The Five Faces Of Doctor Who

The Eighteenth season of Doctor Who finished on Saturday 21 March 1981 with the broadcast of Logopolis part 4 and Tom Baker's plunge from the Pharos Project radio telescope. For the debut of his successor Peter Davison Doctor Who was being moved away from it's traditional Saturday night timeslot to a twice weekly week-night slot and from it's usual start in the autumn, which it had had since 1975, to one in the New Year - the first episode of Davison's first story Castrovalva was shown on Monday 4th January 1982. There had been the traditional August repeats from Season 18 - Full Circle & Keeper of Traken, which introduced two of the three new companions - but there would be no new Doctor Who for nearly nine months. So Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner arranged for a repeat season of stories from past Doctors during November 1981. Such a thing had never been done before, any repeats that did occur were from the then current Doctor. Of course Tom Baker had by this point been the Doctor for 7 years so showing other Doctors helped train the audience, many of whom had grown up only knowing Tom as the Doctor, to accept someone else as Doctor Who. The very first Doctor Who story An Unearthly Child, unseen in the UK for nearly 18 years, was the story chosen to open this repeat season.

Monday 2nd November Tuesday 3rd November Wednesday 4th November Thursday 5th November	First Doctor	An Unearthly Child
Monday 9th November Tuesday 10th November Wednesday 11th November Thursday 12th November	Second Doctor	The Krotons
Monday 16th November Tuesday 17th November Wednesday 18th November Thursday 19th November	Third Doctor	The Carnival of Monsters
Monday 23rd November Tuesday 24th November Wednesday 25th November Thursday 26th November	First, Second & Third Doctors	The Three Doctors
Monday 30th November Tuesday 1st December Wednesday 2nd December Thursday 3rd December	Fourth & Fifth Doctors	Logopolis

The Five Faces of Doctor Who is a seminal moment in Doctor Who fandom. I can remember watching and suddenly the idea that the Doctor had been more than one actor made sense to me. To this day I have a great affection for the stories involved, especially The Krotons and The Carnival of Monsters. Yes they could have showed an Unearthly Child on 23rd November, which would shift the entire repeat season forward ....

Monday 23 November Tuesday 24 November Wednesday 25 November Thursday 26 November	First Doctor	An Unearthly Child
Monday 30 November Tuesday 01 December Wednesday 02 December Thursday 03 December	Second Doctor	The Krotons
Monday 07 December Tuesday 08 December Wednesday 09 December Thursday 10 December	First, Second & Third Doctors	The Three Doctors
Monday 14 December Tuesday 15 December Wednesday 16 December Thursday 17 December	Third Doctor	The Carnival of Monsters
Monday 21 December Tuesday 22 December Wednesday 23 December Thursday 24 December	Fourth & Fifth Doctors	Logopolis

..... so that he last episode of the season - the fourth part of Logopolis which introduces the third new companion completing the trilogy of repeats started in the summer, would then have aired on Christmas Eve a little ahead of the fifth Doctor's début proper on 4th January 1982.

Yes they could have showed Three Doctors and Carnival of Monsters in the right order, something that tasks me to this day, especially as there's a major plot point carried between the two! And yes there's no major monsters: No Daleks, No Cybermen which is a shame. And although we get to see Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sergeant Benton, UNIT and the Time-Lords in The Three Doctors we don't get to see Sarah-Jane Smith while there's two Jo Grant stories and no older story from Tom Baker, necessitated by needing to use Logopolis to get the Fifth Doctor in. Thankfully the opportunity to remedy these faults would come the next summer with the Doctor Who and the Monsters repeat season when The Curse of Peladon (featuring the Ice Warriors), Genesis of the Daleks (an early fourth Doctor tale with Sarah-Jane and Earthshock (with the Cybermen) would get an airing.

One thing Five Faces made fans aware of was the state of Doctor Who's archives. The big question amongst older fans surrounded the choice of the Troughton story: Why the Krotons? If you're going to choose a 4 part Troughton why not the (then) acknowledged classic The Tomb of the Cybermen? The answer was revealed with the release of the 1981 Doctor who Winter Special: The Tomb of the Cybermen no longer existed and the only 4 part Troughton that did exist at the time that could fill Five Faces Monday to Thursday slot was the Krotons.

Thankfully ten years later The Tomb of the Cybermen was returned to the archives from Hong Kong!

So I very much wanted to mark the fortieth anniversary of this event. I've relatively recently (2019 and 2021) published new blog entries for Krotons and Logopolis on Fifty Years of Doctor Who and Forty Years of Tom Baker but I wasn't happy with my 2013 version of An Unearthly Child and wanted to do some work on it before republishing it. And that was a problem....

In early 2020 I lost the thread of what I was saying midway through writing a blog entry for Arc of Infinity episode 4 and suffered a severe case of writer's block which only got worse when the pandemic hit. I was ill in the early stages of the pandemic, possibly with Covid, possibly not, and since then have suffered from a difficulty concentrating, focusing and (especially) reading and writing.

Up until 2 weeks ago I was resigned to either sticking up something I wasn't happy with for the first of five stories or doing nothing at all for Five Faces. I was also facing the knowledge I was away/busy last week so reached a now or never moment. So on Monday 18th November I sat down at my computer and watched An Unearthly Child through taking screencaps as I went thinking "well at least I can make it look nicer". As I did that something went CLICK and suddenly everything fell into place. I did the photos. I redid the cast entries. I tweaked the headers to included BBC Genome links showing what was on the day of the original broadcast and the Five Faces repeats and in doing so stumbled on some really interesting stuff about the BBC's Monday night schedules as well as solving the question of what was on the Friday nights instead of Five Faces.

And having done that I walked away and completed the blog entry for Arc of Infinity 4, started 18 months earlier, and started looking at Snakedance. So I'm up and running again, Thank You Lord.

So over the next FIVE weeks join us as we examine the stories shown in The Five Faces of Doctor Who!