Coming Soon: A Rewatch of the Jon Pertwee Era

Well after 6 years I've decided to breath new life into this blog and re-watch the stories of the Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee.  Look for it April 2017.

As an appetizer for this re-watch, you can read "Wine, Cheese and Moralizing", an article I wrote for the Doctor Who Information Network's (DWIN) fanzine Enlightenment back in 1999:

Wine, Cheese and Moralizing

The Pertwee era has always been like comfort food for me; when I’m sick, tired or just plain worn down by the world, it serves as the best possible tonic. The quintessential image I have of the third Doctor is from Day of the Daleks, sashaying into Sir Reginald Styles drawing room with a vintage red wine and a tray of Gorgonzola cheese. The only thing missing was an Ogron at his feet to fetch his slippers.

Later on in that same story, the Doctor would be seen tasting a little “22nd century hospitality” as he imbibed and nibbled with that misguided Dalek-collaborator, the Controller. Even with bone-headed Ogrons and screeching Daleks at every corner, there was always time for some civilized fare.

Certainly there was plenty of wine and soya-cheese to go around at the “nuthatch” in The Green Death. Even amidst a group of earnest, tree-huggers, the Doctor managed to add an element of “joie de vie.” And then there was that highly suspicious line he uttered at the beginning of Carnival of Monsters as the Doctor and Jo stepped into the hold of an Edwardian cargo ship, “Ah, the air is like wine!”

This man wasn’t going to let galactic domination or ten foot tall, bug-eyed monsters get in the way of the finer things in life.

The Pertwee Doctor was the epitome of the upper middle-class, English intellectual. A kind of Henry Higgins (as portrayed by Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady) for the forth dimension. Arrogant, rude, impeccably dressed and constantly moralizing to anyone within earshot.

 “Why can’t the English learn to speak?” Railed Henry Higgins

“The power was within you all along. All you needed was a little encouragement from me.” Assured the Doctor.

Higgins believed that social class was basically a fraud and that even a flower girl could be trained to appear and behave as a duchess given the proper training and environment. He had absolutely no tolerance for façade or pretense, and yet look at the way he ran his household, conducted his affairs and treated poor Eliza Doolittle.

Pertwee’s Doctor loved his smoking jackets, frilly shirts, and antique cars, but he always had a mouthful of insults to inflict on the various civil servants and authority figures he encountered (“You, sir, are an idiot”). And yet, look at the “authority” he commanded himself. When the Doctor and Jo showed up on Peladon, he was immediately mistaken for the Earth Chairman delegate. Nobody dared question it. And he was certainly up to the challenge.

Quite simply, the man had all the answers—or at least all of Barry Letts’ answers—and he didn’t suffer fools gladly. (“Did you fail Latin too, Jo?”)  If only we’d rid ourselves of our desire for material possessions (crushed velvet and dematerialization circuits notwithstanding), clean up our filthy little planet and learn to live in peace with the Sea Devils, we’d all be a lot better off.

But what makes the third Doctor so irresistible, even today, is that he was very much a product of his times—the early seventies. Things were settling down a little bit after the turbulent sixties and the “me” generation was just starting to gear up. Wine and cheese parties were all the rage in suburbia, but people still talked about making the world a better place. One could pamper oneself, but still feel that one was making a difference. The id, the ego and the super ego living in, er, harmony.

I have no doubt that when the Doctor was exiled to Earth, he took a long hard look at his 500 year-old existence and said, “Might as well live the good life.”  When you’re restricted to one planet and one time—suddenly clothes matter.

And so he tinkered with the Tardis console as if it were an errant eight-track tape player, engaged his passions for gadgets and chase-utility vehicles, and set out to transform Jo into an elegant, upper-middle class, intellectual consort (or scientist so he said). She was certainly pulling it off by the time The Curse of Peladon was transmitted.

The third Doctor became the “cultural laureate” of our little UNIT family. That little bit of class that raised Sgt. Benton and Mike Yates beyond their corned beef sandwich/ ”football match on the tube” lives.

Juxtaposed against the debonair Doctor were the Brigadier and the Master. In the earlier stories, the Brigadier served as the Doctor’s back-up—heightening the Time Lord’s sense of authority. He was Colonel Pickering to the Doctor’s Henry Higgins. Sturdy and reliable, he always asked the practical questions (later of course he took on the equally necessary, but somewhat misplaced role of buffoonish authority figure to be mocked).

The Master by comparison was the gentleman’s genteel nemesis. His elaborate master plans and traps always allowed the Doctor to come across as clever and suave. With a villain like that, one never had to worry about mud on the waistcoat. Here was an arch-enemy you could sit down with over drinks before engaging in lethal battle. By comparison the Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors were positively proletariat.

Alas, the champagne toast at the end of The Green Death would be the last of it’s kind. Season eleven brought independent Sarah Jane Smith and her sensible shoes. Suddenly the old Doc looked over-dressed for the occasion.

Short of a little drinky with Edward of Wessex in The Time Warrior, the party was over. Come to think of it, there wasn’t quite the same reception upon his second trip to Peladon either. And Mike Yates in Invasion of the Dinosaurs proved what the product of too much moralizing could be.

Metebelis 3 finally saw the unraveling for our dandy friend. The first time he showed up, his fancy threads were (symbolically?) left in tatters. The return trip finished him off. Or did the times just change? I guess by that point we’d polished off the bottle of Chardonnay, licked the cheese from our finger tips (and gotten it all over our crushed velvet jackets). We were ready to face a world that was just a little bit unpredictable.

Jon Pertwee wasn’t my favorite Doctor. His stories rarely enflamed my imagination. But when the rain starts pouring down or work starts getting too stressful it’s nice to know he’s there.