Another reason I don’t like the way new Who dwells on this aspect of the Doctor is that I always presumed we were only seeing the more exciting parts of the Doctor’s life, and that he actually spends a fair amount of time travelling around to places and times that aren’t in danger of imminent invasion/destruction and has some adventures that aren’t life-or-death.
The way the rebooted show goes on and on about it, it’s like as soon as he sets foot on a planet, it gets invaded or reacts to his touch by careening into the nearest sun.
No, he was played by Mark Benton, who also had a significant role in RTD’s miniseries “The Second Coming,” which starred Christopher Eccleston.
And IIRC, no one dies in “The Girl in the Fireplace” either. Well, Reinette, but of old age, not because of any nefarious reasons.
Interestingly, all of those are Steven Moffat episodes. And technically “everyone lives” in Moffat’s other two parter, “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.”
If you don’t count the entire spaceship crew, who were quite literally stripped for parts. Not on screen, true, but we got to see their various barbecue smelling bits spliced in to the ship’s workings.
What about River Song, who got zappified, and the rest of her crew, who got Darkness-Pirannah’d?
Oh, and while I like the idea of The Doctor having some downtime occasionally, it seems we typically see him finishing an adventure, telling his companion, “Let’s go see Pompeii!” and then, poof, Pompeii gets hosed.
I don’t know. Remember Rose, in Cardiff, telling Mickey about this giant frozen wave or something on some planet, that we never got to see? It seems like there are the less adventurous trips too.
I blame the Tardis. It has some sort of vaguely defined sentience and will of its own, and it’s drawn toward trouble. I don’t know if that’s been hinted at in the series or I just made it up.
I think the record for largest body count has to be The Caves of Androzani, in terms of the number of named characters dying on screen.
I’ve always suspected that Donna could make a great detective. The most promising thing that I saw at the end was the change in her mother’s attitude towards her. It may wear off, but at least for awhile her mother is going to be more supportive.
I prefer the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy explanation. There’s a lot going on about in the Doctor’s life that is pretty boring, we just don’t get to see it.
Which makes me think, are there any long gaps between assistants that we can assume allowed the Doctor to have had some adventures on his own? Nu-Who seems to allow for that, from McCoy to McGann (escorting the Master to Skaro) and McGann to Eccleston (the Time War) but what about Who of old?
Did the Doctor ever appear unescorted, so that we could assume he had slipped away somewhere for a while? The Brain of Morbius implies (so I’ve read) that there were other regenerations before the first Doctor, but I can’t remember any other companionless times from before.
the Deadly Assassin was the only serial from the classic series in which the Doctor is not accompanied by a companion / assistant. It’s pretty much a given that he proceeded directly from dropping off Sarah-Jane Smith on Earth at the end of the Hand of Fear to Gallifrey (where the “Assassin” story takes place.) But there’s no telling how much time elapsed between the time the Doctor leaves Gallifrey (end of “Assassin”) and his arrival on the un-named jungle planet that is Leela’s homeworld (the next serial the Face of Evil.)
In fact, “the Face of Evil” storyline is actually predicated on an unseen adventure. Sometime in his past (but definitely AFTER he regenerated into his 4th incarnation) he had visited Leela’s homeworld and intervened in a way that gravely impacted the people there. So there is at least one unseen 4th Doctor story.
Also, one of the 6th Doctor’s stories similarly is a ‘sequel’ to an unseen adventure. I can’t remember the name of it, but the Doctor & Peri visit a world that he must have visited during his 3rd incarnation. The people there recognize the TARDIS as the Doctor’s time machine, and one woman has a locket with a picture of Jo Grant.
Let’s see:
1st Doctor: continuous chain of companions until his regeneration.
2nd Doctor: a companion (Jamie) throughout his entire incarnation
3rd Doctor: Stranded on Earth until The Three Doctors. After last adventure with Jo Grant, possibly unspecified amount of time until Sarah Jane Smith becomes companon. (Remember, the Doctor could experience vast amounts of time but return to almost the point he left).
