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| Previous: The Second Doctor | Next: The Fourth Doctor |
| The Third Doctor (1970-1974) | ||||
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Season Seven: Exiled To Earth First appearances of Liz, the Autons and the Silurians. The Doctor becomes UNIT's scientific adviser. Doctor Who is broadcast in colour for the first time. |
Season Ten: A Return To Wandering First appearance of Omega. First multi-Doctor story. The Doctor's exile is lifted. |
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Season Eight:
Enter -- The Master First appearances of Jo, Yates and the Master. |
Season
Eleven: Facing Fears First appearances of Sarah Jane and the Sontarans. The Doctor's home planet is named as Gallifrey for the first time. |
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Season Nine: A
Galactic Yo-Yo First appearance of the Sea Devils. |
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| Season Seven: Exiled To Earth |
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Jon Pertwee portrayed the Doctor from Spearhead From Space in January 1970 to Planet Of The Spiders in June 1974. He returned for The Five Doctors in November 1983 and Dimensions In Time in November 1993. Pertwee passed away in 1996. |
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Liz Shaw was a brilliant scientist who served as an advisor to UNIT. Caroline John played Liz from Spearhead From Space in January 1970 to Inferno in June 1970. She returned for The Five Doctors in November 1983 and for Dimensions In Time in November 1993. |
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| The Production Team |
| With Derrick Sherwin eager to rejoin Peter Bryant elsewhere in the BBC ranks, a new producer was appointed early in Season Seven to replace him on Doctor Who. This was Barry Letts, who had previously directed The Enemy Of The World for the series. Together, he and Terrance Dicks became one of the most stable production teams in Doctor Who's history, remaining intact throughout the Pertwee era. |
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Spearhead From Space by Robert Holmes,
directed by Derek Martinus
The newly-regenerated Doctor is exiled to modern-day Earth by the Time
Lords, where he becomes attached to the British branch of UNIT as their
scientific adviser, ostensibly taking orders from Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart. Aided by Liz Shaw, the Doctor's first task is to
investigate a shower of mysterious meteorites which landed in the
countryside. The Time Lord discovers that these are no ordinary
meteorites: in fact, the plastic-controlling Nestenes have landed,
intending to use their automated servants, the Autons, to take over the
Earth.
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The Silurians by Malcolm Hulke,
directed by Timothy Combe
UNIT is called in when a nuclear reactor on Wenley Moor starts
experiencing strange power disruptions. The Doctor discovers that the
activation of the reactor has accidentally awakened the Earth's original
civilised inhabitants, the reptilian Silurians, who have lain in suspended
animation underground for millennia. Now, the Silurians wish to reclaim
their planet, and unleash a deadly virus which will engulf mankind.
(Also frequently referred to as Doctor Who and The Silurians.
This story has been recolorised, as the original prints are
missing.)
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The Ambassadors Of Death by David
Whitaker, directed by Michael Ferguson
When a manned mission to Mars returns to Earth, it soon becomes apparent
that the three beings who disembark are not the ship's astronauts. The
Doctor realises that the crew have made contact with an alien force on the
Red Planet, but his investigations are interrupted when the aliens
masquerading as the astronauts are kidnapped by someone who knows them of
old. (Episode one is retained in its original color, while episodes
two to seven have been recolorised, as the original prints are
missing.)
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Inferno by Don Houghton, directed by
Douglas Camfield and Barry Letts
Project Inferno is designed to drill down through the Earth's core, where
it will release a powerful new energy source called Stahlman's Gas, named
after the project's director. But the Doctor realises that unleashing
Stahlman's Gas will have horrible consequences for the planet, and indeed
his fears are confirmed when a substance oozing up from the drill shaft
begins mutating men into bestial Primords. Before the Doctor can do
anything to stop Stahlman, however, a power surge in the TARDIS console
sends him to a hostile parallel universe where Project Inferno is nearing
completion.
