The Sixth Doctor was the sixth incarnation of the Time Lord known as the Doctor. Arrogant, dramatic, self-absorbed, and stubborn, the sixth incarnation instantly believed himself superior to almost anyone he encountered and had a very compassionate side only experienced by Peri. By the end of his life, his personality seemed to have calmed down, though he later met his end when he was attacked by the Rani in his TARDIS.
Biography
Early travels
Post-Regeneration
Following this regeneration, he suffered from a particularly unstable personality and even attempted to throttle Peri to death. The Doctor then decided to exile himself on Titan III, but soon got involved with stopping Mestor and his gastropods. On Titan III he also met another Time Lord, his old friend Azmael. Throughout, he experienced extreme lows to bouts of manic near-insanity and violence. (DW: The Twin Dilemma)
With Peri and Frobisher
After a short time, the Doctor's personality settled down into an extremely large ego with a side of compassion only experienced by his closest friends. He set out to fix everything wrong with his aging TARDIS and succeeded in fixing its broken chameleon circuit. For a brief time, it managed to change shape. (DW: Attack of the Cybermen)
Peri must have parted company with the Doctor for a short time. During this period the Doctor stumbled upon a Whifferdill calling himself "Avan Tarklu", a private investigator set upon the Doctor as revenge by Josiah W. Dogbolter. Initially the Doctor's tormentor, the Whifferdill decided to travel with the Doctor, changing his name to Frobisher and his shape to that of a large, rather cartoonish penguin. (DWM: The Shape Shifter)
- Peri and Frobisher would travel together with the Doctor for periods of time, between taking breaks from him.
While Peri was attending a botany symposium the Doctor responded to a call from a friend, Willis but was forced into a situation where he encountered Davros and was forced by Arnold Baynes, one of the richest men in the galaxy to work with Davros. (BFA: Davros)
Travelling to the planet Necros to pay his respects to an old friend, Arthur Stengos, the Doctor fell into a set of circumstances engineered by Davros. (DW: Revelation of the Daleks)
Discovering the illegal use of Cyber-technology on Earth in 1984, the Doctor and Peri returned to 1984, though for Peri it was a much more personal experience. (BFA: The Reaping)
Throughout several adventures together the Doctor and Peri began to rekindle and develop their relationship. (BFA: The Nightmare Fair)
The Trial
The Prosecution
Whilst on the planet Thoros Beta, the Doctor and Peri were forcibly separated by the Time Lords. Peri remained on the world in dire peril of having of the Mentor Kiv's mind transferred into her body. Meanwhile, a council of Time Lords forced the Doctor into his TARDIS and made the ship re-materialise in the Space Station Zenobia. (DW: Mindwarp)
The Valeyard, who the Doctor learned was both an enemy and, in some sense, the Doctor himself, acted as prosecutor and there was an Inquisitor, Darkel. Because he had been taken out of time, the Doctor suffered from partial amnesia. He found himself once again on trial for interfering in the affairs of the universe. He elected to represent himself in the trial, during which he and his prosecutor, the Valeyard, would present events from his life as evidence via the Matrix. (DW: The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp) The Doctor suffered a severe emotional blow as he witnessed the apparent destruction of Peri's mind and her physical death on Thoros Beta. (DW: Mindwarp)
Defence
After a recess, the Doctor would have the opportunity to present a case for defending himself, presenting an adventure from his own future, by which time he had met an Earth woman Melanie "Mel" Bush. The Valeyard seized on this as a chance to try the Doctor for the genocide of the Vervoids, prohibited by Article 17 of the Constitution. (DW: Terror of the Vervoids)
Aftermath
The Valeyard had falsified some of the evidence, which included the supposed death of Peri, with the aid of the High Council, in order to cover up a conspiracy which the Doctor had unknowingly uncovered. By this time, though, the Doctor had gradually won Darkel over to his side.
