Jon Pertwee: Inside The Establishment

Written by Tony Cross Friday, 14 October 2011

Journey Through The Whoniverse - by Tony Cross

When I first crossed the line from someone who enjoyed watching Doctor Who on the television to proper geekdom it was the stories of the Third Doctor that I saw the most of initially. They were available as much copied pirate VHS tapes from Australian television. I remember enjoying seeing stories I'd never seen before and feeling like some kind of televisual Indiana Jones stumbling across ancient treasures. That nostalgia is still with me now. It is not the same feeling that I get when I watch Tom Baker who was the Doctor of my childhood but a more grown up nostalgia.

Jon Pertwee's period as The Doctor spanned five seasons from 1970 to 1974. When he took over Doctor Who's future was far from assured. Its viewing figures had declined from their Hartnell peak and the story is that if a proper replacement couldn't be found Doctor Who would have ended with "The War Games". But by the end of Pertwee's tenure Doctor Who was a success once more and Tom Baker inherited a programme in rude health.

The first thing that needs to be said is that we get Doctor Who in colour for the first time and, having watched episodes in order, I did experience a genuine ‘wow’ moment when Spearhead from Space began. Colour means Pertwee arrives with a bang.

The next thing to note is that there was not one Jon Pertwee era. There were two. There is the Season Seven Jon Pertwee and then there is the other Jon Pertwee: the more clichéd one.

Season Seven, set entirely on Earth and consisting of only four stories: the four part Spearhead from Space and three seven part stories. The format was designed to save money but was (as Terrance Dicks is fond of pointing out) somewhat limiting. It is a more serious, more political and more morally ambiguous Doctor Who than we will see again.

The villains - with the exception of the Autons - are less the out and out black hats with more nuanced reasons to take over the world than the bog standard Doctor Who baddy. The Silurians have a reasonable claim on the Earth; General Carrington acts out of madness rather than malice and it is Professor Stahlman's pride and then a primitive drive that leads to disaster in Inferno. Inferno, with its hop across the dimension, emphasizes this lack of clear cut villainy. The alt-Earth versions of our heroic team illustrate how easily good can become bad; bad can become good.

Season Seven is all about shades of grey. The Brigadier's decision to blow up the Silurian caves is an understandable one and the Brigadier would surely plead that he was only doing his duty. It is not just that decision though, it is the fact that the Brigadier lies to the Doctor and tries to shuffle away before doing the deed. The Brigadier knows that the Doctor would not approve of what he was doing but does it anyway. This is Doctor Who as Realpolitik.

However there's a strong argument to be made that Season 7 is the best Season of Doctor Who in the series history. All four stories have depth and ideas to get your teeth into. Season 7 is a peak of Doctor Who. If you haven't watched the stories, you should.

The rest of the Pertwee era becomes increasingly comfortable though and the Doctor becomes less frustrated alien exile and more the establishments go to guy for aliens. He can flip off civil servants now by name dropping their knighthood wielding bosses names into conversation. The Doctor has become clubbable and that does not feel right. The Doctor is the outsider par excellence. He is an exile, a rebel and probably, to his contemporaries, a pompous pain in the arse. He is not the sort of chap who hangs out with "Tubby" Rowlands at select London clubs.

It is a lovely performance from Pertwee, who was best known for being a comedian when he got the part but Pertwee refuses to play it anything but straight - at least until he goes all disguise crazy in 'The Green Death'. Pertwee's Doctor is also probably the least alien Doctor until David Tennant's, which is reflected in the Doctorishness of Professor Cliff Jones. Could you pick which one was the Timelord in 'The Green Death'? That's not a criticism, it's just a fact. The Third Doctor is a straight down the line English chap as much as Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, despite his complaints about his exile and his acidic digs at the Brigadier’s military mind.

Pertwee's three 'official' assistants: Liz Shaw, Jo Grant and Sarah Jane Smith all have their strengths and weaknesses.

Caroline John does her best with Liz Shaw but the character doesn't get a chance because the super-scientist can't compete with the Doctor and she is quickly reduced to asking the kind of informational questions that any assistant could ask. Her sudden disappearance at the start of Season Eight seems right actually. After all, as the Brigadier points out, all the Doctor needs is someone to pass him his test tubes and tell him how wonderful he is.

Katy Manning's Jo Grant is all emotion, energy and instinct. She's stupidly stupid on a few occasions and Katy Manning can be a tad hammy on occasion but Jo Grant works with the Third Doctor, who it seems has fallen a little in love with her by the time she departs in The Green Death. She's at her best in The Curse of Peladon, which is a lovely little story that lived up to my fond memories.

Sarah Jane Smith always feels like a Fourth Doctor companion to me. Lis Sladen brings so much to the part that you can see why she was still playing Sarah Jane nearly 40 years later. Sarah Jane is feisty, intelligent and proper brave: the kind of brave that understands that she's scared but needs to carry on regardless. She's a breath of fresh air in Season 11 and seems to give the drifting Pertwee and the series in general a boot up the backside.

You can not talk about the Third Doctor without UNIT. They go together like cheese and marmite. UNIT's military abilities seem to vary from story to story: sometimes their ineptness stretches credulity a wee bit, whilst on other occasions they really look like a proper international military outfit.

All of this is held together by the magnificent Nicholas Courtney, who makes the Brigadier real. He's not an idiot, although his thinking is sometimes constrained by his military training. He doesn't always toe the line but is trapped by his place in the system and is - in many ways - without the contacts the Doctor has. UNIT is an international force but he's pushed around because he and his men are from the UK military. You'd certainly want the Brigadier on your side when push comes to shove.

Both Richard Franklin, as Captain Yates, and John Levene, as Sergeant Benton, give fine support as the two other UNIT regulars. The Season 10-11 Yates story is one of the most interesting storylines given to a companion, it almost feels like the sort of thing New Who would do, rather than Classic Who. I always wanted to know what happened to Captain Yates.

I suppose one should say that the final regular of the Pertwee years is Roger Delgardo's Master. In fact he is such a part of the Third Doctor’s ‘gang’ that he gets the honour of his own cliffhanger in The Daemons.

Yes The Master is used too often in Season 8 but he still has a certain panache that other Masters lack. Delgardo is wonderful in the part and keeps the character's hammier possibilities under strict control. It's a great creation, although I still like my theory that actually the Master and the Doctor are keeping each other entertained and there's no serious intention to kill each other. It's more a Time Lord game than anything else. Otherwise it becomes easy to see the Master as something of an intergalactic buffoon with over-complicated plans, a constant supply of unreliable allies and a penchant for aliases.

There are some dud stories in the Pertwee era: Claws of Axos, Colony in Space, Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks spring to mind in particular and, despite my praise for Season Seven, there are too many six episode stories, which have a tendency to padding and dragging. Also there’s an uncanny knack of making follow-up stories that aren’t as good as the originals. So Terror of the Autons is not as good as Spearhead from Space and The Monster of Peladon is inferior to The Curse of Peladon.

The other 'best of' Pertwee's are: The Mind of Evil, The Daemons, The Curse of Peladon, The Three Doctors, The Green Death, The Time Warrior, The Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Planet of the Spiders. Of those, Invasion of the Dinosaurs was the real surprise. I'll admit to having been put off by the dodgy dinosaurs in the past. Don't let that happen to you. It's a good story.

The Third Doctor/Jon Pertwee brought Doctor Who back into the public consciousness in a big way and, as the Doctor regenerates at the end of Planet of Spiders, you can only compliment Pertwee and his on and off screen colleagues on a job well done.