The Third Doctor
Portrayed by: Jon Pertwee
Years active: 1970 - 1974
Series: Classic
Companions: Liz Shaw, Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith
Following being sentenced to exile on Earth and a forced regeneration, the Third Doctor began on Earth with his memories blocked from him by the Time Lords to ensure he could not escape exile by using the TARDIS. He was found, collapsed outside the TARDIS, by UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce headed by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and taken to a nearby hospital in a coma. At the same time, the Nestene Consciousness had arrived on Earth with its affinity for plastic and the Third Doctor was taken to UNIT HQ under the orders of Lethbridge-Stewart. During this encounter, the Doctor worked closely with Dr. Elizabeth 'Liz' Shaw, to build a device capable of stopping the Auton invasion. Fearing further invasion by the Nestenes, Brigadier Lethbridge-Steward asked the Doctor to stay on at UNIT and assist them, an offer the Third Doctor accepted, on condition that he kept the antique roadster car he had acquired during the incident, and UNIT assisted him in repairing the TARDIS and, at the Doctor's insistence, Liz also stayed on to become his companion in Spearhead from Space (Classic Series). During the Third Doctors adventures with Liz and UNIT, he met the Silurians for the first time, where he strove for peace between the Silurians and the humans, even managing to gain the trust of the Silurian leader, before a younger, rebellious Silurian took charge and released a virus deadly to humans. After stopping the Silurians and forcing them to retreat back to their base, the Brigadier had the base destroyed, much to the Doctors disgust, displaying his compassion for retreating species in much the same way the Tenth Doctor would in later life.
The Third Doctor also assisted the radiation-dependent alien ambassadors that had been kidnapped by the xenophobic ex-astronaut General Carrington, who wished to discredit the aliens and convince the world to wage war against them. The Doctor and UNIT thwarted his plans and arranged the safe return of the ambassadors in The Ambassadors of Death (Classic Series). Liz's last regular adventure with the Doctor was in Inferno (Classic Series), where the Doctor worked with UNIT on a drilling project designed to break through the Earth's crust, until the drill began sprouting liquid that turned those it touched into primeval beings that craved heat. Accidently, a partially repaired TARDIS took the Doctor to a parallel Earth, where such a drilling project was further advanced than in his universe. The project in the parallel universe failed, but it gave the Doctor information needed to save his own universe, though he had attempted to save both. In Terror of the Autons (Classic Series), Liz expressed frustration that, despite being extensively trained, the Doctor was still far better than her, and all he needed was someone to pass him test tubes and tell him how brilliant he was, which most likely contributed to her decision to resign from UNIT and continue her own research in Cambridge. In the same adventure, the Doctor first met the Master, a fellow renegade Time Lord that had allied itself with the Nestene Consciousness, until he was stopped by the Third Doctor, Jo Grant, the Doctor's new companion, and the Brigadier.
The Third Doctor and Jo also visited Stangmoor Prison for a demonstration of the Keller Machine that proved to be a plan by the Master again, though once again the Doctor and Jo thwarted him. However, the arrival of the Master on Earth prompted the Time Lords to grant the Doctor limited use of his TARDIS again to assist the universe in whatever capacity he was needed, though it always returned him to 20th century Earth when his mission was finished, turning him into "some sort of galactic yo-yo" in The Claws of Axon (Classic Series). In Colony in Space (Classic Series), the Time Lords discovered that the Master had stolen their secret file on the Doomsday Weapon, and sent the Doctor to retrieve it, sending him to the planet Uxarieus, which was Jo's first adventure off Earth. In Devil's End, the Third Doctor encountered the Master again as he summoned the Azal to try and awake an old evil, though the Azal became confused by an act of self-sacrifice from Jo, who stepped in front of the Doctor and asked it to kill her instead after it had fired a shot of energy aimed to kill the Doctor. The confusion destroyed the Azal while the Master tried to escape in Bessie, the Doctor's car; he was brought back when the Doctor used his remote control on the car. Although he thought the Daleks were dead, the Third Doctor encountered them in Day of the Daleks (Classic Series) when freedom fighters from the future came back in time to assassinate a member of the second World Peace Conference. The Daleks came with them, in pursuit of the Doctor, but were defeated when Shura detonated his bomb.
The Doctor eventually thought he had fixed his TARDIS, and took it on a test flight in The Curse of Peladon (Classic Series) with Jo, landing on the planet Peladon, where the Third Doctor helped uncover a conspiracy occurring between the Federation delegate and the High Priest of Peladon. Following his capture at the end of The Daemons, the Master had been imprisoned on Fortress Island prison, where he tried to convince the Doctor he had reformed, though refused to reveal the location of his TARDIS. While there, the Doctor uncovered a plot to control the Sea Devils by the Master, a plot the Doctor thwarted but resulted in the Master escaping his imprisonment in The Sea Devils (Classic Series). Soon after, the Time Lords summoned the Doctor to deliver a special object to an unknown person in the 30th century near the end of the Earth Empire. With the help of Professor Sondergaard, the Third Doctor discovered that transformations taking place were a natural part of the Solonian life cycle in The Mutants (Classic Series). The Doctor then discovered the Master, disguised as Professor Thascalos, had built a TOMTIT (Transmission Of Matter Through Interstitial Time) device, allowing him to summon the Chronovore Kronos. Kronos was set free and the Doctor, Jo and the Master escaped the destruction of Atlantis in The Time Monster (Classic Series).