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| Making History |
| The start of the Pertwee era saw a number of changes to Doctor Who's format. With the Doctor now exiled to Earth, it meant that money could be saved by setting each serial primarily on modern-day Earth, with several recurring motifs. Furthermore, for the first time Doctor Who would be made in colour, despite the fact that it would be several years before the majority of British homes owned a colour TV set. Given all this change, it was felt that Season Seven was the perfect time to retarget Doctor Who away from very young children and more toward teenagers and even adults. As a result, Doctor Who became a more mature, adventure-oriented programme featuring heavier doses of horror and violence. |
| Season Eight: Enter -- The Master |
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Josephine (Jo) Grant was the Doctor's assistant during his tenure as UNIT's scientific advisor. Katy Manning played Jo from Terror Of The Autons in January 1971 to The Green Death in June 1973. She returned in Death Of The Doctor, one of The Sarah Jane Adventures. |
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Captain Mike Yates of UNIT was Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's second-in-command for much of the Doctor's exile to Earth. Richard Franklin played Yates on a recurring basis from Terror Of The Autons in January 1971 to Planet Of The Spiders in June 1974. He returned for The Five Doctors in November 1983 and for Dimensions In Time in November 1993. |
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Terror Of The Autons by Robert Holmes,
directed by Barry Letts
The Doctor is warned of a new threat to the Earth: the evil renegade Time
Lord known as the Master has arrived. The Master has allied himself with
the Nestene Consciousness and has once again paved the way for an Auton
presence on Earth. The Doctor and his new assistant, Jo Grant, must stop
the Nestenes for a second time -- but this time with the knowledge that
the Doctor is going head to head with a being who is quite possibly his
true equal. (This story has been recolorised, as the original prints
are missing.)
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The Mind Of Evil by Don Houghton,
directed by Timothy Combe
The Master, posing as Professor Keller, has created a device he purports
will remove the negative impulses from the brains of convicted criminals.
The Keller Machine in fact contains an alien mind parasite which turns the
convicts into servants of the Master. With their help, the evil Time Lord
hijacks a nerve missile, with which he intends to hold a world peace
conference hostage. (This story is only available in black and white as
the original prints are missing.)
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The Claws Of Axos by Bob Baker and
Dave Martin, directed by Michael Ferguson
Beings from space arrive in England, calling themselves Axons. They bring
with them a fantastic substance called Axonite which can affect the
structure of matter. The Axons offer to exchange the Axonite with the
various world powers, but the Doctor discovers there is something sinister
about the aliens -- not the least of which is their secret allegiance with
the Master.
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Colony In Space by Malcolm Hulke,
directed by Michael Briant
The Time Lords send the Doctor and Jo to an Earth colony in the 25th
century. There, the time travellers discover the colonists being ravaged
by a weird dinosaur-like beast while sinister miners try to force them to
abandon the planet. Meanwhile, the Master has also arrived, searching for
a legendary doomsday device believed to be buried in the ruins on the
outskirts of the colony.
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The Daemons by Guy Leopold, directed by
Christopher Barry
The Master poses as the new vicar in the rural community of Devil's End,
just as an archaeologist begins work on opening an ancient barrow near the
village. Despite the Doctor's attempts to stop the work, a Daemon named
Azal is released from dormancy within the barrow. A member of an ancient
alien race who guided nascent human life on Earth, Azal has remained
behind to judge humanity's worthiness. But the Master will stop at nothing
to seize Azal's tremendous power. (This story was recolorised as the
original prints are missing.)
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| Making History |
| With the arrival of Katy Manning, Richard Franklin and Roger Delgado as Jo Grant, Mike Yates and the Master, respectively, the now-famous UNIT Family was complete. Pertwee-era Doctor Who was really hitting its stride in Season Eight, although even the production team would later admit to having overexposed the Master by having him appear in every story that year. |
| Season Nine: A Galactic Yo-Yo |
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Day Of The Daleks by Louis Marks,
directed by Paul Bernard
The Doctor is alerted to a disturbance in the time stream when guerrillas
from the 22nd century appear. Their goal is to assassinate Sir Reginald
Styles, who is about to host an important international peace conference.
The Doctor learns that Styles is destined to blow up the conference,
instigating World War Three. As a result, Earth two hundred years in the
future is dominated by one race: the Daleks, aided by their brutish
footsoldiers, the Ogrons.
