Quite simply, the single best television series in the history of the Universe. Biased? Yes. Correct? Of course. It is the longest-running sci-fi show in the world, has been going for almost fifty years, and is watched by over 56 million people worldwide.
Also, it's British. Which, when observed next to the high standard of American sci-fi out there, is pretty good! If you don't like 'Doctor Who', then let this page persuade you otherwise...
This page will feature video clips, articles, interviews, and some of my own fan-fiction, based around this excellent television series!
And the latest addition is a new, autobiographical account of how I became a Doctor Who fan in the first place! Scroll down to check it out, and please let me know what you think!
This page will feature video clips, articles, interviews, and some of my own fan-fiction, based around this excellent television series!
And the latest addition is a new, autobiographical account of how I became a Doctor Who fan in the first place! Scroll down to check it out, and please let me know what you think!
Here is a tribute video to William Hartnell, the First Doctor (1963-1966), by the insanely talented BabelColour:
A BabelColour tribute to Patrick Troughton, the Second Doctor (1966-1969):
A BabelColour tribute to Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor (1970-1974):
A BabelColour tribute to Tom Baker, The Fourth Doctor (1974-1981):
A BabelColour tribute to Peter Davison, The Fifth Doctor (1981-1984):
A BabelColour tribute to Colin Baker, The Sixth Doctor (1984-1986):
A BabelColour tribute to Sylvester McCoy, The Seventh Doctor (1987-1989, 1996):
A BabelColour tribute to Paul McGann, The Eighth Doctor (1996):
A BabelColour tribute to Christopher Eccleston, The Ninth Doctor (2005):
A BabelColour tribute to David Tennant, The Tenth Doctor (2005-2010):
*
How I Became a Doctor Who Fan: An Autobiographical Account of a Huge Obsession, Part 1
I was shrouded in
darkness. The closed blinds forbade any form of natural light to
creep into the room, preserving the atmosphere which I found so
important: that of excitement, intrigue, and mystery. My hands graced
the silky soft quilt I was perched upon, a fabric of pure perfection
that assured maximum comfort on the sprawling double-bed.
Listening
intently for a moment through the yellowed wall (discoloured from the
endless late-night cigarettes Grandma smoked), I could faintly hear
the living room television. Yes, Grandmother was out of the way. I
had her wonderful bedroom to myself. It was my domain now.
I glanced around
in awe at the clutter on top of the wardrobes; the drawers which were
so crammed full of interesting junk they couldn't close properly; the
cupboards crammed with ancient ornaments and fob watches. I knew that
most of the stuff was useless, tit and tat purchased by Granddad on
endless visits to those car boot sales he loved so much. But I often
wondered where all those items originally came from, what secrets
lurked behind each and every one of them (and, perhaps the biggest
mystery of all, what Granddad had actually wanted them for in the
first place!).
One of my hands
wandered towards a tall cup on the bedside table, filled to the brim
with Grandma's own special brew of strong, sweet tea. As I sipped and
sipped and eventually gulped, like an alcoholic draining his first
beer of the day, I allowed the boiling hot liquid to ease its' way
down my throat (and could still feel it as it swirled down towards my
stomach, refusing to die away) – an unrelenting mix of fire and
sugar which seemed to fulfil something more than just a mere
quenching of the thirst, as if I were experiencing a sixth sense
above and beyond that of taste. In a matter of seconds, the cup was
empty, and I replaced it on the plastic mat, directly on the
tea-stained ring at its' centre. The cup's own little throne.
It was after
this satisfying burst of nourishment that I decided to divert my
attention toward the reason I was in Grandma's darkened room in the
first place. Perched awkwardly at the end of the bed was a collection
of videos, in a tidy little box-set, that an Uncle had leant me
earlier in the day. He obviously (wrongly) assumed I was into science
fiction, as the tapes were all from an old show called 'Doctor Who'.
I'd heard of it, of course. Everybody knew the hilarious 'knock,
knock...' joke, for instance. But sci-fi just wasn't my thing. I was
a child of horror, it had always been the way. Of course, polite as
ever, I'd taken the videos from my Uncle with a smile and a “Thanks,
Uncle Peter, can't wait to watch 'em!”, and Grandma had allowed me
to watch them alone in her bedroom.
“Just shout if you
want another cuppa!” she'd called shortly after making me my eighth
cup of tea within the last hour.
