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The Third Doctor was the third incarnation of the Time Lord known as the Doctor. Throughout the majority of his life, this Doctor found himself stranded on Earth as part of his exile by the Time Lords, a fact that on many occasions left him somewhat bitter.
During this time, the Doctor entered the service of UNIT, becoming their unpaid scientific advisor, and would remain in their service long after his exile was lifted. This Doctor stood out from his predecessors in his willingness to engage others physically, and cut more of a dashing figure compared to his predecessors.
Eventually, he was forced to regenerate after being exposed to large amounts of radiation during his efforts to stop the Eight Legs of Metebelis III.
Biography
Regeneration and exile
Following the events with the War Lords and the War Chief, (DW: The War Games) the Second Doctor was sentenced by the Time Lords to a forced regeneration and exile on Earth. To enforce this exile, the Doctor's memory on how to operate a TARDIS was blocked so he could not use it to escape. Upon his regeneration's finalization, the Doctor collapsed outside his TARDIS on earth by a UNIT patrol, and brought to a hospital in a coma.
Concurrent with the Doctor's arrival was a swarm of power units for a non-physical alien intelligence known as the Nestene Consciousness. Normally disembodied, it had an affinity for plastic, and was able to animate humanoid facsimiles known as Autons. The Nestene Consciousness took over a toy factory in London, and planned to replace key government and public figures with Auton duplicates. The Doctor was brought to UNIT HQ as ordered by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The Doctor was still uneasy about the Brigadier since their last meeting and was eager to reclaim his TARDIS key from him to escape the planet. However, despite gaining his key back, the Doctor saw that not only was his knowledge on how to use the TARDIS blocked, but the dematerialisation codes had been changed.
With Dr. Elizabeth Shaw assisting him, the Doctor was able to create a device capable of stopping the Autons. The Brigadier feared that the Nestenes may return and asked for the Doctor's continued assistance. The Doctor agreed to join UNIT as their scientific advisor in exchange for facilities to repair the TARDIS and a car like the sporty antique roadster he had commandeered during the incident. At his insistence, Liz stayed on as his assistant. (DW: Spearhead from Space)
Liz Shaw and incidents on Earth
Summoned by the Brigadier to an underground research centre at Wenley Moor, the Doctor and Liz Shaw first met the Silurians. The Silurians had gone into hibernation millions of years ago but were revived by power from the research centre. The Doctor strove for peace between the reptiles and humans and even managed to gain the trust of the old Silurian leader. However a rebellious young Silurian seized power and released a deadly virus that threatened to wipe out humanity.
The Doctor found an antidote with the help of Liz, but the Silurians retaliated by taking over the research centre. They planned to destroy the Van Allen Belt, a natural barrier shielding the Earth from solar radiation harmful to humans but beneficial to reptiles. The Silurians were forced to return to their caves when the Doctor overloaded the reactor, threatening to cause a nuclear explosion. The Brigadier, to the Doctor's disgust, then had the Silurian base destroyed. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
The Doctor then helped radiation-dependent alien ambassadors who had been kidnapped by the xenophobic ex-astronaut General Carrington. Carrington wanted to discredit the aliens and convince the world 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 regular association with the Doctor and UNIT occured when UNIT was providing security cover at an experimental drilling project designed to penetrate the Earth's crust. The drill head started to leak an oily green liquid that transformed those who touched it into vicious primeval creatures with a craving for heat. The Doctor was accidentally transported by the partially-repaired TARDIS console into a parallel universe where the drilling project was at a more advanced stage and worked to save both universes. While the drilling site in the alternate universe was destroyed, it gave the Doctor information on the course the project would take, allowing him to save his own universe at the cost of the ignorant director in charge of the operations becoming one of the creatures. (DW: Inferno)
Liz had extensive training, but it paled in comparison to the Doctor's own knowledge of the universe and scientific principles. 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)
The Master and travels with Jo
A renegade Time Lord known as the Master arrived at a circus run by a man named Luigi Rossini and stole a dormant Nestene energy unit from a museum. He reactivated it using a radio telescope and took control of a small plastics firm where he organised the production of deadly Auton dolls, chairs and daffodils. The Master had a scheme to destroy humanity and silence the Doctor forever using the Nestene. Aided by the Brigadier and his new companion Jo Grant, the Doctor ended the Master's plans. (DW: Terror of the Autons)
