Simon Kinnear | On 15, Nov 2013

Photo: BBC/Matt Burlem

Doctor Who turns 50 on Saturday 23rd November with a special anniversary episode on the BBC. To celebrate, VODzilla.co is running a daily countdown of every Doctor to date, providing our expert tips on which stories to see – and where to watch them online.

 

Jon Pertwee (1970-4)

Pertwee was primarily a comedian when he got the gig, but counter-intuitively decided that the best response to Troughton would be to play the Doctor as a dashing, debonair action hero. With the character exiled to Earth, Pertwee offered a suitably human Doctor, who defended the Earth with the help of his chums from UNIT.

Top Three Jon Pertwee Episodes

Inferno (1970)

An ill-advised attempt to drill into the Earth’s core unleashes primordial, Earth-destroying terror… which is unfortunate, as the Doctor is stuck in a parallel universe where his friends are Nazis. Possibly the cheapest Who story ever, this mounts the tension like the best disaster movie you’ve never seen.

Doctor Who – Inferno is currently unavailable on-demand. Buy it on DVD from Amazon.

Terror Of The Autons (1971)

If the Doctor can’t go into space, then the bad guys will have to come to Earth. Here, we get the ultimate tag-team between rogue Time Lord The Master (in his debut) and plastic predators the Autons, who are capable of transforming into various kid-scaring shapes: killer policemen, killer daffodils – and, scariest of all, killer armchairs…

Carnival Of Monsters (1973)

Eventually, the producers realised that they couldn’t keep the Doctor on Earth forever. As if to make up for lost time, this aptly named story goes for broke with a bonkers plot about a portable, minitiarised space zoo whose inmates can be viewed like nature documentaries. It’s a bit like video on-demand, with added peril.

Also available on-demand:

Doctor Who: The Best of the Third Doctor

Including: Spearhead from Space, Three Doctors, Green Death, Planet of the Spiders.

Spearhead from Space

The Claws of Axos

The Mutants

The Time Monster

The Three Doctors

The Green Death

The Time Warrior

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