Seventh Doctor
The Seventh Doctor was the seventh incarnation of the Time Lord known as The Doctor. Originally an eccentric, light-hearted buffoon, this incarnation's jolly persona eventually darkened into that of a mysterious, cunning manipulator to properly combat the return of Fenric.
After his regeneration, the Doctor took a much better liking to Mel as she no longer forced him to exercise and drink carrot juice, enjoying their travels together up until she left to help Sabalom Glitz reform.
During his last adventure with Mel, the Doctor gained a new companion in Ace, a troubled 80s teenager brought to the future by a time storm. He decided to heal Ace's psychological wounds while they traveled and gained a surrogate daughter in her as Ace prefered traveling with him over returning home to Perivale.
How they were separated is unknown.
Traveling alone, the Doctor regenerated after being shot in 1999 San Francisco. Although his wounds were not fatal, surgeon Grace Holloway performed exploratory surgery on him, and caused significant damage due to his non-human physiology. His regeneration was delayed due to the effects of anesthesia, taking place several hours later instead of instantly.
Biography
Post-Regeneration
The Sixth Doctor regenerated due to injuries incurred as his TARDIS was forced to land on Lakertya by the Rani. (DW: Time and the Rani)
Exactly how the Doctor was able to injure himself so severely during the attack was never revealed. However it's been suggested the regeneration may have been intentional to prevent the chain of events which could lead to the creation of the Valeyard. (NA: Timewyrm: Revelation) Also suggested is the regeneration was a result of the Doctor being weak from the events leading to the destruction of the Lampreys. (PDA: Spiral Scratch) Third, is he ended his sixth incarnation deliberately so a champion for Time could be born. (NA: Love and War)
Regardless of cause, his regeneration was followed by a usual period of post-regenerative trauma, which resulted in a somewhat chaotic, almost comic personality emerging. He also suffered amnesia, which caused the Doctor to briefly mistake the Rani for his companion, Mel. After regenerating, he indicated that he was exactly 953 years old at this time - the only Doctor to date, other than the Eleventh Doctor, for whom a specific age was given soon after regeneration.
- This number has been called into question a number of times. See Separate article.
While still under the Rani's influence, the Doctor chose a new look for his persona, shedding the chaotic, clown-like attire of his predecessor for a more subtle suit and hat, noting to the Rani that his new incarnation had regained a sense of haute couture. It is not known if the Rani actually had any influence on the Doctor's new look, but she agreed with his descion.
Travels with Mel
After regaining his memory, the Doctor found the Rani had forced his TARDIS to crash-land in order to gain his unwilling assitance in repairing her "time brain" invention and be part of its componets along with fellow brilliant minds such as Albert Einstein. However, thanks to the Doctor's new persona, the Rani's machine backfired and the Doctor saved the geniuses while trapping the Rani in her TARDIS. (DW: Time and the Rani)
Despite some initial friction between Mel and himself due to his change of face, the Doctor continued journeying with her. One of their first visits was to Paradise Towers, (DW: Paradise Towers)
On a vacation attempt, the Doctor found himself part of an alien expedition to 1959 to expereince earth rock n' roll. Once there, he found the last Chemeron queen Delta hiding with her newborn young from the vicious Bannermen. The Doctor defeated the Bannermen by having their leader fall into his own trap, scaring them off. (DW: Delta and the Bannermen)
After a final adventure on Iceworld, Mel chose to leave the Doctor and instead travel with Sabalom Glitz, a con man she felt could be turned to the side of right with her help. On Iceworld, the Doctor met Ace, a troubled teenager from 1980s Earth who had somehow been transported to the planet. After Mel's departure, Ace agreed to travel with the Doctor. (DW: Dragonfire)
Travels with Ace
The Doctor's first trip with Ace took him back to Coal Hill School in 1963, only a few days after he had left Earth with Susan, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. (DW: An Unearthly Child) He returned in order to take care of unfinished business left behind by his first incarnation - namely, the retrieval of the Hand of Omega. As the Doctor had anticipated, this mission was disrupted by the arrival of Daleks, one faction of which was controlled by the now-emporer, Davros. In defeating the Daleks, the seventh incarnation displayed a growing darkness of character, tricking the Daleks to use the Hand to destroy their own homeworld, Skaro. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Afterwards, the Doctor and Ace arrived at 20th century Windsor, encounering the Cybermen and Lady Peinforte, a woman who displayed disturbing knowledge of the Doctor's true character. However, the Doctor was able to stop both the Cybermen and Peinforte by using the Nemesis statue against them. (DW: Silver Nemesis) During his travels with Ace, the Doctor worked to heal his troubled companion, who displayed discomfort at certain memories of her earlier life, such as her fear of clowns. (DW: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy)
He also found himself reuniting with an old friend, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in an adventure that once again brought him to work with UNIT. During this event, it was revealed that the Doctor (possibly in his own future) had once lived in the time of King Arthur and had been known as Merlin. Using this supposed mistaken identity to his advantage, the Doctor managed to stop Morgane from using a nuclear missile. (DW: Battlefield)
