Timothy Craven | Through the Shattered Lens

Robot, the first serial of Doctor Who‘s 12th season, introduced us to a new Doctor. The Third Doctor has regenerated and in his place is a slightly younger and more eccentric man. Robot was the first regeneration story to introduce the idea of the Doctor being disorientated after regenerating. The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) wakes up without the Third Doctor’s pressing concern for Earth or the goings-on at UNIT. At first, at least, he has the wanderlust of the First Doctor without the Third Doctor’s sense of duty. He wants to get in his TARDIS and explore the universe.

The only thing that stops him from leaving are his companion, Sarah jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), and the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney). When they tell him that there have been some technology thefts and that they need his help to investigate, the Doctor agrees to stick around and help out. Of course, before he investigates, he changes his costume. Out are the Edwardian clothes that the Third Doctor favored. In are wide-brimmed hats, trenchcoats, and scarves. Very, very long scarves.

(His scarf in Robot is nowhere near as long as it would eventually get.)

When he was cast as the Doctor, Tom Baker was a character actor who has found some success (even receiving a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexandra) but not enough to give up his part-time job as a construction worker. When he wrote to the BBC asking for a job, the letter was forwarded to Doctor Who producer Barry Letts. Letts, who was struggling to find someone to replace the popular Jon Pertwee, hired Baker for the role after watching Baker play a villain in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. (There’s a movie I might have to review before the month is over.) Tom Baker would go on to have the longest run of any actor as the Doctor and, for years, he was consistently voted the most popular of the actors who have played the Doctor. That’s not bad for someone who, before receiving the role, was tauntingly called “Sir Laurence” by his co-workers at the construction site.

Tom Baker was also the first Doctor that many Americans experienced. When I was a kid and my local PBS station first started showing Doctor Who, they started with the Tom Baker years. For many American, Tom Baker was the one who introduced them to things like the TARDIS, Daleks, and Cybermen. Tom Baker’s Doctor, with the scarf and the sneaky smile and the eccentric humor, became an iconic figure the world over.

Considering how important Tom Baker would be to the show, it’s interesting that his first serial is nothing special. The thefts are the work of a group of humans who want to construct a robot out of “living metal” so that they can steal Britain’s nuclear command codes and hold the world hostage. An attempt to shoot the robot with a disintegrator gun causes the robot grows to supersize. It develops a crush on Sarah Jane, and is destroyed by an early computer virus. The giant robot special effects rival the dinosaurs from Invasion of the Dinosaurs for ineptitude. The episode ends with asking Sarah Jane and UNIT’s Dr. Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) to accompany him on a trip in the TARDIS.

The only thing that really stands out about this episode is Tom Baker’s performance as the Doctor. I hesitate to say that anyone was ever destined to play a role but Baker is so confident from the start and seems like such a natural while interacting with veteran cast members like Nicholas Courtney, Elisabeth Sladen, and John Levene that it’s hard to believe that anyone other than Tom Baker was ever considered for the role of The Fourth Doctor. From the start, Tom Baker just seems like be belongs there.

Robot may not have been classic Doctor Who but Tom Baker was the classic Doctor.

Fresh from defeating an attempt by a Sontaran to disrupt British history, the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and his newest companion, reporter Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), return to present-day London and discover that it has been transformed into a ghost town. Dinosaurs are roaming the streets. The Doctor teams up with UNIT to try to figure out who has been monkeying with time but what he doesn’t know is that the trusted Captain Yates (Richard Franklin) is working with the people responsible for the dinosaur invasion.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs was the second serial of the 11th season. Like The Sea Devils, this was another case where I read the novelization long before I got a chance to see the actual serial. Well-written by Malcolm Hulke, the novelization really got me excited to watch Invasion of the Dinosaurs. It did not prepare me for how fake the dinosaurs would look.

It was to be expected, though. Classic Doctor Who was never known for its wonderful special effects. Instead, it was known for rubber monsters, torn costumes, and alien landscapes that were often made out of cardboard. For many of us, that was a part of its charm. The dinosaurs in this serial look like toys that have been unleashed on a still photo of London. I’ve read that the serial was criticized for its bad dinosaur effects when it originally aired 1974 and that was long before Jurassic Park made everyone take the idea of seeing a realistic dinosaur for granted.

Despite the very fake dinosaurs, Invasion of the Dinosaurs still has one of the better scripts of the Pertwee era. The villains aren’t the typical evildoers who usually showed up on Doctor Who. Instead, they are people who have convinced themselves that the only way to save humanity is to dial back time to what they consider to be the “Golden Age,” before technology and industry blighted what they believe to be the ideal landscape. Of course, they plan to take only the very best among the population to their golden age with them. The villains are elitist environmentalists, convinced that they and only they know what is best. This may be the first episode of Doctor Who where the main antagonist, Sir Charles Grover (Noel Johnson), is a member of Parliament.

Captain Yates’s betrayal of UNIT and the Doctor adds some emotional depth to this story. While Yates was never as important a character as the Brigadier or Sgt. Benton, he was still present for almost all of the Third Doctor’s adventures and the small scenes where he would flirt with Jo Grant were some of the most awkward moments of the Pertwee era. Captain Yates was a loyal member of the Third Doctor’s entourage and his betrayal was motivated not by greed or resentment but instead by a desire to make the world a better place. The novelization made it clear that it was actually the terrible things that Yates saw as a member of UNIT that convinced him that time needed to be turned back.

This was the final Jon Pertwee story to be set entirely on Earth and, though Yates and the Brigadier would return for Pertwee’s final serial, it was the last true UNIT story of the Pertwee years. Jon Pertwee had already decided that the 11th season would be his last. The 12 season would feature a new Doctor. And while the BBC considered actors like Graham Crowden, Bernard Cribbins, and Jim Dale for the role, the Fourth Doctor was ultimately be played by Tom Baker, an actor who was working as a construction worker when Invasion of the Dinosaurs first aired.

Doctor Who would never the same.