Doctor Who (season 7)
The seventh season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 3 January 1970 with Jon Pertwee's first story Spearhead from Space and ended with Inferno.
Casting
Main cast
- Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor
- Caroline John as Liz Shaw
Recurring cast
Nicholas Courtney returns as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and he would continue to make regular appearances in Doctor Who until season 13.John Levene also makes his first appearance as Sergeant Benton since The Invasion in The Ambassadors of Death and would continue to make regular appearances until season 13.
Serials
took over as producer from Derrick Sherwin after Spearhead from Space. From this season onwards the programme was produced in colour. To accommodate the new production methods the number of episodes in a season was cut: season 6 has 44 episodes; season 7 has 25 episodes. The seasons would continue to have between 20 and 26 episodes until season 22. Following the opening four parter, the remaining episodes were divided into three serials each of seven episodes. This, along with setting the entire season exclusively on Earth, had been the choice of previous producer and script editor Peter Bryant and Derrick Sherwin, which Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks were unhappy with.Spearhead from Space was intended to be produced identically to previous serials, with a mixture of location material shot on 16mm film, and studio based material on videotape. Owing to industrial action by studio technicians at the BBC, the planned studio recording sessions were cancelled, with instead all four episodes being shot on location on 16mm film.
Broadcast
The entire season was broadcast from 3 January to 20 June 1970. Peter Bryant and Derrick Sherwin had originally envisaged replacing Doctor Who with a Quatermass-style serial, with Nigel Kneale involved, but this fell through when Kneale refused to write for the show. The plan did, however, have an effect on the programme, seeing the Doctor exiled to a near-future earth as UNIT's scientific advisor.Home media
VHS releases
DVD and Blu-ray releases
In print
| Serial name | Novelisation title | Author | First published |
| Spearhead from Space | Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion | Terrance Dicks | 17 January 1974 |
| Doctor Who and the Silurians | Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters | Malcolm Hulke | 17 January 1974 |
| The Ambassadors of Death | The Ambassadors of Death | Terrance Dicks | 21 May 1987 |
| Inferno | Inferno | Terrance Dicks | 19 July 1984 |