The Doctor and Jo visited Stangmoor Prison for a demonstration of the Keller Machine, a device claimed to be capable of extracting negative emotions from hardened criminals. The Doctor discovered that the Master was behind the machine but had lost control of it. Finally, the machine was destroyed, but the Master escaped 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. However it was always compelled to return him to 20th century Earth when his missions were completed, essentially turning him into "some sort of a galactic yo-yo." (DW: The Claws of Axos) When the Time Lords discovered that the Master had stolen their secret file on the Doomsday Weapon they decided to send the Doctor to retrieve it for them. The Doctor travelled again during his exile and Jo left the planet for the first time. They arrive on the planet Uxarieus and convince the last native Uxariean to destroy the Weapon. (DW: Colony in Space)
The Doctor discovered that in Devil's End, an old evil was asleep and tried to stop his awakening. The Master, posing as a rural vicar, was first able to summon the last of the Dæmon's kind, Azal, for his personal gain. Azal decided to give his power to the Master, and fired energy at the Doctor to kill him. However, Jo stepped in front of the Doctor, asking Azal to kill her instead. This act of self-sacrifice did not make sense to Azal, and the confusion sent him into an agony which ultimately destroyed him. The Master tried to escape in Bessie, but the Doctor's remote control brought the car back, and the Master was taken into custody. (DW: The Dæmons)
The Doctor found the Daleks again, after a long time thinking that they were dead. Ruling in a near future, a group of freedom fighters tried thwart the Dalek invasion by coming back in time to assassinate a delegate at the second World Peace Conference. It was thought that the delegate caused an explosion at the peace conference, starting a series of wars that left humanity vulnerable to Dalek conquest. The Doctor realised that the explosion would actually be caused by one of the fighters, Shura, in a misguided attempt to fulfill his mission. Daleks and Ogrons arrived in pursuit of the Doctor, but were destroyed when Shura detonated his bomb. (DW: Day of the Daleks)
Thinking he had fixed the TARDIS, the Doctor and Jo took it on a test flight but unexpectedly arrived on the planet Peladon. Seeking shelter, they entered the citadel of the soon-to-be-crowned King Peladon, where the Doctor was mistaken for a human dignitary summoned to act as Chairman of a committee assessing an application by the planet to join the Galactic Federation.
In fact a great conspiracy was occurring between a Federation delegate and the High Priest of Peladon. The Doctor and Jo were able to uncover the conspiracy to the King. The traitors were eventually killed and relations between the Federation and the Peladon Kingdom were continued. (DW: The Curse of Peladon)
The Doctor and Jo visited the Master, now held in captivity on Fortress Island prison, after being captured by UNIT. (DW: The Daemons) The Master was being held indefinitely and was the only prisoner. He claimed to have reformed but refused to reveal the location of his TARDIS. As they departed, the governor, Colonel Trenchard, told them that some ships had been mysteriously disappearing. The Doctor could not resist investigating and he and Jo were soon attacked by a Sea Devil while examining a fort.
The Doctor discovered that the Master, assisted by a misguided Trenchard, was stealing electrical equipment from the naval base to build a machine that would control the Sea Devils. The Master intended to use the reptiles as an army to conquer the planet, and began using the machine to summon some of them from the sea. The Doctor entered the Sea Devil's base and tried to encourage peaceful negotiation, recalling how he had failed to broker an agreement between mankind and the Silurians. Matters were left unresolved, however, when the base was attacked by depth charges. The Sea Devils were defeated and the Master escaped his imprisonment. (DW: The Sea Devils)
The Doctor was summoned by the Time Lords to deliver a special object to an unknown person in the 30th century, near the end of the Earth Empire. On the colony world of Solos, the human population was being transformed into hideous mutants. The Doctor, with the help of Professor Sondergaard, discovered that the transformation is a natural part of the Solonian life cycle. A Solonian leader, Ky, eventually went into his metamorphoses and killed the Marshal of Solos, who had been committing genocide against the mutants. (DW: The Mutants)
The Doctor then discovered that the Master, in the guise of Professor Thascalos, had constructed a device known as TOMTIT - Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial Time. This device would allow him to summon the Chronovore Kronos. The creature was summoned but proved uncontrollable. The Doctor, Jo and the Master travelled back to ancient Atlantis in search of a crystal able to control Kronos. The Atlantians summoned Kronos with the crystal, resulting in the city's destruction. Kronos was set free and the Doctor and the Master escape the destruction. (DW: The Time Monster)
Freedom and Jo's departure
A superluminal signal was sent to Earth, carrying with it an unusual energy blob that seemed intent on capturing the Doctor. On Gallifrey, the Time Lords broke the first law of time to bring the first and second incarnations of the Doctor in to help the third. Unfortunately, the first incarnation was trapped in a time eddy and, being unable to fully materialize, could only communicate via the TARDIS scanner. Working with the Second Doctor, the pair found Omega to be behind mysterious disappearances. They managed to prevent him from reinstating himself into the world of matter from his anti-matter domain by blowing it up with a mix of regular matter and anti-matter. (DW: The Three Doctors)
