Doctor Who (1963): The Five Doctors - Part 3

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still writing about The Five Doctors, the epic crossover event that pulls together heroes from 1 TV series. If you want to return to an earlier part click PART ONE or PART TWO.

This special didn't quite manage to bring the full five Doctors together, but I'm struggling to think of another sci-fi TV series that managed to pack so many main protagonists into one story. I can't remember any Star Trek story that brings more than two lead captains together, and Stargate and Babylon 5 didn't do any better. One of the Star Wars shows must have done it by now though...or maybe not? Oh duh, the Arrowverse did Crisis on Infinite Earths. Still, this was the Avengers of 1983.

This review will be full of SPOILERS, but I'll not give away anything that happens later in the series.

Doctor Who (1963): The Five Doctors - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm continuing with Doctor Who's 20th anniversary special, The Five Doctors! This is going to drag on for four parts, and if you want to jump back to part 1, CLICK HERE.

The Five Doctors was the final story by the legendary Terrance Dicks, who'd been writing Doctor Who episodes since the Second Doctor's era. His contributions to the series spanned 14 years, which is a long time... though not quite as long as Russell T Davies' incredible 18 years on the show (with a 12 year break in the middle).

It was hoped that they could get Waris Hussein to direct, as he'd directed the very first serial, An Unearthly Child, 20 years earlier. Unfortunately, he was in America, so the job ultimately went to Peter Moffatt, who'd already directed Peter Davison in a few episodes of All Creatures Great and Small.

Past this point you'll be flooded with SPOILERS for the episode and maybe a few earlier stories as well. I'll not spoil anything that comes later however.

Doctor Who (1963): The Five Doctors - Part 1

Episode:

602

|

Serial:

129

|

Writer:

Terrance Dicks

|

Director:

Peter Moffatt

|

Air Date:

25-Nov-1983

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Doctor Who's 20th anniversary special, The Five Doctors!

The 10th anniversary story, The Three Doctors, was the first serial of a season that aired months before the actual anniversary date, but this time around they wanted to get it right. In fact, efforts were made to get the whole of season 20 rescheduled to air later in the year to make it line up properly. They failed, but they did win a consolation prize: Doctor Who was getting its first-ever feature-length special! There have been plenty of Christmas specials and New Year's specials since then, but The Five Doctors is still the longest episode to this day.

Though in 1995 it got George Lucasified into an even longer and even more special Special Edition, padded out with extra scenes that the director had originally cut for a good reason. Plus there's the 2023 Blu-ray edition as well, along with the version that was split into four separate episodes. I bet that has some interesting cliffhangers.

You know what, I'm going to split this article up to match the four-part edit and find out what all those cliffhangers are. I'm not sure what version I'll be getting on iPlayer, but I do know that it's going to be long, so it'll be more practical for me to tackle it in pieces.

SPOILER WARNING: I might spoil things that came before it, I won't spoil things that came after, and the episode itself is getting extremely spoiled. I'm going scene by scene to maximise spoiler coverage.

Doctor Who (1963) 10-04: The Three Doctors, Episode Four

Episode:

333

|

Serial:

65

|

Writers:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

20-Jan-1973

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's episode 333 of Doctor Who. That means the series was averaging 37 episodes a year up to this point, which isn't actually that ridiculous I guess, seeing as they were all 25 minutes long. Star Trek: The Original Series produced an average of 26 stories a year, each 50 minutes long, so when it came to minutes per week it was actually ahead.

Anyway, just have to write a few more words under screencaps and I'm finally done with The Three Doctors! This is part four of four, the conclusion to this anniversary event, and I'm hoping they didn't already blow through their pyrotechnics budget already with the first three parts, as my expectations have been raised. Also, I'm hoping the story's good etc. Click one of these links to jump back to an earlier episode: PART ONE, PART TWO, PART THREE.

