Doctor Who – towards the Anniversary – the Sixth Doctor

Doctor Who - The Twin Dilemma
Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma

On November 23, 2013 there will be the 50th anniversary of “Doctor Who”. To celebrate this important moment let’s go over the Doctor’s history again. This article remembers the Sixth Doctor.

Played by Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor is the result of another complicated regeneration. The Fifth Doctor “died” wondering if he could regenerate and the result is initially mentally unstable. Immediately he starts mistreating Peri and before recovering a some rationality he even tries to strangle her.

Initially, the Sixth Doctor thinks about living as a hermit but ends up being involved in another adventure and at that point decides to resume his travels around the universe. Although he recovered some mental stability, his ego has soared from his previous incarnation and has no problem to adopt a colorful costume.

The Sixth Doctor is self-centered and moody and brings Peri around the universe going where he wants regardless of his companion’s wishes. For this reason, initially the two of them often quarrel and only with the passage of time the Doctor softens at least a little to Peri.

It’s not easy for anyone to have to deal with the Sixth Doctor, precisely because the high intelligence of this character is joined to the biggest ego he ever had. Despite this, he maintains a high moral sense and because of the combination of these elements he can show compassion for the weak but has no mercy for those who commit crimes.

In the course of his travels, the Sixth Doctor meets among others the Second Doctor and on that occasion temporarily meets his old companion Jamie.

Like his predecessor, the Sixth Doctor is sometimes the protagonist of adventures that contain a significant amount of violence but he’s ready to fight fire with fire. He also ends up clashing with the Time Lords when he’s put on trial by his own people and eventually finds out what’s behind it.

It’s in these circumstances that the Sixth Doctor meets the Valeyard, who runs the prosecution during his trial hiding a shocking truth. For the first time, at least from his perspective, he meets and his companion Melanie Bush.

Those were turbulent years for “Doctor Who” and one of the consequences what led to the Sixth Doctor’s regeneration was never shown. In the case of the previous Doctors, novels, comic books and audio adventures published in the years following their television era simply told adventures among those shown on television. In the case of the Sixth Doctor, those new adventures started filling a much broader gap in an era that in many ways remained incomplete.

It’s for this reason that not only they produced new Sixth Doctor adventures with him traveling alone or together with Peri or Mel but also with other companions. Frobisher is a companion who looks like a penguin, Evelyn Smythe is a history lecturer, Charlotte “Charley” Pollard is a girl of the 20th century who meets the Sixth Doctor after traveling for a long time with the Eighth Doctor, Philippa “Flip” Jackson and her boyfriend Jared met him for the first time in 2012.

In addition to these companions invented for the occasion, the Sixth Doctor meets Jamie  again and for some time travels with him. In other adventures he travels with their Jago and Litefoot, the characters met for the first time by the Fourth Doctor in “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” and protagonists of a spinoff produced by Big Finish.




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