THE THIRD DOCTOR
Peter Wyngarde
(1970 - 1972)
Peter Wyngarde was not the production team's first choice to play the Third Doctor: after the success of John Le Mesurier's relaxed and easygoing approach to the role, a concerted attempt (as script editor Malcolm Hulke would subsequently describe in interviews) would be made to poach Jon Pertwee from
Dad's Army only to be met with refusal when he made clear his preference for the role of Captain George Mainwaring, which saw him acting opposite his distant cousin William, who played the long-suffering Sgt. Arthur Wilson. Fulton Mackay and Philip Madoc were each acknowledged as good possibilities, as were Graham Crowden and Peter Gilmore; Paul Darrow was considered but rejected on account of his youth.
Pressure mounted as the challenge of finding a Third Doctor increased. Eventually, a decision was reached, and the flamboyant Peter Wyngarde – a remarkable character in his own right and one around whom mystery and innuendo were said to swirl – was cast as the Third Doctor. [1] Wyngarde, a onetime acquaintance of J.G. Ballard, had enjoyed an active career as a thespian since the 1940s, but was most immediately recognised by contemporary audiences as the sleuthing spy novelist and mod icon Jason King, a part which had made him the breakout star of the ITC adventure series
Department S, which had recently concluded its run on ATV.
When filming on that series wrapped in early 1970, Wyngarde was offered a spin-off centred around Jason King, but declined the opportunity and accepted an invitation from producer Barry Letts (keen to bag a major star to try and justify the ongoing behind-the-scenes difficulties) to audition to take the lead in
Doctor Who. [2] Relishing the challenge of portraying a different version of the same man as John Le Mesurier had portrayed, Wyngarde agreed and was officially announced as the new Doctor in the spring of 1970 shortly after the broadcast of "The War Games" was completed.
Along with a new actor and a new production and writing team, the Third Doctor era also ushered in a very new and very different status quo for
Doctor Who. Following his trial by the Time Lords in the final Second Doctor adventure, the Doctor found himself confined to his home planet (now identified as Gallifrey) and pressed into the service of the High Council, serving as an agent for the stern, military-minded authoritarian Councillor Goth (played by Nicholas Courtney) and dealing with a mixture of political intrigue within Time Lord society and occasional visits to alien worlds. Throughout these adventures, the Third Doctor was accompanied first by a female Time Lord named Borusa (Caroline John) and Council Guard Harsul (Ian Marter), responsible for keeping him in line, and later by a human space colonist named Elizabeth Grant (Katy Manning) who accompanied him back to Gallifrey following an away mission. [3]
However, the most significant addition to the series during Wyngarde's ultimately brief tenure was a new villain known as the Master, introduced as an old rival of the Doctor and leader of a sinister conspiracy to take control of Time Lord society, played by a young Welsh actor opposite whom Wyngarde had previously acted in
Department S, future Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins. [4] Their vendetta came to a head in the last episode of Wyngarde's tenure, "The Final Game", in which the Master is revealed to have been behind many of the intrigues and conspiracies which the Doctor had uncovered and thwarted during his house arrest on Gallifrey, but is inevitably betrayed by his invading "allies", the Ice Warriors. The Doctor defeats the invaders and saves his enemy's life, but backstabbed and shot by his cowardly foe's Tissue Division Eradicator; the Master himself attempts to make an escape but is seemingly killed when Grant sabotages his TARDIS. [5]
Ultimately, though, the story which surrounded Wyngarde's Third Doctor and particularly the embarrassing circumstances of his departure – today deemed as a major blight on the record of the BBC – is perhaps just as compelling as any which he encountered in costume and in front of the camera.
Wyngarde's portrayal of the Doctor, it is useful to understand, effectively transplanted his Jason King persona into the largely-inactive control room of the TARDIS. He was an inveterate dilettante, an habitually irreverent, long-haired bohemian clad in neo-Edwardian dandy style (justified in the script to the first episode of his first serial, "Spearhead to Space", as a deliberate attempt to rankle the conservative sensibilities of Time Lord society by emulating, "Some amusing 'mod' fashions I encountered last time I was allowed to visit Earth,") replete with ruffled blouses and crushed velvet suits, shirts often unbuttoned to expose a golden medallion ("Picked it from Columbus's own pocket back in 1492.") gleaming against the rug on his chest.
