Tears, Sarah Jane?
Remembering the Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee
One Saturday afternoon in 1970, I was mesmerised watching the television when a blue box appeared in a field and from it, a half-comatose man emerged and promptly fell unconscious to the ground. Taken to a hospital, he would ‘borrow’ a bizarre set of dandy clothing and quickly identify himself as ‘The Doctor’. And I - just as quickly - adored him. That man was Jon Pertwee and he played the third incarnation of the BBC character ‘Dr Who’.
This first adventure of the new Doctor featured mysterious ‘meteors’ falling upon the English countryside - bearers of ‘the Nestene Consciousness’, as it turned out. This beastie had the ability to make plastic come to a nefarious form of life, causing death and havoc along the way. In the end, the Doctor sorted it all out and the Earth survived to fight another day.
“If I can just reverse the polarity..”
On that Saturday, I had no idea that Jon Pertwee’s ‘Doctor’ would ultimately take up such a special place in my heart. I was only five years old and this was the first time I had ever watched ‘Dr Who’. But it certainly wasn’t the last time. His character was very much a dandy, dressed deliciously and appearing like the love-child of James Bond and Jason King. Such a man deserved to have a companion - and over the course of the next four years, this Doctor had several. He began with the cool and superior Liz Shaw, before moving on to the warm and wonderful Jo Grant and finally the beloved character that was Sarah Jane Smith, played superbly by the hugely-missed Elisabeth Sladen.
Across four seasons of the series, this third Doctor would battle the Nestene and its living mannequins the Autons (not to mention some deadly daffodils and a lethal phone line); his arch enemy the Daleks; a veritable plethora of large and unfriendly giant maggots; the potato-headed Sontarans; the subterranean Silurians; and their cousins, the Sea Devils, amongst other baddies.
The Sea Devils story is a particular favourite of mine, not least because I had the pleasure of watching some incidental scenes being filmed. I lived in Portsmouth in those days and much of the story was being filmed at Gosport, with great assistance from the Royal Navy, whose home is in that wonderful city.
Often, the foil of the Doctor - the Master, played originally by the wonderful Roger Delgado - featured heavily, as he did in the story featuring the Sea Devils. I learned later that Jon Pertwee and Roger Delgado were great friends in real life - the death of Delgado in a car accident was a spur to Pertwee deciding to end his tenure of the Tardis.
This third Doctor was very much an action man - with a penchant for a Venusian pinch - and also very technical; he encapsulated the persona of the UNIT ‘scientific advisor’. I learned early on that in many situations, no matter the length and complexity of the battle, all would appear lost until at the very last moment, the polarity was reversed. This always saved the day. As the series progressed, Jon Pertwee’s hair got bigger, the colours of his cape became more vibrant - I especially loved the deep purple and the crimson - and he found a friend in Bessie, who kept him company as he tinkered uselessly with the broken dematerialisation circuit of his TARDIS. Those Mark III versions never seemed to be in good working order.
“Tears, Sarah Jane?”
Jon Pertwee’s final story as the Doctor was ‘Planet Of The Spiders’. I already knew it was to be his last and so the emotions were rising as the episodes progressed toward THAT moment. Having defeated the Eight Legs and returned the Blue Crystal, the Doctor returns to the English house where the group of single men with seriously bad hairstyles have been gathered around their mandala - something not to be recommended, as that chanting can unleash who knows what. Alas, the power of the Crystal Cave has damaged his cells and regeneration begins, with a little push from a cleverly disguised fellow Time Lord. Lying on the floor, Sarah Jane kneels beside him. She knows he is dying and she begins to cry. She wasn’t the only one. I was practically hysterical by this point. Gently touching her cheek, he asks - “Tears, Sarah Jane?” It is his final line in the show. From an open field to a country retreat and many other places in between, the third Doctor was leaving us. The Pertwee Doctor became the (very different) Tom Baker Doctor, as the time of the fourth incarnation began.
Well, I was inconsolable. It was months before I stopped saying “Jon Pertwee would have done it THIS way, not THAT way!”. I came to love the Fourth Doctor too, of course - but not as much as I had loved that Third Doctor. Pertwee was ‘my’ Doctor’. He always will be. His place in my heart is assured for all time.
The Pertwee era is perhaps most famous for its stories having been essentially Earth-bound - no doubt, something to do with the budget for the show. But how I loved those stories. It was a pure and innocent telling of wonderful tales, with good characterisation and a simplicity which was jettisoned in later years, much to my chagrin.
Jon Pertwee the actor left us on this day thirty years ago, 20 May 1996. I remember hearing of his death on the news and - just like with those darned spiders - I cried once again. He had been a huge part of my childhood and he occupied - occupies - a place within me which has never been taken from him. Even today, sitting writing this, I feel than pang of sorrow, as though I grieve a wonderful and much-loved grandfather. That’s how it feels, I think.
Has it really been thirty years since Jon Pertwee’s death? And has it really been fifty-six years since I first laid eyes on this wonderful, wonderful man? Perhaps I have been with him in that Mark III TARDIS, because it feels like only yesterday.
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