctor and Jo find out, that its only the beginning.The Doctor with the help of Professor Sondergaard discovers that the Solonians have different stages. In the end Ky goes to his metamorphoses and deals with the Marshall and peace returns to Solos. (DW: The Mutants)
The Doctor discovers that the Master, in the guise of Professor Thascalos, has constructed at the Newton Institute in Wootton a device known as TOMTIT - Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial Time - with which to gain control over Kronos, a creature from outside time. The creature is summoned but the effect proves uncontrollable.In the end Atlantis is destroyed by Kronos and the Doctor discovers that Kronos isn't so irrational as it could be seen. The Doctor lets the Master escapes eternal punishment and everything ends well. (DW: The Time Monster)
Freedom and Jo's departure
A superluminal signal is sent to Earth, carrying with it an unusual energy blob that seems intent on capturing the 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. 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 anantimatter universe created by the legendary Time Lord Omega. 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, lifting his exile. (DW: The Three Doctors)
The Doctor and Jo arrive the SS Bernice, a cargo ship crossing the Indian Ocean. But things are not what they seem; a monster appears in the sea, events repeat themselves, and a giant hand steals the TARDIS. Investigation reveals that they are in fact inside a Miniscope, an alien peepshow sporting numerous miniaturised environments, which showman Vorg and his assistant Shirna have brought to amuse the populace of the planet Inter Minor. After leaving the Miniscope, the doctor returns all the creatures home and destroys the machine to never be used again. (DW: Carnival of Monsters)
The Doctor and Jo are caught up in the escalating tension between planets Earth and Draconia, and discover that the Master is secretly working to provoke the two sides into all-out war, under the orders of the Daleks. In the end, the Doctor, barely conscious due to shot grazing the Doctor's head, asks Jo to help him into the TARDIS. He staggers over to the console, dematerialising the ship, then pressing his palms to the telepathic circuits. He sends a message to the Time Lords... (DW: Frontier in Space)
Injured after a shoot-out between his old nemesis the Master and the Ogrons, slaves to the evil Daleks, the Doctor sends a message to the Time Lords, asking them to pilot his TARDIS and follow the Daleks to their new base. After he slips into a coma, it falls to his assistant Jo Grant to explore the planet where the TARDIS finally materialises. The Doctor and Jo Grant team up with a guerilla group of Thals on the planet Spiridon, seeking to stop the Daleks from gaining the invisibility powers of the native humanoid species. They discover the base with more than 10.000 Daleks hibernating and decide what must be done for the sake of the universe... . Finally, the Daleks buried in earth and the Thals thank the Doctor leaving the planet on the Supreme Dalek ship, but the Supreme doesn't give saying that the Daleks will return. (DW: Planet of the Daleks)
A death at an abandoned coal pit brings UNIT and the Doctor to the South Wales town of Llanfairfach when the body is found glowing bright green. Global Chemicals are the responsible due to responding to BOSS, the perfect machine designed to learn and give orders, if it must be by sacrificing persons for the mission. the Doctor succeeds defeating BOSS and all the maggots are killed thanks to the Professor Jones formula. In the end Jo and Cliff announce they are getting engaged and then plan to travel the Amazon looking for a rare fungus. The Doctor offers his blessing and gives Jo the blue crystal as a present, but is evidently very upset by the situation and quietly slips away while the party is in full swing. (DW: The Green Death)
Adventures with Sarah Jane
Journalist Sarah Jane Smith is impersonating her aunt, virologist Lavinia Smith, in order to gain access to a research centre where top scientists are being held in protective custody while UNIT investigates the disappearance of a number of their colleagues. The missing scientists have been kidnapped by a Sontaran, Linx, and taken back to medieval England, where they are working under hypnosis to repair his crashed spaceship. The Doctor and Sarah the death of Linx and the destruction of the future weapons, return together. (DW: The Time Warrior)
The Doctor and Sarah arrive in 1970s London to find that it has been evacuated, due to the mysterious appearance of dinosaurs. It turns out that the dinosaurs are being brought to London via a time machine in order to further a plan to revert London to a pre-technological level. In the end, Whitaker and Grover are transported to their "golden age" and Sarah turns officially in the Doctor's companion. (DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs)
The TARDIS crash-lands on a planet that holds the key to saving the galaxy from a plague, but the Doctor first needs to deal with the Daleks and a killer city that controls everything. The City is destroyed along with the Dalek space ship, and the Doctor sadly commented that the Universe is now down to 699 Wonders. (DW: Death to the Daleks)
The Doctor returns to Peladon fifty years after his last visit, finding Queen Thalira, daughter of the late King Peladon, on the throne. A tense labor dispute between Pel nobility and miners is worsened when apparitions of their deity Aggedor attack and kill several miners. The Galactic Federation desperately needs Trisilicate for its war against Galaxy 5, and sends in brutual Ice Warrior troopers to ensure production. The Doctor discovers a devious plot at the heart of Aggedor's appearances. The Ice Warriors reveal to be them the causers of everything due to returning to their origins. After they being defeated Peladon kingdom finally rests in peace and Sarah and the Doctor leave without no one noticing. (DW: The Monster of Peladon)
Guilt, Redemption and Regeneration
The Doctor continued to assist UNIT, though his presence on Earth was now much more intermittent.