After learning of Ace's guilty conscience of burning down a "haunted" mansion in
her time, the Doctor brought to Ace to its past 100 years before she would burn it down as a none-too-pleasant surprise for her. There, he found a temporarily imprisoned and dangerous entity called the Light. It planned to destory the Earth in a childish fit as Earth had been evolving while it was trapped, making the catalog it had made centuries earlier null and void. However, the Doctor was able to use the Light's childish logic to his advantage and convinced the Light to destory itself as it had been evolving as well. He was delighted to have Ace overcome her guilt, but not so amused when she joked about blowing up the mansion instead of burning it down. (DW: Ghost Light)
He even, inadvertently, caused her to meet and interact with her grandmother and infant mother. During this, the Doctor learned the arrival of Ace, and several other intervening adventures had been arranged by Fenric, an evil entity the Doctor had encountered before. Fenric had been trapped in another dimension by the Doctor previously and had escaped through its manipulations. However, the Doctor managed to convince the Great One, one of Fenric's servants, to kill its coporeal host in revenge for trying to trick it into beginning the Heamogoth.(DW: The Curse of Fenric)
Soon after, the Doctor toke Ace back to her time in Perivale. However, Kitlings had been spotted and people had been vanishing. The Doctor soon found that his arch-nemesis, the Master, had been trapped and infected by Cheetah World and was trying to escape by bringing people to change partialy and depart to earth. After defeating the Master, the Doctor was surprised Ace had decided the TARDIS was her home and still wanted to accompany him on his travel. Delighted, the Doctor departed with her. (DW: Survival)
Time's Champion
In the years that followed, the Doctor continued to travel extensively, gaining and losing companions as he went. Ace left to fight in a war, but later returned, older and wiser. (NA: Deceit) The Doctor also gained a valued companion in Dr. Bernice Summerfield, who was herself a fellow adventurer, (NA: Love and War) and who remained with him for quite some time, long enough that the Doctor in his eighth incarnation later claimed she was his longest-serving companion. (NA: The Dying Days)
The seventh incarnation's travels saw him reuniting with many past friends, not always in a positive fashion, including Peri Brown, (NA: Bad Therapy) Romana, (NA: Lungbarrow) Liz Shaw, (NA: Eternity Weeps) and some of his former UNIT colleagues, (NA: Happy Endings) among others.
At one point, the Doctor physically changed himself into a Human called John Smith and lived for a time as such, even falling in love with a Human woman called Joan Redfern. (NA: Human Nature)
- The tenth incarnation also experienced these events. (DW: Human Nature, Family of Blood) Most likely this event is now considered apocryphal, if it was ever canon in the first place due to the uncertain nature of spin-off material.
Near the end of his life, the seventh incarnation returned to the House of Lungbarrow on Gallifrey. During his time on Gallifrey, President Romana assigned him to collect the Master's remains from Skaro. (NA: Lungbarrow)
Death
At some point later, the Doctor (now much older) had been traveling alone and had been assigned to transport the ashes of the Master from Skaro to Gallifrey as it was the Master's final request. But, the Doctor knew the Master was just as much a threat in death as in life and attempted to stow away his ashes safely. However, much to the Doctor's horror, he ended up being right as the Master escaped from the container for his ashes as a Death Worm and caused damage to the inner workings of the TARDIS console. Having no way of getting the TARDIS to work properly due to the Master's interferance in the gudiance systems, the Doctor was forced to make an Emergency Temporal Landing in San Francisco on 30 December 1999.
However, no sooner had he left the TARDIS, than the Doctor was at first mistaken for a gangster and was shot once straight through the shoulder and twice in the leg. The Doctor was unsuccesful in attempting to get Chang Lee to stop the Master from leaving the TARDIS before losing
conciousness. Taken to hospital, it was determined that the bullets had caused only minor injuries to the Doctor. However, due in part to a seeming abnormality in the Doctor's X-ray, caused by his second heart, specialist Dr. Grace Holloway undertook exploratory surgery to try "fixing" his abnormal heartbeat. Waking up just as Grace was to begin, the Doctor attempted to prevent the surgery by explaining his non-terrsitial origins, but was quickly put under anestitic. The Doctor was accidently killed when Grace damaged his circulatory system with a probe. Though they attempted to revive him, the Doctor's seventh body was dead, but had not yet regenerated. Unlike his previous deaths, the Doctor did not regenerate into a new body until several hours later in the hospital morgue. His eighth incarnation later attributed this to having been under anesthesia at the time of his "death". (DW: Doctor Who)
In another account, the Seventh Doctor's death is said to have occurred at some point during his travels with Ace, although it is possible this occurred in an alternate universe or alternate timeline, or was part of a larger, unchronicled scheme. (WC: Death Comes to Time)
- For a list of Seventh Doctor stories in the order in which he experienced them, see Seventh Doctor - Timeline.
