The Sixth Doctor in his patchwork coat. (TV: The Mark of the Rani)
For much of his life, the Sixth Doctor wore a patchwork frock coat with peaked lapels.
It featured patches of red tartan, scarlet, green, pink and maroon felt, peach wool, a woven back piece, checked collar and amber and pink lapels, (TV: The Twin Dilemma) with a total of 76 different colour tones overall. (AUDIO: The Middle) The Tenth Doctor told Gabby Gonzalez that the coat was "at the height of sartorial elegance". (COMIC: Laundro-Room of Doom) The Eleventh Doctor told Clara Oswald that his patchwork coat was "made for a spectrum invisible to the human eye", and that he had won an award for it. (COMIC: Dead Man's Hand)
The coat was the subject of much ridicule, with people often mocking it, (TV: The Twin Dilemma, AUDIO: The Carrionite Curse) with Mel Bush and Peri Brown each thinking that it resembled "an explosion in a paint factory", (PROSE: Instruments of Darkness; AUDIO: An Eye For Murder) although the Doctor insisted that there were places where his coat was considered the "height of fashion". (PROSE: Palace of the Red Sun).
The Fourth Doctor tries on a Kolpashan coat. (COMIC: Victims)
The coat was the height of fashion on Kolpasha, (PROSE: Instruments of Darkness) which in turn dictated fashion across almost 500 planets. (COMIC: Victims) The Sixth Doctor sometimes mentioned that his coat came from Kolpasha. (PROSE: Business Unusual, Spiral Scratch, AUDIO: Real Time, Year of the Pig, The Carrionite Curse) The Fourth Doctor once tried on a coat like that of the Sixth Doctor while visiting Kolpasha, ironically remarking, "No-one would ever be seen out in public dressed like this." (COMIC: Victims)
When Mel first met the Sixth Doctor in Pease Pottage in 1987, she assumed that he was there to audition for the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors) In an alternate timeline, the Seventh Doctor's companion Ace nicknamed the Sixth Doctor "Joseph" when she first saw him. The Sixth Doctor did not understand the reference but Peri found it amusing. (AUDIO: The Light at the End). A version of Martha Jones created by the TARDIS also asked the Tenth Doctor if he had been auditioning for the role, to which the Doctor admitted to having had an 'off-day' regarding his fashion choices. (COMIC: The Forgotten)
The Doctor eventually replaced his patchwork coat with an azure blue one, which functioned as a mourning suit, (WC: Real Time et al.) but began wearing the patchwork one again towards the end of his life (TV: Time and the Rani) for the benefit of an amnesiac version of Mel, who preferred his original attire. When reflecting on his blue coat, Mel used "understated", "sombre", and "boring" as words not often associated with the Sixth Doctor. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors)
The bright colourful nature of his coat helped the Sixth Doctor fight certain species: Kroton sensory systems were jammed by it (PROSE: Alien Bodies) and Terravores were visually over-stimulated to the point of unconsciousness. (AUDIO: The Crimes of Thomas Brewster)
When Strax found himself in the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS wardrobe, he tried on the Sixth Doctor's patchwork coat along with various other pieces of clothing from previous Doctors. (COMIC: The Adventures of Strax & the Time Shark)
The coat would eventually come to hang in the remembered TARDIS, (TV: Earthshock) although Steven Taylor didn’t seem to be very much fond of the coat. (TV: The Time Meddler)
Other individuals who wore the coat[]
Gareth Jenkins wears a smaller version of the Sixth Doctor's coat. (HOMEVID: A Fix with Sontarans)
Young Gareth Jenkins, a fan of the Doctor's adventures on television, had a costume based off of the Sixth Doctor's patchwork attire. Tegan Jovanka thought he was some sort of mini-clone because of it. (HOMEVID: A Fix with Sontarans)
While acting as "the Doctor", Jack Harkness wore the Sixth Doctor's patchwork coat with his seventh favourite waistcoat and yellow-stripped trousers. He had a clear distaste for the outfit, joking to the Doctor that he intended to burn his tailor down. After their work was done, Jack exchanged the coat for his own coat which the Doctor took to pretend to be him. The Doctor admitted that he did "cut a dash" in Jack's coat and hesitated to give it back, only for Jack to say that he would only have put cat badges on it. (AUDIO: Piece of Mind)
Behind the scenes[]
Variant cover F of 12DY3 2.
- According to an interview with Colin Baker in DWM 118, the Sixth Doctor's coat was created because John Nathan-Turner had the idea that it should be in "very bad taste" to show the Doctor's alien nature. Baker himself had wanted to wear black to display the Doctor's darker side.
- More recently, Colin Baker has expanded upon this, stating that what he wanted to wear was pretty much what would become the costume for Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor. (DOC: Doctor Who: The Ultimate Guide)
- A variant cover for 12DY3 2 has the Twelfth Doctor trading coats with a hologram of the Sixth Doctor, thereby giving the Sixth Doctor a dark black coat.
