“I was saying to him in the Club only the other day…” The Third Doctor name-drops his club in Terror of the Autons (1971).
The title character of the BBC’s long-running science-fiction programme Doctor Who (1963-89; 2005-present) might not seem a natural member of ‘Clubland’. The character is presented as a perennial outsider, an anti-establishment figure. But one of the things about having a time-travelling alien character who is thousands (possibly billions) of years old, who has lived many lifetimes’ worth of experience which remain offscreen, is that plenty of unexpected details emerge from the woodwork.
One of the most distinctive eras of the show was that of the Third Doctor (1970-4), when he was played by Jon Pertwee. His version of the Doctor was possibly the most rooted in Earth, of all the Doctor’s incarnations. For much of his era, he was exiled to the planet Earth (and specifically, the UK) in the 1970s (or was it the 1980s?), his ability to travel through time and space having been temporarily stripped away by his people, for the crime of interfering in the affairs of other planets. And the Third Doctor undoubtedly put down roots on Earth. He had a job (of sorts) as Scientific Advisor to UNIT, a secret UN army tasked with fending off alien invasions, which were usually drawn to cross millions of light years, to invade the Home Counties.
The Third Doctor’s club
Where do clubs come into all this? In the Third Doctor story Terror of the Autons (1971), we learn that the Doctor is a member of a club; and quite an influential one, by the sound of it.
The Third Doctor, in his colourful velvet smoking jackets, ruffled Mr. Fish shirts from Carnaby Street, increasingly bouffant hair, and predilection for action scenes and Bond-like gadgets, was very much a man of his time. He was also seen as very “clubbable.” Critics have often remarked upon his love-hate relationship with the British ‘Establishment’. In The Wife in Space - a hysterically funny episode-by-episode blog by a husband-and-wife team of university lecturers - Sue Perryman says:
“He’s such a pompous Tory. I bet he hangs around gentlemen’s clubs, drinking brandy and being a t__t…Look at Pertwee – he always dresses like he’s on his way to a Masonic Lodge.”
(Indeed, the book version of the Wife in Space’s Third Doctor criticism is called “The Pompous Tory.”)
Brownrose (right) is initially extremely condescending towards the Brigadier (left), and the Third Doctor (offscreen).
Details of the Doctor’s club membership emerge when UNIT is visited by an officious British civil servant in an old school tie (one of many encountered during the Third Doctor’s era), by the name of Brownrose. He busily throws his weight around during his visit to UNIT HQ, grumbling that he is “far from satisfied” with UNIT’s professionalism and expertise; and even less impressed by the idea of the Doctor being consulted on anything - Brownrose protests that his concerns are “not something to be shuffled off onto some stray boffin, you know.” The Doctor visibly bridles at this, and asks:
Doctor: Who’s in charge of you pen-pushers these days? Old ‘Tubby’ Rowlands, isn’t it?
Brownrose: [Coolly.] Lord Rowlands is head of our department, yes.
Doctor: I was saying to him in the Club only the other day, “Wrong sort of chap is creeping into your lot, Tubby,” I said.
Brownrose: [His whole manner immediately changing, from brusque to fawning and simpering.] Well, of course, I didn’t mean to imply anything offensive.
Doctor: [Pausing, then curtly.] No. No, of course not. Say no more about it.
Obviously, the most relevant detail of the encounter, for the purposes of the story, was establishing how well-connected the Third Doctor was, and using that to repel Brownrose’s interference. But of which club was he supposed to be a member?
Brownrose visibly begins to fear the Third Doctor’s influence, after the Doctor mentions he knows the minister socially, through their club, and has been disparaging the department’s appointees.
Clues to the identity of the Third Doctor’s club
We can safely assume that it was a club in London. At this time, UNIT’s headquarters, based in an old priory on the former Scarman estate, was on the outskirts of London.
It is almost certain that the Third Doctor, with his frequently-expressed contempt for the military, was not a member of any of the military clubs. This scarcely takes us any closer to a suitable club in 1970s/1980s London, though it does rule out several well-known clubs, like the United Service Club. It is also unlikely that the Doctor was a member of an aristocratic club like White’s or Brooks’s - although the Time Lord was an aristocrat (of sorts) back on Gallifrey, he lacked the family connections on Earth which would have been near-essential for membership of such clubs in the 1970s. Which makes one of the more meritocratic clubs, open to scientists, a more likely prospect. But it was nothing so narrow as a “purely” scientific club, such as the (real-life) Chemical Club or the (fictional) Royal Scientific Club (which I will come to shortly).
