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Season 6B is a theory related to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who to solve some continuity problems within the classic series. It constitutes a hypothetical period in the life of the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) between his final regular appearance in season 6 and the debut of the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) in season 7. It was originally devised by fans in order to explain the continuity issues that arose when Troughton reprised his role as the Doctor in The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors. Although the television series has not confirmed the existence of the season 6B timeframe, numerous stories in spin-off media have been set during this era. The Doctor Who BBC official site also mentions the theory.^[1]

Continuity problems[link]

The conclusion of The War Games, the last serial of season 6, sees the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) exiled to Earth by the Time Lords, who also force him into regeneration. This regeneration, however, does not take place on-screen and the newly-regenerated Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) first appears falling out of the TARDIS in Spearhead from Space.

Troughton reprised his role as the Second Doctor three times in the television series: in The Three Doctors (1973), The Five Doctors (1983) and The Two Doctors (1985). The latter two stories both see the Second Doctor's character contradicting established events from his original tenure.

In The Five Doctors, the Second Doctor and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart are retrieved via Time Scoop from a UNIT reunion, which the Doctor had travelled to in the TARDIS. However, prior to the Doctor's exile on Earth (and therefore for the entire of the Second Doctor era of the television series) the TARDIS's destination was unable to be determined by the Doctor. Later in the episode, illusions of Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and Zoe Heriot are dismissed because the Second Doctor knows that the Time Lords wiped their memories, and therefore Jamie should not have recognised the Brigadier. Since this only occurred shortly before the end of The War Games, it is unclear how the Doctor can be aware of Jamie's mindwipe unless he has already lived through his trial as seen in The War Games.

In The Two Doctors, the Second Doctor and Jamie appear on a mission for the Time Lords, who are even able to control the Doctor's TARDIS remotely. Again, this seems irreconcilable with the Second Doctor's original era, as the Doctor had no contact with the Time Lords between a time prior to the series' first episode and The War Games. Jamie is also aware of the Time Lords here, where The War Games saw him returned to his own time with no memory of his travels with the Doctor shortly after he arrived on Gallifrey. As in The Five Doctors, the Second Doctor is able to control the flight of the TARDIS much more effectively than before, deliberately piloting it to the space station where The Two Doctors takes place and also temporarily dropping off Victoria Waterfield before the episode begins.

Season 6B[link]

The "Season 6B" theory was first published in the 1995 book The Discontinuity Guide, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping.^[2] The theory reads that following his trial in The War Games the Second Doctor is not immediately exiled and forced into regeneration, but for a time works for the Celestial Intervention Agency, a covert Time Lord organisation that grants him increased control over his TARDIS at the cost of his freedom. If the Second Doctor from The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors comes from this period, the continuity issues described above are thus resolved.

During this time, the CIA may allow the Doctor to travel with both Jamie and Victoria as companions, acquires a Stattenheim remote control device to summon the TARDIS (as seen in The Two Doctors), and possibly receives a ring, bracelet, and a watch which home in on the TARDIS (which are found with the Third Doctor in Spearhead from Space). Eventually, the arrangement with the CIA comes to an end and the Doctor's original sentence is enforced. The Discontinuity Guide also postulates that the Doctor's memory was wiped of the events of season 6B when he went into exile, with the Third Doctor displaying memory issues at the start of Spearhead from Space.^[2]

Adoption in tie-in fiction[link]

The idea of a post-The War Games Second Doctor was first introduced before the Third Doctor had even appeared on-screen, in the TV Comic comic strip in 1969. Action in Exile (TVC #916-#920) sees the Doctor arrive in London without his TARDIS, where he checks into the luxurious Carlton Grange Hotel. From there, he proceeds to have five Earth-bound adventures, at the end of which he is re-captured by the Time Lords and forced into regeneration in a direct lead-in to Spearhead from Space.

Former Doctor Who series writer and script editor Terrance Dicks has utilised season 6B in two Past Doctor Adventures novels. Players (1999) features a flashback to this period, and World Game (2005) explicitly bridges the gap between The War Games and The Two Doctors. It follows the season 6B outline as described above, with only the minor difference that Jamie only believes Victoria has been travelling with himself and the Doctor due to the Time Lords altering his memories.

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Cornell, Paul, Day, Martin & Topping, Keith (1995). The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Publishing, ISBN 0-426-20442-5.