The Doctor and Jo arrive the SS Bernice, a cargo ship crossing the Indian Ocean. But things were not as they seemed. A monster appeared in the sea, events repeated themselves, and a giant hand stole the TARDIS. Investigation revealed that they were in fact inside a Miniscope, an alien peepshow sporting numerous miniaturised environments, which showman Vorg and his assistant Shirna had brought to amuse the populace of the planet Inter Minor. After leaving the Miniscope, the Doctor returned all the creatures home and destroyed the machine, allowing him to return to normal size. (DW: Carnival of Monsters)
Upon arriving on an Earth freighter the Doctor and Jo became caught up in the escalating tension between planets Earth and Draconia. They soon discovered that the Master was secretly working to provoke the two sides into all-out war, under the orders of the Daleks. The Doctor, barely conscious due to a shot having grazed his head, asked Jo to help him into the TARDIS. He sent a message to the Time Lords, asking them to pilot his TARDIS and follow the Daleks to their new base. (DW: Frontier in Space)
After he slipped into a coma, Jo explored the planet and met a guerrilla group of Thals. After the Doctor regains consciousness, they attempt to stop the Daleks from gaining the invisibility powers of the native humanoid species. They discovered the base with more than ten-thousand Daleks hibernating and decided what must be done for the sake of the universe. Finally, the Daleks were buried in earth and the Thals thanked the Doctor, leaving the planet on the Supreme Dalek ship. (DW: Planet of the Daleks)
After several attempts to get to Metebelis III the Doctor succeeded in landing his TARDIS there, though he was attacked by several violent beings. While on the planet however, he took a certain blue crystal. Returning to Earth he joined the Brigadier and Jo at Llanfairfach, where UNIT was investigating a miner who had been found, turned green, in an abandoned coal pit. It is determined that Global Chemicals was responsible for the pollution, having been directed by the computer BOSS. BOSS was able to use a mind control on key company staff and had planned on controlling the world based on his initial programming. The Doctor was able to break BOSS's control using the blue crystal, however. Once freed, company boss Stevens destroys BOSS before it can link with computers over the world. Jo and Cliff Jones, a scientist who was working at Wholeweal, announced they were getting engaged and planned to travel the Amazon looking for a rare fungus. The Doctor offered his blessing and gave Jo the blue crystal he had retrieved from Metebelis III as a wedding present. He then discreetly left to return to UNIT HQ. (DW: The Green Death)
Adventures with Sarah Jane
Journalist Sarah Jane Smith impersonated her aunt, virologist Lavinia Smith, in order to gain access to a research centre. Top scientists were being held there in protective custody while UNIT investigated the disappearance of a number of their colleagues.
The missing scientists had been kidnapped by a Sontaran, Linx, and taken back to medieval England, where they were working under hypnosis to repair his crashed spaceship. Following the death of Linx and the destruction of his weapons, the Doctor and Sarah began travelling together. (DW: The Time Warrior)
The Doctor and Sarah arrived in 1970s London to find that it had been evacuated, due to the mysterious appearance of dinosaurs. It turned out that the dinosaurs were being brought to London via a time machine in order to further a plan to revert London to a pre-technological level. Eventually the masterminds behind the scheme, Whitaker and Grover, were accidently transported to pre-historic Earth. (DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs)
The TARDIS then crash-landed due on the planet Exxilon. Upon arriving, the Doctor encounters Space Marines who were seeking Parrinium, a cure to a space-plague. The Daleks also landed on Exxilon seeking the Parrinium. Both the Doctor and the Daleks discovered the Great City of the Exxilons, a large city that had a power-disrupting tower preventing any technology from functioning on the planet. Journeying within the City, the Doctor sought to disrupt its functions and remove the power-disrupting facility. Concurrently the Daleks ordered humans to place bombs around the City's central tower to destroy it. The City was destroyed along with the Dalek space ship, and the Doctor sadly commented that the universe was now down to 699 Wonders. (DW: Death to the Daleks)
The Doctor returned to Peladon fifty years after his previous visit, finding Queen Thalira, daughter of the late King Peladon, on the throne. A tense labor dispute between Pel nobility and miners was worsened when apparitions of their deity, Aggedor, attacked and killed several miners. The Galactic Federation desperately needed Trisilicate for its war against Galaxy 5, and sent in brutal Ice Warrior troopers to ensure production. After the Doctor managed to bring the miners and ruling class together they were able to fight back the Ice Warriors and rebuild Peladon. (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.
