Friday Fives: The Five Doctors
On Monday, Doctor Who News reported that the five remaining classic Doctor Who lead actors were at the Collectormania 18 conference in Milton Keynes, England this past weekend. I don’t know if these five have ever shared a stage before–if so, it’s been a long time. I don’t think Tom Baker has been doing many Who events since the end of his run as The Doctor in 1981. The other four make appearances from time to time, but, as I recall, rarely together. So this truly was a special event.
Picture: Copyright Elspeth Renfrew
In the picture, from left to right: The Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker), the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann), and the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison).
William Hartnell, who played the First Doctor, died in 1975. Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, passed away in 1987, and Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor, died on the eve of the broadcast of the Doctor Who Movie in 1996.
It would be wonderful to have the five surviving Doctors all in an episode of Doctor Who for the 50th anniversary next year. Who knows…?
I had no idea that there were so many Doctors! I mean, I knew that the series started a long time ago, stopped, and then was picked up again in recent years. I think Classic Who fans would go bonkers if they were to all star in an episode together or even if they were to have cameos in a current Who. š
I think the fan-squee quotient would far exceed normal parameters. š The trouble with having a multi-Doctor episode featuring them all is that… well… let’s be honest–they’re all much older now than when they were in the show, so it’d be harder to suspend belief. My SecondBorn has suggested that maybe the 7th and 8th Doctors could be in it (along with the 11th–and possibly the 9th and 10th!) as the Doctor, with the other 3 as other characters. I know Tom Baker has always wanted to play the villain in Doctor Who.
For the non-Who folks, such multi-Who stories have been done in the past: The Three Doctors in 1973, The Five Doctors in 1983, The Two Doctors in 1985, and the mini-episode Time Crash in 2007. Given the first two were done to celebrate the 10th and 20th anniversaries, it seems only proper that something similar should be done to celebrate the 50th, right? Right? š