External links[link]

• Discontinuity Guide entry at the BBC website
• Doctor Who - The Complete Adventures timeline

Matthew Weiner
Weiner at the 2011 Time 100 gala
Born	(1965-06-29) June 29, 1965 (age 46) Baltimore, Maryland
Other names	Matt Weiner
Occupation	Screenwriter, television producer, and director

Matthew Weiner (pronounced /,winer/;^[1] born 29 June 1965)^[2] is an American writer, director and producer of television drama. He is the creator, executive producer, head writer, and show runner of the AMC television series Mad Men. He is also noted for his work on the HBO series The Sopranos, on which he served as a writer and producer during the show's fifth and sixth seasons. Weiner has received nine Emmy Awards for his work on Mad Men and The Sopranos as well as three Golden Globe Awards for Mad Men.^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]} Mad Men has won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series four consecutive years (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011); the Sopranos (with Weiner as executive producer) won the same award twice (2004, 2007).^[9][10] Weiner was named one of the 2011 Time 100 Most Influential People In The World.^[11] In November 2011, The Atlantic named him one of 21 "Brave Thinkers."^[12]

Early life and education[link]

Weiner was born in 1965 in Baltimore to a Jewish family, attended The Park School of Baltimore and grew up in Los Angeles where he attended Harvard School for Boys. His father was a medical researcher and chair of the neurology department at USC. His mother was a lawyer. ^[13] He enrolled in the College of Letters at Wesleyan University, studying literature, philosophy, and history and earned an MFA from the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television.^[14][15]

Early career[link]

Weiner began his screenwriting career as an uncredited joke-writer for the short-lived Fox sitcom Party Girl. He is also credited as a writer on Nixon: the CD-ROM released the same year as Oliver Stone's film on the former president. He was a writer and producer on The Naked Truth and Andy Richter Controls the Universe.^[14][15] Weiner wrote the pilot of Mad Men in 2000 as a spec script while working as a staff writer on Becker. The Sopranos creator and executive producer David Chase offered Weiner a job as a staff writer on his show after being impressed by the script.

Weiner served as a writer and producer on The Sopranos during its final three seasons. He wrote or co-wrote a dozen episodes, including the Emmy Award-nominated episodes "Unidentified Black Males" (co-written with Terence Winter) and "Kennedy and Heidi" (co-written with David Chase). He received two Emmy Awards as a producer of The Sopranos — one for the show's fifth season in 2004 and one for the second part of the show's sixth season in 2007.

In addition to writing and producing, he acted in two episodes, "Two Tonys" and "Stage 5" as mafia expert Manny Safier, author of The Wise Guide to Wise Guys, on TV news broadcasts within the show.

Weiner also spent the hiatus between the two seasons teaching at his alma mater, the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television (now School of Cinematic Arts), where he taught an undergraduate screenwriting class on Feature Rewriting during the Fall 2004 semester.

[edit] Mad Men

Weiner in 2007

After The Sopranos had finished its run, Weiner began looking for a network to produce Mad Men. He presented the show to HBO and Showtime; however, both networks passed on it. HBO offered to produce the series if David Chase, creator and executive producer of The Sopranos, would be on board as a writer or producer. Chase instead chose to focus on developing feature films.^[13] He eventually pitched the series to AMC which had never produced an original dramatic television series; they picked up the show, ordering a full 13-episode season.^[2] Weiner served as show runner, executive producer, and head writer of Mad Men for its first and second season. Weiner is credited with writing or co-writing seven episodes of the first season, ten episodes of the second, twelve episodes of the third and ten of the fourth. He has also directed all four of the season finales, although he had a major role in the writing and directing of every episode.^[13]

Mad Men received considerable critical acclaim and won four Golden Globes and fourteen Emmy Awards. Mad Men is the first basic cable series to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, winning the award in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. Weiner won the 2008 Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for the pilot episode, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes". He also won Emmys for the same category in 2009 (shared with Kater Gordon)^[16] and in 2010 (shared with Erin Levy).^[17] Weiner and his writing staff also won a Writers Guild of America Award for Best New Series and were nominated for the award Best Dramatic Series at the February 2008 ceremony for their work on the season.^[18][19][20] They were nominated for the WGA award for Best Dramatic Series a second time at the February 2009 ceremony for their work on the second season.^[21] Weiner and the writing staff won the WGA Award for Best Drama Series (after being nominated for the third consecutive year) at the February 2010 ceremony for their work on the third season.^[22][23] Weiner was also twice nominated for the WGA award for episodic drama at the February 2010 ceremony for his work on "The Grown-Ups" (with co-writer Brett Johnson) and "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency" (with Robin Veith).^[22]

Personal life[link]

Weiner is married; Marten, one of his four sons, plays the recurring role of Glen Bishop on Mad Men. Weiner currently resides in Los Angeles.^[15] He was a 1-day champion on the quiz show Jeopardy!.^[14][24]

Writing credits[link]

[edit] The Sopranos

[edit] Mad Men

References[link]

External links[link]

• Matthew Weiner at the Internet Movie Database
• Talks between Lionsgate, Weiner continue
• Interview with the Archive of American Television

v t e Mad Men Creator Matthew Weiner Characters Don Draper • Betty Draper • Peggy Olson • Pete Campbell • Joan Holloway • Roger Sterling • Lane Pryce Episodes Season 1 • Season 2 • Season 3 • Season 4 • Season 5 Related articles Awards and nominations Category