Patrick Troughton decided to retire from the role after three seasons so they had to find a new Doctor. Jon Pertwee was an unexpected choice because he was mostly known for playing comedy. But he wanted to stretch out, and approached the Doctor as a James Bond type of hero, which was very much in the zeitgeist of the time.
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. Of course, the Brigadier was well known from the Troughton years where he was introduced to the show, so now he has to get used to the idea of regeneration. It takes him some time, but it helps to set up his reaction when the fourth Doctor appears, where he says wearily “Well, here we go again.”
This is when the show switched over from being black-and-white to color.
Spearhead from Space
And we get to meet a new monster, the Autons. They appear a few more times, most notably in the very first story of the new Doctor Who in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston. And we have a new companion as well, Liz Shaw, who is herself a scientist called in by the Brigadier before the Doctor has even made an appearance, because he needed some scientific help with the apparent landing of 60 “meteorites”, which of course were nothing of the sort. The new Doctor and the new age of color get off to a good start in this story that moves right along. The Autons are made of plastic and controlled by the Nestene Consciousness, and they want to take over the Earth of course. Their best trick is to animate shop window mannequins and turn them into killers.
Doctor Who and the Silurians
OK, this is a classic story. The Silurians are a just a bit cheesy, the science does not bear too close inspection, but it hits the ground running with a mystery that unfolds over several episodes. The Silurian period in paleontology/geology runs from 443.8 million years ago to 419.2 million years ago, and while land animals were starting to appear by this time, reptiles and mammals were far in the future. That the Silurians as an advanced race of reptiles with a high degree of scientific achievement makes no sense, and neither does them having a war with the monkeys. So just ignore that, and enjoy another “base under seige” story that skewers race prejudice. Both the Humans and the Silurians have many members who only want to kill the other, and only the Doctor thinks there might be a way to live together.
The Ambassadors of Death
This is a thriller in the James Bond mold. Somehow Britain in the 1980s is sending manned missions to Mars, and latest, Mars Probe 7, has come back to Earth orbit, but the astronauts are not responding. So they send up a recovery capsule with another astronaut, and now he is not responding either. They manage to bring back the capsule, but mysterious bad guys try to steal the capsule, and do succeed in taking whoever was inside. We suspect alien life forms because of the high radiation readings. Humans could not survive such high radiation, but whoever these things are they seem to need the radiation to stay alive. There are lots of action scenes and mysteries about who the baddies are and what they want, partly because they don’t all want the same thing.
A few of the episodes are in black-and-white because the BBC continued its short-sighted policy of scrapping the tapes after the shows were transmitted, but all of the episodes are there.
Inferno
This is a fun little romp that takes the Doctor into a Bizarro-world analog to our Earth, but in a sideways dimension. Britain is no longer a monarchy, but a Fascistic Republic, and the UNIT people are now sort of Nazi SS types. The plot is based on something that really did happen around this time called Project Mohole, which was about drilling into the Mohorovičić discontinuity, which is the boundary between the Earth’s crust and mantle. This was a very real program, but suddenly it stopped, and apparently the reason for stopping it was highly classified, or so the writers claimed. So they made a similar project the focus of this story, and gave a reason for stopping it. The main area where you have to suspend disbelief is that the drilling program was supposedly bringing up some green goo, and if you touched the green goo you gradually turned into a green-skinned, hairy werewolf-like creature called a Primord. The Doctor “explains” this as a retrogression, but then Pertwee’s Doctor was always good for scientific-sounding babble. Still, this is a favorite of the Pertwee era for many Doctor Who fans, and is a fun story that carries you right along.
Terror of the Autons
The Autons are back! And we are introduced to the Master. One of the classic villains of Doctor Who made his appearance here. It all started with a conversation between Producer Barry Letts and Script Editor Terrance Dicks, noting that the relationship between the Doctor and the Brigadier resembled that between Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. But then, what about Moriarty? The Doctor needed a Moriarty, and thus the Master is born. Played by Roger Delgado, he oozes evil and is for my money still the best Master to ever play the part. Sadly, he died in a car crash in 1973, cutting short his run, but they used him a lot while they had him, possibly too much.
As for the Autons, somehow they had hooked up with the Master, and he was helping them to take over the Earth. The thing about the Autons is that they can turn anything made of plastic into a tool or weapon, and gosh there are a lot plastic things around. Plastic chairs can kill you, plastic dolls can kill you, even plastic daffodils can kill you. And then there is the telephone cord. By the end of the story, the Doctor has managed to steal a key component from the Master’s TARDIS, thus stranding him on Earth as well, good for a few more stories.
Jo Grant (Katy Manning) is the new companion, and is not a scientist like Lis Shaw was, and this was a deliberate choice by the producer, Barry Letts. He felt that Liz was taking some of the attention away from the Doctor. She is fine in this episode, and does more than just ask questions and scream on cue.
The Mind of Evil
A nice little six-parter here. A Dr. Keller has created a machine that can extract the evil thoughts from people’s brains and make them harmless. So the government decides that this is better than executing criminals, just remove the bad stuff and leave them alone. The Doctor attends a demonstration at Stangmoor Prison, and he thinks something is wrong. They bring in a violent offender, strap him into the machine, and he screams in agony as the machine is used, which appears to be an unusual reaction. Meanwhile, the First World Peace Conference is happening in London, and something is going wrong in the Chinese delegation. Some documents are reported missing, then the Captain who reported them missing is seen burning some documents. Then the chief delegate from China is found dead. It turns out all of this is related, and the Master is behind it. In the end he is defeated, but he does get his Dematerialization Circuit back and can again travel through Space and Time. But don’t worry, we haven’t seen the last of him.
The Claws of Axos
A UFO lands on earth, and golden aliens are offering a mineral of untold riches. What could possibly go wrong with that? When you learn that the Master is involved, well, quite a lot. An American agent is involved who is trying to end the threat of the Master, but of course he does not succeed of there would be no more stories and we know that there will be more stories with the Master. Roger Delgado continues to shine in the role he invented and still does better than anyone else. And is the Doctor really betraying everyone on Earth? A good 4-part story with satisfying action, and a suitably venal British government official for the Doctor to despise and to clash with the Brigadier.
