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.
