Is Pertwee’s Doctor truly establishment?

There’s been a certain point of discussion that has been spiralling around Who fandom for a while. Was Jon Pertwee’s Doctor pro-establishment? It’s a notion echoed by Verity Lambert (who claimed that Pertwee and his era was “too establishment” for her, although I’ve no clue how much of it she watched), and the likes of arses such as Paul Cornell (lambasting him as a “tory”), and one that’s always baffled me personally.

Pertwee’s Doctor was by no stretch pro-establishment, given that he literally goes head to head with establishment figures in almost every story (often criticising their stubborn worldviews or patronising attitudes), and the only fathomable reason I could possibly view him as such is down to him working with Earth authorities. Yet he often displays a desire to leave Earth during the early stages of his era, and frequently criticises the “military mind”, so this also strikes me as a weak argument. Yes, he aids and supports UNIT and the Brigadier. and even views him as a friend despite his questionable actions in “The Silurians”, but this doesn’t make him pro-establishment so much as pragmatic and reasonable in my view.

What do you guys think? Was his Doctor and era pro-establishment, or do you take my stance and view this perspective as a load of utter shite?

The argument's mostly a pile of shite, at least in terms of the way Cornell makes it. But I can see why some fans saw a kernel of truth in it.

I think Paul Cornell was the kind of philistine who thought The Sea Devils was a trailer for the Navy, just because the Navy were in it.

It also suited the agenda of those fan writers like Cornell who wanted to big up the New Adventures range as something revolutionary and right-on, by pointing to the Pertwee era as an example of the pro-establishment, militaristic 'boy's own' material they were raleighing against.

Blood Heat was probably the archetypal of these books, chiefly based around "what if the Silurians had ended differently in a way that made the gritty, mature Season 7 approach the standard, and the coziness of the rest of the era impossible?"

I think if there *was* something a bit more conservative about the Pertwee era is that it could never really end with the status quo upset. It could never end with revolution in the air, in the way The Dalek Invasion of Earth or The Sun Makers could. It always had to end with the Doctor doing his job and UNIT remaining defenders of the British realm.

When you do more apocalyptic stories, more possibilities present themselves, but the Pertwee era by design couldn't do that. And after a while the format just became the accepted status quo, including the treatment of ordinary soldier grunts like disposable cannon fodder. And I think that's what made it feel uncritical of this military life or the big issues. Even when it tried to be topical, it all felt too much like soldier's games.

Maybe Cornell had a point there, in his juvenile mud-flinging way. Or at the very least he tapped into something that sometimes nagged about the era, and it snowballed from there.

The third Doctor is a kind of 'conscience made flesh' for the status quo.

This would make sense, as he's unable to escape the clutches of the authorities due to his exile, so can't go around sabotaging the entire establishment and leave them to pick up the pieces. He's also in a position where he has to cooperate in order to fight alien menaces and provide a secure space to work on fixing his TARDIS.

His ideas are so advanced that he sometimes has to ingratiate and charm those around him in order to effect any influence - although he often fails and ends up ranting while being dragged away from whichever establishment fathead is doing the fucking up.

It's less about conservatism, and more about expedience and pragmatism.

In respons to the question - I didnt think so.

He used Unit principally as a means of escaping his exile on earth. They provided him with the resources he needed to excape as well as carve out a living which is essential to anyone living on this planet. At the same time he provided much needed support to the authorities who were tryig to fight numerous alien invaders. Going on LGBT or MacPherson Minorities Rights marches - i.e., support the community - may have kept twats like Cornell happy but it wouldnt have helped repel the Daleks in "Day", the Silurians in "The Silurians" or solved the problems that Stahlaman's drill was causing in "Inferno".

The Doctor seemed to cosy up to officials but then i always saw that as a means to an end - so he could achieve his objectives be it defeating the Autons or foiling the Axon invasion. He also challenged authority in different stories if it stood in his way - e.g., deaing with the stupid politicians/bureaucrats/army types in different episodes such as in The Sea Devils or Terror of the Autons.

Beyond all this I don't really care for the question - as put by the Woke fetishists who frequently ask it (I am not refering to Bernard). For Dr Who was just about the production team putting together an adventure serial for broadast on a Saturday night to entertain the kids and their parents. It was escapism and a bit of fun and excitement. It wasn't about laying siege to the traditional pillars of bourgeois society, analysing its social structures and achieving social justice on earth. If you wanted to do that - and there are good reasons to do it - you watched Panorama, World in Action or Nationwide and got out and joined a political partyor pressure group. You didn't then - and still don't now - have to be a political activist 24/7.

