Seventh Doctor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Doctor | |
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| The Seventh Doctor | |
| Portrayed by | Sylvester McCoy |
| Tenure | 1987–1996 |
| First appearance | Time and the Rani |
| Last appearance | Survival (regular) Doctor Who (guest star) |
| Number of series | 3 |
| Appearances | 12 stories (42 episodes) |
| Companions | on television: Mel and Ace in spin-offs: Benny, Roz, Chris, Frobisher, Olla, Hex, Antimony and Catherine |
| Related Articles | |
| Preceding | Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) |
| Succeeding | Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) |
| Series | Seasons 24 to 26 |
The Seventh Doctor is the name given to the seventh incarnation of the Doctor seen on screen in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by the actor Sylvester McCoy.
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[edit] Overview
In his first season, the Seventh Doctor started out as a comical character, mixing his metaphors ("Time and tide melt the snowman," for example), playing the spoons, and making pratfalls, but soon started to develop a darker nature and raising the profound question of who the Doctor actually is. The Seventh Doctor era is noted for the cancellation of Doctor Who after 26 years. It is also noted for the Virgin New Adventures, a range of original novels published from 1992 to 1997, taking the series on beyond the television serials.
The Seventh Doctor's final appearance on television was in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie, where he regenerated into the Eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann.
[edit] Biography
When the TARDIS was attacked by the Rani, the Sixth Doctor was injured and forced to regenerate. After a brief period of post-regenerative confusion and amnesia (chemically induced by the Rani), the Seventh Doctor thwarted the Rani's plans, and rejoined his companion Mel for whimsical adventures in an odd tower block and a Welsh holiday camp in the 1950s.
On the planet Svartos, Mel decided to leave the Doctor's company for that of intergalactic rogue Sabalom Glitz. Also at this time, the Doctor was joined by time-stranded teenager Ace. Although he did not mention it at the time, the Doctor soon recognised that the ancient entity known as Fenric was responsible for the Time Storm which transported Ace from 1980s Perivale to Svartos in the distant future. The Doctor took Ace under his wing and began teaching her about the universe, all the while keeping an eye out for Fenric's plot. The Doctor began taking a more active approach to defeating evil, using the Hand of Omega as part of an elaborate trap for the Daleks which resulted in the destruction of their home planet, Skaro. Soon afterwards, the Doctor used a similar tactic and another Time Lord relic to destroy a Cyberman fleet.
The Seventh Doctor's manipulations were not reserved for his enemies. With the goal of helping Ace confront her past, he took her to a Victorian house which she had burned in 1983. Eventually, the Doctor confronted and defeated Fenric at a British naval base during World War II, revealing Fenric's part in Ace's history. The Doctor continued to act as Ace's mentor, returning her to Perivale; however, she chose to continue travelling with him. The circumstances of her parting from the Doctor were not shown on television.
Near the end of his incarnation, the Seventh Doctor was given the responsibility of transporting the remains of his former enemy the Master from Skaro to Gallifrey. This proved to be a huge mistake: despite having a limited physical form, the Master was able to take control of the Doctor's TARDIS and cause it to land in 1999 San Francisco, where the Doctor was shot in the middle of a gang shoot-out. He was taken to a hospital, where surgeons removed the bullets but mistook the Doctor's double heartbeat for fibrillation; their attempt to save his life instead caused the Doctor to "die". Perhaps due to the anesthesia, the Doctor did not regenerate immediately after death (unlike all previous occasions); he finally did so several hours later, while lying in the hospital's morgue.
[edit] Personality
While the Seventh Doctor would sometimes act like a buffoon, he usually preferred to manipulate events from behind the scenes; much like his second incarnation, he was prepared to play the fool in order to fool his foes into underestimating him (inevitably leading to the defeat at his hands). In fact, while he appeared to be an unassuming figure, the Seventh Doctor was actually quite powerful and devious, for he would use his friends and foes alike as pawns in his elaborate chess game against "evil". As Ace put it, he was "well devious."
In direct contrast to his third incarnation, this Doctor was absolutely opposed to violence of any sort (as demonstrated in stories such as Battlefield, where he stops a battle merely by ordering the warriors to desist) and he was totally against using firearms (even to the extent of "talking down" a soldier ordered to execute him in The Happiness Patrol). Instead, he managed to talk his enemies into submission (as seen in Remembrance of the Daleks, where he taunts the seemingly last Dalek in existence into suicide, and in Ghost Light, where he defeats the malevolent Light by telling him the folly of trying to prevent evolution). It is indeed fitting that this, at times the darkest Doctor of all, should not use physical force to implement his actions, even though he seemed to have the universe's weight on his shoulders more often than any other Doctor.
These trends continued in the New Adventures, where the Doctor would be prepared to destroy planets in the name of the greater good, and his companions were not always sure whether they could trust him. However, the mysterious Seventh Doctor eventually became slightly less dark and manipulative towards the end of his incarnation.