The key clue to the identity of “the club” is in its members. We know that the Third Doctor was a member, and that he claimed to be qualified in “practically everything.” We also know that Rowlands - both a cabinet minister, and a member of the House of Lords - was a member. Furthermore, there was a possibility that Brownrose was also a member - for while the Third Doctor’s reference to “the Club” could have been an abstract allusion, it also implies that he doesn’t think it needs spelling out to Brownrose, as though it is a common institution to them both.
We are left with a London club which attracts senior politicians, including peers and serving government ministers, but also scientists across a wide range of disciplines; and which is by no means out of bounds to (and is certainly known to) senior civil servants.
With a description like that, it is very hard to envision the Third Doctor’s club being anything other than the Athenæum on Pall Mall. That is not to say that it could not have been another club. Other Pall Mall edifices were also possibilities, though it is hard to imagine the Doctor signing up to a political club like the Reform, or a club with as many spies as the Travellers. A cultural club like the Savile would not have been implausible, although its smattering of serving government ministers was the exception, rather than the rule. And while the Third Doctor’s fondness for his souped-up vintage motor car “Bessie” would have made him well-suited to membership of the Royal Automobile Club, the “Chauffeur’s Arms” would not necessarily have projected quite the same shudder of Establishment reach as the Doctor invoking “the Club” to Brownrose.
So on the balance of probabilities, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the Third Doctor would have been an Athenian, with the club having been set up in 1824 for writers and scientists, but also containing a high concentration of ministers and civil servants, and being known by the 1970s as the Club of “the Establishment.”
When did he join?
It is likely that the Doctor had his club subscription paid for by UNIT. We get a hint, in Spearhead from Space (1970) that UNIT has deep pockets, but that the Doctor was more interested in payment-in-kind for various substantive perks, than he was in money:
Brigadier: I think you’ll find the salary is quite adequate.
Doctor: Money? My dear chap, I don’t want money. I’ve got no use for the stuff.
Brigadier: Then what do you want?
Doctor: Well, facilities to repair the TARDIS; a laboratory; equipment; help from Miss Shaw here.
Brigadier: Very well. Anything you need. Within reason, of course.
It is therefore perfectly plausible that UNIT had been covering the Doctor’s club subscription, and monthly bills.
That said, Terror of the Autons is set only about a year later than the start of the Doctor’s exile in Spearhead from Space. Since the Athenæum was operating a waiting list of several years in the 1970s and 1980s, it is doubtful that the Doctor had only just put his name down and been promptly elected in time for Terror of the Autons.
It is therefore likely that the Doctor was at the very least nominated at some point prior to the 1970s, most likely in either his first or second incarnation.
The First Doctor (left) at the time of The War Machines (1966), with his companions Polly (centre) and Ben (right), as seen in the trailer at the end of the colourised version of The Daleks (1963-4/2023).
With the Athenæum having been founded in 1824, this means the Doctor could have been elected (or at least had his name put down and proposed for membership) anytime between the 1820s and the 1970s. Of the known adventures, depicted on television this could have happened around the events of:
An Unearthly Child (1963, First Doctor), with some scope for the Doctor to have been proposed before the episode; though he seemed to have been very keen to keep a low profile around this time, making it doubtful he joined then; not to mention his expressed contempt for humans at this time makes it less likely he would have sought the human companionship of a London club.
The War Machines (1966, First Doctor), when the Doctor actually visits a London club - the fictional Royal Scientific Club, which holds a press conference. And Sir Charles Summer, a senior civil servant and scientist who also served as Chairman of the RSC, comes across as a thoroughly ‘Establishment’ figure, very much the archetypal Athenæum member of the era, who warms to the Doctor as they collaborate to save the Earth. The way that the Doctor seems to stick around for a little while after the adventure makes it doubly plausible that he could have been proposed for the Athenæum around this time, most likely sponsored by Sir Charles. And if his name was put down in 1966, he could quite plausibly have been elected in time for Terror of the Autons in 1971.
The Faceless Ones/Evil of the Daleks (1966, Second Doctor), both stories actually being set concurrently with The War Machines, on the same day. It is possible that the Second Doctor could have arranged a membership then - he was known to be manipulative and multi-tasking - though it seems implausible when he spent much of his time under house arrest at Gatwick Airport, or else urgently searching for his missing TARDIS.
