Season 6B
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Season 6B — also known as Season 6b and Season 6 (b) — is the narrative space between the end of The War Games and the beginning of Spearhead from Space.
It arose because the regeneration between Troughton and Pertwee was never explicitly shown on television. Instead, viewers were left only with the impression that the Doctor had been sentenced to two fates: enforced regeneration and exile on Earth. The "gap" contains stories in which the Second Doctor is living under the threat of these two sentences. Depending on the story involved, he may be exiled to Earth or not. But all stories in this period have him waiting to be forcibly regenerated.
Season 6B is regarded as a theory or fanon by those fans who hold that only the televised stories are "proper" or "canonical", but it has been the backdrop to many officially licensed, if un-televised, stories. Because this wiki takes the view that all officially licensed stories are of equal value, the basic notion that the Second Doctor had many adventures after The War Games is regarded here as a "truth" of the Doctor Who universe.
Origins
The idea of a gap of time between War Games and Spearhead dates back to 1969, the very year Patrick Troughton left the series.
When Hartnell had regenerated into Troughton, things had been relatively easy for TV Comic, the official Doctor Who comic licensees. There had been precisely a one-week gap between Hartnell and Troughton on TV, and TV Comic, a weekly publication, had easily followed suit. In 1969, though, Troughton was leaving at the end of the season and there would be a significant break as Doctor Who cut its annual episode output almost in half. In fact, it was almost six months between the end of War Games and the beginning of Spearhead.
Not wanting to stop publication of their Doctor Who comic strip, they did what the narrative of War Games allowed: they kept on publishing Troughton stories. They said that the Second Doctor had indeed been exiled to Earth, but that he was awaiting his Time Lord-imposed regeneration. For a period of time, the Second Doctor lived the high life as a celebrity based in London's swanky Carlton Grange Hotel. (TVC: Action in Exile) He then travelled the Earth, responding to calls received via the Carlton Grange switchboard, with nary a UNIT soldier in sight. (TVC: The Mark of Terror, The Brotherhood, U.F.O.)
One day — conveniently around the time Spearhead launched on TV — he was a celebrity panelist on Explain My Mystery, a game show of sorts that asked experts to explain supernatural phenomena. Unable to diagnose the caller's mystery over the phone, the Doctor went out into English countryside to a farm. There, in the deep of night, scarecrows animated by the Time Lords captured him and forced him to regenerate. Then, they sent the TARDIS on one last journey, leaving the reader to believe that when the Doctor arrived, he'd fall out of the TARDIS in Oxley Woods as Jon Pertwee, just as he did in Spearhead. (TVC: The Night Walkers)
These comic strips, however, were soon forgotten. In an internet-less age, it wasn't easily possible for fans in possession of the comic strips to share them with the broader fanbase. They would lay outside of fans' grasp for another few decades.
Fans start to ponder things
In the meantime, Patrick Troughton returned to Doctor Who three more times — each time looking a little older. At the same time, it became easier to get home video of early serials such as War Games and Spearhead. And fans began to question what they were seeing. Amongst the questions that got asked were:
- Why does the Third Doctor begin Spearhead from Space with several items that the Second Doctor didn't have at the end of The War Games, such as a ring, a bracelet and a TARDIS homing watch?
- How does the Second Doctor in The Five Doctors know that the Time Lords had erased the memories of Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot? The erasure took place immediately before the Doctor is seen to "twirl around" at the end of War Games, so that twirling must not have indicated regeneration.
- Why do the Second Doctor and Jamie appear noticeably older in The Two Doctors?
- How does Jamie know about the Time Lords in The Two Doctors unless The Two Doctors comes after The War Games for him?
- How come the Second Doctor is working, apparently willingly, for the Time Lords in both The Three Doctors and The Two Doctors?
- Why does the Second Doctor possess a TARDIS recall device of a type the Sixth Doctor does not possess in The Two Doctors?
- In The Two Doctors, why is the Second Doctor's TARDIS of an obviously different design to that which he used prior to his trial?
- Why is the Doctor's recorder in the second console room in The Masque of Mandragora? We never saw him use the second console room on television, so he must've used the room at some point after The War Games.
