Doctor Who: Jon Pertwee – Action Doctor!
By James Aggas
Twenty-three years after his death, we look back on one of a truly action-packed incarnation in Doctor Who – Jon Pertwee, the iconic Third Doctor!
Decades after he left Doctor Who – and twenty-three years after his passing – Jon Pertwee still stands out as a legendary Doctor. A key reason for this is that, in some ways, his Doctor’s methods were unlike many others. Usually, because he wasn’t afraid to get into a fight or use Venusian aikido if he felt he needed to.
Jon Pertwee’s Doctor was surprisingly more hands-on than others. Especially compared to his previous two incarnations. William Hartnell’s Doctor was already an old man when we first met him, and usually relied on having younger companions to do the fighting for him.
Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, meanwhile, preferred more to play the fool, or let enemies underestimate how dangerous or intelligent he was. In both cases, both Doctors preferred to use their intelligence than physical violence to resolve a situation.
This is still true of Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, but to a lesser extent. Sometimes, he’d demonstrate his Venusian martial art skills to combat enemies, such as in The Curse of Peladon. Other times, however, he’d use it to just teach someone annoying a lesson, as he demonstrated with Professor Stahlman in Inferno.
But if the martial arts weren’t enough, he wasn’t afraid of using weapons, either. Check out the clip below for an amazing scene from The Sea Devils involving the Doctor and the Master clashing swords.
Love of gadgets
It’s not just the Third Doctor’s use of physical violence that make him more of an action-focused Doctor. You also see him occasionally in car chases (one of the most boring examples belonging to half the second episode of Planet of the Spiders).
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He’s also a Doctor who loves his gadgets, too. Along with the increased use of the Sonic Screwdriver during this period (although admittedly, not as much as in the New Series), he would often create devices to deal with problems surprisingly quickly. (One of the best examples that has to be seen is in The Time Monster. The way he uses everyday items to stop the Master is nothing if not creative.)
Combined, these key attributes almost sound closer to James Bond than to what we typically think of regarding the Doctor. But of course, Pertwee had just the right amount of eccentricity and style to remind the audience that he was still recognizably the same man as Hartnell and Troughton, too. (It probably helped that he never made any moves on any of his assistants, too.)
There’s also the fact that, as action-focused as the Third Doctor was, this was really only one side to his character. There was also his dandy side too, which we’ll be looking at very shortly…
Next. Review: The Evil of the Daleks is still one of the greatest ever Dalek stories. dark
Which action scene did you enjoy the most from the Third Doctor’s era? His sword fight with the Master? His use of Venusian aikido? One of his car or bike chases? Let us know in the comments below.