Jon Pertwee played the Doctor onscreen from 1970-1974. Always a fond ambassador of the series, he returned to the role multiple times, both officially and unofficially. You can buy Jon Pertwee's stories on DVD or BluRay from Amazon. In the meantime, please join me as we rank his time as the Doctor from worst to best...
Before we can get started on the Jon Pertwee era proper, there are some random curios that we must get through first. In 1993 Jon appeared as the Doctor in this audio play for Radio 5, one of the few celebrations of a show that had been axed on television four years earlier.
Written by Barry Letts, the producer of all of Jon's television stories save for his first, it also featured Elisabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney reprising their roles as Sarah Jane Smith and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. If you close your eyes and pretend just a little, you can hear those characters come back. Close your eyes with Jon and... well, you have to use your imagination a lot more. He was in his early 70s, and it does sound like it.
There's also a colleague of Sarah's introduced in the story, a Scrappy Doo companion known as Jeremy Fitzoliver, along with the slight irritation of the Doctor calling the TARDIS just "TARDIS". As '80s theme composer Peter Howell does the incidental music, they also use the '80s theme, which is incongruous to say the least.
There's continuity if you want it, with the audio supposedly being set between the television stories The Time Warrior and Invasion of the Dinosaurs, but it's incredibly unlikely a television story of the period would have included lines about "heroin", "junkies", "brothels", "randy sheep" and "virgins".
Mainly, though, this starts out as an okay listen, before getting gradually more tiresome as it goes on. The various acting styles range widely, and, like a lot of Doctor Who on audio, it makes the mistake of creating a story that's essentially a television episode without any pictures. While that's what your imagination is for, the medium would be far better serving something like an historical story, rather than something that relies on characters explaining what things look like to each other.
The Ghosts of N-Space was the second audio story recorded with Jon, Elisabeth and Nick, completed in 1994 but delayed broadcast until 1996. In many ways it's even worse than the first, though there's a certain terrible quality to the whole thing that at least keeps you awake. Not "so bad it's good", more "so bad it's intoxicating".
Terms that defy the era it's supposedly set in include "smart arse", "whore house", "cow shit" and "bastard". In his 2005 autobiography Still Getting Away With It: The Life and Times of Nicholas Courtney, Courtney remarked that it was: "rather less comprehensible than its predecessor had been - at least, I know that Jon and I certainly had to have some things explained to us."
Added here for completeness' sake, this was part of an advertising campaign with Jon in character as the Doctor. The video itself wasn't actually a television advert, but rather a corporate video telling Zanussi workers about an upcoming ad campaign and advising them to get behind it.
The exact date of release isn't known, but it can be confirmed that it was released in the first half of 1981, as Jon shows off a print advert which he says will appear in national newspapers during May-July. Said print advert was difficult to track down, but did appear in The Sunday People on 7th June 1981.
Seeing Jon performing in character, even referred to as "Doctor", reading off an autocue to talk about selling washing machine insurance seems a little inappropriate. Yet not as inappropriate as the end, which features Diana Weston asking Jon "Where in the galaxy is Zanussi?", only to receive the reply "Show us your tits and I'll tell you." Such was the secret corporate world of 1981. This wasn't the only commercial that Jon did in character - he did a series for British Telecom, for example - but almost certainly the only one to feature such a line.
By 1993 the series had been off the air for four years, and this charity special for Children In Need was all that marked the thirtieth anniversary, save for some BBC2 repeats and the Pertwee audios. A 3D crossover with EastEnders, it felt like the final nail in the coffin of the series, but now the show has returned to the BBC it can be enjoyed more as a camp curio.
Five Doctors appear, including Tom Baker for once, along with 11 companions (including Liz Shaw and Sarah Jane Smith) plus Captain Yates and the Brigadier. Except they're not actually the companions themselves, but time projections of them written over Sylvester McCoy's companion, Ace... except when there are two of them. It's really quite confusing and confused, but okay if you're in the mood.
