I Am The Doctor

ISBN: 1852276215

After having reviewed Jon Pertwee’s Moon Boots and Dinner Suits which is the autobiography of his life, it was noted that there was another such work by him. That work is this one, also an autobiography, called I Am The Doctor.

The first autobiography focused on his life as a whole. It is disclosed in this book, that he wrote that one because his anticipation of being able to continue Worzel Gummidge post cancellation was first built up hopefully only to be dashed at the last minute by political maneuverings by the TV executives which were to be the new dispensers of the show on their network which was based partly in Ireland as well as in England. Since Gummidge had been what he started doing shortly after his time as The Doctor, it probably spurred him to take inventory of his life since there was an obvious kind of stop.

The same thing happened where his tenure as The Doctor on Doctor Who was concerned, but before we discuss that matter, it seems urgent to mention what frames this secondary autobiography is an answer to something Pertwee posed in song:

I cross the void beyond the mind The empty space that circles time I see where others stumble blind To seek a truth they never find Eternal wisdom is my guide I am the Doctor

Through cosmic waste the TARDIS flies To taste the secret source of life A presence science can’t deny Exists within, outside, behind The latitude of human minds I am the Doctor

My voyage dissects the course of time “Who knows?,” you say But are you right? Who searches deep to find the light That glows so darkly in the night Toward that point I guide my flight

As fingers move to end mankind Metallic teeth begin their grind With sword of truth I turn to fight The satanic powers of the night Is your faith before your mind? Know me Am I the Doctor?

The title of this autobiography would appear to answer that question in the affirmative, and the entirety of the work can be viewed with the lens that Pertwee was trying very hard NOT to be the Doctor in the sense of being typecast, but at the same time, when it came time to play the Doctor, he was told, basically, to be himself–which he did, and so if he was being typecast as the Doctor he was being typecast as himself.

I Am The Doctor walks us through Pertwee’s memories of being on the show and certain episodes and what they were like to record. We learn that his sidekick, Katy Manning, was nearly blind and had trouble filming certain episodes due to not being able to see what wasn’t there–but also not also being able to see the cues for where the thing ought to be. We learn that the actor who played the evil Master, Roger Delgado, who seemed to inspire fear was, in reality, scared of just about everything and had to constantly face those fears to play his role. We hear of the many ticks Pertwee orchestrates sometimes out of a goodly sense of fun, and sometimes because someone writes him a scathing letter and he wants that person to feel foolish for having done so. Mentioned are the love of cars for Pertwee, and how he helped design the “Whomobile” and how, on at least one occasion, he made another performer take him for the ride on the back of his scooter and chided him for not going fast enough while not knowing the brakes were out on the conveyance and that in order to stop the fellow had to use his feet on the front tire to squeeze it to a stop and so did not want to go terribly fast.

We get access to some personal facts about Pertwee–like the time someone shows up to his house with what he believes is an ex-girlfriend but turns out to be the ex-girlfriend’s daughter which suddenly explains why she has changed so little. We learn how Pertwee at one point got frustrated with a shoot, and decided to, while driving a vehicle, not to return but to keep on driving much to the chagrin of the assembled crew. Likewise, we learn how on another such occasion, he and Katy Manning got lost also much to the consternation and alarm of the filming crew while not returning after a drive scene and going for a country tour.

Particularly interesting is how, during one episode, Pertwee’s wife secretly arranges an episode of This Is Your Life to feature Pertwee without his knowing, which nearly ends in disaster before it gets started by his refusal to cooperate with the feints necessary to keep him unaware of the plan. What stands out in this re-telling is how Pertwee was deeply touched by seeing his former shipmates from World War II who he had not seen in years. Especially moving in this matter is the fact that he barely escaped from a ship, the Hood before it was blown to smithereens and how several times during Doctor Who he was returning to places he had fought battles in during the war. One imagines the dissonance from these events must have been great–to be filming where formerly immense German guns had been placed must have seemed peculiar at the least.