The Web of Fear (c.1968, Second Doctor) is a possibility, particularly as there is scope for an unseen aftermath of the Doctor in London, as the city resumes normality after the alien invasion. Also, he is reacquainted with the eminent anthropologist Professor Edward Travers, exactly the sort of figure one might expect to find at the Athenæum in the 1960s, willingly signing his support for the Doctor’s candidacy. But given this was possibly only two or three years before the events of Terror of the Autons, it is unlikely that this was when the Doctor was first proposed.
The Invasion (c.1968, Second Doctor), when again, the Doctor spent some time in London; and his departure was not necessarily immediate. And again, he befriended another eminent scientist, Professor Joseph Watkins, another archetypal Athenæum member who could have signed his entry in the candidates’ book. But again, time would have been short for the Doctor to have been elected by 1971, so this was probably not when he was first proposed.
The First Doctor pulls up in a London taxi to arrive at the Royal Scientific Club in 1966, filmed on location in Bloomsbury’s Bedford Square.
Other sojurns on Earth, such as in The Chase (1872, aboard the Mary Celeste; and 1965, atop the Empire State Building), The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965-6, during a cricket match), and The Massacre (1966, very briefly on Wimbledon Common, before being chased away by police), were almost certainly too brief for the Doctor to have been put up for membership; while we can rule out Planet of the Giants (1964), when the Doctor was reduced to microscopic size, along with The Gunfighters (1881), The Abominable Snowmen (1935) and Fury from the Deep (1968), when the Doctor was on Earth, but nowhere near London.
Of course, it is equally possible that the Doctor was proposed for membership during one of his many off-screen, non-canonical adventures - there is not the space here to discuss the endless novels, audio adventures, comic strips, etc.
But if we limit ourselves to “official” onscreen adventures, then the most likely course of action was that in the latter stages of The War Machines, before the Doctor returned to his TARDIS and departed Earth, Sir Charles Summer proposed him for the Athenæum in 1966. The Doctor’s name would then have been placed in the candidates’ book, and plausible figures supporting his candidature from 1966-71, could have included Professor Travers; Professor Watkins; Professor Brett (the antagonist of The War Machines, who retained no memory of what he had done, and was keen to atone for his having invented a genocidal computer that had him hypnotised); the unnamed government minister in The War Machines; Charles Gordon, the manager of Gatwick Airport in The Faceless Ones (whom we are told in the novelisation has an officious streak that may suggest a background as a senior civil servant); Euro Sea Gas head John Robson (who spends much of Fury from the Deep being taken over by the sea creature, but is deeply grateful to the Doctor when finally freed); the eminent medical specialist Doctor Beavis (who may have been grateful to the Doctor for the safe return of his vintage car and his clothes after Spearhead from Space); controller of British Space Control Professor Ralph Cornish (seen in The Ambassadors of Death); and the sympathetic senior civil servant Sir Keith Gold (who feels a deep debt to the Doctor after the events of Inferno). Between them, they would already have accounted for 9 of the minimum of 12 supporting signatures the Doctor would have needed to have collected for election to the Athenæum.
All this means that in the most likely scenario, by the time of the Third Doctor’s exile to Earth (and the latest retconning of the date in the colourised version of The War Games heavily implies that this happened in 1970), the Doctor was close to having the level of support needed for membership of the Athenæum, being elected sometime around 1970.
Sir Charles Summers with the First Doctor at the Royal Scientific Club in 1966.
Finally, we cannot entirely rule out that with a time-traveller such as the Doctor, he may have been proposed for membership out of chronological order, i.e. a much older, “future” incarnation of the Doctor was proposed for the Athenæum at some date prior to 1971 (and indeed prior to 1966), but that the Third Doctor was in a position to take up membership in the 1970s. Possible proposers could have included Winston Churchill, an Athenian from 1908-30, and again from 1955 until his death in 1965. (We know that by the time of the Eleventh Doctor story Victory of the Daleks, set in 1941, Churchill was already familiar with the Doctor being an alien time-traveller; indeed, the novel Players suggested that the two had been friends since the 1890s, when Churchill first met the Sixth Doctor, with the duo meeting intermittently and out of sequence over the decades.) It is very hard to see how a candidate put up by Sir Winston Churchill after 1955 would not have been elected.
Disclaimer: Since I am myself a member of the Athenæum, I should probably disclose that, lest it sway my credibility in anyone’s eyes, or seem like a conflict of interest, in advancing it as the Doctor’s club!
You can view the full and varied backlog of Clubland Substack articles, by clicking on the index below.
Index
Articles are centred around several distinct strands, so the below contains links to the main pieces, sorted by theme.
Glorious stuff!
Absolutely wonderful! The Doctor in virtually all his incarnations would have been eminently clubbable!