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''The Three Doctors'' is the first serial of the tenth season of the British
science fiction television Science fiction first appeared in television programming in the late 1930s, during what is called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary ...
series ''
Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson (writer and producer), Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterre ...
'', first broadcast in four weekly parts on
BBC1 BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's oldest and Flagship (broadcasting), flagship channel, and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includ ...
from 30 December 1972 to 20 January 1973. In the serial, the solar engineer Omega (
Stephen Thorne Stephen John Thorne (2 March 1935 – 26 May 2019) was a British actor of radio, film, stage, and television. He was best known for his regular BBC Radio 4 work and audiobook recordings, and for his portrayals of a few ''Doctor Who'' villains, ...
), the creator of the experiments that allowed the
Time Lord The Time Lords are a fictional ancient race of extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial people in the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. Time Lords are so named for their command of time travel technology and their Nonli ...
s to travel in time, seeks revenge on the Time Lords after he was left for dead in a universe made of
antimatter In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding subatomic particle, particles in "ordinary" matter, and can be thought of as matter with reversed charge and parity, or go ...
. The Time Lords recruit the time travellers the
First Doctor The First Doctor is the original incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor, the protagonist of the British Science fiction on television, science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He was portrayed by actor William Hartnell in th ...
(
William Hartnell William Henry Hartnell (; 8 January 1908 – 23 April 1975) was an English actor, who is best known for portraying the first incarnation of the Doctor, in the long-running British science-fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' from 1963 t ...
), the
Second Doctor The Second Doctor is an incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor, the protagonist of the British Science fiction on television, science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He was portrayed by actor Patrick Troughton. Out of his 1 ...
(
Patrick Troughton Patrick George Troughton (; 25 March 1920 – 28 March 1987) was an English actor. He became best known for his roles in television, most notably starring as the Second Doctor, second incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor in the lo ...
), and the
Third Doctor The Third Doctor is an incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor, the protagonist of the British Science fiction on television, science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He was portrayed by actor Jon Pertwee. Within the series' ...
(
Jon Pertwee John Devon Roland Pertwee (; 7 July 1919 – 20 May 1996), known professionally as Jon Pertwee, was an English actor. Born into a theatrical family, he became known as a comedy actor, playing Chief Petty Officer Pertwee (and three other roles) in ...
) for help when Omega drains power throughout the universe, threatening all of existence. The serial opened the tenth anniversary year of the series, and features the first three
Doctors Doctor, Doctors, The Doctor or The Doctors may refer to: Titles and occupations * Physician, a medical practitioner * Doctor (title), an academic title for the holder of a doctoral-level degree ** Doctorate ** List of doctoral degrees awarded b ...
all appearing in the same serial. This makes it the first ''Doctor Who'' story in which an earlier incarnation of the Doctor returns to the show. It was also Hartnell's last appearance as the First Doctor prior to his death in 1975. Omega would later return to the series in the 1983 serial ''
Arc of Infinity ''Arc of Infinity'' is the first serial of the 20th season of the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'', which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts on BBC1 from 3 to 12 January 1983. The serial is set in Amsterdam a ...
'' and the 2025 two-parter "
Wish World "Wish World" is the seventh and penultimate episode of the Doctor Who series 15, fifteenth series of the British science-fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. The episode is the first in a two-part story, concluding with "The Reality War" one ...
" / "
The Reality War "The Reality War" is the eighth and final episode of the fifteenth series of the British science-fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. Written by Russell T Davies and directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai, it is the second of a two-part story alon ...
".