We see glimpses, also, of the Pertwee who was the ladies man who, during a stunt with wires, gets tangled up with a fellow male actor but wishes to try to arrange matters on the re-take to be entangled with the female actress instead.

Finally, we see Pertwee cast about after Roger Delgado dies in a car wreck that almost seems like a dark joke, and many others of the cast begin to depart the show and Delgado’s wife, ironically or fatefully named Kismet, cannot get any kind of insurance or help after she is left a widow other than from being given a vocal role in the show which features Pertwee’s final moments as the Doctor.

Those final moments as the Doctor, for Pertwee, were apparently racked with physical pain from back trouble he had acquired partly in the war, and partly from skiing in daredevil ways–and so his regeneration which looks peaceful was in reality quite painful. Pertwee really did not want to stop playing the Doctor, it seemed, but since everyone was leaving or dead, it felt to him to be a fitting conclusion to his tenure.

Afterwards, we hear a little about his other roles in some movies and his run of playing the scarecrow in Worzel Gummidge and how occasionally he is able to reconnect with the original crew for one event or another where filming certain special editions of Doctor Who are involved. One episode that stands out is around the 1994 Children in Need Special–Dimensions in Time. Pertwee encounters his fellow actors and actresses in ways that he does not expect, and because he makes observations that do not fit the way the script is written is accused of not having read the same by them. He remarks by this point that “all logic has gone out the door” and the script is a mess logically, as far as he is concerned–which is somewhat ironic in that Pertwee is a stickler for realism and details in the scripts and was accustomed to sending actors notes along with everyone else who regularly performed with him concerning how the actor or actresses fared. While an uncharitable reading of the autobiography might make a person think that Pertwee had become old enough to become careless in reading his scripts, by the end of the work it begins to become apparent that the problem had nothing to do with age whatsoever–but rather the identity of Jon Pertwee. When other members of the cast were to be his companions who were not, originally, his companions, since he had played the Doctor as himself, it simply did not make any sense.

But then, afterwards, we have Pertwee evaluating his work in the aftermath and how it becomes difficult as one gets older to get any other parts mostly because everyone, after you have been in something like Doctor Who has not seen you in awhile and so they conclude you are dead. Many other parts were unobtainable because, they said, Pertwee was too recognizable even though he points out that a scarecrow and the Doctor are not anything like each other and he was able to hold those roles and have successful outcomes.

Finally, Pertwee makes a self-appraisal that a role he holds much later–that of a Basque pornographer who happens to be an arsonist–is his best work. He laments that it does not catch on–one infers probably because it was a Basque pornographer who happened to be an arsonist– and then says he would like to fade out, rather like the Tardis in the show, but not quite yet. Apparently though, that was not to be, since twelve days after this book being sent to print Jon Pertwee had died of a heart attack. In some ways, it reads a little like the “Last Will and Testament” of Jon Pertwee, without, of course, his knowing it was to be so. I suspect he probably would have gotten a kick out of that had he been in on the “cosmic joke”.

Jon Pertwee, it seems, was trying to get away from the horrors of war and was trying to return to innocence and happened to play a character that became a kind of avatar of that desire. His secondary role for which he was widely known, that being the scarecrow in Gummidge, though not exactly a hero role in the same way as the Doctor was also still aimed at children. Then, like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, Jon Pertwee played with some fire on the less than child-friendly side of the spectrum, believed that to be his best work, and then died after confessing, of course, that he was, indeed, The Doctor–the very same Doctor who fights evil and holds his faith before his mind–which is a considerable mind after all. Pertwee tells his fans, almost like a kind of post narration, “Yeah, that’s me!” Then, after the big reveal, he exits stage right. What a performance–and what a convoluted way to reach a conclusion!

Pertwee it seemed, lived long enough to be cast as a villian when he was all ready cast by everyone else as a hero. He tried the black hat–it did not fit. In the end, he was The Doctor.