Doctor Who (season 6)


The sixth season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 10 August 1968 with the first story of season 6 The Dominators and ended Patrick Troughton's reign as the Doctor with its final story The War Games. Only 37 out of 44 episodes are held in the BBC archives; 7 remain missing. As a result, 2 serials are incomplete.

Casting

Main cast

Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury make their final appearances as the Second Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot respectively. Troughton and his fellow actors collectively decided that the workload of Doctor Who was exhausting them, and that they would soon depart from the show. From Season 7 onwards the show would never have such a high number of episodes again. The three actors remained with the show until the conclusion of the final season six serial The War Games.

Guest stars

reappears as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in The Invasion, last seen in The Web of Fear. He would soon make regular appearances in the program beginning with season 7's Spearhead from Space.
John Levene makes his first appearance as Corporal Benton in The Invasion. He would continue to make regular appearances, with the character promoted to sergeant, from season 7 until season 13.
Alan Bennion makes his first of three appearances in the series playing an Ice Warrior. In this, his first appearance, he portrays Lord Slaar in The Seeds of Death.

Serials

took over from Derrick Sherwin as script editor from The Invasion, with Sherwin resuming the role for The Space Pirates. Derrick Sherwin took over as producer from Peter Bryant for The War Games.
Season 6 is the most complete of all the Second Doctor's seasons, with only seven episodes missing, none of the season's stories missing in their entirety and only two stories incomplete. This compares to the first two seasons of the Second Doctor from which only two complete serials survive. The missing two episodes of The Invasion have since been reconstructed using animation and released on DVD.
The War Games, which was the final serial of the season, and the last of Patrick Troughton's tenure as the Doctor, was also the second longest serial up to that point, spanning 10 episodes – only the 12-part serial The Daleks' Master Plan from Season 3 was longer.
The Dominators and The Mind Robber were both produced at the end of the fifth recording block and held over to Season 6.

Missing episodes

  • The Invasion – Episodes 1 & 4
  • The Space Pirates – Episodes 1, 3 – 6

    Home media

VHS releases

DVD and Blu-ray releases

In print

Serial nameNovelisation titleAuthorFirst published
The DominatorsThe DominatorsIan Marter19 April 1984
The Mind RobberThe Mind RobberPeter Ling20 November 1986
The InvasionThe InvasionIan Marter16 May 1985
The KrotonsThe KrotonsTerrance Dicks13 June 1985
The Seeds of DeathThe Seeds of DeathTerrance Dicks17 July 1986
The Space PiratesThe Space PiratesTerrance Dicks15 March 1990
The War GamesDoctor Who and the War GamesMalcolm Hulke25 September 1979