Plot

A
superluminal Faster-than-light (superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light in vacuum (). The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero ...
signal is sent to Earth, carrying with it an energy blob that seems intent on capturing the Doctor, but has already mysteriously abducted two individuals; a local game warden, and scientific researcher Dr. Tyler. The
homeworld ''Homeworld'' is a real-time strategy video game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by Sierra Studios on September 28, 1999, for Windows. Set in space, the science fiction game follows the Kushan exiles of the planet Kharak after t ...
of the
Time Lord The Time Lords are a fictional ancient race of extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial people in the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. Time Lords are so named for their command of time travel technology and their Nonli ...
s is also under siege; they are trapped themselves, with universal energy being drained through a
black hole A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. Th ...
, threatening to unravel the fabric of time and space. Desperate to send help, the Time Lords break the First Law of Time by recruiting a previous
incarnation Incarnation literally means ''embodied in flesh'' or ''taking on flesh''. It is the Conception (biology), conception and the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form or an Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic form of a god. It is used t ...
of the Doctor from his own past. As the
Second Doctor The Second Doctor is an incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor, the protagonist of the British Science fiction on television, science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He was portrayed by actor Patrick Troughton. Out of his 1 ...
and the present
Third Doctor The Third Doctor is an incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor, the protagonist of the British Science fiction on television, science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He was portrayed by actor Jon Pertwee. Within the series' ...
cannot cope with each other's personalities, the Time Lords attempt to retrieve the
First Doctor The First Doctor is the original incarnation of The Doctor (Doctor Who), the Doctor, the protagonist of the British Science fiction on television, science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. He was portrayed by actor William Hartnell in th ...
to "keep them in order", but he is trapped in a "time eddy", unable to fully materialise, communicating through a viewscreen. The Doctors investigate, while
UNIT Unit may refer to: General measurement * Unit of measurement, a definite magnitude of a physical quantity, defined and adopted by convention or by law **International System of Units (SI), modern form of the metric system **English units, histo ...
headquarters faces an attack by shapeless lumpy-globule-like creatures. The First Doctor assists both Doctors by correctly surmising that the previously-sent energy blob is a bridge to another universe. The Third Doctor attempts to go alone, but Jo is abruptly abducted with him. The Second Doctor later allows the
TARDIS The TARDIS (; acronym for "Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space") is a fictional hybrid of a time machine and spacecraft that appears in the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' and its various spin-offs. While a TARDI ...
with himself, the Brigadier, and Benton inside, to be taken by the blob, although this causes UNIT HQ to be stolen as well. Jo, the Third Doctor, and Dr. Tyler, whom they discover there, assess their situation in this new mystery universe of antimatter, inside the black hole. The Third Doctor also deduces that a conversion has taken place for their assailants and themselves to somehow exist in each other's universes without annihilation. Before they can do any more, though, they are accosted by the shapeless creatures and taken to an unfamiliar location. When they arrive, they meet the legendary Time Lord
Omega Omega (, ; uppercase Ω, lowercase ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and last letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numerals, Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value ...
, who created the
supernova A supernova (: supernovae or supernovas) is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. A supernova occurs during the last stellar evolution, evolutionary stages of a massive star, or when a white dwarf is triggered into runaway nuclear fusion ...
method that powers Time Lord civilisation, but which also supposedly killed him. Omega seeks revenge on the Time Lords, whom he assumes left him stranded alone for centuries in his universe, of which he explains that he willed into existence. Assuming he has been deceived once again by the Time Lords after discovering the Second Doctor and correctly deducing his identity, Omega imprisons both Doctors, Jo, Benton, and Tyler. After the two Doctors help everyone escape through both of their own willpowers, Omega discovers the getaway, and challenges the Third Doctor to a battle of minds, nearly killing him. The Second Doctor convinces Omega to stop, appealing to his desire to escape. Now calmer, Omega explains further to the two that he shaped this reality within the black hole both with his willpower and the power of its singularity. However, due to this, his will is the only support keeping this reality stable. He cannot freely leave without releasing control, but releasing control would collapse the antimatter universe instantly, annihilating everything in it; and so Omega's intention is for the Doctors to take his place maintaining it. As he prepares to leave with the Doctors' help, they are stunned to find that the extremely prolonged exposure to the singularity has destroyed Omega's physical body; his willpower now also maintains his essence, and he will cease to exist if he leaves. Suffering a nervous breakdown from the shock, Omega now seeks to destroy all creation. Taking advantage of his neurosis, the two Doctors escape back to the TARDIS with all of the abductees. With the First Doctor, the two devise a way to defeat Omega. By accident, the two also discover the Second Doctor's previously-lost
recorder Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a newsp ...
within the TARDIS' force field generator, and integrate it into their plan. The two meet with Omega again, claiming they can give him his freedom. Omega, though, sharply retorts that he cannot be freed, and demands that they share his exile. The Doctors agree, on the condition that all of his abductees are sent safely back to Earth. Once done, the two present him with the generator. Omega knocks it over in rage at the paltry offer and the recorder falls out; having fallen into the generator during the abduction, the recorder was protected from conversion, remaining as normal matter. The resulting contact annihilates the antimatter universe, creating a new universal source of energy, and ejecting the Doctors in the TARDIS, UNIT HQ, and all of its stolen objects, back to their proper places in the normal universe. With the Time Lords' power restored, they return the First and Second Doctors to their respective time periods. Forlorn, the Third Doctor implies to Jo that death was the only freedom anyone could offer Omega. Out of forgiveness, the Time Lords then send the Doctor a new dematerialisation circuit for the TARDIS and restore his knowledge of how to travel through
space and time In physics, spacetime, also called the space-time continuum, is a mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum. Spacetime diagrams are useful in visualizing ...
, lifting his exile.