These questions were given detailed consideration in The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping. A theory grew from this book which was quickly embraced by fandom. Indeed, it eventually became "fanon". When the BBC eventually started printing excerpts from the Guide on their website, it crossed over from fanon into essentially BBC "policy". As of 2011, "season 6B" remains a part of the official BBC episode guide. The full text of the official position on 6B is more extensive than this, but the core of the idea goes something like this:
- Rather than undergoing the regeneration shown starting at the end of The War Games, the Second Doctor was recruited to work for the Celestial Intervention Agency, a branch of the Time Lords. During this time, the Second Doctor regained Jamie and Victoria Waterfield as companions, acquired a Stattenheim remote control device to summon his TARDIS, and undertook an unknown number of missions, including that depicted in The Two Doctors. Eventually, either the Time Lords tired of keeping the Doctor on a leash, or the Doctor rebelled and attempted to escape once more. This resulted in the exile which begins in Spearhead from Space.
Televised stories in references to Season 6B
The Three Doctors
The Second Doctor is called on by the Time Lords to help the Third Doctor. But the fact that gives this away is that the Doctor is alone so it could be placed before The War Games but if this is so then when the Third Doctor makes contact with the Second, then the Second should know about his trial, his exile and regeneration (otherwise, this would prove that Time Lords have the power to send messages very carefully and not mention any events if the above is true). If this takes place after it, then this contradicts the aftermath of The War Games, as he is seen regenerating but otherwise, these events could have been prevented by the CIA.
The Five Doctors
As noted above, the Second Doctor claims that Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot should not recognise the Brigadier, as they had their memories wiped. (Although they were just illusions, so Rassilon might have done it as a trap.) Some evidence in dialogue confirm that this story happens after The Three Doctors. Since the Second Doctor would not be aware of the memory wipe if he was taken before The War Games, there is no easy way that he can know this, and still be the Second Doctor.1
The Two Doctors
The Two Doctors shows an aged Second Doctor traveling with Jamie on a mission for the Time Lords. The Time Lords have also built a device into the TARDIS console that gives them dual control. The Second Doctor states that working for them is the price he pays for his freedom. However, Jamie was not aware of the Time Lords until The War Games and a major plot point in that story is that the Second Doctor is and has for all previous stories been on the run from the Time Lords (This was confirmed as an error by the The Two Doctor's writer, Robert Holmes.) The aged appearance of the two actors also suggests it is after The War Games. The later Time Crash, however, attempted to rationalize the age differential issue but in fact does not as we see the Second Doctor and Jamie prior to meeting the Sixth Doctor and they are still aged.
The Doctor refers to Victoria as being part of the TARDIS crew, indicating the Doctor has been allowed to have her as a companion again. In World Game, however it is stated that this is a false memory given to Jamie by the Time Lords to explain her absense.
Stories taking place during this period
Novels
- Players (a Sixth Doctor novel featuring a flashback to the Season 6B period]
- World Game (set just before the Second Doctor's part of The Two Doctors from the point of view of the Second Doctor)
Short stories
Audiobook
- Helicon Prime (with Jamie)
Other information
- The idea of a post-The War Games Second Doctor, as Cornell acknowledges, had already been introduced in TV Comic. In Action in Exile, the Doctor arrives in London without his TARDIS and checks into the luxurious Carlton Grange Hotel. From this base, he proceeds to have five Earth-bound adventures, culminating in The Night Walkers, in which the Doctor investigates tales of walking scarecrows. He discovers that the scarecrows have been animated by the Time Lords to capture him, as the Doctor had escaped from the Time Lords before they could complete his sentence of a forced change of appearance. The scarecrows take him into the TARDIS and proceed to trigger his regeneration, leading directly into Spearhead from Space. (The scarecrows get a brief mention in the Doctor Who Unbound audio play Exile, and a variation is featured in the televised episodes Human Nature and The Family of Blood, which were written by Cornell.)
- Aside from Jamie and Victoria, one other companion is known to have worked with the Doctor during Season 6B, a female Time Lord named Serena, who appears in PDA: World Game.
- The early Doctor Who comic strips featuring the Second Doctor had him reuniting with John and Gillian, his grandchildren from the First Doctor comic strips, and sharing several adventures with them. As it's hard to rationalize where in the Second Doctor's TV timeline such travels might have occurred (given Jamie was with him for almost his entire life), it's possible these adventures also took place during Season 6B, although none of the stories make any reference to the CIA (suggesting they may have been part of the "on the run" storyline in TV Comic).
Notes
1. The actual explanation is a re-write. The original plan was to have Zoe and Victoria Waterfield as the two illusions, and Victoria would give it away by naming the Brigadier, as she only met him as "Colonel" in The Web of Fear.
See also
- Exile on Earth, for an in-universe time-line that incorporates various elements of the Season 6b theory
