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| Cover art by Clayton Hickman |
Dressing the Second Doctor
This Doctor was first glimpsed in the final episode of The Tenth Planet, on October 29, 1966. The closing sequence, mixing between close-ups of actors William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, survives in the BBC archive but the rest of the episode does not, and Troughton’s next 11 episodes are also missing. Many details of the Second Doctor’s outfit and how it developed can only come from other sources.
The camera script for the opening of The Power of the Daleks reveals the following: “Doctor Who has fallen to the floor, his face has changed, his white wig is now streaked with black.” That change, that black streak, is before “the face mixes to an even younger face”, which implies some alteration to Hartnell’s make-up prior to the transformation, except that the actor wasn’t at the episode’s recording. If the mix was included it could only be a repeat of the sequence from The Tenth Planet. However, the camera script may not accurately describe what was broadcast.
This new Doctor struggles to his feet, “hampered by the long, loose cloak he is wearing”, which he soon gets rid of. The audience sees “that the clothes the Doctor wears underneath […] are several sizes too big for him, they are shapeless and baggy, an extravegant (sic) bow is tied around his neck. The loose jacket has a number of pockets.” The Doctor’s ring slips from the new man’s finger, underlining that they aren’t the same person.
This description matches Troughton’s Doctor as seen in photographs from the time. As detailed in issue 126 of the Doctor Who Figurine Collection, the BBC’s head of drama, Sydney Newman, suggested Troughton “interpret the role like a ‘cosmic hobo’ – a Charlie Chaplin”. In May 1966 – two months before Troughton accepted the part – an internal document, The New Dr. Who, said, “In the first serial, he wears a fly-blown version of the clothes associated with this character.” Costume designer Sandra Reid gathered up old stock, and held a trying-on session in a dressing room at Television Centre. Troughton, Reid, Newman and producer Innes Lloyd were there, and between them they established the new Doctor’s costume: a blue, short-sleeved shirt; a bow-tie pinned to the collar; a pair of baggy checked trousers held up with a thick belt; a black jacket that was slightly too big; a tall, Paris Beau hat; finished off with ankle boots. Troughton added a pair of bright-red braces with gold animals, embroidered by his mother.
In the academic book Reading Between Designs – Visual Imagery and the Generation of Meaning in The Avengers, The Prisoner and Doctor Who (2003), authors Piers D Britton and Simon J Barker believed the tails of Troughton’s coat “had to be pinned up to stop them from trailing on the ground”.
Sandra Reid – now Alexandra Tynan – had no memory of this when we spoke to her, which is to be expected. No one could ever believe that the details of what the actor would still be pored over six decades later! Yet colour photographs of Troughton on set do show that the coat-tails are pinned back, revealing the shiny lining and large pockets, with at least four pins glinting brightly.
An oft-repeated story from those working on the production is that the original plan was to have Troughton wear a curly wig, which was quickly vetoed on the day of recording by co-stars Michael Craze and Anneke Wills. Wills then borrowed a comb from a member of the crew and styled the Doctor’s hair more in the ‘mop’ style worn at the time by the Beatles.
There’s an implication in the document The New Dr. Who that the parody of Hartnell’s outfit was intended solely for Troughton’s debut, but the actor wears the same outfit in the next story, The Highlanders, where he also delights in putting on a traditional Scottish blue bonnet – the colour seen in Sandra Reid’s photographs from location filming at Frensham Ponds. This hat has sometimes been referred to as a ‘tam o’shanter’ – though that’s a later, more elaborate version. The Doctor adopts other disguises in the adventure. “Patrick loved dressing up as the old washer woman,” Frazer Hines tells the Doctor Who Figurine Collection. “Because we shot it as-live, he had to change quickly, like in a theatre play. I think he took off his jacket and wore that dress and everything over the top.” Another disguise saw Troughton adopt the bright-red coat of a British soldier, with a hat, bandage and huge moustache. “All the 18th-century costumes were hired from costumiers,” notes Tynan.
Off-air photographs of The Underwater Menace show the Doctor in a shorter hat than that previously seen. “It’s the same hat,” Tynan informs us, “but probably pushed in. The Doctor’s trousers had fallen apart – they were old to start with – so I had a new pair made.” These were of a thicker material with a smaller check, and would remain part of Troughton’s costume until 1969. “I was also only available for the location filming,” Tynan recalls. “I took ill and was away from the show for two months.” Juanita Waterson took over for studio recording and in these sessions, the Doctor sported disguises that could be quickly donned over his regular outfit: a black sou’wester and hat; then the ornate costume of the priests. Hines recalls the headdress being yellow and “the capes were light blue, and like curtains”; then Troughton wore dark glasses, cape and, according to Hines, a red bandana. An off-air photograph taken by John Cura shows Polly wearing the Doctor’s hat in the final scene of the story - and is likely to have been its final appearance. Troughton later recalled his friend, producer Campbell Logan, advised him “to get rid of the hat”.
There’s no sign of said hat in The Moonbase, which otherwise sees the Doctor and his friends in their clothes from the previous adventure, before donning spacesuits to explore the lunar surface. Tynan – who worked on the story before falling ill – believes these suits were made from quilted cotton, which Hines recalls were silver-grey, with Doctor Martens boots sprayed silver. Inside the base, the Doctor wears his usual costume – presumably, it was underneath the spacesuit.