[edit] Story style
In Season 24, the Seventh Doctor era began with a light-hearted approach, with stories like Delta and the Bannermen clearly aimed at a younger audience. However, in the final two seasons with Andrew Cartmel as script editor, the stories soon explored the true nature of the Doctor, hinting at dark secrets in his past. In Silver Nemesis, Lady Peinforte hints she knows the Doctor's secret of being more than just a Time Lord (deleted scenes in Remembrance of the Daleks and Survival also refer to this). Remembrance has the Doctor talk using "we" when referring to early Gallifreyan time travel experiments.
With the cancellation of the series, these developments were never fully played out in the television series, but some of them were revealed in the New Adventures.
Marc Platt's novel Lungbarrow is usually considered to be the conclusion of the "Cartmel Masterplan". In that novel, the Doctor is revealed to be the reincarnation of "the Other", a shadowy figure and contemporary of Rassilon and Omega from Ancient Gallifrey. Lungbarrow was originally intended for Season 26, but producer John Nathan-Turner felt that it revealed too much of the Doctor's origins. It was reworked to become Ghost Light instead.
[edit] Other appearances
[edit] Television
The Seventh Doctor and Ace appeared twice on television between the time Doctor Who was cancelled and the 1996 television movie. The first was in 1990, in a special episode of the BBC2 educational programme Search Out Science. In this episode, the Doctor acted as a quiz show host, asking questions about astronomy; Ace, K-9 and "Cedric, from the planet Glurk" were the contestants. The Seventh Doctor then appeared in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time. Neither of these appearances are generally considered canonical.
There are also many novels and audio plays featuring the Seventh Doctor.
[edit] Novels
[edit] Virgin New Adventures
- Timewyrm: Genesys to Lungbarrow. Sixty books were written in this series for the Seventh Doctor.
[edit] Virgin Missing Adventures
[edit] Past Doctor Adventures
- Illegal Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
- The Hollow Men by Martin Day and Keith Topping
- Matrix by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
- Storm Harvest by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
- Prime Time by Mike Tucker
- Independence Day by Peter Darvill-Evans
- Bullet Time by David A. McIntee
- Relative Dementias by Mark Michalowski
- Heritage by Dale Smith
- Loving the Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
- The Algebra of Ice by Lloyd Rose
- Atom Bomb Blues by Andrew Cartmel
[edit] Eighth Doctor Adventures
[edit] Telos Doctor Who novellas
- Citadel of Dreams by Dave Stone
- Companion Piece by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry
[edit] Comics
[edit] Doctor Who Magazine
- A Cold Day in Hell
- Redemption
- The Crossroads of Time
- Claws of the Klathi
- Culture Shock
- Keepsake
- Planet of the Dead
- Echoes of the Mogor
- Tide and Time
- Follow that TARDIS!
- Invaders from Gantac
- Nemesis of the Daleks
- Stairway to Heaven
- Hunger from the End of Time
- Doctor Conkerer
- Trainflight
- Fellow Travellers
- Darkness Falling / Distractions / The Mark of Mandragora
- Party Animals
- The Chameleon Factor
- The Good Soldier
- A Glitch in Time
- The Grief
- Ravens
- Memorial
- Cat Litter
- Pureblood
- Emperor of the Daleks
- The Last Word
- Final Genesis
- Time and Time Again
- Cuckoo
- Uninvited Guest
- Ground Zero
- The Last Word
[edit] Doctor Who Magazine Specials
- Plastic Millenium
- Seaside Rendezvous
- Under Pressure
- Evening's Empire
- Metamorphosis
- Younger and Wiser
- Flashback
[edit] Death's Head
- Time Bomb
[edit] The Incredible Hulk Presents
- Once in a Lifetime
- Hunger from the End of Time
- War World
- Technical Hitch
- A Switch in Time
- The Senitel
- Who's that Girl
- The Enlightenment of Ly-Chee the Wise
- Slimmer
- Nineveh
[edit] Audio dramas
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The Seventh Doctor on the BBC's Doctor Who website
- Seventh Doctor theme music
- Seventh Doctor title sequence
- Alan Kistler's Profile on the Seventh Doctor
| The Doctors |
|---|
| First Doctor (William Hartnell) | Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) |
| Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) | Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) |
| Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) | Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) |
| Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) | Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) |
| Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) | Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) |
| Other Doctors |
| Cushing Doctor (Peter Cushing) | Shalka Doctor (Richard E. Grant) |
| Companions of the Seventh Doctor | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season 24 | Season 25 | Season 26 | Movie | |||||||||
| 148 | 149 | 150 | 151 | 152 | 153 | 154 | 155 | 156 | 157 | 158 | 159 | Movie |
| ←Melanie | ||||||||||||
| Ace | ||||||||||||
