Sixth Doctor

Prior to being cast, various media outlets had suggested Colin Baker should be the one to replace Peter Davison as the Doctor. Baker, a fan of Doctor Who, had expressed interest and previously considered auditioning for the role of the Fourth Doctor. However, due to Baker's casting as Commander Maxil in "Arc of Infinity" (1983), he assumed he was ineligible for the role. On 10 June 1983_, during a meeting with the production team, Baker was formally offered the role by producer John Nathan-Turner. He accepted and signed a four year contract.^[4][5]

Sylvester McCoy, who went on to portray the Seventh Doctor, did reach out in interest of auditioning for the role of the Sixth Doctor, although was unaware Baker had already been cast. McCoy would later joke he did eventually get to play him, due to needing to stand-in for Baker at the beginning of "Time and the Rani" (1987).^[3]

The Sixth Doctor was first seen briefly at the end of "The Caves of Androzani" (1984), where the Fifth Doctor, having resisted regeneration throughout the latter half of the story, finally succumbs to his injuries and transforms into his latest incarnation.

Due to the circumstances of his prior iteration's death, the Sixth Doctor suffers from post-regeneration trauma in his debut "The Twin Dilemma" (1984), where he acts out erratically, seen in his strangulation of companion Peri Brown, who he accuses of being an "alien spy".^[7] Unaware of what he'd done, but consumed with guilt as he witnesses the newfound terror felt towards him by Peri, the Doctor vows to "become a hermit" on the asteroid of Titan III, only to meet the lone survivor of a crashed ship and a mysterious dome on the asteroid's surface when they arrive.^[8] The Doctor and Peri go on to uncover and stop a conspiracy by a member of an alien species known as the Gastropods to hypnotise a pair of super-intelligent adolescents, who they'd planned to use to advance their nefarious goals; at the end of the story, the Doctor reassures Peri that, through the course of their debut adventure, he'd since fully recovered from his earlier bout of madness, confidently insisting "I am the Doctor – whether you like it…or not!"^[9]

He went on to encounter many old foes including the Master, Davros and the Daleks, Cybermen, and the Sontarans, and shared an adventure with his own second incarnation in "The Two Doctors" (1985). He also faced a renegade female Time Lord scientist, the Rani, who had been conducting experiments on humans using the Luddite riots as a cover.^[10]

The Doctor and Peri would later land on the devastated planet Ravolox in "The Mysterious Planet" (1986), which they discovered to actually be Earth, moved across space by unknown forces, resulting in devastating consequences.^[11] On a separate adventure, the TARDIS landed on Thoros Beta, where they confronted the villainous Sil, previously encountered in "Vengeance on Varos" (1985). What actually occurred here is left intentionally unclear, but initial accounts suggested that Peri was killed after being cruelly used as a test subject in brain transplant experiments, which the Doctor was stopped from preventing after having been pulled out of time by the Time Lords to face trial under the prosecution of the Valeyard.^[12]

In reality, this trial was a cover-up organised by the High Council, done due to a race from Andromeda having had stolen Time Lord secrets and hidden them on Earth, so in an effort to protect themselves, the Time Lords moved Earth through space, burning the surface in a massive fireball and leaving it as Ravolox which the Doctor later discovered unbeknownst to him at the time. As the trial continued, the Valeyard would be unmasked as an alternate, evil incarnation of the Doctor, who was an amalgamation of his darkest traits extracted between the Doctor's twelfth and final incarnations.^[13] Also revealed was the Valeyard had been tampering with evidence shown during the trial, specifically the recordings of the Doctor's travels; in reality, Peri had survived the events of "Mindwarp" (1986), and went on to marry an alien warrior king she'd met during the events of the story. The trial tangled the Doctor's timeline slightly, as he left in the company of future companion Mel Bush, a fitness enthusiast from Pease Pottage, whom he technically had not met yet.^[14]

When the TARDIS is attacked by the Rani at the beginning of "Time and the Rani" (1987), the Sixth Doctor was somehow injured and regenerated into the Seventh Doctor; the exact cause of the regeneration, however, is not given on-screen.^[15]

The Sixth Doctor's costume as seen in season 22 (left) and season 23 (right)

Colin Baker wished to dress his Doctor in black velvet, to reflect his character's darker personality.^[25] Producer John Nathan-Turner, however, opted for a deliberately "totally tasteless" costume with clashing colours. Designer Pat Godfrey made several attempts which were considered not tasteless enough before Nathan-Turner finally accepted the last one as sufficiently garish.^[26] Colin Baker later described the outfit as "an explosion in a rainbow factory".^[25]

The Sixth Doctor wears a scarlet plaid frock coat, with green patchwork, and yellow and pink lapels over a white shirt with crimson question marks embroidered in the collar (a feature of the programme since 1980), a waistcoat with a fob watch, a large tie, yellow trousers with black stripes, and emerald green ankle boots with royal orange spats. There were many variants on the waistcoat and tie, the earliest being the knitted brown waistcoat and turquoise cravat. The waistcoat was changed to a deep, muted burgundy check, and in the following story a new crimson cravat with cream polka dots appeared.^[27] In-universe, the coat was tailored on the planet Kolpasha, which the Doctor asserts is the "fashion capital of the universe".^[28]

The costume saw minimal redesign for The Trial of a Time Lord, with the coat remaining the same. A new red and pink plaid waistcoat was introduced, which included buttons in the design of teddy bears, and a new polka-dotted scarlet bow tie. A future version of the Sixth Doctor seen in "Terror of the Vervoids" (1986) wore a new silk waistcoat with green, blue, and pink diagonal stripes with a canary yellow bow tie.^[27] During Baker's run in the stage play Doctor Who – The Ultimate Adventure, the original frock coat was replaced by one with a scarlet, blue, and purple colour scheme, which was worn over a white waistcoat overlayed with striped blue, red, and black vertical lines.^[29]

