This is one of the best multi-Doctor interviews around. To mark the show’s twentieth anniversary, three of the four surviving Doctors got together on the BBC’s ‘Nationwide’ show. It’s defintely worth watching the clip, because part of the joy is the interaction between them, especially Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee.
Q: Jon, the Doctor always gets away with it. Is that some deep philosophical message, the triumph of good over evil, or is it ingenious fun?
JP: It’s his brilliance! It’s his brilliance and his experience, is it not Patrick?
PT: Oh yes! What are we talking about? Yes! Brilliant, yes!
Q: We must ask him a question because he’s been waiting. Patrick, the character as you saw it, would you like to tell me about that?
PT: Yes. Well it took me time to see the character because I had to follow Billy, and that was the first follow. And it was a question of doing it differently, really, because you couldn’t do it the same. So we had various ideas, first a kind of captain with one of those Victorian… (mimes a hat)
Q: It was the late 60’s when you did it, wasn’t it? I thought that was a Dr. Who of its time, because you had a kind of Beatles haircut, didn’t you?
PT: It probably was, yes. There was a thing about that, actually, because Mike Craze and Anneke, when they saw my wig in make-up –
JP: What wig?
PT: I had a wig, originally, in make-up, they saw it, they said ‘No, we are not going on’, I looked like Harpo Marx.
JP: That’s where Tom got the idea.
PT: So they whipped it off and they dressed my hair like a Beatle.
Q: Peter, it’s now unashamedly for adults, isn’t it, because they’ve put you on later.
PD: Well I don’t think it’s unashemedly for adults, I think it’s always had a fairly adult audience, and I think they tried to give it an extra boost by putting it on in the week, and it’s certainly increased the viewing figures.
Q: Jon, do children still stop you in the street? Do they still think you’re Dr. Who?
JP: Yes, when they don’t think I’m Worzel Gummidge.
PT: Have you seen his Worzel Gummidge? Fantastic.
Q: But do they believe that you’re some sort of supernatural being?
JP: Yes. They say ‘Hello Doc, I wonder if you could help me out with a little bit of trouble’.
PD: But it’s quite extraordinary, because the day after it was announced that I would be Dr. Who, I was called Dr. Who in the street.
Q: They stopped calling you Tristram?
PD: Yes, they did, that ended it. But before I’d even appeared, you know, people were so used to the idea, they even thought they’d seen me, they said ‘I watch you every week’, they were watching Tom!
Q: But it has to be frightening, doesn’t it? (to Patrick) I mean you’re sending it up –
PT: I don’t! I’ve never sent it up in my life! It’s a different attitude to a desperately dangerous situation.
PD: When you’re doing it, you can’t send it up. When you’re in rehearsal, you can’t afford to send it up.
PT: We might do it here.
Q: Have any of you any regrets about doing it? Has it ruined your lives?
ALL: No!
JP: Good heavens, no.
PT: Absolutely not.
JP: The repeats are marvellous.
Q: Listen, it’s been worked out that the Time Lord, he can regenerate himself thirteen times –
PT: Hey?
Q: It’s very mathematical. Listen, 45 years more he’s got to live. What I want to know is, when is a woman going to be Dr. Who?
PD: That depends on when I give up, don’t you think?
PT: What a good idea.
Tags: 2nd Doctor, 3rd Doctor, 5th Doctor, Anneke Wills, Female Doctor, Jon Pertwee, Michael Craze, Patrick Troughton, Peter Davison
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