The Valeyard schemed to steal the Doctor's remaining regenerations with the help of the corrupt Council. Paradoxically, because in the Doctor's timeline he had not met her yet, Mel was brought to the trial as a witness, as well as Sabalom Glitz. The Doctor's enemy, the Master, intervened. As the populace of Gallifrey reacted to news of the dishonesty of their High Council, they seemed ready to overthrow their leaders. Subsequently, Darkel suggested the Doctor as the new Lord President, but the Doctor suggested that Darkel herself would make for a better choice. The Doctor left in his TARDIS with Mel. The Valeyard, apparently killed inside the Matrix, had actually survived. (DW: The Ultimate Foe)
The Doctor returned Mel to her original point in time following the conclusion of the trial. (MA: Time of Your Life, PDA: Business Unusual)
Later travels
The Doctor travelled to Bianca's Bar shortly after his trial and became involved in a problem concerning Iris Wildthyme. (BFA: The Wormery)
Following his trial, the Doctor appears to have become a more sombre individual (DWM: Time & Time Again) at one point even contemplating suicide. (MA: Killing Ground) He reunited with Frobisher, and for a time they again traveled together. (BFA: The Maltese Penguin, PDA: Mission: Impractical)
The Doctor then spent some travelling alone. On the planet Torrok, he determined to become a hermit and avoid becoming the Valeyard by not meeting Mel. However, he was interrupted in this venture, eventually meeting a young man, Grant Markham. (MA: Time of Your Life)
- At some point, Grant departed from the Doctor.
The Doctor, at some point after his trial, was tracking nexus point distortion and encountered Evelyn Smythe. The Doctor then took her back in time to stabilise the nexus point and save her life. (BFA: The Marian Conspiracy)
While visiting the Kurgon Wonder, the Doctor was led into a series of events involving an alternate timeline, the Knights of Velyshaa and an invasion of Gallifrey. Following an encounter (and seeming absorption) by the Temperon he found himself on Gallifrey with his fifth and seventh selves. Together they worked to attempt to escape Gallifrey and set history along its correct path. However it was the Doctor (his sixth self) that freed the Temperon, allowing it to set history alongst its correct path. (BFA: The Sirens of Time)
Whilst travelling with Evelyn the Doctor met, once again his old friend Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, and while on the planet Etra Prime the Daleks once more. He also assisted Romana's escape from them and her return to Gallifrey. (BFA: The Apocalypse Element)
Further travels alone
At some point after Evelyn departed her travels with the Doctor and settled down on the planet Világ, (BFA: Thicker Than Water) , the Doctor continued to travel alone. In 2001 he received a message from Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart via the space-time telegraph, asking for his help involving UFOs, Nazis and a conspiracy. (PDA: The Shadow in the Glass)
Travels with Charlie, Jamie and Mel
At some point after his travels with Evelyn, but prior meeting Mel, the Doctor picked up a distress signal from a desert island in the year 500,002. There, he rescued a young girl named Charley Pollard who, unbeknownst to the Doctor, was, in fact, the companion of one of his later incarnations. (BFA: The Condemned)
- Charley leaves during the events of (BFA: Blue Forgotten Planet) and while The Doctor remembers their adventures together his memory is altered so that he believes that she is a woman called Mila
The Doctor, for the first time in his sixth incarnation, travelled with a version of Jamie McCrimmon. (BFA: City of Spires, The Wreck of the Titan, Legend of the Cybermen)
The Doctor met Melanie Bush on a beach in Brighton in 1989. Mel was a computer programmer. She elected to travel with the Doctor for some time, until the end of the Doctor's sixth regeneration. (PDA: Business Unusual)
Regeneration
The sixth incarnation was weakened after fighting the Lamprey. (PDA: Spiral Scratch) The Rani blasted his TARDIS with a Tractor Beam, causing him to land on Lakertya. The Doctor then regenerated into his seventh incarnation. (DW: Time and the Rani)
- For a list of Sixth Doctor stories in the order in which he experienced them, see Sixth Doctor - Timeline.
Undated/Unchronicled events
- The Doctor had met Captain Travers previously. (DW: Terror of the Vervoids)
Encounters with other incarnations
He encountered his second incarnation and Jamie McCrimmon whilst investigating temporal research. (DW: The Two Doctors) The Doctor also met his fifth and seventh incarnations in an alternate timeline. (BFA: The Sirens of Time). He briefly encountered the fifth, seventh and eighth incarnations after helping to change the course of the Jariden / Dalek conflict, but the memory of the meeting was erased by temporal changes. (BFA : The Four Doctors)
Psychological Profile
Personality
The sixth incarnation saw his new body as an improvement and felt that his fifth incarnation had a feckless charm that wasn't him. This Doctor was unpredictable, he was consistently arrogant and self-absorbed, stubborn and childish, argumentative and tasteless, and he could often be seen as un-likeable or even loathsome. At other times, he could be seen as melodramatic. He almost never doubted his own ability, and considered himself greatly superior to nearly everyone he encountered. This included his companions, especially Peri, though he seemed to have mellowed during his time with Evelyn.