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The Curse Of Peladon by Brian Hayles,
directed by Lennie Mayne
The Doctor and Jo are sent by the Time Lords to Peladon, a planet
attempting join the interstellar Federation. Someone is sabotaging the
negotiations, however, and the Doctor suspects it is the Ice Warrior
delegates. But as the mystery deepens and the body count mount, the
Doctor may prove to be disastrously mistaken.
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The Sea Devils by Malcolm Hulke,
directed by Michael Briant
The Master escapes from incarceration and allies himself with the
newly-awakened Sea Devils, the aquatic cousins of the Silurians, who have
also lain dormant for aeons in suspended animation. With an army of Sea
Devils at the Master's command as he seeks to conquer the Earth, the
Doctor soon realises that even with the backing of the British navy, there
may be no stopping his arch-foe this time.
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The Mutants by Bob Baker and Dave
Martin, directed by Christopher Barry
The Time Lords send the Doctor and Jo to the planet Solos in the dying
days of Earth's decadent intergalactic Empire. An Earth delegation, led by
the maniacal Marshal, has arrived on Solos, seeking to convert its
atmosphere into one more suitable for habitation by humans. The native
Solonians oppose this, but at the same time they discover that a
crippling plague has befallen their people, turning them into hideously
mutated monsters.
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The Time Monster by Robert Sloman,
directed by Paul Bernard
The Master, posing as Professor Thascalos, obtains the Crystal of
Kronos, a relic of ancient Atlantis. Using the Crystal, the evil Time
Lord summons Kronos, a powerful Chronovore native to the time vortex.
The Doctor pursues his enemy back in time to Atlantis, where he has one
last chance to stop the Master from gaining permanent control over
Kronos, and unleashing the unstoppable force onto the world.
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| Making History |
| Day Of The Daleks saw the first appearance of the Daleks as primary villains in a story in more than four years. During this time, their creator, Terry Nation, had been engaged in unsuccessful attempts to sell the concept of a Dalek television series in the United States. |
| Season Ten: A Return To Wandering |
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The Three Doctors by Bob Baker and Dave
Martin, directed by Lennie Mayne
The Time Lords' energy is being drained through a black hole, so all three
Doctors are summoned to investigate. While the First Doctor advises them
from the TARDIS scanner, the Second and Third Doctors travel through the
black hole. They discover that Omega, a long-lost pioneer of Time Lord
history, is imprisoned therein. Believing he has been abandoned, Omega --
now wielding supreme power over the anti-matter universe within the black
hole -- is determined to destroy the Time Lords, and force the Doctors to
remain within the black hole in his place.
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Carnival Of Monsters by Robert Holmes,
directed by Barry Letts
With the Doctor once again free to wander in time and space, the TARDIS
brings him and Jo to a cargo ship. The Doctor believes it is the 1920s,
until he learns that the boat is one which history records as having
disappeared without a trace. It soon becomes clear that they are in fact
trapped within an outlawed Miniscope, which holds prisoner a menagerie of
oblivious creatures from across time and space.
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Frontier In Space by Malcolm Hulke,
directed by Paul Bernard
The Earth Federation is on the brink of war with the rival Draconian
Empire. When the Doctor and Jo arrive, they discover someone is trying to
inflame the tensions between the two space powers. They quickly learn that
the culprit is the Master, but before they can deal with him, the evil
Time Lord has them framed as Draconian spies. Worse still, the Master is
not working alone...
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Planet Of The Daleks by Terry Nation,
directed by David Maloney
The TARDIS materialises on Spiridon, where the Doctor and Jo are aware a
Dalek plot is afoot. Teaming up with a band of Thals, the time travellers
soon discover an enormous army of Daleks is present on the planet. To make
matters worse, a Dalek scientific team is on the verge of gifting their
siblings with the invisibility powers of the Spiridon natives.
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The Green Death by Robert Sloman,
directed by Michael Briant
Waste from a chemical plant, Global Chemicals, in Wales has mutated the
local insects, turning them into deadly giant monsters. With the aid of a
team of local ecologists, the Doctor and Jo set about stopping the
monsters and the environmental destruction being wrought by the refinery.
But when Mike Yates goes in undercover, he discovers that Global
Chemicals' director is not just unscrupulous: he's inhuman.