Is it "canon" Doctor Who? That's not a question to be answered here, but it does feature Jon Pertwee playing the Doctor, so it has to appear on this ranking. In I Am The Doctor, Jon Pertwee's second autobiography, published posthumously, Jon confessed he didn't really understand the script, and declared that the special: "turned out to be a bit of a poo".
Included in this ranking as a completist curio, the low ranking of Devious isn't a knock on the production itself, but instead more of a default placing; Devious is a decently-done fan film being ranked amongst professionally-made television.
The Devious concept was a group of enthusiastic fans making the adventures of an "in between" Doctor, who was the halfway point between the regenerations of Troughton and Pertwee. As the group had a connection to '80s producer John Nathan-Turner, they negotiated for Pertwee to be in one of the episodes, completing the "regeneration".
Obviously seeing a 75-year-old Jon Pertwee in a scene that leads into the start of Spearhead From Space where he was 25 years younger isn't going to be the most convincing thing in the world - how could it be? - but the enthusiasm of the group is admirable. The clip was included as an extra on The War Games DVD, while you can learn more about the group and the wider Devious story on their website.
We finally move on to the actual television stories, and while you can buy them on BluRay or DVD, having them readily to hand on BBC iPlayer as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations has been a real pleasure. (As long as you live in the UK, obviously.)
The Jon Pertwee era perhaps doesn't have as many out-and-out classics as the two eras either side of it, but it doesn't have many outright bad stories, either. Put on an episode, particularly from earlier in the run, fix yourself a cup of tea, and relax after a long day at work.
With all this in mind, we won't dwell too long on The Three Doctors. It was repeated on the BBC back when I was just a small boy, and was exciting, mysterious and thrilling... but I'm not a small boy any longer. Really, the ideal age to watch this edition is about 7 or 8 years old, and it has everything you could want at such an age.
Put it on any older and you'll notice how the regular cast are now so comfortable in each other's company that it's started to seep through the cracks into the programme, and everything's become "safe" and "cosy". You'll also notice that Patrick Troughton doesn't return to essay his own wonderful take on the Doctor, but just turns up as a clown, a dotty old man without any real nuance.
Everything has a natural lifespan, and while the Doctor joining a military organisation as a scientific advisor is a little outside the core character, it initially works well. But nothing can last forever, nor should it, and it's all started to get a bit too silly at this point. Stephen Thorne, playing the masked Time Lord "Omega", later admitted that he'd overcompensated too far for being under an inexpressive mask, and that his performance was over-the-top as a result.
Thankfully the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) get a bit more dignity in their last three stories with Jon Pertwee, though really harming this serial is how little money they'd thrown at it. If you're watching Doctor Who for high production values then you're watching the wrong programme, and the stories are what should come first... but this one time, they really did scrimp too much.
One small post-script to this story was one of the Tales of the TARDIS episodes. When the series went onto iPlayer to celebrate the 60th anniversary, six short pieces featuring companions and Doctors discussing their travels were used to bookend omnibus versions of old Doctor Who stories.
Such things ably illustrate the general disconnect between the old and the new – the first four actors to play the Doctor had all been in the military, some of them partially as a career, others, like Tom, just as part of national service. Their eras were borne from the philosophy of "stiff upper lip", where emotions were understated, often withheld... whereas the new stuff sees characters take turns to pass around the crying towel, earnestly verbalising emotion in a way no real person actually would.
Despite this, the Pertwee era does lend itself better to "naked blub time" better than most. Katy Manning reprises her role as Jo, alongside Daniel Anthony as Clyde from The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007-2011), a creditable spin-off that was often better – certainly "purer" - than the resurrection of the parent show. It's a surprisingly decent little play that does manage to be vaguely touching before making you vomit on the saccharine dialogue and the overstated music... whereas the others in the series produce a gagging reaction almost as soon as the opening credits have faded.