Psychological Profile
Personality
The personality of the seventh incarnation was originally much more light-hearted and prone to clownish behaviour, which masked the Doctor's intellect and courage against evil. However, as he matured, he took a much darker turn. This "darker" side would come to define him, as the seventh incarnation became a master manipulator who saw the battle between good and evil as a game of chess and everyone around him as pawns, rooks, etc, to be manipulated in the pursuit of stopping evil. Frequently, he would only see the "bigger picture" rather than the world before him. An example of this occurred when the Doctor emotionally devastated Ace by labelling her, among other things, an "emotional cripple" during his battle with Fenric. This was necessary in order for her to briefly abandon her belief in him, weakening Fenric's power, a fact that he did not explain until later. (DW: The Curse of Fenric)
Despite his manipulative actions, such as (by one account) using psychic powers to make Mel leave, (NA: Head Games) the seventh incarnation did care for his companions. He had a paternal relationship with Ace, which ultimately soured when Ace found herself unable to deal with the Doctor's growing emotional coldness.
Aspects of his light-hearted nature did continue, however, as he particularly seemed to relish his game against Light. (DW: Ghost Light) He was also not totally unfeeling when it came to the "bigger picture"; he appeared greatly apprehensive about his decision to destroy Skaro, and was agonised when he had to convince Ace that he did not care about her. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks, The Curse of Fenric)
Upon meeting his future self, the Fifth Doctor was repulsed by his manipulative nature. The Seventh Doctor had a similarly low opinion of his fifth incarnation, describing him as "bland" and "not even one of the good ones." (MA: Cold Fusion)
Appearance
At the beginning of his seventh incarnation, the Doctor wore an off-white safari-styled jacket. He wore a red paisley scarf under the lapels and had a matching handkerchief in the left pocket. Like many of his previous incarnations, he wore a fob watch as part of his clothing. He wore a yellow pullover with turquoise zigzag lines and red question marks. Under the pullover he wore a white shirt with red tie. For trousers, he wore sand-coloured tweed plaid trousers with white and brown brogued spectator shoes. He also wore a white colonial-styled Panama hat. The hat had a paisley hat band and an upturned brim, similar to the hat he wore in his fifth incarnation. He carried an umbrella which had a red, question mark shaped handle. (DW: Delta and the Bannermen et. al.)
When the Doctor's personality began to change, his outfit changed alongside it. His jacket, hat band, handkerchief, scarf and tie became darker, varying between shades of burgundy and brown. (DW: Ghost Light et al)
By the end of this incarnation, his outfit had somewhat altered again. He wore a light brown tweed jacket, with a red waistcoat and a black and brown, zigzag patterned tie. The Doctor still retained his Panama hat. (DW: Doctor Who)
Habits and Quirks
The seventh incarnation was a consummate fan of the game of chess, to the point of treating his companions and enemies as pieces on a chess board. (DW: Silver Nemesis, The Curse of Fenric) Despite his tendency toward a dark personality, the seventh incarnation was known for his use of words to resolve problems instead of violence.
He also rolled his 'R's, and spoke with a Scottish accent.
He liked to carry around a question mark umbrella, often using it for practical purposes unrelated to keeping the rain away. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks)
A habit occasionally displayed was a tendency to mangle and combine earth idioms, such as "Time and tide melt the snowman" ,"A stitch in time... takes up space" and "Fit as a... trombone".
Also, early into this incarnation, the Doctor showed a knack for playing the spoons as a musical instrument, though this was seen less as he matured.
Behind the scenes
Casting
Actors considered for the role of the seventh incarnation before McCoy was cast included Rowan Atkinson, who later played the ninth incarnation in the satirical The Curse of Fatal Death; McCoy's mentor Ken Campbell; Chris Jury; Tony Robinson; and Alexei Sayle. Sayle had previously played the DJ in DW: Revelation of the Daleks.
Cartmel Masterplan
Season 25 and 26 had broad hints that the Doctor was not simply a Time Lord, as previously shown and stated. This overarching plot, conceived by Script Editor Andrew Cartmel and referred to by fans as the Cartmel Masterplan, was designed to restore an element of mystery in the Doctor and his true nature as in the stories of the first and second incarnations.
- For further discussion, see Cartmel Masterplan.
Parodies and pastiches
- After the original series ended, Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred went on to play characters called the Professor and Ace, respectively, in a series of audio adventures produced by BBV Productions. Initially the stories were clearly based upon Doctor Who, but these connections decreased when the character was renamed the Dominie and Aldred's character Alice.
- McCoy also parodied his version of the Doctor in the BBV production, Do You Have a Licence to Save This Planet? in which he played the Foot Doctor. Although the film featured several monsters from Doctor Who, this production is not considered canonical in any way.
- In the BBC series, Doctors, Sylvester guest-starred as Graham Capelli, an actor who had played the title role in The Amazing Lollipop Man, a cult 1980s children's television series of the same name. The Lollipop Man had many similarities to the Doctor.
- An Easter Egg referencing the Seventh Doctor appears in the seventh episode of the first season (The Tale of the Captured Souls) of the Nickelodean children's horror series, Are You Afraid of the Dark. The Seventh Doctor's hat and coat can be seen hanging from a hatstand at two points in the episode.
External links
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