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| Making History |
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For the tenth season of Doctor Who, it was clear that something special should be done. As a result, all three Doctors -- William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee -- were reunited in a celebratory adventure. Hartnell's role had to be minimised due to his ongoing health problems, from which he would sadly pass away just two years later. Meanwhile, in the midst of the tenth-anniversary jubilation, tragedy struck when the Master, Roger Delgado, was killed in an automobile accident in Turkey. This, combined with Katy Manning's decision to leave Doctor Who, began the dissolution of the UNIT Family and heralded the beginning of the end of the Pertwee era. |
| Season Eleven: Facing Fears |
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Sarah Jane Smith was a journalist who stowed away aboard the TARDIS during an investigation. Even after leaving the Doctor, she continued defending Earth from alien invasion with the help of several teenagers and the robot dog K-9. Elisabeth Sladen played Sarah from The Time Warrior in December 1973 to The Hand Of Fear in October 1976. She returned for The Five Doctors in November 1983, Dimensions In Time in November 1993, School Reunion in April 2006, The Stolen Earth / Journey's End in June/July 2008, and The End Of Time in January 2010. She died in April 2011. |
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The Time Warrior by Robert Holmes,
directed by Alan Bromly
UNIT is called in when scientists begin disappearing and, with the help of
journalist Sarah Jane Smith, the Doctor discovers they are being abducted
into the past. Travelling to the Middle Ages, the Doctor learns that a
Sontaran, Linx, has crashlanded on the planet and allied himself with
a cutthroat brigand named Irongron, who has been using Linx's alien
weaponry to terrorise the countryside.
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Invasion Of The Dinosaurs by Malcolm
Hulke, directed by Paddy Russell
When the Doctor and Sarah Jane return to modern-day England, they find
London deserted and dinosaurs on the loose. It transpires that a group of
politicians and scientists are trying to right what they perceive as the
cause of all our planet's wrongs by reverting the Earth to a
pre-technological level. To make matters worse, they have help -- from
inside UNIT and amongst the Doctor's closest friends. (Episode one of
this story exists only in black and white as the original print is
missing.)
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Death To The Daleks by Terry Nation,
directed by Michael Briant
Two ships -- one piloted by Daleks, the other by a team of humans --
crashlands on Exxilon. Both groups have come to Exxilon in search of the
mineral parrinium, the only cure for a space plague which is wreaking
havoc throughout the cosmos. The Doctor and Sarah discover that both
parties have been mysteriously rendered powerless, meaning that the
Daleks' weapons are inoperable -- and they have begun acting unusually
cooperative as a result. As his oldest foes begin to show their true
colours, however, the Doctor must brave the dangers of the lost city of
the Exxilons in order to deliver the parrinium into the rightful
hands. | |
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The Monster Of Peladon by Brian Hayles,
directed by Lennie Mayne
The TARDIS returns to Peladon fifty years after its first visit, and the
Doctor and Sarah Jane find the planet in disorder once again. The
Federation desperately needs trisilicate -- in which Peladon is rich -- in
order to wage a war against the oppressive Galaxy Five. But this has lead
to claims amongst the natives of Peladon that the Federation is raping
their planet. To make matters worse, the ghost of Aggedor, the Sacred
Beast of Peladon, has been appearing, apparently condemning the
Federation. Once again it seems as if the Ice Warriors are to blame. Can
the Doctor be wrong twice?
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Planet Of The Spiders by Robert
Sloman, directed by Barry Letts
Mutant Spiders rule the planet Metebelis Three in the far future, holding
a regressive Earth colony in a grip of fear. The leader of the Spiders,
the mammoth Great One, is constructing a device using Metebelis' powerful
blue crystals which will increase her mental powers a millionfold. But the
Doctor is in possession of the last crystal, and soon he and Sarah find
themselves pursued by the Spiders and their human agents.
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| Making History |
| With Richard Franklin leaving Doctor Who this season, and Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks finally prepared to dissolve the long-standing production team, Jon Pertwee himself decided to leave the series, a decision also mitigated by an unwillingness by the BBC to increase the actor's salary. As a result, perhaps the most stable era of the show's history ended on a high note, with the programme's popularity still soaring. But the heights Doctor Who had reached thus far were nothing compared to those it would soon attain... |
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