He drank ("A good Spiridonian wine, 12,000 B.C. by Earth reckoning unless I miss my guess. Rather a fancy year, if I say so myself!"), and even occasionally smoked ("A trifling human affection, dear Goth, and one you would do well to try,") and flirted shamelessly with every woman he shared a screen with. Audiences loved him, but Gallifrey's were not the only conservative sensibilities the Third Doctor managed to offend.
Constance Mary Whitehouse was an art teacher from Nuneaton and a devout evangelical Christian who, in 1965, founded the National Viewers and Listeners Association with the stated aim of cleaning up television. The movement made BBC one of its most frequent targets and often attacked
Doctor Who in the late Le Mesurier years (despite speaking favourably of the actor himself) for the purported "un-Christian ambiguity of its morals" it displayed in its stories. After getting a taste of Peter Wyngarde, Whitehouse and her group redoubled their efforts, but after the surprise outcome of the general election of 1970 found a new ally in Westminster in the form of the newly-ensconced Conservative prime minister - a social conservative determined not to cede further ground following the decriminalisation of homosexuality by the outgoing Labour government in the late 1960s.
Although the BBC paid little heed to the NVALA campaigns, matters were exacerbated in late 1972, when the organisation began to focus its attacks on Wyngarde's widely-rumoured homosexuality, with Whitehouse infamously denouncing the BBC for, "trying to translate prurience and perversion into the attributes heroism in a television programme aimed at our children". Although homosexuality had, as noted, previously been decriminalised, the homophobic stigma had not yet lifted. A vociferous letter-writing campaign ensued, accompanied by column inches in scandal sheets and strong statements from rival organisations including the Campaign for Homosexual Equality on one side and various religious groups on the other.
Throughout the affair, Wyngarde himself remained judiciously quiet on the matter, and the unexpected increase in the ratings for
Doctor Who suggested that his audience was still behind him. As political pressure mounted, a deputation led by Malcolm Hulke made clear that they were prepared to fight on their lead's behalf, but in the end, Wyngarde decided to leave the role freely. Discussing the matter with Letts and Hulke, it was agreed that the Third Doctor's rivalry with the Mater would receive a decisive conclusion and the Doctor absolved of any wrongdoing under an obscure piece of Time Lord law discovered by Councillor Goth, allowing him to travel freely in space and time once more.
At just short of three years, Peter Wyngarde's tenure as the Doctor is among the shortest of any actor cast in the role. Nonetheless, his time in the TARDIS (or, more accurately, on Gallifrey) remains a popular era in the programme's history. Despite leaving under a cloud, Wyngarde would return to
Doctor Who for two further guest appearances and and has been a frequent contributor to the popular line of tie-in audio dramas produced by Audio Visuals.
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[1] Much of Wyngarde's early life is shrouded in some mystery, with the year and place of his birth and even his birth name being open to some dispute. Wyngarde himself is believed to have been born in China – his father has variously been cited as a diplomat or a naval engineer – sometime between 1926 and 1933 (Wyngarde identified 1933 as the correct date) with the name Cyril Goldbert. He was interned for a time in a camp near Shanghai during the war with Japan and relocated to England at the end of 1945.
[2] A Jason King solo series featuring Wyngarde would eventually appear on ITV later in the decade, shortly before Wyngarde's casting as Prince Barin in the feature film Flash Gordon.
[3] Caroline John would leave relatively early on in the Third Doctor's tenure, citing personal difficulties now widely attributed to be backstage quarrels (subsequently patched up) with Peter Wyngarde. Her character, Borusa, would eventually return, but for now was written out as having been dispatched on a mission to the distant past by Councillor Goth.
[4] Hopkins would win three Academy Awards, with two statues for Best Actor for his performances as Hannibal Lecter in Jonathan Demme's Red Dragon (1993) and the title role in Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995) and one award for Best Supporting Actor in 1995 for his portrayal of Abraham Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1994).
[5] Expressing a desire to leave the series at the end of 1972, Katy Manning agreed with Letts and Hulke in advance that her character, Elizabeth Grant, would fall in love with Ian Marter's Council Guard Harsul and remain on Gallifrey with him when the Doctor would inevitably be permitted to leave. This storyline was praised at the time for its consistent development and credible resolution.