Tag: Jon Pertwee

Doctor Who: The War Games in Colour

“You can’t just change what I look like!”

(SPOILER WARNING, ON THE OFF CHANCE THAT YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THIS 1969 STORY)

I don’t know if you can cast your mind back that far, but in the 90s, colourisation of classic movies was all the rage. It was also hugely controversial, as Turner Classic Movies, added what was then a very primitive and unconvincing colour palette to the beloved likes of Laurel and Hardy and Casablanca. “These movies were meant to be seen in black and white,” the purists cried. Generally, people (including me) agreed, and the fad passed within a few years.

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Doctor Who at 60 – and me at 54!

“Time is memory, and memory is time.”

When I was a kid, Doctor Who seemed like a really old show. It started before I was born, six whole years before in fact. And to a kid, six years is an eternity.

I first got into it very, very young. Literally the earliest memory I have is of my mother sitting the three-year-old me in front of the big, rented colour TV in our Durham suburban home, presumably in an attempt to get some time off from me, and my being enthralled by what I now know to be Planet of the Daleks episode 4 (it was the bit where Jon Pertwee and Bernard Horsfall shove a Dalek into a lake).

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How sexist is Doctor Who?–50 years of sexism in statistics

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been going through every Doctor Who story from 1963 to now, and assessing their gender balance by applying the Bechdel Test to each of them.

doctors

For a reminder of the rules, check the Intro here. Then, going by Doctor:

  1. William Hartnell
  2. Patrick Troughton
  3. Jon Pertwee
  4. Tom Baker
  5. Peter Davison
  6. Colin Baker
  7. Sylvester McCoy / Paul McGann
  8. Christopher Eccleston
  9. David Tennant
  10. Matt Smith

A quick reminder of the Test:

  1. It has to have two named female characters
  2. Who talk to each other
  3. About something besides a man.

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How sexist is Doctor Who?–Part Three

The Jon Pertwee years

Pertwee1

Welcome to Part Three of my attempt to analyse the sexism in every Doctor Who story ever, using the Bechdel Test – and my wits. For a reminder of the rules, check the Intro here. Then, going by Doctor:

  1. William Hartnell
  2. Patrick Troughton

A quick reminder of the Test:

  1. It has to have two named female characters
  2. Who talk to each other
  3. About something besides a man.

According to the venerable Sue Perryman over at the Wife in Space blog, Jon Pertwee outranks either of his predecessors for active sexism, story by story. Can it be true? Let’s find out…

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