Baker added a cat pin to the ensemble, worn on the left lapel of his coat, which the Sixth Doctor would occasionally rub for good luck. Baker cited the Rudyard Kipling short story "The Cat that Walked by Himself" as inspiration for it, specifically stating the repeated line in it "I am the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to me" as reminding him strongly of the Doctor.^[30][31]

A royal blue version of the original costume has been used in spin-off media, first seen in the webcast Real Time, which was done due to the limited availability of colours in the type of animation used, which prevented use of the original multi-coloured coat.^[32] It has reappeared on the covers of audio dramas from Big Finish Productions, slightly redesigned to feature a patchwork style similar to the original multi-coloured frock coat. In the Big Finish audio Criss-Cross, the Doctor is depicted on the cover as wearing a brown-and-scarlet tweed jacket and waistcoat with a blue-and-white striped shirt, along with a navy blue bow tie with crimson spots, while acting undercover in Bletchley Park in the 1940s.^[33] The Sixth Doctor dons this attire again, referring to it as his 'Bletchley Tweeds', when visiting Vienna and Bucharest during the same time period in the audio drama Quicksilver.

• The Sixth Doctor's image has appeared among other incarnations in several revival series episodes, often in montages, beginning with "The Next Doctor" (2008). He was briefly portrayed via a stunt double for "The Name of the Doctor" (2013) and appears in "The Day of the Doctor" (2013) using archived footage.^[34] Colin Baker would return to play the Sixth Doctor in "The Power of the Doctor" (2022), marking 36 years since he last appeared on television in the role, as a "vestige of [the Doctor's] consciousness", alongside previous Doctors, now all visibly aged as part of the "Guardians of the Edge”.^[35]
• "A Fix with Sontarans", a 1985 segment of the children's television programme Jim'll Fix It, featured the Sixth Doctor in a brief adventure with former companion Tegan Jovanka and a young Earth child named Gareth Jenkins encountering an ambush by a squadron of Sontarans. The short episode was later edited to remove the presence of Jimmy Saville, who bookended the segment on the original broadcast, when it featured on the Doctor Who season 22 Blu-ray release in 2022, with CGI and a returning Baker providing a new ending monologue in place of Saville.^[36]
• On Top Gear (Series 2, Episode 8), Baker appeared in-character as the Sixth Doctor for a sci-fi themed challenge, first materialising in the TARDIS on the test track and distracting a Cyberman trying to set a lap time in a Honda Civic Type R. Sixth came fourth out of six with a lap time of 1:43, placing ahead of a Dalek and Ming the Merciless, but behind a Klingon, Darth Vader, and the aforementioned Cyberman.^[37]
• For the third episode of Tales of the TARDIS in 2023, Baker returned as the Sixth Doctor, reuniting with a returning Nicola Bryant portraying Peri, now a warrior queen, a fate revealed at the end of "The Ultimate Foe" (1986). Sixth appears as an older, bearded version, now sporting a pink three-piece suit with rainbow-coloured socks and a dog pin in place of his usual cat pin. The episode chosen to represent the Sixth Doctor's era was "Vengeance on Varos" (1985), with the characters recounting the events from the story.^[38]

An internal 1988 BBC survey, which was taken a few years following Colin Baker's departure from the role, saw his portrayal receive a personal index figure of 66 which indicated a "moderately popular" view from audiences.^[54] The immediate reaction towards the Sixth's "aggressive, hostile, and violent" characterisation in his debut story "The Twin Dilemma" (1984), especially when contrasted with the Fifth Doctor's in the preceding season installment "The Caves of Androzani" (1984), has been cited as a factor that led to poorer reception towards the Sixth Doctor prematurely and that with which continued to plague the show throughout Baker's tenure.^[55][56] Future Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall was one critic of the Sixth Doctor era from the time, describing the show's writing in a segment of Open Air as "cliched" and "very routine."^[57] Then-BBC1 controller Michael Grade, who would order Doctor Who to take an 18-month hiatus following transmission of Baker's first season, called the show "rubbish" and heavily criticised the supposedly violent nature of Baker's era, which he felt was a poor use of viewers' licence fee.^[58]

Baker, script editor Eric Saward, and Nicola Bryant all approved of the planned direction to portray the Sixth Doctor as outwardly antagonistic at the beginning, and approved of the controversial strangulation scene, which Baker and Bryant considered "brave" to include,^[59] with the plan being to lead towards a gradual softening of the character over time. Baker compared it to the character of Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, who he was excited to have the Sixth Doctor emulate,^[60] but would express frustration that the writing was "sloppy," in part due to showrunner John Nathan-Turner and Saward frequently conflicting behind the scenes, and that the show failed to properly translate the concept as a result.^[61] Saward, in an interview with Starburst shortly after having left the show, would corroborate that Nathan-Turner and he had fallen out by the end of Baker's second season and their working relationship was unsalvageable.^[62][63]

Years following his portrayal of the character on television, Baker would return to play the Sixth Doctor once again beginning in 1999 with his involvement in a series of Doctor Who audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions. This has frequently been cited as contributing to a revitalisation of the incarnation among the fanbase, with popularly received stories, such as 2003's Jubilee, receiving critical acclaim.^[56][64][60] Baker would credit Big Finish for properly utilising him in the role of the Sixth Doctor in a way he felt the television series never truly did, saying in an interview promoting The Last Adventure that "[Big Finish] have given my Doctor the opportunity to live beyond those few episodes on television which were recorded during a time when the programme was under siege from various quarters...the Sixth Doctor has lived and breathed anew and developed in a way that I am extremely happy with."^[65]

• History of Doctor Who – Sixth Doctor