And so here I
was. I assumed it would be a case of watching one episode, pretending
I'd viewed them all (so as not to offend my Uncle), and then go out
into the sunshine to play. Taking the first video of the set, titled
'Genesis of the Daleks', out of its' case, I shoved it into the huge
mechanical monster that was Grandma's VCR player, which devoured the
tape hungrily and noisily. I then switched on the equally enormous
square television, before folding back onto the bed to watch, I
expected, just one single episode. In just a matter of seconds,
unbeknownst to me, the seeds of a colossal, almost insane, obsession,
were to be sown.
I could not have been
more unprepared for the experience I was about to endure...
*
Everything I Learned In Life, I Learned From Doctor Who
#1
Talk to Strangers
No kiddies, I'm not talking about the man in the
moth-eaten trench coat, who wants you to go back to his house so he
can give you sweets. I'm talking fun strangers, unusual strangers,
people who you can learn from!
I have all sorts of issues, especially when it
comes to being confident and speaking to people. But every so often,
somebody just sort of turns up at an unexpected moment, and they
captivate you with stories and adventures, and you realise that you
aren't alone in this big old world. There are others that get
you.
A few weeks ago, for instance, me and my cousin
went out for a few drinks, and met a wonderful, well-spoken chap (who
can be followed on Twitter here: @mister_meredith) who just so happened to share many
of our interests. He had even met several (read: lots!) of major
'Doctor Who' personalities. He's also a top-rate caberet performer, and unafraid to speak his mind!
And there's Twitter. Out of my 800-odd followers,
I know about 5 people in 'the real world' (including my partner in
geekiness, the incomparable @Sonic_Bionic). The rest are quite
literally strangers, who sprang out of nowhere on this social
networking site, and became friends extremely quickly. Fascinating
people from all over the world, who have the same loves and hates,
and who have seen things I can only dream of. They know who they are
(many can be traced by visiting the list of websites on the left-hand
side of the page), and they have given me a great deal of pleasure.
So, when a chap turns out of the blue telling you he
once knew Sir Isaac Newton, don't run away in terror. Listen to him -
you might just wander into a whole new world...
#2
Tea is the Best
The Doctor likes a bit of coffee, oh yes. Patrick
Troughton's Doctor was always after a cup, and Jon Pertwee wouldn't
have managed all that tinkering in his lab without some pure, strong
caffeine to keep him going!
But seriously though, tea is much more vital, much more
important. Not just because it's beautiful, but also because it is
responsible for the safety of our Universe. Fact. Was it
coffee that brought the Tenth Doctor back to consciousness in 'The
Christmas Invasion'? Did a spillage of Nescafe's finest bring him to
his senses? Nope. It was tea. Tea from a flask, brewed by a
single mother on a council estate in London. Without her brew, the
Doctor would have remained in the land of nod while half the
population jumped from the rooftops to their doom.
And it's the one thing that can cheer the good old
Doctor up. In 'Genesis of the Daleks', he and Harry are captured by
the Kaleds, and the Doctor asks for some tea. Denied, he mutters
somberly to his companion: “No tea Harry...”. There is one
unimpressed Time Lord, and from that moment on, the fate of the
Kaleds is sealed.
So, there you have it. Tea. The saviour of the Universe,
favourite drink of our favourite Time Lord, and an all round tasty
brew. I can be safe in the knowledge that if the Doctor should whisk
me away, I'll know that somewhere aboard the TARDIS, there's a
kettle. Life without tea, for me, would be no life at all...
By way of a conclusion, I'll leave you with this
gorgeous moment from 'The Awakening', which sums up the beauty of
'Doctor Who' and tea at the same time:
Will: What be tea?
The Doctor:
Oh, a noxious infusion of Oriental leaves containing a high
percentage of toxic acid.
Will:
Sounds an evil brew, don't it?
The Doctor:
True. Personally, I rather like it.
('Doctor Who' – The
Awakening, Eric Pringle)
*
'A New Beginning' - A Drabble
*
'Never Play Chess With Yourself' - A Drabble
'A New Beginning' - A Drabble
The charred remains of the Master lay dormant, the pale moonlight revealing him to be no more than an empty, dead shell.
Another figure lurked in the shadows, a slight smile upon his moustached mouth.
“So this is my final destiny…” he muttered, glancing down at his closed fist, which opened to reveal a glowing green ring sitting at the centre of his palm.
“…Or so they thought…”
As he shrank away into the darkness, he laughed with twisted glee, stepping over the corpse of a woman with red fingernails, her body reduced to the size of a child’s doll.
Another figure lurked in the shadows, a slight smile upon his moustached mouth.
“So this is my final destiny…” he muttered, glancing down at his closed fist, which opened to reveal a glowing green ring sitting at the centre of his palm.
