Doctor Who Regenerations: A Tribute To 11 Epic Changes

6. June 1974: Third/Fourth Doctor

The Third Doctor's demise was properly dramatic and properly emotional, at least by the standards of the time and what had gone before. Despite all the silly giant spiders and the appallingly bad green-screen effects throughout the story, the way it ends is really quite dramatic and could only ever have been leading up to one thing. Over the course of six somewhat convoluted episodes, the Doctor comes into possession of a blue crystal that turns out to be the missing link in a powerful lattice-work of psychic energy on the faraway planet Metebelis III, a planet controlled by giant spiders (aka the Eight Legs) who want the crystal back. After some to-ing and fro-ing, the Doctor - realising he was the cause of the problem by taking it from its planet of origin in the first place - travels to Metebelis III to return the crystal to The Great One, the maniacal spider queen intent on dominating all Two Legs and ruling the entire cosmos. However its return triggers an enormous wave of power that completely wipes out the spiders and which the Doctor is also caught in. From that point onwards, there's only one outcome left for him. It's supposed to be more than three weeks after his departure for Metebelis III when Sarah-Jane Smith turns up in The Doctor's U.N.I.T. HQ laboratory, at the very same moment that The Brigadier also walks into the room... all of this being terribly coincidental given that neither has any expectation of seeing The Doctor again anytime soon, with Sarah actually convinced he's dead and that they'll never see him again. With all the coincidences flying around the room at the time, of course it's also the exact moment that the TARDIS just happens to reappear and the Doctor falls out the door - alive, but only just. There are tears from Sarah-Jane and some astonishingly dramatic lines from a Doctor who, it's fair to say, was never one to shy away from a spot of wide-eyed melodrama. "I had to face my fear. That was more important than just going on living". Nearly thirty-nine years later, the immortal last words of the Third Doctor remain unforgettable: "A tear, Sarah-Jane? No, don't cry. While there's life, there's...". Some more awful green-screen sees the Doctor's fellow exiled Timelord K'Anpo Rinpoche appear, hovering cross-legged over a table and reassuring Sarah and the Brigadier - in what can only be described as comical 1970s faux-Oriental tones - that the Doctor isn't dead and that he can give the process "a little push" to get the revitalised Doctor back on his feet. As Pertwee's features blur and blend into a young Tom Baker's, The Brigadier looks on in surprised disapproval, muttering "here we go again". Cue the familiar scream, the Doctor Who theme and the closing credits. After five years, the Third Doctor's era was over.