10 Times Doctor Who Wanted You To Hate It
2. The Early Days Of The Sixth Doctor (The Twin Dilemma)
While regeneration has kept Doctor Who going for over 60 years, it can be jarring for viewers when the Doctor they love is replaced by a total stranger.
As such, most of the time a new Doctor’s first story plays it safe.
But when it came to the transition from Peter Davison to Colin Baker, the production team decided to lean into that sense of unease and make the new Doctor deliberately unlikable.
This was part of a broader plan to make the new Doctor slightly spiky and inaccessible like his first incarnation – the idea being that he would mellow over time, like Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
Even so, having him spend part of his debut story attempting to strangle his companion in a post-regenerative fit was a wild choice. Maybe he could've just moaned about the weather or something? That’s before we even get on to his brash costume, which producer John Nathan-Turner wanted to be “totally tasteless”.
All combined it got the Sixth Doctor off to a shaky start, which regrettably, he never quite recovered from.
The fact that his adventures didn’t resume until nine months after his debut story didn’t help either. But overall, his characterisation was to blame. A new Doctor should be someone you want to spend time with – not someone who makes you afraid they might chokeslam you at any second.