Classic Doctor Who: The Third Doctor’s Earthbound exploits
Mark Harrison | On 28, Mar 2023
Offering more than 600 Classic Doctor Who episodes broadcast between 1963 and 1996, BritBox and BBC iPlayer’s The Whoniverse are bigger on the inside. If you’ve watched all of the new series already, then why not join us as we turn on the TARDIS randomiser for a monthly primer on the adventures of the first eight Doctors…
The 1970s saw the debut of Doctor Who in colour, wherever colour TVs were available. They also came with a new Doctor in the shape of Jon Pertwee, and something of a format change. Outgoing producer Derrick Sherwin came up with the idea of the Doctor being confined to Earth as a budget-saving measure, with the returning Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) and UNIT and assorted companions providing a home base for the roving Time Lord. His replacement, Barry Letts, ran with this, and wound up overseeing the show for all five seasons in which Pertwee starred.
There’s definitely something of a Quatermass flavour but also, at Pertwee’s behest, an increased focus on the sort of gadgets and vehicles you’d expect in the James Bond movies and the Batman TV series. These Earthbound adventures focus on the not-too-distant future of the UK (creating a long-running continuity gag about whether it’s meant to be the 1970s or the 1980s in the process).
Inevitably, a couple of stories snuck off Earth or back in time, even before the TARDIS was restored midway through, but this locale appears throughout the Third Doctor’s era. So for this month’s column, we look at how that format evolved season by season, and give you a road map to the Earthbound exploits of the Third Doctor on BritBox. Everybody get ready to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow…
Spearhead From Space
We never usually put first things first in this column, but Pertwee’s introductory story, Spearhead From Space is essential viewing, not only as a cracking re-pilot for this Earth-centric run of Doctor Who, but also as an enduring template for most of the 21st-century post-regeneration stories. It’s certainly an influence on Russell T Davies’ first episode of the revival, which also features the Autons.
The Brigadier is trying to recruit Dr Liz Shaw (Caroline John) as a scientific adviser to the newly formed UNIT when he hears his first choice has just turned up unconscious in a hospital in Epping. But the Doctor is not the Doctor he knew – and while both he and Miss Shaw help battle the Nestene Consciousness, this new bloke wants room and board, a laboratory and a bright yellow roadster called Bessie for his services.
What to watch: Spearhead From Space (Season 7, 1970)
Season 7 (1970)
In the rest of Season 7, the Doctor bristles at his exile and frequently clashes with the Brigadier over his duties within UNIT, whether in parlaying with the Earth-native Silurians (Doctor Who and the Silurians) or attempting first contact in an Arrival-style stand-off between the military and some interstellar beings (The Ambassadors of Death).
By the season finale, the Don Houghton-written Inferno, he attempts to repair the TARDIS console by taking it for a standalone flight, outside of the blue box, but only succeeds in arriving at the same time and place in a parallel universe. In both realities, Professor Stahlman’s Project Inferno is about to drill through the Earth’s crust, but the parallel world is hours ahead and portends total disaster…
What to watch: Inferno
Season 8 (1971)
Liz departs between seasons, but the Doctor’s new assistant, Jo Grant (Katy Manning), isn’t the only immediately fresh aspect of Season 8. Terror of the Autons may mark the first returning monster of the Pertwee era, but it also introduces Roger Delgado as the Master, in his original conception as a Moriarty figure – a consultant to the forces that invade or attack Earth, starting with the Nestenes in tow.
The Master proves a nuisance throughout the rest of the season, whether introducing an alien parasite into the UK prison system (The Mind of Evil) or using a small village as a launchpad from which to harness an ancient evil (The Dæmons). He’s in every serial this season, even though he has a TARDIS and can go where he likes – perhaps he’s never been better than when tormenting the Doctor in his exile.
What to watch: The Mind of Evil and the Dæmons (Season 8, 1971)
Season 9 (1972)
Delgado also appears in the Earthbound gem of Pertwee’s third season, with the Master finally incarcerated by the Royal Navy after his umpteen crimes against Earth in Season 8. As we’ve noted in this column before, his return in The Sea Devils is what firms up the two Time Lords as former friends rather than lifelong enemies.
The season around it has some more time-hopping and spacefaring adventures, starting with the Daleks returning for the first time since 1967 (Day of the Daleks). But with cracking action, oodles of vehicular mayhem, and its terrestrial alien conflict, The Sea Devils may be the key text of the entire Earthbound era.
What to watch: The Sea Devils (Season 9, 1972)
Season 10 (1973)
Doctor Who celebrates its first decade by giving the Third Doctor his TARDIS back (The Three Doctors) and accordingly embarks on more timey-wimey and spacey-wacey adventures for most of the season. It’s telling though, that the season finale brings it back home, and pointedly drags the Doctor away from meddling on Metebelis 3 (he’ll get there in the end) for a more classic scrape with the UNIT family.
In The Green Death, Jo has gone along with UNIT to investigate mysterious deaths in a mine in South Wales. Quite aside from the environmental concerns around the new Global Chemicals plant and its “Stevens process”, the side effects seem to include radioactive-looking corpses and, oh yes, giant maggots.
What to watch: The Green Death (Season 10, 1973)
Season 11 (1973 – 4)
After Jo’s departure, the typical assistant role needs a shake-up. Enter Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), roving journalist, forthright feminist and soon to be the Doctor’s Best Friend Ever. Her first trip in the TARDIS is a return from the Middle Ages, but London is not as either she or the Doctor remembered it at the beginning of Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
This final Pertwee season restores more of a balance of Earthbound adventures and trips through time and space. Again, UNIT is a base in the Third Doctor’s final story, Planet of the Spiders, but Sarah Jane injects a fresh perspective that the series will carry forward. Invasion of the Dinosaurs is the one that showcases her best while also letting Pertwee muck around with wacky vehicles and gadgets in a deserted London.
What to watch: Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Season 11, 1974)
Short trips…
Before the Third Doctor wins his freedom, there are occasional jaunts off Earth when the hypocritical Time Lords dispatch his TARDIS to crises that require a smidge of intervention – like Peladon’s difficult entry into a galactic federation (The Curse of Peladon – Season 9, 1972) or the Master’s attempt to hijack a doomsday weapon on the planet Uxaerius (Colony In Space – Season 8, 1971).
The Doctor also leaves terra firma by other means, in an early action-packed and underrated story, The Ambassadors of Death (Season 7, 1970) as the solo pilot of the Recovery 7 space probe, and then later in the Whomobile (Planet of the Spiders – Season 11, 1974), the sci-fi vehicle that Pertwee himself commissioned to use in the show.
There’s also a nice fake-out in Carnival of Monsters (Season 10, 1973) when the Doctor and Jo believe they’ve landed on a missing ship in the Indian Ocean and discover… well, have a watch of that one yourself, it’s too fun to spoil here, and it’s one of the finest stories, Earthbound or otherwise, of this era.