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The Doctors:

Peter Davison, the fifth Doctor:

Peter Davison played a younger, milder, and sometimes much less confident Doctor. His casting was very much a reaction to Tom Baker's sometimes over-the-top performance; his characterisation was based somewhat on the first Doctor's portrayal, playing a less physical Doctor, with Hartnell's techiness tempered by Davison's own youth and mild manner. Other aspects of the show established links with the early years of the series: the Doctor again had three travelling companions, as in the first stories, two women and a young man. The stories also frequently had no pause between them, with the ending of one story leading into the next, something rarelyseen since the early days of Doctor Who.

His first story was Castrovalva, broadcast in January of 1982, beginning the ninteenth season, and his last was Caves of Androzani, broadcast in March of 1984. His twenty stories featured several stories with the Master, and also brought back other old enemies including the Daleks, the Black Guardian, the Sea Devils, and the Cybermen. The twentieth season, Davison's second, included the anniversary story The Five Doctors, which reunited Davison's Doctor with (most of) his predecessors.

Click here for pictures and sounds from the fifth Doctor's era.

Colin Baker, the sixth Doctor:

The sixth Doctor's character was, literally, violently opposite to the fifth Doctor's. In his firststory, The Twin Dilemma, one of the first things the new Doctor did was attempt to strangle his companion Peri. His character was loud (as were his clothes) and frequently obnoxious, and is one of the least favourite portrayals amongst fans. The original plan was to have a gradual development of thenew Doctor's character, however the BBC's dropping confidence in the show, and other factors prevented this from ever happening.

The sixth Doctor met up with several old enemies including the Cybermen, the Daleks, and the Master, and introduced some popular new enemies, including the Rani, a female renegade Timelord, and the Valleyard. The Valleyard was introduced in season twenty-three, which, not like season sixteen, had a single, unifying story: The Trial of a Timelord.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Colin Baker's tenure marked the first major hiatus of the show, an eighteen-month long period between season twenty-two and twenty-three. Baker left the series without filming a regeneration scene, necessitating his successor, Sylvester McCoy, to double for him.

Colin Baker was in eleven stories, beginning with The Twin Dilemma, and ending with The Ultimate Foe/The Judgement, which was the last segment of Trial of a Timelord. He worked with Peter Davison, the fifth Doctor, in the season twenty story Arc of Infinity, in which Baker played the Gallifreyan guard Maxil, a part which almost went to Pierce Brosnan. Baker also appeared with the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton in The Two Doctors, a story commemorating the twenty-second anniversary of Doctor Who, not long before Troughton's death.

Click here for pictures and sounds from the sixth Doctor's era.

Sylvester McCoy, the seventh Doctor:

The seventh Doctor began without his memory, thanks to a plot by the Rani, in the season twenty-four story Time and the Rani. The Doctor started his new regeneration as a spoon-playing, malapropism-spouting clown. It was not until the following season that McCoy began to really get a handle on the new Doctor's character, playing him as a darker and more manipulative Timelord than his predecessors generally were. McCoy has said in interviews that he disagreed with the way the BBC asked him to play the part, and worked to change it into the portrayal we saw in his later stories, and described the effort involved as being like "trying to turn a great ship."

By this point in the original series, a lot of the mystery which surrounded the Doctor in the early seasons had gradually been lost as the audience learned more about the Timelords and Gallifrey. With this in mind, the later stories began to reintroduce a touch of mystery into the Doctor's character, hinting that he may have been around aeons ago, during the times of Rassilon and Omega, the founders of Timelord society. This theme probably would have become more prominent after season twenty-six, if the series had continued. Here is a clip from an untransmitted segment of Remembrance of the Daleks, where the Doctor reveals to Davros that he is not just what he seems. . .

The seventh Doctor encountered several old enemies including the Cybermen in Silver Nemesis, the Daleks in Remembrance of the Daleks, the Rani in Time and the Rani, and the Master in Survival. In Battlefied, he met his old friend the Brigadeer, who had known the Doctor since his second regeneration. Nicholas Courtney, who plays Brigadeer Lethbridge-Stewart, has appeared in the series with all of the Doctors, excepting the sixth (although the two did get a scene together in the Children in Need charity special Dimensions in Time).

Sylvester McCoy was in twelve stories, beginning with Time and the Rani, broadcast in 1987, and ending with Survival, which was broadcast in 1989. He also was in the first few minutes of the Fox Doctor Who TV movie, The Enemy Within before regenerating into the Eighth Doctor.

Click here for pictures and sounds from the seventh Doctor's era.