Rank & Rate: The Jon Pertwee Era

[Redfern]

"Inferno"? Hmm, well, for a moderate percentage of American viewers in the 1980s, it was the "first" of the Pertwee stories we could see. While all of the Pertwee episodes (except for "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" Pert One) existed, many of them were only available in monochrome. Several PBS markets were initially reluctant to air an adventure that would have to "flip flop" between color and B/W. "Inferno" was the earliest of the Pertwee serials to have all of its 7 episodes in color (at least as of the mid 80s), so that was how and when many fans first saw the Third Doctor.

Later, those markets (at least WFSU and Georgia Public Broadcast, GPB) changed their policies and air all of the serials, alternating between color and monochrome, but that did not change the fact that for many viewers, "Inferno" was their first Pertwee serial.

On the other hand, the story could have been a bit more "tight" if not for the inclusion of the "Primords", the green haired "werewolves" skulking around the drilling site. Personally, I feel they were added to adhere to some "mandate" that every DW story feature a "monster".. Had they not been added, I bet the serial might have run only 6 episodes, possibly only 5.

 

[BritishSeaPower]

I recently rewatched Spearhead from Space - often lauded as the best classic Who post-regeneration episode - and I was surprised how... lackluster I found it (though the Blu-Ray transfer was crisp and the Brig and Liz stuff was great). I'm not particularly fond of the Pertwee era. I think he's fine and I love his supporting cast but I never quite liked many of his serials. Inferno, The Green Death, The Time Warrior. There are a few I like despite not ranking them high - The Three Doctors, Carnival of Monsters, The Silurians - but it's been too long since watching the lot of them that I wouldn't rank them.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Although the film look is a definite improvement for classic Who, I'm not particularly bowled over by "Spearhead from Space" either.

* I count the Frontier in Space/Planet of the Daleks serials as one, mainly because they really do bleed one into the other, and story-wise make sense as such. Its not very different from other long serial like that, I think - the only thing it missed, IMO, as a Delgado appearence in the last episode, to really hammer the point home. But anyway.

I also would have liked to see a combined human/Draconian task force show up at the end to mop up any Dalek stragglers.

But I do know that The Mutants is easily the worst Pertwee serial, for me. There is absolutely nothing good about that one. Its terminally boring, with one of the worst actors ever on DW.

What? Soldeed wasn't in "The Mutants"!

The 3rd Doctor isn't my cup of tea. I have no issues with Pertwee himself or the stories, but I like my Doctors eccentric (Troughton, Tom Baker, Matt Smith) and #3 is just too self-assured and lacks any alien-ness. I guess the reasons why I'm not a James Bond fan are the reasons I'm not big on Pertwee.

I'll agree that Pertwee was probably too normal to be the Doctor but he's so damn charming that I just don't care! He's often my #3 favorite Doctor (after Capaldi and T. Baker) and never drops below #6.

I never understood the love for Inferno. Its well made, but hardly Pertwee's best by any measure.

I'm a big fan of the parallel universe sci-fi trope and "Inferno" is one of the show's only cracks at it. (The only other being Tennant's "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel.")

I'm not good at ranking this sort of stuff on my own, particularly if you give me much more than 10 items at a time. (I've seen computer programs that let you rank things by giving you a series of one-on-one matchups. Anyone know of an app that I could download to create my own rankings like that?)

I know that my favorite is "The Three Doctors." Troughton steals the show from Pertwee and then the Brigadier steals it from him. I love the tragedy of Omega as a villain and the shouting actually really works for me since he's someone who's been alone for so long that he's accustomed to screaming at the universe in the desperate hope that he will be heard.

I don't really have a least favorite. I don't think any of his stories are bad. Some of them are kinda slow and padded out like "Colony in Space," "The Mutants," and "Planet of the Daleks." "Frontier in Space" is basically just the Doctor and Jo being marched from one jail cell to another over and over, escape, get recaptured, rinse, repeat. Much like Eccleston, Pertwee's era doesn't have many of my all time favorites but there are really no genuine dogs in the bunch either.