Doctor Who @60 and an unusual Liverpool link

The best British TV sci-fi series of all time celebrates its 60^th anniversary on the 23^rd November 2023. Doctor Who holds the Guinness World Record for being longest running science-fiction television series in the world. It’s got to be doing something right to still be going strong after all this time (no pun intended).

So what’s so great about Doctor Who? It has the best premise of any programme. You have a central character who’s a hero, using words and not weapons to save the day. You have an ever-changing collection of companions who help our hero along the way. Together they travel in a battered blue police box which just happens to be a spaceship AND a time machine, which can go anywhere and any when in the universe. That gives a lot of potential for storylines, and over the last 60 years we’ve had not only the TV show but comics, books and audio adventures.

Of course, 60 years means a lot of filming locations have been used. This year I’ve written about three of them from the classic series. This website documenting ‘Whoniverse’ locations is a great resource but sadly stopped updating in 2014 . Since 2005 there’s a noticeable cluster in and around Cardiff where the rejuvenated show is filmed. I’ve visited many of the new era locations too which I’ve not yet written about. But I wanted to do a post about a location to mark the 60^th anniversary and I’ve decided on probably one of the most tenuous ones – a back street in Liverpool, used in a 1990s Vodaphone commercial…

1996 saw a TV commercial air for the telecommunication company Vodafone, it’s only a minute long yet gets in homages to the X Files, Twin Peaks and Doctor Who. Thanks to VHS recordings at the time and uploads to YouTube it’s still possible to watch. https://youtu.be/mUKa5qIdI1w?si=tcjn1uL1ZJF1-BOi

The advert starred Kyle MacLachan, who was Dale Cooper in the early 1990s series Twin Peaks, as an X Files Fox Mulder style character with a female sidekick investigating a potential threat to the world in a garage in Liverpool. In brief, what they think is a time machine turns out to be a karaoke machine… an easy mistake to make… their confusion provides a very random way to show that Vodafone lets you control your phone bill more by charging by the second not the minute.

The opening shots of the advert confirm the location of this story as Liverpool – with views of the Liver Building and St George’s Hall. It then cuts to a cobbled street with red brick buildings and a view of the Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral in the distance. We see our Mulder & Scully type characters park up and go inside a garage. It then cuts to a scene inside the garage with a man that they accuse of have a ‘time machine’. Our nameless agents leave disappointed as it blares out the traditional Scouse anthem of ‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’ proving it is indeed not a threat to mankind, just their eardrums. As they drive off a curiously familiar figure checks his fob watch and walks across the street towards another garage with ‘Doctor On Call’ written on it. The garage doors part as he approaches, he steps into the bright white light beyond them and they close. Who was that mysterious man? What’s in that garage?

Now it’s clearly former Doctor Who actor Jon Pertwee and the advertisers are counting on the audience recognising him as the Third Doctor, heavily implying that inside that garage is an actual time machine, the TARDIS. This is quite impressive given he played the role between 1970 and 1974, over 20 years before the advert aired. Still a striking figure, with a distinctive head of white hair, those that watched Doctor Who back in the 1970s would easily recognise him. Sadly Jon Pertwee died in May 1996, the year the advert aired. So, though not officially ‘Doctor Who’ it is Pertwee’s last appearance as a mysterious time traveller… a last appearance filmed in Liverpool.

Now, I vaguely remembered this advert from the 90s but it was only when I was on an early date with my boyfriend (now husband) Andy in 2016 did I get reminded of it. Andy and I were walking out from the city centre to find a pub he knew and he casually mentioned that down a side street nearby Jon Pertwee had once filmed a Vodafone advert. I was intrigued and we went and sought it out. It turned out to be a good test of our relationship, we were certainly on the same geeky wavelength! Ever since then we’ve always referred to the street as ‘Pertwee Ally’ whenever we’ve navigating around the city.

Pilgrim Street in Liverpool’s Georgian Quarter is gradually being gentrified but it still retains it cobbled surface. Many of the buildings along it have been revamped, some drastically. The garage that Pertwee is seen going into is now a coffee shop called ‘Coffi’ and the beside it are now AirBnBs you can rent.

Jon Pertwee’s advert appearance gets mentioned in a very thorough list of Doctor Who’s Liverpool connections in an article on the Liverpool Museum’s website, from when they hosted the ‘Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder’ exhibition in 2022.

A surprising number of actors and actresses came from Liverpool and the surrounding area, notably Tom Baker and Paul McGann. Most recently the final season of Jodie Whittaker’s era introduced a Liverpudlian character Dan Lewis, played by John Bishop. The TARDIS finally made a proper appearance in the city at the Albert Dock in 2021 when filming of the series took place in several locations across Liverpool, one day I’m going to write another blog about that too.

So, if you’re ever in Liverpool and are seeking somewhere off the beaten track, have a look for Pilgrim Street and grab yourself a coffee where the Doctor once (possibly) parked his TARDIS… and then head to one of the many good pubs nearby and raise a toast to the best TV show ever. Happy birthday Doctor Who!