Back on Gallifrey, the Time Lords broke the first law of time to unite the First, Second and Third incarnations of the Doctor, though it went wrong with the First Doctor only able to communicate through the TARDIS' scanner. The Third and Second Doctor had a personality clash and didn't get on, even though they are the same person, and needed the authoritative aura of the First Doctor to make them work in harmony together. The trio of Doctor's managed to stop Omega from coming back into the world of matter from his anti-matter domain in The Three Doctors (Classic Series). On the SS Bernice, the doctor and Jo find a monster has appeared in the sea in Carnival of Monsters (Classic Series), though the Doctor managed to return the monsters home before journeying on to an Earth Freighter where he and Jo became caught in escalating tensions between the planets Earth and Draconia, where they found the Master had secretly provoked both sides into going into all-out war against each other, under the orders of Daleks. The Doctor's head was grazed by a shot, resulting in him struggling to stay conscious, and asked Jo to help him into his TARDIS where he asked the Time Lords to pilot the TARDIS to follow the Daleks to their new base in Frontier in Space (Classic Series). The Third Doctor slipped into a coma again and Jo explored the planet they had landed on, meeting a group of Thals in Planet of the Daleks (Classic Series), where Jo and the recovered Doctor assisted them in burying the Daleks.
It took the Third Doctor several attempts to pilot his TARDIS to Metebelis III, and when he finally succeeded in doing so he was attacked by several violent beings. However, he managed to take a blue crystal which he then used back on Earth to defeat the computer system BOSS in Llanfairfach with UNIT and Jo. While in Llanfairfach however, Jo had fallen in love with Cliff Jones, one of the scientists, and chose to marry him, leaving the Doctor's company. The Doctor gave Jo the blue crystal as a present, though he was upset at Jo moving on. Meanwhile, journalist Sarah Jane Smith impersonated her aunt, a virologist, to gain entry to a research centre where UNIT was holding top scientists in protective custody while they investigated the mysterious disappearances of numerous colleagues. The missing colleagues had been kidnapped by the Sontaran Linx, who was using them to repair his crashed spaceship. Following the death of Linx, Sarah Jane became the Doctor's companion and travelled with him. In 1970's London, the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane investigated the mysterious appearances of dinosaurs, before tracing it to Whitaker and Grover, who were then transported to pre-historic Earth by accident in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Classic Series). The TARDIS, now working more and more, crash landed on the planet Exxilon where the Doctor and Sarah Jane encounter the Daleks, discovering the Great City of the Exxilons, where the Doctor tries to disrupt the city's power-disrupting technology tower, while the Daleks ordered human slaves to place bombs around it. The tower and the Dalek spaceship were destroyed along with the Great City itself, which the Third Doctor remarked as taking the universe down to 699 wonders in Death to the Daleks (Classic Series). The Doctor also returned to Peladon with Sarah Jane, 50 years after his previous visit, where the Doctor helped defeat the Ice Warriors and rebuild Peladon in The Monster of Peladon (Classic Series).
The Doctor often disagreed with the Brigadier's way of thinking in military style for most of the situations they face and with any petty officials. The Third Doctor challenged the Master often, though visited him in prison. Jo noted that Doctor worried about the Master, and the Doctor confirmed that the Master was an old friend of his. The Third Doctor did not encounter the Cybermen during his adventures, but he and Sarah did witness them being massacred in The Five Doctors (Classic Series) adventure. The Doctor tried to bring peace between the humans and the Silurians, as his Eleventh incarnation would also try in later life, as well as trying to come to an agreement with the Sea Devils, only killing them when he saw no other hope. Unlike future incarnations, the Third Doctor was a man of action, willing to join the fray whenever he could, whereas his two predecessors had attempted to insinuate themselves into event discreetly. The Third Doctor was not afraid of using his physical strength when the need arose for his, often bringing his mastery of Venusian aikido into play, though much like his predecessors, his keen and brilliant mind was his primary asset, loving to play with gadgets of all sorts. The Third Doctor's knowledge of the TARDIS grew extensively, no doubt due to the fact that he took it apart and reassembled it to try and make it work before the Time Lords gave him back his memories on how to use it. After his memories were restored, the Doctor was far better at controlling his destinations than his previous incarnations ever were, incarnations that often lacked any control of the TARDIS, though he denied any mistake was caused by him if the TARDIS strayed. The Third Doctor was known for his ornate dress sense, most famously for his frilled shirt, inverness cape and smoking velvet jacket outfits. He liked to wear his frilled shirt with a bow tie or cravat, though because of this, the First and Second Doctors called him a dandy, though his clothes were stolen from a hospital, becoming the first incarnation to do such, with the Eighth and Eleventh Doctor also doing so in later life.
The Third Doctor left behind a legacy with UNIT, and even though his future incarnations severed all ties with the agency, numerous UNIT members still wished to meet the man. The Ninth and Tenth Doctors both worked briefly with UNIT themselves. The Third Doctor worked with UNIT for most of his exiled life on Earth, though his assistance became less as his exile wore off and he was allowed to travel more in the TARDIS. One of these travels however, took him back to Metebelis III, where a colony of large Spiders had to be defeated. Doing so meant the Third Doctor had to expose himself to lethal levels of radiation, which ultimately forced him to regenerate, with the help of his old mentor, K'anpo Rimpoche, into his fourth incarnation, the Fourth Doctor.