Finally, to defeat the Spiders of Metebelis III, he sacrificed his own life by exposing himself to lethal levels of radiation. With the assistance of his old mentor K'anpo Rimpoche, he was able to regenerate into his fourth incarnation. (DW: Planet of the Spiders)
After Regeneration
The Fourth Doctor seemed to dislike his predecessor. He commented that his new nose was a definite improvement only hours after his regeneration (DW: Robot). When on Karn, the Fourth Doctor mentioned that he preferred his then-current form than "what he had last time". (DW: The Brain of Morbius)
Right after his regeneration, the Eleventh Doctor did a quick check of his body. When commenting on his nose, he said, "I've had worse". (DW: The End of Time)
- For a list of Third Doctor stories in the order in which he experienced them, see Third Doctor - Timeline.
Characteristics
The Third Doctor often had problems with the Brigadier's tendency to think of situations in military terms and with petty officials generally. The Third Doctor had a continuing series of contests and challenges with the Master, and was the first known incarnation to encounter the Silurians and Sea Devils as well as the Ogrons, and the Autons. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Sea Devils, Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons and Day of the Daleks) The Third Doctor never faced the Cybermen but he and Sarah Jane Smith did witness a Raston Warrior Robot massacre a squad of Cybermen (DW: The Five Doctors)
His time with UNIT had a lasting effect. Even though his following incarnations pretty much severed all ties with UNIT, the Ninth Doctor and Tenth Doctor worked with them a few times when the need arose and the Doctor's later incarnations never did resign this one's posistion. It was shown that the Doctor was well known within UNIT even up to the late 2000s with all of the members wanting to meet him. Captain Erisa Magambo and Proffessor Malcolm Taylor were both exicted to hear from him with Magambo even saluting him despite it annoying the Doctor. The two described the Doctor as the man everyone in UNIT wanted to meet but feared the day they would as they knew that that day would bring chaos. (DW: Planet of the Dead)
Psychological Profile
Personality
The Third Doctor was a man of action, aggressively joining the fray whenever he could, unlike the first two Doctors who generally insinuated themselves into events discreetly. This was a Doctor who was unafraid to pitch in with his physical skills, often bringing his mastery of Venusian aikido into play when the situation called for it.
But much like his predecessors, his keen mind was still his primary asset, and this was a Doctor who particularly loved to create and play with gadgets of all sorts. This passion displayed itself both in terms of the Third Doctor's scientific bent and in his love of vehicles, such as his yellow roadster Bessie and his car which he specially built.
Staunchly moral, he was every bit the gentleman, a hero of the Victorian mold.
The Doctor had a noticeably antagonistic relationship with his predecessor, the Second Doctor. Their relationship was so rocky that they were incapable of working together without the authoritative presence of the First Doctor. (DW: The Three Doctors, DW: The Five Doctors) The nature of the Second Doctor's regeneration into the Third may be the cause of their open disliking of each other. By contrast, the Fourth Doctor, although he never met himself in his previous incarnation, occasionally spoke rather fondly of that form.
Habits and Quirks
The Third Doctor was known for his great passion for gadgets.
Known for his ornate fashion sense, most famously his frilled shirt, smoking jacket and inverness cape outfit. As such, his first and second incarnations called him a dandy.
He would occasionally perform magic tricks
He loved his vintage car Bessie and later his specially designed futuristic car almost as much as he loved his TARDIS. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians, Invasion of the Dinosaurs)
He could at times by very tetchy and argumentative, an attitude that he demonstrated repeatedly with bureaucrats and other authority figures.
Having been a man of action, he used a wide variety of martial arts including Venusian Aikido.
