Seventh Season - Jon Pertwee - Palain.comPalain.com

Spearhead from Space

This is when the show switched over from being black-and-white to color.

In order to save money otherwise spent on special effects, the BBC decided to keep Doctor Who on Earth at the beginning of Pertwee’s run. This was of course explained as a sentence by the Time Lords at the end of War Games. The other economy move was to reduce Doctor Who to a half-year instead of a full year. For the balance of the year the BBC slotted in an SF program from America called Star Trek. I guess buying programs is cheaper than making them. As part of this Earth-grounding, the Doctor became the Science Advisor to U.N.I.T. (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), lead by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Watch for other Lethbridge-Stewarts to show up in other stories in the future.