“…Or so they thought…”
As he shrank away into the darkness, he laughed with twisted glee, stepping over the corpse of a woman with red fingernails, her body reduced to the size of a child’s doll.
*
'Never Play Chess With Yourself' - A Drabble
Seven moved his pawn carefully across the board.
Six allowed himself a small grin.
Too easy, he thought proudly to himself, He’s no good at all!
Moving his own piece, Six then leant back in his chair, arms folded defiantly, as he announced, “Check!”
“Mate,” was Seven’s unexpected reply, as, seemingly from nowhere, he moved another piece, overthrowing the Queen.
“What?” Six leapt to his feet in shock, appalled at this sudden turn-around.
“Maybe a pie eating contest would be more appropriate for you? You’ve certainly had the practice…”
Seven was slightly unnerved by the look his opponent gave him.
Six allowed himself a small grin.
Too easy, he thought proudly to himself, He’s no good at all!
Moving his own piece, Six then leant back in his chair, arms folded defiantly, as he announced, “Check!”
“Mate,” was Seven’s unexpected reply, as, seemingly from nowhere, he moved another piece, overthrowing the Queen.
“What?” Six leapt to his feet in shock, appalled at this sudden turn-around.
“Maybe a pie eating contest would be more appropriate for you? You’ve certainly had the practice…”
Seven was slightly unnerved by the look his opponent gave him.
*
Season 6B: Officially An Unofficial Season
By Cory Eadson (@Evermore_Evil), 2012
Season 6B: A whole season, a whole era of Doctor Who, created purely to fill in a few critical gaps in the shows’ continuity. Devised by the authors of The Discontinuity Guide (Cornell, Day, and Topping, 1995), this fan theory has been widely regarded and accepted as canon, with the legendary Doctor Who writer and script-editor Terrance Dicks even utilising it for two of his own spin-off novels!
Before we look at the proposed season itself, let’s first examine where the gaps in continuity sprung from in the first place.
Bending the Rules a Little
At the end of the epic 10-part story The War Games (1969), the Doctor goes back to his home planet for the first time in the series’ 6-year history. Before that final episode, there was never a mention of Time Lords or any inclination that he had any contact with them prior to leaving Gallifrey in the first place (the Meddling Monk aside). The story ends with the Doctor’s two travelling companions (Jamie and Zoe) having their memories wiped, and returned to their own time streams. The Doctor is then forced to regenerate, before being exiled to Earth for his crimes of interference. There is no inclination that the Second Doctor had any other adventures at the end of this story. As far as the viewer is concerned, the Second Doctor is gone.
In The Five Doctors (1983), the Second Doctor has a certain amount of control over the steering of his TARDIS, unlike in his earlier television adventures. Also, during the story, when he comes face to face with phantoms of Jamie and Zoe, he says they can’t be real because they had had their memories erased and wouldn’t remember him. This surely puts the story, from the Second Doctor’s perspective, after the events of The War Games.
The Two Doctors (1985) is even more complicated. The Doctor and Jamie, looking much older than they did during their original set of adventures, are under the control of the Time Lords, being sent on missions by them, despite the fact that initially, their first and only meeting with the Time Lords resulted in Jamie’s memory being wiped and the Doctor’s regeneration. Jamie is already fully familiar with the Time Lords, despite never having met them before part 10 of The War Games!
“Officially I'm Here Quite Unofficially” or What is Season 6B?
In 1995, a trio of dedicated Whovians sought to resolve this continuity mess, by combining what little evidence there is on screen with their own imaginations. Hence the birth of Season 6B!
According to Paul Cornell, via Twitter of all places, the 6B theory was born out of the mystery behind the wood-panelled control room in The Masque of Mandragora (1976) – which featured the Second Doctor’s recorder on its console - and the mess of inconsistency that is The Two Doctors.
Here then, I will lay out the proposed timeline of Season 6B, in chronological order so that it will be easier to follow. I will highlight where the elements of 6B fit into established Who-lore, and I will include some of my own speculations. Then, I will delve into why some of the continuity errors listed above may have occurred in the first place. This will be followed by a brief look at the ‘original Season 6B’ – a comic strip featuring the Second Doctor published and set after The War Games, but before Jon Pertwee’s debut in Spearhead from Space (1970)!
Our story starts with the Celestial Intervention Agency. This agency was a covert group of Time Lords put together to protect the Time Lords’ interests. Various spin-off novels and short stories describe them as spies and potential traitors, whose motives are deeply hidden and secretive. During the Doctor’s trial in The War Games, speculation suggests that the CIA were involved, and that although the Doctor was ‘officially’ exiled to Earth and regenerated, they used him in his Second persona to do a few missions and jobs for them first.
