Devious (home video)
Devious is the title of an as-yet-unfinished fan-made film starring Tony Garner as an interim incarnation, the "Second-and-a-Halfth Doctor". Production began not long before Jon Pertwee's death in 1996 and constituted one of his last performances both as the Third Doctor and in acting altogether, doing his final widely-seen performances (a TV commercial for Vodaphone and the 21 April 1996 segment of Surprise Surprise) afterwards. Pertwee's scenes were videotaped in April 1995.
According to the official website of the production, the film is near completion, with editing and special effects left to be done. The footage has been divided into six episodes, possibly in imitation of the classic series' twenty-five-minute length.
The writers posted in 2011 that they hoped to finally finish the production that year.
Plot Summary
The "Interim Doctor", along with his companions, attempt to stop the Daleks, who possess a mechanism which makes time jump around (and hence, why the characters appear older in some scenes).
Cast
- "Second-and-a-Halfth Doctor" - Tony Garner
- Second Doctor - Patrick Troughton (via archive footage)
- Third Doctor - Jon Pertwee
- Polly Wright - Anneke Wills
- Voix - Peter Tuddenham
- Scribe - Hugh Lloyd
- Auriga - David Clarke
- Callisto -Anthony Townsend
- Adreinna - Lynette East
- The Covellitor - Stephen Cranford
- Councillor Chaldor - Ashley Nealfuller
- Aturo - Arthur Harrod
- Observer Aquilia - Heather Cohen
- Observer Vardrah - Chris T. Kirk
- Ralib - Ian Edmond
- Nilan - Richard Kingshott
- Stunt Double for Pertwee - Tim Pieraccini
Background
During the 1990s, a large number of fan-made audio, film and video productions were undertaken to keep the Doctor Who brand alive during the "wilderness years" between 1989 and 2005. Many of these productions featured either characters who were effectively the Doctor in all but name (such as The Stranger and The Time Travellers), or non-BBC-owned characters and monsters from the TV series that had been licensed direct from their creators (such as P.R.O.B.E., Downtime, and Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans).
With the exception of Tom Baker, all surviving Doctor actors, including Pertwee, had participated in at least one of these productions. Among fan-films, only Devious and one other (Gene Genius with Sylvester McCoy) are known to have featured one of these actors playing his incarnation of the Doctor...although there is no indication that the character had been licensed from the BBC.
Release
Following Pertwee's death, Big Finish Productions utilised audio of him from Devious in the fortieth-anniversary audio drama, Zagreus.
In 2009, BBC Video released a twelve-minute excerpt from Devious as a bonus feature on the UK and North American DVD releases of the final Troughton serial, TV: The War Games; the story of Devious takes place between it and Pertwee's first televised story, TV: Spearhead from Space. This marked the first time the BBC has released a fan film of this nature, although it is uncertain whether its inclusion on the DVD means it is accepted as canon and, if so, what it overrides of Season 6B.
The film also includes several other cameos, including Anneke Wills reprising her role as Polly, although she does not appear in the excerpt released to DVD.
Story notes
- A major factor that began production of Devious was the comparison of Garner to both Troughton and Pertwee, looking like a cross of the two. This fueled the idea of the Second Doctor only regenerating halfway.
- Anneke Wills does not appear in the excerpt featured on the 2009 DVD release, as rights could not be secured to show the Cybermen (which appear in Wills' scenes). Similarly, the Daleks (which also feature in the production) were not seen.
- The TARDIS console and walls, along with the Dalek props, were borrowed in 1999 for use in The Curse of Fatal Death. In 2004, the console room was borrowed for use in a four-part news report on the history of Doctor Who. The TARDIS exterior (not seen in Curse), complete with Yale key-and-lock, has also appeared in a few retrospectives.
- When Jon Pertwee agreed to reprise his role in 1995, the console room was overhauled – the walls were upgraded from simply having photocopied roundels on cardboard to using cut-out roundels on hardboard, while the console itself was upgraded from a foot-long model to a full-sized one. Most scenes that had been recorded up to that point with the original console room were reshot using the new console/walls; a few brief shots using the original walls can be seen in the 2009 excerpt.
- The final scene of the story is a redo of the Doctor's first appearance in Spearhead from Space, with Pertwee coming out of the TARDIS and his stunt double doing the fall.
- For at least the excerpt, the open and close are from the Second and Third Doctor eras, respectively.
- The website claims that Devious was "something only intended for our friends to see and enjoy - the website being the documenting of the film-making experience - hence you may see images, not clips from the production", implying that the finished product will not see mass release.
- Devious and its production team were profiled on the BBC shows South Today in 2005 (although the show claimed production began in 1990) and South East Today in July 2009 (to coincide with the DVD release of The War Games). Clips from the production were also seen in the "making-of" feature on the video release of The Curse of Fatal Death.
- Per authorial intent, this story is the "bridge" between TV: The War Games and TV: Spearhead from Space. While this is at odds with the Season 6B put forth primarily by TV: The Two Doctors and COMIC: Action in Exile, it is possible that the group was unknowingly viewing a recording of the Second Doctor's trial and actually retrieved him during his forced regeneration at the end of COMIC: The Night Walkers. Such a move would not be out-of-character for the Time Lords, as they had a spy among the TARDIS group in this story and, much later in the Doctor's life, manipulated video evidence to frame him for crimes they committed (TV: The Trial of a Time Lord).
