Doctor Who: Time Away from Earth (Classic Era)

Doctor Who is a series about a wanderer in time and space who travels using a machine capable of going to anyplace and anytime in the universe. But it is also series which was produced by human beings on earth in the present day (whenever that was at the time).

(Daily Doctor Who #323)

Thus, there have been a whole lot of Doctor Who TV serials that have taken place on earth…most of them, in fact. It got me wondering…whats the longest run of stories that did not bring the audience back to earth?

Let’s see, starting with the Classic Era…here are all the stories (I think) which don’t take place in whole or part on modern day earth (and for clarification, we are going to count stories which are clearly meant to be on near-modern day earth, like the UNIT stories, as being on modern day earth)…

First Doctor

The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, Marco Polo, The Keys of Marinus, The Azteks, The Sensorites, The Reign of Terror, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Rescue, The Romans, The Web Planet, The Crusade, The Space Museum, The Time Meddler, Galaxy Four, Mission to the Unknown, The Myth Makers, The Ark, The Celestial Toymaker, The Gunfighters, The Savages, The Smugglers, The Tenth Planet

Second Doctor

The Power of the Daleks, The Highlanders, The Moonbase, The Macra Terror, The Tomb of The Cybermen, The Abominable Snowmen, The Ice Warriors, The Enemy of the World, The Wheel in Space, The Dominators, The Mind Robber, The Krotons, The Space Pirates, The War Games

Third Doctor

The Curse of Peladon, Carnival of Monsters, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks, The Monster of Peladon

Fourth Doctor

The Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen, Planet of Evil, Pyramids of Mars, The Brain of Morbius, The Masque of Mandragora, The Deadly Assassin, The Face of Evil, The Robots of Death, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Horror of Fang Rock, The Invisible Enemy, The Sun Makers, Underworld, The Invasion of Time, The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll, The Armageddon Factor, Destiny of the Daleks, The Creature from the Pit, The Nightmare of Eden, The Horns of Nimon, Meglos, Full Circle, State of Decay, Warrior’s Gate, The Keeper of Traken

Fifth Doctor

Four to Doomsday, Kinda, The Visitation, Black Orchid, Earthshock, Snakedance, Terminus, Enlightenment, The King’s Demons, Warriors of the Deep, Frontios, The Caves of Androzani

Sixth Doctor

The Twin Dilemma, Vengeance on Varos, Timelash, Revelation of the Daleks, Trial of a Time Lord

Seventh Doctor

Time and the Rani, Paradise Towers, Delta and the Bannermen, Dragonfire, Remembrance of the Daleks, The Happiness Patrol, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, The Curse of Fenric, Ghost Light

So looking over that, I can see that the longest consecutive run of stories which don’t take the viewer to modern day earth comes toward the end of things, starting with the Colin Baker / Sixth Doctor story

Timelash

Revelation of the Daleks

Trial of a Time Lord

And then onto Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor with…

Time and the Rani

Paradise Towers

Delta and the Bannermen

Dragonfire

Remembrance of the Daleks

The Happiness Patrol

So that’s nine serials or 39 consecutive episodes before the Doctor came back to earth for Silver Nemesis.

The sneaks ahead of the second place option, which comes from the show’s first season–seven consecutive serials from The Daleks to The Reign of Terror, which adds up to 38 episodes.

(But this brings up the fact that actually, it’s never clear from anything on screen that the Episodes 2-4 of An Unearthly Child takes place on earth. This is the caveman scenes of the story which came out before The Daleks. If we don’t assume those scenes are on earth, then that would bring up the episode count to 41 episodes, which would give it the top spot in this list. But in general, most people assume that caveman costume drama is on earth, so…nevermind.)

But what about if we only look at stories which take place on earth at all? This cuts our list of stories as such:

First Doctor

The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, The Keys of Marinus, The Sensorites, The Rescue, The Web Planet, The Space Museum, Galaxy Four, Mission to the Unknown, The Ark, The Celestial Toymaker, The Savages

Second Doctor

The Power of the Daleks, The Moonbase (I’m pretty sure–let me know if I’m wrong!), The Macra Terror, The Tomb of The Cybermen, The Wheel in Space, The Dominators, The Mind Robber, The Krotons, The Space Pirates

Third Doctor

The Curse of Peladon, Carnival of Monsters, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks, The Monster of Peladon

Fourth Doctor

The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen, Planet of Evil, The Brain of Morbius, The Deadly Assassin, The Face of Evil, The Robots of Death, The Invisible Enemy, The Sun Makers, Underworld, The Invasion of Time, The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll, The Armageddon Factor, Destiny of the Daleks, The Creature from the Pit, The Nightmare of Eden, The Horns of Nimon, Meglos, Full Circle, State of Decay, Warrior’s Gate, The Keeper of Traken

Fifth Doctor

Four to Doomsday, Kinda, Snakedance, Terminus, Enlightenment, Frontios, The Caves of Androzani

Sixth Doctor

The Twin Dilemma, Vengeance on Varos, Revelation of the Daleks

Seventh Doctor

Time and the Rani, Paradise Towers, Dragonfire, The Happiness Patrol, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

A couple of interesting stories have come off the list–Trial of a Time Lord which appears to not be on earth except for the twist revelation about the first segment of the story taking place on a distant future earth. Also The War Games, which appears to take place on earth at first but doesn’t–however, it comes off the list because of the brief scene of Jamie being returned to 16th century Scotland in Episode Ten).

There are two consecutive runs of five stories, all four episodes each, which don’t go to earth at all. Both runs are in Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor’s era. One of them included The Sun Makers, Underworld, The Invasion of Time, The Ribos Operation, and The Pirate Planet–a total of 20 episodes.

But the other one is actually slightly longer, because if we look at the surrounding stories we see that it actually starts with part two of The Leisure Hive (after a short earth-bound scene in part one)