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The Sixth Doctor was the sixth incarnation of the Time Lord known as The Doctor. Arrogant, dramatic, self-absorbed, driven, and stubborn, the sixth incarnation instantly believed himself superior to almost anyone he encountered, though he had a very compassionate side only experienced by his companions.
For the bulk of his travels, he was still accompanied by Peri Brown. He was later seperated from Peri by the Time Lords to be put on a faux trial by the corrupt government as a cover for nearly discovering their involvement with "Ravalox". Despite his wish to return for her, he learned that she had become the queen of king Ycarnos and decided that she was better off left there.
While still with Peri (in literature), he gained a secondary companion, a metamorphic Whifferdill, Frobisher.
During an encounter with his Second Incarnation, the Sixth Doctor held a brief reunion with Jamie McCrimmon and helped prevent an intellectualy augmented savage from gaining the secrets of Time Travel.
Near the end of his trial, the Doctor saw that he would gain a new companion in Mel Bush in his near future. Shereceived help from a future version of Mel in his defense against the Valeyard, who falsified most of the evidence. This let him clear his name and depose the corrupt members of the Gallifrey government. Unlike Peri, who allowed the Doctor to take charge and tell her what to do, the Doctor found himself at the mercy of Mel, who imposed a much unneeded diet and exercise regimen.
As seen in the Matrix footage, the Sixth Doctor mellowed out during his time with Mel, allowing himself to be the scapegoat in the plans of others.
This Doctor met his end when the TARDIS was assaulted by an attack from the the Rani forcing a crashlanding. This caused severe physical trauma to the Doctor's body, leading to his next regeneration.
Biography
Post regeneration
The Doctor's fifth incarnation regenerated after being exposed to spectrox toxaemia on Androzani Minor. He regenerated in his TARDIS.
He was immediately challenged by Peri to prove that he was still the Doctor. He finally got her to believe it was still him despite his new face and personality. The Doctor saw his previous life as unbecoming and was happy to have changed. However, despite having physicaly stabilised, the Doctor suffered from a particularly unstable personality and tried to strangle Peri. He decided to exile himself on Titan III as punishment until he had attained appropriate humility, but soon got involved with stopping Mestor and his gastropods.
On Titan III, he met another Time Lord, his old friend Azmael. His personality ranged from extreme lows to bouts of manic near-insanity and violence. (DW: The Twin Dilemma)
Early travels
With Peri and Frobisher
Soon, the Doctor's personality settled down into an extremely large ego with a side of compassion only noticed 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. All the while working to stop the Cybermen from trying to destroy Earth with Haley's comit and saving Mondas, which was destroyed by the First Doctor, and keep the Web of Time from being damaged by their carelessness. (DW: Attack of the Cybermen)
After the TARDIS ran out of Zeiton-7, the Doctor was forced to land on Varos to search for more and resupply the TARDIS. However, the society on Varos nearly forced him to participate in their deadly "games" when he attempted to free those trapped in the Punishment Dome. The Doctor manages to stop the swindler behind the "games", Sil, and obtain Zeiton-7 for the TARDIS. (DW: Vengeance on Varos)
Arriving in 19th century England in search of the source of a time distortion, the Doctor finds the Master and the Rani working together for one of her monsterous experiments and for the Master's plan to accelerate Earth technology beyong its normal advancing rate. However, the Doctor sabatoges the Rani's TARDIS and has her and the Master thrown off into the Time Vortex. (DW: The Mark of the Rani)
When he landed on Space Station Chimera, the Doctor became involved with the Androgum, Chessene of the Franzine Grig. This led to him encountering his second incarnation. Together they foiled a Sontaran bid for time travel and that of Chessene, who wished to have the Doctor as her consort. (DW: The Two Doctors)
Afterwards, the Doctor and Peri accidently go through a time corridor and arrive at Karfel, where the sinister Megelen now rules. The Doctor is forced to find the amulet that allows Megelen to throw people to different points in time and space. The Doctor prevents Megelen from mutating Peri into a hideous form similar to his own and sends the vile villain throw the Timelash, where the Doctor beleives he'll end up becoming the Loch Ness monster]. It was during this trip, the Doctor met H.G. Wells, who he unententionaly gave the idea for his book "the Time Machine". (DW: Timelash)
Peri must have parted company with the Doctor for a short time. During this period the Doctor stumbled upon a Whifferdill who called 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, change 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. It is during this time the Doctor saw that Davros had managed to create Daleks loyal to him and glad the original Daleks were too dense to realize his identiy. (DW: Revelation of the Daleks)
Discovering the illegal use of Cyber-technology on Earth in 1984, the Doctor and Peri returned to that year, 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 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, whom 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 as evidence events from his life via the Matrix. (DW: The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp) The Doctor suffered an emotional blow as he witnessed the apparent destruction of Peri's mind and her physical death on Thoros Beta. (DW: Mindwarp)
Defense
After a recess, the Doctor presented a case for his defense, offering an adventure from his own future, by which time he had met an Earth woman Melanie "Mel" Bush. The Valeyard seized on this to charge 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, 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 tried 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 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.
