How Much Does the 6th Doctor’s Outfit Affect Your Perception?
Guest contributor Robert Colonna examines if Six’s outfit was damaging to views of his Doctor.
I won’t deny that there were many problems with Colin Baker’s years as the Doctor. He was plagued by sub-par stories, budget cuts, and a lot of fire from executives at the BBC. It’s unfortunate because I truly believe that the 6th Doctor could have been one of the most well-received Doctors, and I feel you need to look no further than the Big Finish stories. Colin Baker is constantly named one of the, if not the best audio Doctor every year. On top of the reasons named above, as well as the fact that his character arc was never completed on screen, I feel one of the big problems with Colin Baker’s Doctor was the outfit he wore.
An Explosion in a Rainbow Factory
That was how Colin Baker described his costume. He said the only good thing about it was that he didn’t have to look at it himself. Looking at any picture can show it can be quite distracting. The only good thing about that is that it drew the vision of everyone who looked at the screen to the Doctor, but not for the reason a writer would want. It immediately made it difficult to take the 6th Doctor seriously, and dates his Doctor horribly.
The Blue Suit Test
Many of you may have heard of this, but for those that haven’t, a fan on YouTube decided to edit a clip of the 6th Doctor to make his multi-colored suit all blue. It is clear that this one change drastically affects the clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJEw5xIDZZs
It would be interesting to see how the reactions to the 6th Doctor may have changed if he had been dressed like this throughout his tenure. It should also be known that Colin Baker wanted his Doctor to wear a black jacket, similar to the 9th Doctor. Here is a reaction to a fan made video here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZBFK5nkwB8
The Audio Stories
The Big Finish audio stories naturally take the vision aspect of Doctor Who stories out of the equation and therefore eliminate the 6th Doctor’s outfit. This causes the listener to focus on only the story and gets rid of any distractions caused by the 6th Doctor’s suit. My personal favorite 6th Doctor stories are the ones involving Charley, as well as the ones with Jamie.
Conclusion
Overall I feel the 6th Doctor’s outfit has a huge negative effect on the way Colin Baker’s Doctor is perceived. While I don’t feel a different outfit would fix every problem, I do feel like it would make his gems like Vengeance on Varos and Revelation of the Daleks into true classics that would seen as some of the best episodes of Doctor Who.
But what do you think? Was Colin Baker’s Doctor negatively affected by his rainbow costume?