He particularly enjoyed wine. (DW: Day of the Daleks)
His was the first incarnation to steal clothes from a hospital: his eighth and eleventh incarnations did the same. (DW: Doctor Who (1996), The Eleventh Hour)
Mysteries and Discrepancies
- The newly regenerated Doctor sported a tattoo on one arm. (DW: Spearhead from Space) This was the mark made by the Time Lords to signify the Doctor was an exile. (NA: Christmas on a Rational Planet) Jon Pertwee was once in the navy. It was a sort of tradition to get a tattoo. This is why it is there.
- The Doctor describes himself as thousands of years old (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians), which seems inconsistent with figures of his age given in later incarnations. He repeats that age later to Jo Grant. Previous incarnations of the Doctor gave his age to "some hundred years"
Unrecorded Adventures
- Though sidetracked to the planet Nooma (MA: Speed of Flight), the Doctor, Jo and Mike Yates visited the planet Karfel and encountered the Borad and Katz's father there. (DW: Timelash)
- In Castrovalva, the Fifth Doctor mentions being with the Brigadier and him chasing Ice Warriors, so this must have been an unrecorded adventure for him.
As the Fifth Doctor was going through a rather unstable regeneration at that point however, the claim of having had an adventure with the Brigadier and chasing the Ice Warriors may not be entirely factual.
Key Life Events
- Newly regenerated, partially amnesiac and exiled on Earth, the Doctor re-unites with UNIT and the Brigadier and encounters the Autons and Nestene Consciousness for the first time. Afterwards, having nowhere else to go, the Doctor reluctantly accepts the position of UNIT's unpaid scientific advisor. He is given his own automobile, which he dubs "Bessie", and Dr. Liz Shaw becomes his assistant. (DW: Spearhead from Space)
- Witnesses the brief destruction of the Silurians and his disgust with UNIT. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
- Is briefly sent to a parallel earth. (DW: Inferno)
- The Doctor meets Seargeant (later Captain) Mike Yates. (MA: The Eye of the Giant)
- Liz Shaw leaves UNIT and Jo Grant becomes the Doctor's new companion. (DW: Terror of the Autons)
- A Time Lord warns the Doctor that a former friend turned enemy, the Master, has come to Earth. (DW: Terror of the Autons)
- Encounters the Daleks for the first time in many years; also, due to a TARDIS malfunction, accidentally meets a future version of his same incarnation. (DW: Day of the Daleks)
- With his first and second incarnations, the Doctor defeats Omega. As a reward for this, the Time Lords rescind his exile and restore his knowledge of the TARDIS. (DW: The Three Doctors)
- With his freedom restored the Doctor begins scaling back his involvement with UNIT and starts travelling through time and space again. (DW: Carnival of Monsters)
- The Doctor emotionally says goodbye to Jo Grant, who leaves in order to marry an environmentalist. (DW: The Green Death)
- The Doctor meets Sarah Jane Smith for the first time. (DW: The Time Warrior)
- The above episode also saw the introduction of the Sontarans. However a later serial, The Two Doctors, established that the Second Doctor had previously met the creatures, making this no longer a first encounter. This serial is also the first time the name of Gallifrey is mentioned on screen.
- In a timeline created by Faction Paradox, the Doctor dies on the planet Dust. (EDA: Interference - Book One, Interference - Book Two).
- The Doctor re-unites with K'anpo Rimpoche, a spiritual teacher and Time Lord, whom the Doctor had known during his youth on Gallifrey. He would help the Doctor regenerate after a confrontation with the Great One (DW: Planet of the Spiders)
Behind the scenes
- It is interesting to note that, during his exile on Earth, Torchwood made no (known) attempts to capture the Doctor, despite him being named in the Torchwood Charter. However, it could be explained that Captain Jack Harkness most likely would have stopped them from interfering with his personal timeline.
- Due to the absence of the TARDIS as a travel device for much of the first through third years of the Third Doctor's period, this is one of the few known extended periods in the Doctor's life where time passes at approximately the same rate for him as it does for the rest of the Universe. Being exiled to Earth, his few TARDIS travels during this time consistently involved his immediate return to the same time on Earth that he left. Using the humans around him as a measure, the Doctor presumably aged only a few years between the events of Spearhead from Space to The Three Doctors, the point where his exile is lifted and he can time travel freely.
"Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" is thought to be his most commonly used quote, but in fact he only says it fully once. In The Paradise of Death, he admits to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart that the phrase doesn't actually mean anything from a scientific point of view.
Casting
- Ron Moody was approached by the producers after his success in "Oliver" but he turned down the role. He has stated in interviews that turning down the role of the Third Doctor was the worst thing he ever did professionally; every time he hears the familiar Doctor Who theme tune he kicks himself.
External Links
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