Doctor Who: The Three Doctors Special Edition

The Time Lords are in crisis. A powerful force is draining their energy into a mysterious Black Hole - and they must recruit the Doctor to save them. But one Doctor isn't enough for this mission.

All three of the Doctor's incarnations, aided by Jo Grant and UNIT, must face the wrath of Omega - a fallen Time Lord trapped in a universe of anti-matter, with one thing on his mind: revenge.

A gel-like plasma creature arrives on Earth and hunts down the Doctor, who calls on the Time Lords for help. The Time Lords themselves are in crisis as their energy is being drawn off into a black hole. They send the Doctor's earlier selves to join him.
The first Doctor, caught in a time eddy and able only to advise, deduces that the creature is a time bridge. The third Doctor and Jo then give themselves up to it and are transported to a world of antimatter beyond the black hole.
On Earth, the second Doctor is forced to take refuge in the TARDIS along with the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton. On the advice of the first Doctor he switches off the ship's force field, and the whole UNIT building is transported through the black hole.
Behind these events is Omega, a figure from Time Lord history whose solar engineering provided the power for time travel. He has been trapped in the black hole ever since and now wants the Doctor to swap places with him, but it transpires that the corrosive properties of his domain have already destroyed his physical form, leaving only his will.
He threatens to destroy the universe but is tricked into touching the second Doctor's recorder - the only thing not converted to antimatter when the TARDIS passed through the black hole - and is consumed in the resulting supernova. Everyone else is returned home.

Directed by Lennie Mayne
Written by Dave Martin, Bob Baker
Produced by Barry Letts
Original Music by Dudley Simpson
Film Editing by Jim Walker
Costume Design by James Acheson

First Transmitted
1 - 30/12/1972 17:50
2 - 06/01/1973 17:50
3 - 13/01/1973 17:50
4 - 20/01/1973 17:50

This story features another new TARDIS interior set, this time designed by Roger Liminton and based closely on the original. The previous one, which had appeared only in The Time Monster, had been disliked by the production team and had in any case been damaged in storage so that it was no longer useable.

This is the final performance by William Hartnell in Doctor Who. He was suffering badly from arteriosclerosis and had to read all his lines from cue cards while seated in a chair. The scripts were hastily rewritten to circumvent this problem, and he was seen only in pre-filmed inserts displayed on screens. This was to be his last work as an actor and he died some three years later, on 24 April 1975.