Three Doctors
Director - Lennie Mayne
Cast - Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, Patrick Troughton, Nicholas Courtney, William Hartnell, Stephen Thorne
Country Of Origin - U.K.
Distributor - BBC Worldwide
Number of discs – 2
Reviewed by - Brad Hogue
Date- 08/06/2019
A space signal hits Earth and a globule like monster threatens the Third (then current) Doctor (Jon Pertwee) while the Time Lords of Gallifrey are also under attack. Unable to counteract the attack directly, the Time Lords decide to recruit the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) from the past to help. The two Doctors bicker back and forth causing the Time Lords to summon the First Doctor (William Hartnell) to restore civility between the two. Unfortunately the First Doctor is contained within a time eddy and only appears via a viewscreen on the Tardis and to the Time Lords.
It turns out all of this disruption is being caused by Omega (Stephen Thorne), a Time Lord that jumpstarted the chain of events that power the entire Time Lord civilization. Long thought dead due to this, he's actually stuck in an antimatter dimension where his will rules all and isolation has driven him insane, believing that the Time Lords had left him stranded. He seeks to destroy the Time Lords' universe. The Doctors are aided by companion Jo (Katy Manning), The Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) and Sergeant Benton (John Levene) in their attempt to stop the cuckoo Omega. Can The Doctor, The Doctor and The Doctor stop him?
I can't imagine how exciting it must have been to see three doctors together (even with the First Doctor appearing in truncated form due to William Hartnell's illness) in this 10th anniversary show. It set the precedent for all future Doctor interactions with uh, the Doctor. And not only was it the first time a Doctor met a Doctor as far as I can tell, it was the first time seeing the First and Second Doctors in color (or colour for the British kids). The First Doctor says that he'd been replaced with a "dandy and a clown," and my heart soars. This was William Hartnell's final appearance as the Doctor as he was not in good health. Troughton would appear as the Second Doctor again in The Five Doctors (am I confusing you yet?) and another actor appeared as The First Doctor due to Hartnell's death. They really had a time getting doctors together even as late as the 50th anniversary story, The Day Of The Doctor, when Christopher Eccleston declined to appear as the Ninth Doctor. What I'm getting at is that all the doctors appearing on the same show was quite a treat and one they'd not be able to really pull off again. (Tom Baker appears in previously unused footage in The Five Doctors. Producers foiled again.)
The great fun of the serial is the interplay between Doctors, each one assuming that they have the best qualities and personality, and also our supporting cast reacting to them. The Brigadier and Sergeant Benton first met the Doctor in the guise of The Second Doctor and both are quite shocked, thinking he had somehow regressed. Omega is a pretty standard megalomaniac villain, yet one that ties into Time Lord history. Speaking of the Time Lords, they were so grateful for the Doctors' help that they removed his restriction on traveling away from Earth. This opened the Third Doctor up to finally whizzing around time and space in the Tardis, something audiences hadn't seen in a while.
The Three Doctors is unlikely to win any fan polls. The story is solid enough if nothing outstanding. It's the joy of the crossover, even within the same show, that provides the fun. Crossovers are huge these days from the CW DC Televisual Universe to The Avengers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, yet here is an early example of fan service in that regard. I bet the kids went crazy.
BBC Worldwide provided DVD-Rs for review. Scott and I surmise that as many of these discs have gone out of print and command high prices in the used dvd market, they are releasing them to complement the new bluray sets. These, to my eyes, look much like the older dvds. Whovians know the drill, outdoor scenes are on film; interiors are on video, and visual quality changes between the two. Audio is presented with a clean mono track and English subtitles are present.
BBC has jam packed the second disc with extras: Audio Commentary with Katy Manning, Nicholas Courtney and producer Barry Letts - Happy Birthday To Who, new making of with Katy Manning and Stephen Thorne, Barry Letts, Terrance Dicks and Bob Baker - Was Doctor Who Rubbish?, a defense of the Classic Who series - Girls, Girls, Girls- The 70's, Katy Manning, Caroline Shaw, and Louise Jameson - Pebble Mill At One, Archival interviews with Patrick Troughton and visual effect artist Bernard Wilkie - Blue Peter, Jon Pertwee introduces the Whomobile - BSB Highlights, Cast and crew discuss The Three Doctors during BSB's 1990 Doctor Who weekend - The Five Faces Of Doctor Who, the full trailer for the 1981 repeat season - BBC 1 Trailer, The 1972 trailer for Episode One - 40th Anniversary Trailer - Photo Gallery - PDF Materials, Radio Times Listings and Production Notes Subtitle Option.
