[Susan Foreman]

Favourite Doctors?

Well, from Classic Who, each has good and bad points:

1) William Hartnell was the original Doctor, and as such many of the now accepted mythos is atributed to him; He was the Doctor when the Daleks and Cybermen were introduced; but because he was an old man in real life, he regularly forgot his lines, and no one was really sure about the character of the Doctor in the early days - more often than not, it was his companions who solved problems

2) Unfortunately most of the Patrick Troughton adventures are lost to the public because during the 60's and 70's the BBC wiped many TV shows (not just Dr Who, but also things like The Beatles on Top Of The Pops). The Troughton era was known as 'The Monsetr Yeras' and they introduced (amonst others) The Ice Warriors and the Yeti. But because Troughton had a history of playing comedy roles, there is a lot of humour in these stories

3) Jon Pertwee brought action to the series because he was an action-man type of actor. It was also the time that the Master was introduced, but because the Doctor was exiled on earth during the first part of this era, many of his stories became 'samey'

4) Tom Baker is most commonly associated with the role. During his first years, the stories were fast and scary - almost gothic in origin. This incarnation also had the most gorgeous companion ever - Lalla Ward (Romana version 2). But by the later series, it has become an accepted notion that he "believed he was the Doctor", and took little (or no) notice of directors and writers, leading to him sending up the show a bit too much. Also, he was the Doctor who used K-9 as a companion, which (more than anything) destroyed the show for me

5) The Peter Davison stories were quite often more intelligent and thought provoking than they had been in previous years, but he was too young to lay the role convincingly

6) Colin Baker wasn't given a fair chance. Some of his stories were very enjoyable, but right from the start he was give an uphill battle

7) Sylvester McCoy tried to bring back some of the mystery and magic to the series, but again but again the stories suffered

8) The guy from the Americanised TV movie version was just wrong. This was not 'Doctor Who' - this was a cross between 'The X-Files' and 'Star Trek' - i.e science fiction for an American audience during the 1990's!!!!