11. The Third Doctor
"I had to face my fear. That was more important that just going on living..." - Planet of the Spiders
In his last story as the Doctor, Jon Pertwee got to give fans a further reassurance that their alien hero wasn't so alien after all. Since the show's inception the Doctor had, slowly, been allowing himself to appear more and more human in terms of his tastes and traits and 1974's 'Planet of the Spiders' is a fine example of the Doctor allowing himself to display one of the most human emotions of them all: fear. While everyone experiences fear on at least a semi-regular basis, the Doctor is usually very good at hiding, disguising or ignoring his fears in order to appear cool, calm and collected to his human companions. Indeed, many viewers take solace in the fact that no matter what the danger, the Doctor seems to have firmly everything under control. It's this usual tendency to hide his fear which makes the Doctor's open admissions of fear all the more powerful and Jon Pertwee's delivery of the line is beautiful as ever. The truly inspiring thing, fans may come to realise, about the Doctor is that he is often scared or fearful of the situations in which he finds himself - yet he carries on anyway. The Doctor shows fans here that, in spite of oneself, you can still do the right thing, be brave, rock the boat, challenge the status quo and travel through space and time (well maybe not that the last one) without yielding to the fear that one may feel at any given moment.