The CIA’s involvement was suggested because of the actor Bernard Horsfall, who appeared both as an unnamed Time Lord during the Doctor’s trial, and as Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin (1976), a part-time agent of the CIA. It is suggested that Horsfall could have been playing the same character in both stories, therefore ‘proving’ CIA involvement.
So, the Doctor isn’t regenerated or exiled. Instead, he is given back his TARDIS and assigned certain missions to put a halt to issues that threaten both the Time Lords and the Universe. It could be suggested that during these early stages of his ‘freedom’, the Doctor uses the wood-panelled console we see in …Mandragora, as there is nothing on-screen to disprove this theory.
We then come to The Five Doctors, where the Doctor is able to steer his TARDIS, something he was unable to do during his years as a renegade. I, however, put forth the suggestion that when the Doctor visits the Brigadier in this story, the CIA may have brought him there deliberately, in order to take part in the events that follow. The Doctor may have been unaware of their involvement, and his capture by Borusa deemed another of his unfortunate coincidences. Also, him being aware of Jamie and Zoe’s memories being wiped, later in the story, shows that at this time he has no companions travelling with him, and puts the story into context in terms of the 6B Season.
I am, for the purpose of this article, focussing almost wholly on television stories, as the wealth of spin-off fiction regarding 6B is too wide and complex! However, the novel World Game (2005) is set explicitly during season 6B, has a brief recap of the Second Doctor’s trial, and shows what happens next. Furthermore, as well as being an official BBC Book, it is also written by Terrance Dicks himself! The reason I present World Game next in this chronology is because it explains why the Doctor gets Jamie back as a companion, bridging a neat gap between the Five and Two Doctors stories. Dicks proposes that the Doctor works better with a companion, so the CIA let him have Jamie back. But Jamie has had his memories altered slightly, believing that Victoria has been travelling with him and the Doctor again when she hasn’t. The Doctor mentioning Victoria learning graphology in the latter multi-Doctor story is merely to keep up appearances, keep Jamie thinking she’s out there somewhere.
As this is a novel, rather than a televised story, nobody can be sure of whether it can be counted as canon or not. Some fans may disregard World Game, while others may embrace it. A Doctor Who veteran, embracing a fan-made theory and using it to tidy up some continuity errors…I personally adore it! There’s even mention of the Doctor getting a streak of grey in his hair due to the stress!
Now that World Game has revealed why the Doctor has gone grey, why he is doing missions for the CIA, and why Jamie is back with him, within the context of Season 6B, The Two Doctors suddenly makes a lot more sense. Indeed, the lovely quote, “Officially, I’m here quite unofficially!” (The Two Doctors, Part One, Robert Holmes, 1985) sums up not only that particular story, but the season as a whole. It is a much more entertaining story when viewed from a 6B perspective, with everything falling into an ‘unofficial’ place.
Once again though, some speculation is required. We have to assume the Doctor has now stopped using that wooden control room, and has now moved onto something more akin to what his Fourth persona used. We can also assume that the Time Lords take explicit control of his TARDIS here due to his ‘bending’ of the laws in The Five Doctors (that’s if you ignore my theory about him being brought to the Brigadier deliberately, of course!).
So where to from there? The element of 6B arrives in Spearhead from Space, when the Doctor wakes up with a ring, a homing watch, and a bracelet – none of these in his possession at the end of The War Games. But this doesn’t explain why the Doctor ended up here, exiled and earthbound.
Did the Time Lords tire of the Second Doctor, and give him his originally proposed punishment in cold blood? I personally like to think that the Second Doctor attempted to sabotage his TARDIS, to escape the shackles of the CIA. This obviously enraged them, and without giving him another chance, delivered the punishment he should have had in the first place. Jamie would have been returned to Earth with his mind wiped, and everything would have been covered up neatly by the CIA.
And there you have it. Season 6B. A complicated yet straightforward, confusing yet accessible series of officially unofficial adventures that evolved from a few messy holes and errors in the fiction of the show. Maybe you have your own theories and speculations. Maybe you didn’t even know Season 6B existed until now! Whatever the case, you must remember that it is all theory. I have embraced it, because I’m a huge Two Doctors fan and the theory works. There is nothing onscreen then or now to disprove the Season 6B theory. And when somebody like Terrance Dicks utilises it for his own means…well, surely that’s the ultimate stamp of approval?