Production

Working titles for this story included ''The Black Hole''. The script was originally supposed to feature all three Doctors equally, but William Hartnell was too ill to be able to play the full role as envisioned. He was, therefore, reduced to a pre-recorded
cameo role A cameo appearance, also called a cameo role and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief guest appearance of a well-known person or character in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking one ...
, appearing only on the TARDIS's scanner and the space-time viewer of the Time Lords. It would be the last time he played the Doctor and his last acting role before his death in 1975. Hartnell's scenes were filmed at BBC's Ealing Studios. The only time that all three Doctors appeared together was in promotional photos for the story. One session of these took place in October 1972 at a photo studio in Battersea - this produced the image that was used for the cover of the ''
Radio Times ''Radio Times'' is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules, with other features such as interviews, film reviews and lifestyle items. Founded in September 1923 by John Reith, then general manage ...
'' magazine to promote the story. The production team also planned for
Frazer Hines Frazer Simpson Frederick Hines (born 22 September 1944) is an English actor. He began his career as a child actor and appeared in ''A King in New York'' (1957) with Charlie Chaplin. He later played Jamie McCrimmon in ''Doctor Who'', appearing i ...
to reprise his role of
Jamie McCrimmon James Robert McCrimmon, usually simply called Jamie, is a fictional character played by Frazer Hines in the long-running British Science fiction on television, science fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. A Bagpipes, piper of the Clan Mac ...
alongside the Second Doctor; however, Hines was not available, due to his work on the soap opera ''
Emmerdale Farm ''Emmerdale'' (known as ''Emmerdale Farm'' until 1989) is a British television soap opera that is broadcast on ITV. The show is set in Emmerdale (known as Beckindale until 1994), a fictional village in the Yorkshire Dales. Created by Kevin ...
''. Much of the role originally intended for Jamie was reassigned to Sergeant Benton.


Casting notes

The Chancellor is portrayed by Clyde Pollitt, who had also played one of the Time Lords who tried and exiled the Second Doctor. Barry Letts states in the DVD commentary that this was intentional, as he meant for this to be the same character. Similarly, Graham Leaman reappears as a Time Lord, having been seen in the same role in ''
Colony in Space A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule, which rules the territory and its indigenous peoples separated from the foreign rulers, the colonizer, and their ''metropole'' (or "mother country"). This separated rule was often orga ...
'' (1971) discussing the Master's activities and the Time Lords' use of the exiled Doctor as an agent. The same DVD commentary and the on-screen production captions note that the unavailability of actor Richard Franklin led to a shifting of the roles by the UNIT supporting cast. Sergeant Benton took on the majority of the role written for Captain Yates and a new character, Corporal Palmer, took on most of the lines originally written for Benton.


