Seeing that Doctor Who is premiering on Disney tomorrow, I wanted to post this.

Here is the back cover of The Blue Guardian #13 an adult Doctor Who het fanzine published in 1982 by The Prydonian Renegades an American fan club based out of Columbus, Ohio. It's fanart inspired by "Doctor Who and Mickey Mouse Go to Gor" a story from issue #12.

The cover feels like an obvious send up of Tom Baker's appearance in Disney Time.

Disney Time - Miscellaneous

So for the Third Doctor we looked at trailers and promos for the show itself, well for the Fourth Doctor we’re looking at promotional material and advertisements for things that aren’t related to the show.

See Doctor Who is so popular that the series has been used to advertise various products, charities, PSAs, both for the UK and other countries, and even promote other IPs.

Which leads us to Disney Time. 

Disney Time was an annual special that ran in the UK from 1961 to 1998. And it was literally just one giant advert for Disney each and every year. It would show clips from it’s newly released or up coming movies, including recent re-releases and shorts, and promote it’s other tv shows.  

Each year the segment was hosted by a celebrity who would provide linking segments and explain the context of the clips being shown. And in 1975 that celebrity was Doctor Who.

Not just Tom Baker, who played the Doctor, but the actual character of the Doctor, running around the theater proclaiming how great Disney is, how much he loves classic Disney characters like Donald Duck, and horribly mispronouncing Mowgli’s name.

The in universe explanation being that the Doctor is on vacation. Having just dropped off Harry and Sarah Jane back home at the end of Revenge of the Cybermen, he enjoys his holiday by going to the movies. At the end of his day off he gets a message from the Brigadier which is supposed to lead directly into Terror of the Zygons. So yeah, this is meant to be canon to the show.

The segment has never officially been released due to copyright, but mega fans with home recorders have kindly posted Tom Baker’s clips to youtube.

In order to watch the show as intended, I pulled up the missing clips off of Disney Plus and kept the Doctor Who linking clips up in another tab; switching between the two when needed.

To re-create the experience yourself, this is the line up.

To start everything off, you have

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from Fantasia

The Doctor’s 1st clip

The Clock-cleaners (the short was edited down for the episode, but I don’t know where the cuts were made, so I just watched the entire short) 

2nd Doctor clip

“Blackbeard drives a car and says fuck the police” from BlackBeard’s Ghost (the clip starts with Dean Jones and Blackbeard driving in the car and ends with Dean Jones getting handcuffed) 

3rd Doctor Who clip

"Trust in Me" from The Jungle Book (clip starts with Kaa singing, and ends Kaa being pushed out of the tree by Mowgli. just end when the segment fades to black) 

Back to the Doctor; 4th clip

“The hippopotamus segment” from The African Lion  

5th  intro by the Doctor

“Theodore and Amos try to rob the bank” from The Apple Dumpling Gang (the segment starts with Theodore telling Amos his plan for using a rope to haul himself to the roof, it ends at the next scene with the Sheriff finding the two thieves tied up together in front of the vault. cut the scene before the trial starts)

6th clip for the Doctor

"The Beautiful Briny" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks (start with them meeting Mr. Cod and end as soon as they accept the trophy)

Another Doctor segment, the 7th clip

“A cougar attacks a child” from  Return of the Big Cat (This TV movie is on youtube not Disney+; and clips were actually shown out of order for the episode. first clip time stamp 41:52 to 43:53, and the second clip time stamp is 37:30 to 39:27)

 7th Doctor Who clip

“The puppets dancing” from Escape to Witch Mountain (the scene starts with the kids being stuck inside while it rains. they make the puppets come to life, the villains watch them from a hidden camera, next scene the children discuss running away)

8th Doctor who clip 

“He’s a Tramp” from Lady and the Tramp (scene kicks off with Lady being brought into the pound, ends with the song ending)

Final Doctor Who clip

Of course it’s Disney and Doctor Who, two my favorite things combined so I love it. THe best bits were the songs, but even the segments from ‘lesser’ films proved to be at least interesting given their context.

The Apple Dumpling and Escape to Witch Mountain were the big theatrical releases at the time, hence their inclusion.

BlackBeard’s Ghost, The African Lion, and Jungle Book were all getting planned releases that following year, and indeed the theater where this was filmed was playing Lady and the Tramp at the time. Which is why the episode ended on that segment in particular. 

But most interesting of all was the Return of the Big Cat segment. A movie that I didn’t even knew existed until this marathon.

It’s not a theatrical release, but rather a made for tv movie that was created for Disney’s anthology show The Wonderful World of Color.

Disney made original tv movies from time to time for his anthology and they’re basically the prototype for the Disney Channel Original Movies that I grew up on. With about the same level of quality too.