The Doctor wears his usual costume in The Macra Terror, although an off-air photograph from the final instalment shows Troughton in one of the marching-band hats worn by the colonists. “They were bright orange,” thinks Hines. The Doctor is in his regular costume for The Faceless Ones and The Evil of the Daleks, with The Tomb of the Cybermen seeing Troughton in his black cape. This was the final story Tynan oversaw, and Martin Baugh succeeded her for The Abominable Snowmen. With location filming in Wales doubling for Tibet, Hines recalls, “We knew it would be cold, so Patrick wanted a fur coat.” This was worked into the script: Professor Travers thinks he sees the Doctor attack and kill his friends; it was really a robot Yeti. While the Yeti costumes were made from fun fur (supplied by the father of Louise Page, costume designer for the David Tennant era), the Doctor sported an expensive Russian fur coat from stock. Later in the story he’s given a Tibetan scarf. “I think that had bells on it,” recalls Hines. “It was dark blue, with some yellow or grey.” The fur coat, minus the scarf, unsurprisingly reappeared in the glacially cool The Ice Warriors.
Troughton embellished the opening scenes of The Enemy of the World, where the TARDIS lands on a beach in Australia (in actuality, Climping in Sussex), by having the Doctor strip down to long-johns and run into the sea. The actor had envisaged a sunny morning, but filming took place on a chilly, very British November day. “We got to a cold and windy location, and I think Patrick wanted to change his mind!” laughs Hines, but the sequence was filmed as planned.
The Enemy of the World is more notable for Troughton also playing the villainous Salamander, and the Doctor feigning to be the villain and vice versa.
“I had to make him much darker skinned [as Salamander],” make-up designer Sylvia James recalls on the DVD release, “and also changed his hairstyle as well. And [gave him] heavier eyebrows. Which I think we see Mary Peach doing, as well, as if it’s [Astrid Ferrer] transforming the Doctor into Salamander. Where his beard-line would be naturally, we made that look a little bit darker as well, a little heavier looking.”
This took time, which wasn’t always available. “At the end of the first episode,” says Hines, “we hear a helicopter, and Patrick dashes out before Colin Douglas’ character [Bruce] comes in. Then, a moment later, Patrick emerges in that black polo neck, pretending to be Salamander. Today, they’d go, ‘Cut! Patrick to wardrobe and make-up,’ and we’d wait for ten minutes till he was ready, but he did that in real time.”
Martin Baugh gave Salamander a smart uniform that reflected his status as respected world leader, but scruffy overalls for when he pretends to have escaped from a world in ruins. When Salamander and the Doctor confront each other in the final episode, a sticking plaster on Troughton’s face helps identify who is who.
The Doctor wears his usual clothes in The Web of Fear, and in Fury from the Deep excepting the opening scenes when, arriving by dinghy, he wears a woolly hat and life vest. The rare colour photography from filming shows the hat was pale blue and the vest bright red. From The Wheel in Space to The Space Pirate, there’s next to no change in the Doctor’s clothes (excepting wellies in The Invasion and an umbrella in The Krotons).
In the opening episode of The War Games, the Doctor establishes where and when he thinks the TARDIS has landed by identifying a Tommy’s helmet from the First World War. Unusually for this hat-fan Doctor, he doesn’t try it on. “He’s thinking it must have come from a dead Tommy,” notes Hines. The story includes two disguises for the Doctor: first as a British soldier, second in the futuristic glasses with cross-shaped eyepieces. Photographs from Troughton’s final scenes, where the Doctor is made to stand trial by the Time Lords, show the sorry state of his usual clothes: the pinned-up tail of his coat is coming loose and there’s a rip in his trousers. Was that to convey that he’d come to the end of the line? “I don’t think so,” says Frazer. “He just had the one costume – it’s not like now where you’d have doubles of the same clothes. We were filming out in the rubbish dump at Brighton [doubling for the trenches] and I just think they tore.”
Jon Pertwee appears to wear this battered, torn outfit in his first on-screen moments as the Third Doctor, at the start of Spearhead from Space. This scene, filmed on 15 September 1969 at the Royal Horticultural Gardens in Wisley, mark the last appearance of the Second Doctor's coat. It was in such poor condition by this stage, it was probably thrown away.
This presented challenges when Troughton returned for The Three Doctors. Costume designer James Acheson supplied an approximation of Troughton’s former costume, though the red and blue checks of the trousers seen in some early publicity pictures were found to strobe on camera, so in the story as broadcast Troughton wears a plainer pair. The braces holding up the trousers aren’t the red-and-gold pair made by his mother, but are white, decorated with red flowers.
Fast-forward 11 years to 1983 where costume designer Colin Lavers tried to match Troughton’s established outfit for The Five Doctors. The shirt is pale grey with checked trousers that more closely resembled those Troughton wore in his first two stories, and also ensured the check didn’t cause strobing. With location filming in Wales, and Troughton suffering from a heart condition, it was decided to dress him in a warm fur coat as in The Abominable Snowmen. Troughton wore a different coat as the original was a one-off and, sensibly, Lavers wanted two versions of all costumes used on location. Two fur coats were accordingly hired from Berman’s, where Lavers had once worked.
This same outfit – excepting the coat – was worn by Troughton in The Two Doctors. In early scenes the actor is in a grey shirt, in later ones it is pale blue. When the Doctor is augmented into an Androgum, he wears a purloined top hat. Make-up designer Catherine Davies also restyled his hair and added prominent, orange-tinted eyebrows.
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