10 Doctor Who Mysteries You Didn't Know Were Answered
4. Who Put That Sofa There?
Sylvester McCoy is an actor who has never knowingly turned down the opportunity for a comedy pratfall. Case in point, Survival Part Three – the final episode of Classic Doctor Who – in which the Doctor hops on a motorbike for a life or death game of chicken with Midge.
Midge is burned and mangled in the collision while the Seventh Doctor... ends up head-first in some sofa cushions? It's the sort of all-too convenient resolution that makes Doctor Who fans either roll their eyes with disgust, or hoot with laughter.
But seriously, how on Earth did the Seventh Doctor dismount an exploding motorbike and end up with his head between the sofa cushions without a single scratch?
Step forward Paul Cornell, whose 30th anniversary comic Emperor of the Daleks explained that the Seventh Doctor had a bit of help. At the end of the story, the Sixth Doctor asks if his future self "appreciated the mattress in Perivale?"
Now, yes, it wasn't a mattress, it was a sofa. Which means Paul Cornell either forgot this, or, more excitingly, the Seventh Doctor leapt from an exploding motorbike, bounced off a mattress, and landed headfirst on an old sofa.
If they'd aired that in 1989, Doctor Who's future would've been assured all the way through the 1990s!