If you do insist Dr Who be invested with this politcal crap you end up with Chibnall Nu Who. Not good imho.

stengos wrote:Beyond all this I don't really care for the question - as put by the Woke fetishists who frequently ask it (I am not refering to Bernard).

No worries- I don’t uphold this view in the slightest. I just thought it’d be interesting to discuss, as I wouldn’t say it’s a view exclusively held by such woke twats (as often as they like to parade it about). Verity Lambert has also posed this view, which seemed quite curious, although I fail to see how the era is establishment beyond a simplistic and surface level reading of it.

To me he was anti establishment look at jon pertwee in the green death and the silurians for example.

Bernard Marx wrote:Verity Lambert has also posed this view, which seemed quite curious, although I fail to see how the era is establishment beyond a simplistic and surface level reading of it.

It might be that she meant regardless of if the show was still pro- or anti-.... she felt the character of the Doctor had become establishment in a way she had never envisioned him to. Simply in the fact he got an Earth-bound job in the military establishment would've been, I suppose to her eyes, a big departure from her set-up.

Maybe Verity just didn't like the idea of the Doctor being stuck on 20th century Earth because it meant the show was unable to have the variety of adventures that regular TARDIS adventures had provided.
But I never quite got what she meant about the Pertwee era being too "establishment" when the third Doc was clearly at regular loggerheads with "establishment" authority figures during this period. And it's not as if the Doctor's behaviour during this era was unprecedented either since the Hartnell Doctor worked comfortably enough with Sir Charles Summer and the military in War Machines just as the Troughton Doctor co-operated with the army in Web of Fear and supported the nascent UNIT in Invasion.
And, as others suggested above, it surely made sense from a purely pragmatic point of view anyway for him to develop some form of accepted position within the society in which he was temporarily confined, simply to facilitate his eventual escape by trying to repair the TARDIS as well as ensuring that he was in the best possible position to protect humanity from the cycle of alien invasions that (as the Time Lords had known) coincided with his exile.
The Doctor was never "establishment" - I think that idea just fits in with the woke shit that comes from New Poo and its creatures.
The Doctor may have occasionally exploited his position once he was accepted into the UNIT setup but this was usually to protect his friends (including existing allies like the Brigadier) or merely petty stuff for his own amusement (like acquiring 'Bessie') or sometimes just to better allow his desire to explore science under the circumstances of his limited freedom on Earth (e.g. by Planet of the Spiders, he's investigating paranormal phenomena while still officially UNIT's scientific advisor).

BillPatJonTom wrote:The Doctor was never "establishment" - I think that idea just fits in with the woke shit that comes from New Poo and its creatures..

If anything, I’d argue that the NuWho Doctors are the true establishment Doctors, given just how mundane, conformist and prosaic the character and the series has become amidst being helmed by the Fitzroy crowd.

Exactly

Agree with everything else said. It's easy to be anti-establishment when you've got free reign of time and space and can bugger off anywhere at a moment's notice, but a little pragmatism is required when you're stuck somewhere for the foreseeable. The Doctor obviously chafes at the whole situation but has little option but to go along with it, and makes the best of it by, you know, helping to save the Earth every week.

The Cornell brigade are just lunatics, as their bastardisation of New Who has more than ably demonstrated.

Bernard Marx wrote:

BillPatJonTom wrote:The Doctor was never "establishment" - I think that idea just fits in with the woke shit that comes from New Poo and its creatures..

If anything, I’d argue that the NuWho Doctors are the true establishment Doctors, given just how mundane, conformist and prosaic the character and the series has become amidst being helmed by the Fitzroy crowd.

Yup. The 'New Labour' Doctor and about as sincere...

Anyone who thinks he's establishment is either a woke moron, or they just haven't been paying attention. 'Claws of Axos' alone puts paid to any arguments on that score.
The various ministers, private secretaries, and governors and so on were the 'establishment'. By extension you could argue that the Brig and UNIT represented the establishment too, but a very specific part of the establishment which were not ALWAYS simply compliant to the government. The whole idea of UNIT being based in Geneva was suggestive of multi-national collaboration, and more often than not the Doctor was berating or opposing the Brig's more militaristic mind-set, but also the Brig went against the establishment sometimes, in support of the Doctor, who was always firmly against the establishment bureaucrats.
Throughout his enforced exile, the Doctor had to make the best of it. But no establishment man would be itching to get away as soon as he could get his Tardis sorted.....