Mysterious goings-on at a meditation retreat run by Tibetan monks were linked to the blue planet Metebelis III and a colony of monstrous spiders. To defeat the Spiders of Metebelis III, the Doctor sacrificed his own life by exposing himself to lethal levels of radiation to destroy the web of the Spiders's leader, the Great One. With the assistance of his old mentor K'anpo Rimpoche (who has regenerated), he was able to also regenerate into his next incarnation much to the surprise of Sarah Jane and the annoyance of the Brigadier. (DW: Planet of the Spiders)
After regeneration
The fourth incarnation 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 incarnation mentioned that he preferred his then-current form than "what he had last time". (DW: The Brain of Morbius)
- For a list of third Doctor stories in the order in which he experienced them, see Third Doctor - Timeline.
Legacy
His time with UNIT had a lasting effect. Even though his following incarnations pretty much severed all ties with UNIT, the ninth and tenth incarnations worked with them a few times when the need arose. None of the Doctor's later incarnations are known to have resigned this one's position. 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 Professor Malcolm Taylor were both excited 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)
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 incarnation mentions being with the Brigadier and him chasing Ice Warriors, which 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.
Psychological profile
Personality
The third incarnation often had problems with the Brigadier's tendency to think of situations in military terms, and with petty officials, generally. The third incarnation 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 incarnation never faced the Cybermen, though he and Sarah Jane Smith did witness a Raston Warrior Robot massacre a squad of Cybermen. (DW: The Five Doctors)
Despite his conflict with the Master, he visited him in prison. Jo noticed that he worried about him; he told her that he was an old friend. (DW: The Sea Devils)
He attempted to achieve peace between the humanity and the Silurians; he again tried to come to an agreement with the Sea Devils, killing them when he saw no other hope. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Sea Devils) While on a diplomatic mission, he fired upon Ogrons who boarded with the intention of taking his prisoner. (DW: Frontier in Space)
The third incarnation was a man of action, aggressively joining the fray whenever he could, unlike the first two incarnations who generally insinuated themselves into events discreetly.
This incarnation was unafraid to pitch in with his physical skills, often bringing his mastery of Venusian aikido into play when the situation called for it.
Much like his predecessors, his keen mind was still his primary asset, and this was an incarnation who particularly loved to create and play with gadgets of all sorts. This passion displayed itself both in terms of the third incarnation's scientific bent and in his love of vehicles, such as his yellow roadster, Bessie, and his car which he specially built.
Staunchly moral, the Doctor was every bit the gentleman, a hero of the Victorian mold. (ST: A True Gentleman)
The Doctor had a noticeably antagonistic relationship with his second incarnation. Their relationship was so rocky that they were incapable of working together without the authoritative presence of the first incarnation. (DW: The Three Doctors, DW: The Five Doctors) The nature of the second incarnation's regeneration into the third's may be the cause of their open disliking of each other. By contrast, the fourth incarnation, although he never met himself in his previous incarnation, occasionally spoke rather fondly of that form.
His knowledge of the TARDIS greatly increased in this incarnation (chiefly due to practically taking it completely apart and reassembling it in an attempt to make it work). Once the Time Lords returned the knowledge of how to operate it, (DW: The Three Doctors) the Doctor became more adept at controlling his destinations then his previous incarnations, who often lacked any sort of control at all. (DW: An Unearthly Child) He denied any mistake on his part if he strayed. (DW: Carnival of Monsters)
He was optimistic in most cases. He once declared a belief that life would always continue in some form. (DW: The Mutants)
Habits and Quirks
The third incarnation was known for his great passion for gadgets, his love of 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 would occasionally perform magic tricks. The third incarnation 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)
Appearance
He was known for his ornate fashion sense, most famously his frilled shirt, smoking velvet jackets and inverness cape outfit. He also wore his frilled shirt with a bow tie or cravat, like the Eighth Doctor. Because of this, his first and second incarnations called him a dandy.
His was the first incarnation to steal clothes from a hospital, followed by his eighth and eleventh incarnations, respectively. (DW: Doctor Who, The Eleventh Hour)
Mysteries and discrepancies
- The newly regenerated Doctor sported a tattoo on one arm. (DW: Spearhead from Space) It was a tattoo from the actor's days in the Navy.
- This was the mark made by the Time Lords to signify the Doctor was an exile. (NA: Christmas on a Rational Planet)
- The Doctor described 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".
- See separate article.
Behind the scenes
- "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" is thought to be this incarnation's most commonly-used quote, but in fact he only says it fully, on television, in The Sea Devils and The Five Doctors. There are several other occasions, as in The Dæmons, where he mentions simply "reversing the polarity".
- Katy Manning has accepted responsibility for the third Doctor's increasingly-bouffant hairstyle. She claims that she teased Pertwee about a tiny bald spot on the back of his head until he became self-conscious about it. When she suggested he just put rollers in to make his hair "bigger" — and thereby cover the bald spot — he seized on the idea with alacrity. (DCOM: Planet of the Daleks)
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.