You won't be shocked to hear that the heavily promoted season premiere which brought back Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell got the highest viewing figures for the Third Doctor's whole run, averaging 10.3 million on BBC. It had almost twice as many eyes on it as the least watched serial, Inferno. Wait, why didn't anyone watch Inferno? That one was great!

I'll be going through this whole episode scene by scene, so there will be SPOILERS below. I may find reason to mention things that happened in earlier episodes as well, but I won't spoil anything that happens later.

Doctor Who (1963) 10-03: The Three Doctors, Episode Three

Episode:

332

|

Serial:

65

|

Writers:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

13-Jan-1973

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the third part of the The Three Doctors, the only serial in the entire series to feature 100% of the Doctors that had been introduced up to that point, all played by their original actors. Well, except for the entirety of the First Doctor's run, I suppose.

If you want to jump to PART ONE or PART TWO, click the appropriate link.

It looks weird if I don't pad this intro out with some trivia, so I'm going to talk about books for a moment. Each Doctor Who serial got its own novelisation, with the naming format often being "Doctor Who and [the name of the serial]". So you've got titles like Doctor Who and the Keys of Marinus and Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen etc. It's very Indiana Jones.

That title scheme didn't quite work with this story though, as you can't have 'Doctor Who and The Three Doctors', because then there'd be four Doctors and the story would be all messed up. So they just called it The Three Doctors.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm not going to spoil absolutely everything about this episode, but I feel like I could probably manage to give away at least 90% of it and I may mention one or two things that happened in previous stories as well.

Doctor Who (1963) 10-02: The Three Doctors, Episode Two

Episode:

331

|

Serial:

65

|

Writers:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

06-Jan-1973

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the second episode of The Three Doctors - Doctor Who's epic 10th anniversary saga (that actually aired around its 9th anniversary). It's a four part serial so I'll have made it halfway through after this. Though you can click this link: EPISODE ONE if you'd rather go back and read about the first quarter of the story.

You know, I'm sure that title looks slightly different than it did on part one. They must have had to add it to each episode separately instead of just reusing the footage. That's the kind of quality trivia you can expect to find in my reviews.

Here's another Doctor Who fact for you: the episode was written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, the folks who get a credit whenever K-9 appears in an episode.

Bob is maybe not the most famous Baker to work on Doctor Who, but he did get there before Tom and Colin at least. Plus he co-wrote the Wallace and Gromit stories!

SPOILER WARNING: There will be spoilers here for the events leading up to, and occurring within, this particular part of this particular serial. I won't spoil anything that happens afterwards though and I definitely won't give away how the story ends as I can't remember.

Doctor Who (1963) 10-01: The Three Doctors, Episode One

Episode:

330

|

Serial:

65

|

Writers:

Bob Baker and Dave Martin

|

Director:

Lennie Mayne

|

Air Date:

30-Dec-1972

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Doctor Who is finally returning to television this month with its 60th anniversary special. But I can't write about something that hasn't aired yet, so today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm covering the first part of the four-part 10th anniversary serial The Three Doctors!

Anniversary specials traditionally happen near an anniversary, but they decided to get an early start with this one. In fact, episode one aired at the end of 1972, almost a whole year early! This was the first episode of Jon Pertwee's fourth year in the role, which means he'd beaten Patrick Troughton's run (almost 3 seasons) and was getting close to matching William Hartnell's (a bit over 3 seasons). Pertwee still had a while to go before he matched their ridiculous episode counts though, as he was averaging 26 episodes a year compared to their 42 episode seasons. It'd take Ncuti Gatwa 15 years to match Hartnell's run and that's including Christmas specials.

I already wrote about this serial a few years back when Twitch did its marathon, but I don't actually remember what I said about it. Or what happens in it. I'm pretty sure I liked it though... unless I didn't. Anyway, this time around I'll be going through the whole story scene-by-scene and writing about it properly. This means there'll be SPOILERS for the episode and maybe a few earlier ones as well, if I can remember anything from them.