Reception

Patrick Mulkern of ''
Radio Times ''Radio Times'' is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules, with other features such as interviews, film reviews and lifestyle items. Founded in September 1923 by John Reith, then general manage ...
'' wrote that ''The Three Doctors'' "may not be the greatest story ever told" but it ended the Doctor's exile on Earth and brought back Troughton, though unfortunately Hartnell was not able to do much. ''
The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was created in ...
'' reviewer Christopher Bahn summarised that the serial "has some good ideas in it, but they're treated with such an unambitious lack of imagination that there's not enough actually happening here for the story to be offensively bad—just boring". He felt the "most enjoyable part" was the "comic squabbling" between Pertwee and Troughton, and also called the Brigadier a "saving grace".
DVD Talk DVD Talk is a home video news and review website launched in 1999 by Geoffrey Kleinman. History Kleinman founded the site in January 1999 in Beaverton, Oregon. Besides news and reviews, it features information on hidden DVD features known as ...
's Ian Jane gave the serial three out of five stars, noting that it was "slightly silly" and the production designs and special effects were "definitely not the best that the series has had to offer". He also felt that the story was wrapped up too quickly and was "fairly predictable". However, he praised Pertwee and Troughton's interplay, the fact that Jo was given more to do, and Stephen Thorne's performance as Omega. Alisdair Wilkins of
io9 ''io9'' is a sub-blog of the technology blog ''Gizmodo'' that focuses on science fiction and fantasy pop culture, with former focuses on science, technology and futurism. It was created as a standalone blog in 2008 by editor Annalee Newitz under ...
picked ''The Three Doctors'' as the worst ''Doctor Who'' story of the classic series, feeling that the Second Doctor and the Brigadier were written as too comical, the story had too much padding, and that Omega was a "shouting, one-dimensional villain".


Broadcast

The serial was repeated on BBC2 in November 1981, daily (Monday–Thursday) (23 November 1981 to 26 November 1981) at 17:40 as part of "The Five Faces of Doctor Who". The four episodes achieved ratings of 5.0, 4.5, 5.7 and 5.8 million viewers respectively.


Commercial releases


In print

A novelisation of this serial, written by
Terrance Dicks Terrance William Dicks (14 April 1935 – 29 August 2019) was an English author and television screenwriter, script editor and producer. In television, he had a long association with the BBC science-fiction series ''Doctor Who'', working as a ...
, was published by
Target Books Target Books is a British publishing imprint, established in 1973 by Universal-Tandem Publishing Co Ltd, a paperback publishing company. The imprint was established as a children's imprint to complement the adult Tandem imprint, and became wel ...
in November 1975. The novelisation provides a rationale for Omega's realm to be a
quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mining, open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock (geology), rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some juri ...
: Over the millennia, Omega has become weary of the mental effort required to generate a verdant landscape and now makes do with rock and soil. The Second Doctor is referred to throughout as Doctor Two. In the book, Mr Ollis is renamed Mr Hollis. It is stated that Omega is only the second Time Lord that the Doctor has come up against as an adversary, the first being The Master.


Home media

''The Three Doctors'' was released twice on
VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...
, first in August 1991 and thereafter remastered and re-released in 2002 as part of the
WHSmith WH Smith plc, trading as WHSmith (also written WH Smith and formerly as W. H. Smith & Son), is a British retailer, with headquarters in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service s ...
's ''The Time Lord Collection'' boxed set. It was released on
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...
in the UK in November 2003 as part of the ''Doctor Who'' 40th Anniversary Celebration releases, representing the Jon Pertwee years. Some copies came in a box set housing a limited edition
Corgi The Welsh Corgi ( or Corgi, plural Corgis, or occasionally the etymologically consistent Corgwn; ) is a small Dog type, type of herding dog that originated in Wales. The name ''corgi'' is thought to be derived from the Welsh language, Welsh w ...
model of "Bessie", the Third Doctor's vintage roadster. A special edition of the DVD, with new bonus features, was released in the UK on 13 February 2012 in the third of the ongoing ''Revisitations'' DVD box sets with additional bonus features. In 2019, ''The Three Doctors'' was released as part of the Season Ten Boxed Set Blu-Ray collection. The story and its special features occupy one disc in the set, and include features from previous releases and specially-made content.


''Tales of the TARDIS''

A special edition of the episode aired on BBC iPlayer on 1 November 2023, in the spin-off ''
Tales of the TARDIS ''Tales of the TARDIS'' is a companion series to the television series ''Doctor Who'' which features re-releases of stories from the show's original run, enclosed by additional material featuring actors reprising their roles. The series is produce ...
''.


References


External links

*
archived
on 2013-06-01)


Target novelisation

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Three Doctors, The First Doctor serials Second Doctor serials Third Doctor serials Doctor Who multi-Doctor stories Doctor Who serials novelised by Terrance Dicks 1972 British television episodes 1973 British television episodes Anniversary television episodes Television episodes written by Bob Baker (scriptwriter) Fiction about black holes Doctor Who anniversary specials Television episodes set in England Television episodes set in the 20th century