Devious (home video)

Devious is the title of an as-yet unfinished fan-made film starring Tony Garner as an interim incarnation, the "Second-and-a-Halfth Doctor". Production began not long before Jon Pertwee's death in 1996 and constituted his final known performance as the Third Doctor (and possibly his final acting performance altogether, though he may have filmed his final widely-seen performance – a TV commercial – afterwards). Pertwee's scenes were videotaped in April 1995.

Plot summary
To be added

Cast

 * "Second-and-a-Halfth Doctor" - Tony Garner
 * Second Doctor - Patrick Troughton (via archive footage)
 * Third Doctor - Jon Pertwee
 * Polly Wright - Anneke Wills

Background
During the 1990s a large number of fan-made audio, film, and video productions were undertaken to keep the Doctor Who brand alive following its cancellation in 1989. Many of these productions featured either characters who were effectively the Doctor is all but name (see The Stranger and The Time Travellers, for example), or non-BBC-owned characters and monsters from the TV series that had been licensed direct from their creators (see P.R.O.B.E., Downtime, and Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans, for examples).

Although with the exception of Tom Baker all surviving Doctor actors, including Pertwee, had participated in at least one of these productions, Devious is notable as being the only production to feature one of these actors playing his incarnation of the Doctor, although there is no indication that the character had been licensed from the BBC.

Release
Following Pertwee's death, Big Finish Productions utilized audio of him from Devious in the 40th-anniversary audio drama, Zagreus.

In 2009, BBC Video released a 12-minute excerpt from Devious as a bonus feature on the UK and North American DVD releases of the final Troughton serial, DW: The War Games (the storyline of Devious takes place between it and Pertwee's first televised story, DW: Spearhead from Space). This marked the first time the BBC has released a fan film of this nature.

The film also includes several other cameos, including Anneke Wills reprising the role of Polly, although she does not appear in the excerpt released to DVD.

The DVD features only a 12-minute clip from the film, as according to the official website of the production, the film has yet to be completed.

Story notes

 * Anneke Wills does not appear in the excerpt featured on the 2009 DVD release.
 * The TARDIS console and walls, plus the Dalek props, were borrowed for the Comic Relief story The Curse of Fatal Death. In 2004, the TARDIS set was borrowed for use in a four-part news report on Doctor Who's past.
 * Partway through production, the TARDIS walls were upgraded from simply having circles drawn on them to indented circles that much more closely resembled that of the show. Scenes that had been filmed up to that point using the old walls were reshot using the new walls, however a few brief shots using the "drawn-circle" walls can be seen in the 2009 DVD excerpt.

Continuity

 * This story appears to take place directly after DW: The War Games and directly before Spearhead from Space, but the 1960s TV Comic stories and DW: The Two Doctors cause a contradiction. The Second Doctor may in fact have been retrieved during his forced regeneration in TVC: The Night Walkers, which also leads directly into Spearhead from Space.
 * Although not addressed, the fact the Third Doctor looks considerably older at the start of his regeneration than seen in Spearhead from Space is not necessarily a continuity error. In DW: The Christmas Invasion, it is established that a Time Lord can alter his body immediately after the regeneration (and is supported by Romana's regeneration in DW: Destiny of the Daleks). DW: Time Crash also establishes that if two incarnations of the same Time Lord interact, it can cause one of them to appear older.