4th Doctor: Unknown amount of time between Deadly Assassin and Leela becoming companion. Unknown amount of time after the last story with Leela (The Invasion of Time), which IIRC was a season-ending story, and the beginning of the Key of Time arc which introduced Romana. Another season end was the last appearence of Romana I, and the next season featured Romana II, and an unspecified amount of time could have passed inbetween. Romana is a Time Lady, so decades or more of time could have passed during her tenure.
5th Doctor: IIRC, chain of companions throughout incarnation
6th Doctor: extreme confusion due to disruption of the Doctor’s history line in the Trial of a Time Lord arc (we never find out exactly how Mel met the Doctor!)
7th Doctor: An episode in which he encounters his 2nd incarnation and Jamie in a previously undocumented adventure. Hiatus/cancellation of series, no resolution for where and how Ace and the Doctor parted company.
8th Doctor: disputed canonicity of Doctor Who movie, events of Time War never shown.
9th Doctor: unknown amount of time between end of Time War and meeting Rose.
10th Doctor: Possible gap between departures of previous companions and arrival of next.
ALERT! ALERT! Someone mentioned the Morbius Doctors! Canon war imminent! Batten down the hatches. Sound the Cloister Bell. Watch out for the Other! No-one mention UNIT dating.
Fan tradition often places this earlier visit in the trip the Doctor takes shortly after regenerating in “Robot”. The TARDIS only disappear for a second (from our point of view) but who knows how long it was from the Doctor’s point of view. Plus he was still behaving erratically from the regeneration.
The fourth Doctor probably had the most opportunity for unseen, companionless adventures. Most of his companions left in one story, with the new one arriving in the next, and we don’t really know how much time elapsed for the Doctor in between. (A lot of the novels are set in these kind of gaps.)
Is anyone disputing that these days? Even among the camp that believe there is a Doctor Who “canon” (a camp which doesn’t include the BBC, or Russell T Davies, the people who would have best claim on declaring a canon if they wanted to), surely it’s about as accepted as the new series is? The new series even shows Paul McGann as the Doctor in “Human Nature” and “The Next Doctor”.
I’ve wondered about that, but in the scene showing the psychic regression, I thought at least some of the faces shown were Morbius’s. Any good links to a review of the question?
The fourth Doctor was shown mental thumb-wrestling with one-time renegade Timelord and galactic despot Morbius, who was now reduced to a brain in a fishbowl on top of an agglomeration of sewn-together alien bits, or “Chop-Suey, the Galactic Emperor”. The still puissant Morbius and his titular brain - a genius villain, and one well due for a revival - at first gained the upper hand {well, mismatched claw, really}, and we saw on the view-screen Baker’s Doctor being forced back through his prior incarnations: Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell - and then four or five others. It is hotly disputed in fandom as to whether these count as prior incarnations, and the consensus is that they are not canon: certainly they’ve never been referred to before or since. Either way, bring back Morbius!
Or people managing to get killed whenever Jessica Fletcher is visiting in Murder She Wrote. (Not to say that if I heard Ms. Fletcher was visiting I wouldn’t take the opportunity for a distant vacation).
I think it’s unlikely that there was much of a gap between the Romana I and Romana II. Remember that while regenerating, she opted to regenerate into the exact likeness of Princess Astra, whom she met during “the Armageddon Factor” (last Romana I story.) While it’s possible some time could have passed,why would she choose that form if it wasn’t fresh in her mind?
Nitpick: the 6th Doctor was the one to run into his 2nd incarnation & Jamie.
Curiously, “the Two Doctors” story seemed to indicate that the story intersected with the 2nd Doctor’s timeline soon after Victoria left the ship. But the story in which she left the crew immediately leads into “the Wheel In Space” in which Zoe joined the crew. (Victoria says goodbye, the TARDIS takes off, and the Doctor discovers something wrong with his ship, which is a cliffhanger that directly leads into the next story.) So that story doesn’t fit in with “canon.”