Whatever the case, Season 6B is just a framework. The tip of the iceberg. A device continuing to built upon. Maybe one day Big Finish will do their own take on Season 6B? Or maybe it should remain distant. Something unique to each and every fan. An ‘undiscovered country’, as Paul Castle wrote for Shooty Dog Thing (6b Or Not 6b?, 2010).
Continuity Error
Why do we have a Season 6B in the first place? Where did these continuity errors come from, and why? Sadly, the answers are lost in the mists of time. But let us ponder anyway...
The Five Doctors
Steering the TARDIS, looking a bit older…these are things that can be glossed over or ignored. Little blips that on their own wouldn’t cause much in the way of headaches for fans, and certainly wouldn’t result in home-made seasons and essays on the subject! But why did Terrance Dicks acknowledge, explicitly, the fact that Jamie and Zoe had had their memories wiped?
My answer is simply this – plot convenience. When the Third Doctor sees the phantoms of Mike and Liz, he realises that they are fakes by an uneasy feeling he gets. As chilling as the moment is, it doesn’t pack a dramatic punch. The Second Doctor, on the other hand, so close to wandering into a trap, ingeniously remembers that Jamie and Zoe wouldn’t possibly recognise him or the Brigadier, proving them to be ghosts of the mind. It’s more exciting, it shows the Doctor using his intelligence. It works as a scene. This may be why Dicks chose that approach, but then again it might not be.
The Two Doctors
Robert Holmes was one of the strongest writers on Doctor Who, crafting some of the best loved stories of the whole show. So why, then, did he make such explicit continuity errors in his penultimate story? Was he misremembering the past? Having written the Third Doctor’s debut story, he may have wrongly assumed that the Second Doctor had been a Time Lord Agent too. He may have been oblivious to the events of The War Games, having no idea just how little the Time Lords were involved in the series’ earliest years.
This doesn’t tally with Holmes’ style at all though. He was well-versed in the shows’ history – indeed, he created a lot of it! Naming Gallifrey and reimagining it as a corrupt regime, writing the first Master story, creating the Autons and Sontarans…The list goes on. Maybe Holmes was consciously shaking up the established past of the show, going out of his way to do something different. It may also have been a simple matter of plot convenience. A ploy to bring the two Doctors together that wouldn’t need much explanation.
It’s hard to imagine John-Nathan Turner letting this glaring blip on the continuity map slip by, though. As a producer, JNT was very aware of the shows’ past, as so it must be assumed that despite being aware of the errors in this story, he let them slide. Maybe it was the pull of having the Time Lords involved? Time Lords were traditionally involved in multi-Doctor stories, so maybe nostalgia weighed in his favour?
We will never truth. Neither producer nor writer are with us anymore, and so speculation is all that us fans have. Whatever the reasons, we should be grateful that Paul Cornell, Keith Topping and Martin Day came up with the theory in the first place, and that Terrance Dicks liked it so much that he embraced it himself. He may not be able to give us answers for his own little blip in The Five Doctors (it was a long time ago!), but he has gladly filled in the gaps since. I would urge you to watch The Two Doctors again with the 6B theory in your mind, because it is a wonderful, witty story, and one that ought to be appreciated.
And Finally: The ‘Other 6B’
It would seem that none of the authors of The Discontinuity Guide were influenced by a quaint little comic strip from the 1960’s, but nonetheless, Action In Exile is a little bit of history, very much in-keeping with the eccentric nature of the TV Comic strips. The story was created quite simply because the publishers didn’t want to stop Doctor Who strips while the show wasn’t on the air. And so, in the gap between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, readers of the time were treated to an adventure explicitly set after the Second Doctor’s final bow, in which he is an exile on Earth, having a great many adventures and even becoming a local celebrity! The story ends with the Doctor being captured by some Time Lord-controlled scarecrows, and regenerated…just in time for Jon Pertwee’s on-screen debut just days later! The scarecrows even send the Doctor on one last trip in the TARDIS, leading to the intro of Spearhead where it lands back on Earth.
Like many of the TV Comic strips, this story doesn’t really fit into canon due to its’ bizarre nature. However, it is a nice little slice of history that shows a different media format to the TV series carving its’ own little part of continuity, diverting slightly from the established path. I have not yet managed to track down this strip, so if anybody reading this knows where I could acquire a copy, I would be most grateful!
I hope you have enjoyed this rather lengthy journey through Season 6B. Perhaps it has inspired you to add your own thoughts and theories to this expanding framework. Maybe it has given you the inclination to create your own theory to explain some continuity error, or the past of a character etc…One thing you must take away from this, more than anything else, is that with an imagination, you can work wonders!
