When you let it known to the world that you're a Doctor Who fan, you usually find yourself answering questions about how long you've been watching and what you remember watching first.
"Who's your Doctor? Who's your first Doctor?"
For many people—British, American, or beyond—the answer is usually Tom Baker. The Fourth Doctor is their Doctor, and they remember watching syndicated Fourth Doctor stories on PBS or BBC2 when they were kids. I do remember watching Doctor Who on PBS when I was a kid, but Tom Baker isn't the first Doctor I think of. For me, it's Pat Troughton. Which is curious, considering so many of his episodes are lost and very little else was broadcast abroad because by the time the BBC sent tapes overseas color was the standard and stations weren't interested in paying to air black and white.
Luckily for me, I'm from Chicago, and WTTW aired TONS of Doctor Who. It's presence on WTTW went relatively uninterrupted from 1975 to 1996. Which is really impressive, considering Doctor Who was shelved in 1989. But WTTW had a special tie with Doctor Who; it was the channel that premiered "The Five Doctors", even before the BBC did in the UK. Why? From what I can tell, it had a lot to do with stereo sound transmission.
We're used to stereo sound being the standard in broadcast television, but back in 1983 mono sound was the norm. As early as 1975, Telesonics was experimenting with multichannel sound transmission, which was the vehicle needed to send stereo sound (mono being one channel, stereo being two or more, therefore a multichannel band was needed to send the extra sound information). Telesonics approached WTTW to test out the multichannel transmission, which began in 1979. WTTW engineers would eventually help set the standards eventually approved by the FCC. WTTW began transmitting full-time in stereo in October 1983, and it aired "The Five Doctors" in November of 1983. The Chicago PBS channel, then, became the perfect place to transmit the anniversary special, as it was one place where it was guaranteed to hit a large viewership in stereo. Not all Chicagoland sets received in stereo at the time, but the program was allowed transmission in stereo to test the quality of recording by the BBC, as well as to drum up interest in Doctor Who and stereo sound in the US. The BBC wouldn't begin experimentations with transmitting Doctor Who in stereo until 1988 when they broadcast "Remembrance of the Daleks" in stereo sound to parts of London.
[There have been multiple accounts about "The Five Doctors" being in stereo or mono originally. It was initially recorded in four-channel stereo but broadcast in the UK with mono sound. It was later remixed for Dolby 5.1 for later DVD releases.]
So that brings me back to Pat Troughton. Why do I remember him so well from my childhood? My guess is the transmission of "The Three Doctors," "The Five Doctors," and "The Two Doctors" on WTTW. Chicago was a hub of Doctor Who fandom in the US, which resulted in an extensive catalogue of when WTTW aired Doctor Who. I was born in 1984, meaning that the tv I would start remembering would be from 1989 and onwards. Therefore, the times I would have seen Pat Troughton on my tv would have been:
"The Three Doctors"
May 28, 1989
October 23, 1990
July 14, 1996
"The Five Doctors"
July 21, 1996
"The Two Doctors"
May 19&26, 1991
The chances of me seeing those stories, especially in the mid-90s, are really good. That was before my family started forking over for cable, so I was watching VHS tapes, playing video games, and watching old British television on PBS all the time. Why I zeroed in on Pat Troughton and not Jon Pertwee or Colin Baker. My guess is with all the Three Stooges I watched as a kid that his black bowl cut stuck with me because of Moe.
Either way, it's cool to have a resource like this to see what aired in Chicago. I'm not sure any other PBS stations have an extensive list like this. Just another reason why Chicago is the greatest city on Earth.
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