He once described this incarnation as pragmatic. (BFA: The Sirens of Time)
This incarnation did not suffer fools gladly. He sometimes seemed to endure his companion's presence far more than he actually appreciated it, but the new incarnation's brash exterior hid the fact that this was a Doctor more determined than ever to defeat the evil he encountered. He was possessed of a tenacity and a thirst to do what was right that was far more visible than ever before. Despite his often unstable demeanour, he was always quick to act when the situation called for it, and very little, even his companions, could hope to get in his way. More than his other incarnations, the Doctor could be something of a fatalist, more than once deciding he was doomed and resolving to accept his fate.
It was during this incarnation that in some instances he began to see the logic in murder. (EDA: Alien Bodies) This might be reflected by how he seemed to be a bit more accepting of violence in certain circumstances. While his physical attack on Peri could be attributed to a post-regenerative crisis, he reacted with humour after witnessing two men fall to their death in an acid bath. (DW: Vengeance on Varos) Most notably, he smothered Shockeye to death in self defence. (DW: The Two Doctors) Peri sometimes appeared nervous around the Doctor, (DW: Attack of the Cybermen, Timelash) perhaps due to his initially erratic behaviour.
Habits and Quirks
After an unpleasant encounter with an Androgum in Spain, the Doctor proclaimed that he was becoming a vegetarian, though later he seemed to have abandoned the practice. (DW: Boom Town)
He also had an ear for poetry, often reciting bits of it when events reminded him of it. (DW: The Twin Dilemma, The Mark of the Rani, Terror of the Vervoids)
This Doctor also had a habit of walking in a direction different to his proclaimed intention. This quirk was later mirrored by his tenth incarnation and once by the eleventh incarnation, although these incidents were caused by a lack of knowledge of directions and post-regeneration "steering" problems, respectively.
Appearance
The sixth incarnation's taste in clothes were the subject of much ridicule, though it was suggested that he wore his outlandish coat in order to distract people from noticing anything else about him. He once mentioned that his coat was the "height of sartorial elegance" (BFA: Jubilee). At some point, the Doctor abandoned his outlandish multi-coloured outfit for a more subdued blue costume, (WC: Real Time) though by the time of his regeneration, he had resumed wearing his original garb. (DW: Time and the Rani)
The sixth incarnation was very fond of cats, and always wore one of a number of cat-shaped pins or brooches in his possession. By the time of his tenth incarnation, however, he had developed a dislike for the breed. (DW: Fear Her)
Physically, he was very tall. Mel also considered him to be overweight, and forced him to take up both a diet, consisting mainly of carrot juice, and an exercise regime, neither of which he felt he needed. (DW: Terror of the Vervoids). He had blonde curly hair and had firm eyes (The twin dillama).
Behind the scenes
- According to Colin Baker, his coat was created because John Nathan-Turner had the idea that it should be in "very bad taste". He had wanted to wear black to reveal the Doctor's darker side. (DWM: DWM Issue 118 - Colin Baker Interviewed)
- Baker declined an invitation to film the regeneration sequence at the start of Time and the Rani, so his successor, Sylvester McCoy, donned a blonde wig and briefly appeared on screen as the sixth incarnation.
- Spiral Scratch by Gary Russell gives a "revisionist" account of the circumstances behind the Doctor's regeneration, explaining that it had not happened simply because he had hit his head. Love and War by Paul Cornell offered a different explanation, or at least implied one, although it should be noted that neither theory expressly contradicts each other. Spiral Scratch features the Doctor being weakened after having his chronal energy drained fighting the Lamprey, while Love and War implies that he deliberately flew into the tractor beam to trigger his regeneration, but it is possible that the injuries the Doctor sustained in the beam were simply made worse by his already weakened state and his incarnation could have otherwise lived for a while longer.