Further Reading and Viewing
If you have enjoyed this article, here are some more books that explain, discuss, or utilise Season 6B:
Discontinuity Guide, The (1995) Cornell, P., Day, M., and Topping, K. London: Virgin Publishing, Ltd
Shooty Dog Thing (2010) Castle, P. Andover: Hirst Books
World Game (2005) Dicks, T. London: BBC Books
And the episodes that inspired the Season 6B Theory are:
The War Games (1969), by Malcolm Hulke – BBC DVD
The Masque of Mandragora (1976), by Louis Marks – BBC DVD
The Five Doctors (1983), by Terrance Dicks – BBC DVD
The Two Doctors (1985), by Robert Holmes – BBC DVD
Season 6B: A whole season, a whole era of Doctor Who, created purely to fill in a few critical gaps in the shows’ continuity. Devised by the authors of The Discontinuity Guide (Cornell, Day, and Topping, 1995), this fan theory has been widely regarded and accepted as canon, with the legendary Doctor Who writer and script-editor Terrance Dicks even utilising it for two of his own spin-off novels!
Before we look at the proposed season itself, let’s first examine where the gaps in continuity sprung from in the first place.
Bending the Rules a Little
At the end of the epic 10-part story The War Games (1969), the Doctor goes back to his home planet for the first time in the series’ 6-year history. Before that final episode, there was never a mention of Time Lords or any inclination that he had any contact with them prior to leaving Gallifrey in the first place (the Meddling Monk aside). The story ends with the Doctor’s two travelling companions (Jamie and Zoe) having their memories wiped, and returned to their own time streams. The Doctor is then forced to regenerate, before being exiled to Earth for his crimes of interference. There is no inclination that the Second Doctor had any other adventures at the end of this story. As far as the viewer is concerned, the Second Doctor is gone.
In The Five Doctors (1983), the Second Doctor has a certain amount of control over the steering of his TARDIS, unlike in his earlier television adventures. Also, during the story, when he comes face to face with phantoms of Jamie and Zoe, he says they can’t be real because they had had their memories erased and wouldn’t remember him. This surely puts the story, from the Second Doctor’s perspective, after the events of The War Games.
The Two Doctors (1985) is even more complicated. The Doctor and Jamie, looking much older than they did during their original set of adventures, are under the control of the Time Lords, being sent on missions by them, despite the fact that initially, their first and only meeting with the Time Lords resulted in Jamie’s memory being wiped and the Doctor’s regeneration. Jamie is already fully familiar with the Time Lords, despite never having met them before part 10 of The War Games!
“Officially I'm Here Quite Unofficially” or What is Season 6B?
In 1995, a trio of dedicated Whovians sought to resolve this continuity mess, by combining what little evidence there is on screen with their own imaginations. Hence the birth of Season 6B!
According to Paul Cornell, via Twitter of all places, the 6B theory was born out of the mystery behind the wood-panelled control room in The Masque of Mandragora (1976) – which featured the Second Doctor’s recorder on its console - and the mess of inconsistency that is The Two Doctors.
Here then, I will lay out the proposed timeline of Season 6B, in chronological order so that it will be easier to follow. I will highlight where the elements of 6B fit into established Who-lore, and I will include some of my own speculations. Then, I will delve into why some of the continuity errors listed above may have occurred in the first place. This will be followed by a brief look at the ‘original Season 6B’ – a comic strip featuring the Second Doctor published and set after The War Games, but before Jon Pertwee’s debut in Spearhead from Space (1970)!
Our story starts with the Celestial Intervention Agency. This agency was a covert group of Time Lords put together to protect the Time Lords’ interests. Various spin-off novels and short stories describe them as spies and potential traitors, whose motives are deeply hidden and secretive. During the Doctor’s trial in The War Games, speculation suggests that the CIA were involved, and that although the Doctor was ‘officially’ exiled to Earth and regenerated, they used him in his Second persona to do a few missions and jobs for them first.
The CIA’s involvement was suggested because of the actor Bernard Horsfall, who appeared both as an unnamed Time Lord during the Doctor’s trial, and as Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin (1976), a part-time agent of the CIA. It is suggested that Horsfall could have been playing the same character in both stories, therefore ‘proving’ CIA involvement.
So, the Doctor isn’t regenerated or exiled. Instead, he is given back his TARDIS and assigned certain missions to put a halt to issues that threaten both the Time Lords and the Universe. It could be suggested that during these early stages of his ‘freedom’, the Doctor uses the wood-panelled console we see in …Mandragora, as there is nothing on-screen to disprove this theory.