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 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)
The Doctor, at some point after his trial, was tracking nexus point distortion and encountered Evelyn Smythe. The Doctor took her back in time to stabilise the nexus point and save her life. (BFA: The Marian Conspiracy)
Whilst travelling with Evelyn the Doctor met again his old friend Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, (BFA: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor) and while on the planet Etra Prime, the Daleks. 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 Charley, 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) When Charley left the Doctor to travel with the Viyrans, she altered the Doctor's memories so that the Doctor would believe that he travelled with a woman called Mila, so as not to damage the Web of Time. (BFA: Blue Forgotten Planet)
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 incarnation. (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, too physical weakened to stay alive from the crash, 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)
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, consistently arrogant and self-absorbed, stubborn and childish, argumentative and tasteless, and often unlikeable or even loathsome. At times, he could be melodramatic. He rarely doubted his abilities and considered himself greatly superior to nearly everyone he encountered. This included his companions, especially Peri, though he seemed to have mellowed by 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 companions' presence far more than he 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 was a fatalist, more than once deciding he was doomed and resolving to accept his fate.
It was during this incarnation he began to see the logic in murder. (EDA: Alien Bodies) This might be reflected in being 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 onwitnessing two men fall to their death in an acid bath. (DW: Vengeance on Varos) He smothered Shockeye to death in self defence. (DW: The Two Doctors) He also killed Chintor at close range with a double-barreled shotgun. (DWA: Retribution) Peri sometimes seemed nervous around the Doctor, (DW: Attack of the Cybermen, Timelash) perhaps due to his initially erratic behaviour.
When Peri was distressed over the non-existence of London, the Doctor tried to comfort her, even showing empathy for her plight. However, he encouraged her not to become emotional. Peri noted that he talked about the planet's ruining as if he were in a planetarium. (DW: The Mysterious Planet)
However this incarnation also had a more emotional and caring side. He was determined to save the survivors of the Ravolox conspiracy from Drathro, stating "I can't let people die if there's a chance of saving them." He was devastated when presented with the false news of Peri's demise on Thoros Beta, and was enraged that the Time Lords had decided to act like second rate gods and engineer her execution, threatening that he had every intention of discovering what they were up to. When he discovered that the Time Lords were behind the Ravolox conspiracy and had murdered billions of humans to preserve their secrets, he stated that his purpose was to stop evil and power mad conspirators, but that he should have stayed on Gallifrey and not travelled the universe to do so.
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 a taste 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) On occasion, the Sixth Doctor would take with him a multi-coloured umbrella that matched the clashing colours of his clothing (DW: The Two Doctors, The Mysterious Planet, Time and the Rani).
This Doctor also had a habit of walking in a direction other than 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
Physically, the Sixth Doctor was a very tall man, with long, curly, blond hair. His companion Mel thought him 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).
Clothes
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)
This Doctor usually wore a variety of waistcoats and cravats to accompany his multi-coloured coat, each of which possessing a different colour and design. He first wore a knitted waistcoat that was dark brown in colour, along with a turquoise polka-dot cravat (DW: The Twin Dilemma - Revelation of the Daleks), though during and beyond the time in which he was put on trial by the Time Lords, he wore a bold red gingham dupion silk waistcoat accompanied by a red polka-dot cravat (DW: Trial of a Time Lord, Time and the Rani). During his struggle with the Vervoids on the Hyperion III, the Sixth Doctor wore a pink, purple and green dupion silk waistcoat with a yellow cravat decorated with a starfield pattern (DW: Terror of the Vervoids). In the pockets of these waistcoats, he usually bore a neon-green watchchain.
It is also worth noting that this Doctor wore a number of other clothing points during his life. Whilst confronting the Sontarans in Seville, Spain, 1985, the Sixth Doctor briefly replaced his usual outlandish coat and jerkin for an open, Hawaiian style waistcoat. (DW: The Two Doctors). On another occasion, he briefly wore a a blue cape over his usual attire as mourning for the supposed death of Professor Arthur Stengos on Necros (DW: Revelation of the Daleks).
Much like his late fourth and fifth incarnations, the Sixth Doctor also wore a plain white shirt with question marks embroidered on the collar (DW: The Twin Dilemma et. all). Also, like his fifth incarnation, he wore braces adorned with question mark symbols (DW: Vengeance on Varos, The Two Doctors). He also took to wearing a set of striped, yellow trousers during this incarnation. His generally preferred footwear was a pair of orange spats over green ankle boots.
The sixth incarnation was very fond of cats, and always wore one of a number of cat-shaped pins or brooches. By the time of his tenth incarnation, however, he had developed a dislike for the animal. (DW: Fear Her)
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 unconscious sixth Doctor. McCoy's face was obscured from camera view, first by the TARDIS console and then by the regeneration FX, before the final reveal of the Seventh Doctor.
- 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.