Doctor Who 3 - The Third Motion Picture (short story)
Doctor Who 3 - The Third Motion Picture was one of the three prose stories in The Doctor Who Fun Book, being written as a parodical script. Within the fictional framing device of a long-lost script for a third Dalek movie having been discovered, it offered a surprising explanation for why the second sequel to Dr. Who and the Daleks [+]Loading...["Dr. Who and the Daleks (theatrical film)"] never materialised.
Although the story featured Peter Cushing's Doctor, the illustration depicted a puzzled First Doctor, possibly suggesting that this "mainstream" Doctor was reading through the rediscovered script and finding it as shocking as the reader.
Summary[[edit] | [edit source]]
The 1967 unfinished script for a third Dr. Who movie has been discovered despite Peter Cushing's attempt to "burn, drown and throttle it". Though it begins innocently enough in the Who family's living room, it soon devolves into a metafictional mess with dreary consequences in the real world!
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
The lost 1967 unfinished script for a third Dr. Who movie has been discovered despite Peter Cushing's attempt to "burn, drown and throttle it". It opens with Susan sitting in the Whos' living room working on some sort of maths problem while Barbara is reading a trashy romance story in a magazine. When Barbara asks Susan to quiet down so she can concentrate on her reading, Susan explains that she's trying to work out what her share of the profits will be from "the last two crummy films". When she eventually works out the figure, the precocious genius also realises that it'll be held in trust until her 21st birthday anyway, and bemoans that she ever chose the life of a child actor.
The conversation is interrupted by a phone call from Mrs Ogron, who explains that she has just seen Dr. Who wandering down the High Street in a daze. This is apparently not the ageing inventor's first such spell, and his granddaughters begin to discuss the necessity of sending him to a home. It is at this moment that Ian Chesterton comes in, in full circus clown getup. To head off Dr. Who at the post office, where they assume he'll be (this being pension day), the three climb into the TARDIS, which materialises and dematerialises with the sound of a revving motorbike (as "the BBC owns the copyright to the VWORP-VWORP sound").
When Susan catches up to her Grandfather and takes the pension money back from him, the Doctor does not appear to recognise her, but seems delighted to "meet" her, introducing him to his new friend, Hari Sullivan, a lackadaisical hippie. Susan recognises him as really being one of the Yeti, and she pulls out a hammer and wooden stake, props "saved from one of Grandfather's last acting jobs", with which she threatens Sullivan, who turns on his heel and runs away.
Susan then states that it's time for them to deal with their real enemy in these movies: the Scriptwriter, the one who keeps getting them all into these ridiculous situations to begin with. The last sentence in the typed script is a stage direction which describes Susan turning towards the Scriptwriter with the hammer and stake; large blots of blood staining the rest of the page are the only evidence of what happened next.
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Susan is twelve years old.
- Barbara's last school report was "over 15 years ago" and stated that she would be best suited for life as a housewife.
- Dr. Who turned his walking frame into a turbo-charged walking frame.
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The parodied versions of the Peter Cushing Doctor's companions emphasise the traits which, in their official outings, drew the ire of the fans of televised Doctor Who, namely Barbara Wright's reduction into a "sixties dolly-bird" (as the script itself puts it) and Ian Chesterton becoming little more than a comic-relief slapstick part.