We then come to The Five Doctors, where the Doctor is able to steer his TARDIS, something he was unable to do during his years as a renegade. I, however, put forth the suggestion that when the Doctor visits the Brigadier in this story, the CIA may have brought him there deliberately, in order to take part in the events that follow. The Doctor may have been unaware of their involvement, and his capture by Borusa deemed another of his unfortunate coincidences. Also, him being aware of Jamie and Zoe’s memories being wiped, later in the story, shows that at this time he has no companions travelling with him, and puts the story into context in terms of the 6B Season.
I am, for the purpose of this article, focussing almost wholly on television stories, as the wealth of spin-off fiction regarding 6B is too wide and complex! However, the novel World Game (2005) is set explicitly during season 6B, has a brief recap of the Second Doctor’s trial, and shows what happens next. Furthermore, as well as being an official BBC Book, it is also written by Terrance Dicks himself! The reason I present World Game next in this chronology is because it explains why the Doctor gets Jamie back as a companion, bridging a neat gap between the Five and Two Doctors stories. Dicks proposes that the Doctor works better with a companion, so the CIA let him have Jamie back. But Jamie has had his memories altered slightly, believing that Victoria has been travelling with him and the Doctor again when she hasn’t. The Doctor mentioning Victoria learning graphology in the latter multi-Doctor story is merely to keep up appearances, keep Jamie thinking she’s out there somewhere.
As this is a novel, rather than a televised story, nobody can be sure of whether it can be counted as canon or not. Some fans may disregard World Game, while others may embrace it. A Doctor Who veteran, embracing a fan-made theory and using it to tidy up some continuity errors…I personally adore it! There’s even mention of the Doctor getting a streak of grey in his hair due to the stress!
Now that World Game has revealed why the Doctor has gone grey, why he is doing missions for the CIA, and why Jamie is back with him, within the context of Season 6B, The Two Doctors suddenly makes a lot more sense. Indeed, the lovely quote, “Officially, I’m here quite unofficially!” (The Two Doctors, Part One, Robert Holmes, 1985) sums up not only that particular story, but the season as a whole. It is a much more entertaining story when viewed from a 6B perspective, with everything falling into an ‘unofficial’ place.
Once again though, some speculation is required. We have to assume the Doctor has now stopped using that wooden control room, and has now moved onto something more akin to what his Fourth persona used. We can also assume that the Time Lords take explicit control of his TARDIS here due to his ‘bending’ of the laws in The Five Doctors (that’s if you ignore my theory about him being brought to the Brigadier deliberately, of course!).
So where to from there? The element of 6B arrives in Spearhead from Space, when the Doctor wakes up with a ring, a homing watch, and a bracelet – none of these in his possession at the end of The War Games. But this doesn’t explain why the Doctor ended up here, exiled and earthbound.
Did the Time Lords tire of the Second Doctor, and give him his originally proposed punishment in cold blood? I personally like to think that the Second Doctor attempted to sabotage his TARDIS, to escape the shackles of the CIA. This obviously enraged them, and without giving him another chance, delivered the punishment he should have had in the first place. Jamie would have been returned to Earth with his mind wiped, and everything would have been covered up neatly by the CIA.
And there you have it. Season 6B. A complicated yet straightforward, confusing yet accessible series of officially unofficial adventures that evolved from a few messy holes and errors in the fiction of the show. Maybe you have your own theories and speculations. Maybe you didn’t even know Season 6B existed until now! Whatever the case, you must remember that it is all theory. I have embraced it, because I’m a huge Two Doctors fan and the theory works. There is nothing onscreen then or now to disprove the Season 6B theory. And when somebody like Terrance Dicks utilises it for his own means…well, surely that’s the ultimate stamp of approval?
Whatever the case, Season 6B is just a framework. The tip of the iceberg. A device continuing to built upon. Maybe one day Big Finish will do their own take on Season 6B? Or maybe it should remain distant. Something unique to each and every fan. An ‘undiscovered country’, as Paul Castle wrote for Shooty Dog Thing (6b Or Not 6b?, 2010).
Continuity Error
Why do we have a Season 6B in the first place? Where did these continuity errors come from, and why? Sadly, the answers are lost in the mists of time. But let us ponder anyway...
The Five Doctors
Steering the TARDIS, looking a bit older…these are things that can be glossed over or ignored. Little blips that on their own wouldn’t cause much in the way of headaches for fans, and certainly wouldn’t result in home-made seasons and essays on the subject! But why did Terrance Dicks acknowledge, explicitly, the fact that Jamie and Zoe had had their memories wiped?
My answer is simply this – plot convenience. When the Third Doctor sees the phantoms of Mike and Liz, he realises that they are fakes by an uneasy feeling he gets. As chilling as the moment is, it doesn’t pack a dramatic punch. The Second Doctor, on the other hand, so close to wandering into a trap, ingeniously remembers that Jamie and Zoe wouldn’t possibly recognise him or the Brigadier, proving them to be ghosts of the mind. It’s more exciting, it shows the Doctor using his intelligence. It works as a scene. This may be why Dicks chose that approach, but then again it might not be.
The Two Doctors
Robert Holmes was one of the strongest writers on Doctor Who, crafting some of the best loved stories of the whole show. So why, then, did he make such explicit continuity errors in his penultimate story? Was he misremembering the past? Having written the Third Doctor’s debut story, he may have wrongly assumed that the Second Doctor had been a Time Lord Agent too. He may have been oblivious to the events of The War Games, having no idea just how little the Time Lords were involved in the series’ earliest years.
This doesn’t tally with Holmes’ style at all though. He was well-versed in the shows’ history – indeed, he created a lot of it! Naming Gallifrey and reimagining it as a corrupt regime, writing the first Master story, creating the Autons and Sontarans…The list goes on. Maybe Holmes was consciously shaking up the established past of the show, going out of his way to do something different. It may also have been a simple matter of plot convenience. A ploy to bring the two Doctors together that wouldn’t need much explanation.
It’s hard to imagine John-Nathan Turner letting this glaring blip on the continuity map slip by, though. As a producer, JNT was very aware of the shows’ past, as so it must be assumed that despite being aware of the errors in this story, he let them slide. Maybe it was the pull of having the Time Lords involved? Time Lords were traditionally involved in multi-Doctor stories, so maybe nostalgia weighed in his favour?
We will never truth. Neither producer nor writer are with us anymore, and so speculation is all that us fans have. Whatever the reasons, we should be grateful that Paul Cornell, Keith Topping and Martin Day came up with the theory in the first place, and that Terrance Dicks liked it so much that he embraced it himself. He may not be able to give us answers for his own little blip in The Five Doctors (it was a long time ago!), but he has gladly filled in the gaps since. I would urge you to watch The Two Doctors again with the 6B theory in your mind, because it is a wonderful, witty story, and one that ought to be appreciated.
And Finally: The ‘Other 6B’
It would seem that none of the authors of The Discontinuity Guide were influenced by a quaint little comic strip from the 1960’s, but nonetheless, Action In Exile is a little bit of history, very much in-keeping with the eccentric nature of the TV Comic strips. The story was created quite simply because the publishers didn’t want to stop Doctor Who strips while the show wasn’t on the air. And so, in the gap between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, readers of the time were treated to an adventure explicitly set after the Second Doctor’s final bow, in which he is an exile on Earth, having a great many adventures and even becoming a local celebrity! The story ends with the Doctor being captured by some Time Lord-controlled scarecrows, and regenerated…just in time for Jon Pertwee’s on-screen debut just days later! The scarecrows even send the Doctor on one last trip in the TARDIS, leading to the intro of Spearhead where it lands back on Earth.
Like many of the TV Comic strips, this story doesn’t really fit into canon due to its’ bizarre nature. However, it is a nice little slice of history that shows a different media format to the TV series carving its’ own little part of continuity, diverting slightly from the established path. I have not yet managed to track down this strip, so if anybody reading this knows where I could acquire a copy, I would be most grateful!
I hope you have enjoyed this rather lengthy journey through Season 6B. Perhaps it has inspired you to add your own thoughts and theories to this expanding framework. Maybe it has given you the inclination to create your own theory to explain some continuity error, or the past of a character etc…One thing you must take away from this, more than anything else, is that with an imagination, you can work wonders!
Further Reading and Viewing
If you have enjoyed this article, here are some more books that explain, discuss, or utilise Season 6B:
Discontinuity Guide, The (1995) Cornell, P., Day, M., and Topping, K. London: Virgin Publishing, Ltd
Shooty Dog Thing (2010) Castle, P. Andover: Hirst Books
World Game (2005) Dicks, T. London: BBC Books
And the episodes that inspired the Season 6B Theory are:
The War Games (1969), by Malcolm Hulke – BBC DVD
The Masque of Mandragora (1976), by Louis Marks – BBC DVD
The Five Doctors (1983), by Terrance Dicks – BBC DVD
The Two Doctors (1985), by Robert Holmes – BBC DVD
(This article was published in issue 9 of Fish Fingers And Custard Fanzine, download link here: Issue 9 FREE Download )
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