BIB. Absolutely. For me, Season 7 is the best-ever of Classic Who. Without it - and Pertwee - the show wouldn't be here today. And as you rightly point out, ratings rose dramatically after Troughton's last series. Whether one likes the exile scenario or not is purely subjective. But it was expedient. And clearly audiences at the time embraced it, so on that level it was a success.

BIB: As someone who was around and watching at the time of Pertwee's first season, the consensus was that it was a vast improvement over what had gone before. It was felt to be exciting, colourful (well it would) and more adult. The Bondian-Avengers vibe helped considerably. I know it's anecdotal, but I recall I used to watch the Troughton stories with my sister. When Pertwee started, the adults started watching with us.

Pretty much the same drop-off for recent Matt Smith seasons, then. I'm not sure what we should read into that.

Also Pertwee was well known from his cinema and radio work so a lot of people watched to see how he went in the role and presumably enjoyed it, I know I did! I liked the exile scenario, and UNIT, though it did go on for longer than it needed to. A bit less Master and more Liz would have been great but I enjoyed it anyway.

How much of a factor was the switch to color in people's desire to watch the show?

Was there any anger or backlash to the slashing of the number of episodes per season by over a third?

I was only two years old when this switch happened, so I am very curious.

By 70's standards, that is quite some drop.

There was vastly less competition from other channels so I would say in real terms from that time, the drop was quite significant but thankfully it jumped back up again for the following Season and stayed there.

As Jethryk said, summer may have been a factor but that doesn't seem the case for the following Seasons.

Interestingly enough, when the BBC decided to repeat Season 7 in the early 90's on BBC I don't believe they ever finished it. I think, and I'm sure I read it somewhere at the time, that the ratings for these repeats were low and audience research showed it 7-Part nature of The Silurians had been a factor.

Personally, I think the best Pertwee Seasons are the middle three, that was the main part of really. Season 7 got it going and had a different feel about and Season 11 is an interim Season where it feels Pertwee was just there to fill a gap until Tom Baker came along. That's why, as I said previously, if I could improve it, I'd have had him leave in Season 10 instead. That just seems such an appropriate time for him to leave.

I think when any long running show went to colour back then, it was a big deal. If I remember correctly, Coronation Street marked the move to colour with a bus trip to the Lakes.

I don't recall there being a backlash about the slashing of the number of episodes. But then there was no internet back then, so there were far fewer people sitting at home just waiting to be "outraged" by things on TV!

Decided to add my own opinions.

Many of the stories could have been shortened, having mostly seven-part stories tended to drag on, when four-parters would do nicely. Give Liz a proper exit, instead of having it happen off screen. I could also agree with what some people have been saying about the not very subtle moralizing that they had during some stories.

Not calling Silurians the Silurans would be a harmless, inconsequential thing to go back in a time machine and change (do I hear thunder? ) but beyond that I'd leave everything be.

Well... I have one pet idea I've mentioned before. Instead of the Three Doctors I would have had Salamander, played by Patrick Troughton, return. Of course, UNIT would be quite easily convinced he was actually the Doctor and the 3rd one was an imposter, given no-one actually saw the regeneration happen, and have only taken his word, rather dubiously, that he is the same man. Using UNIT, he could recreate his attempt to control the Earth that he made in his own era. The real Doctor, now an outcast would have to somehow regain trust and defeat him.

Now, I know a lot of people will blanche at Patrick Troughton (and maybe even Hartnell) never having returned to play the Doctor, but what you have to understand, and this is a fact mind , is that shorn of your sentiment derived bias, 'The Three Doctors' really is a terrible story. Bad idea, bad script, bad execution. The Salamander idea would have been epic in comparison. Even the viewers could be fooled, or at least doubtful, about who was the true Doctor for a while. And as we know with hindsight, there was always future Doctor Who anniversaries to bring back the old Docs as themselves...

Seriously, just stop and think of all the awesome story possibilities of this idea, and the potential it could have had to bring back Patrick Troughton as a recurring villain in Doctor Who and you will feel your love for 'The Three Doctor's fade away...

Great idea, but noooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- Cutting down a few stories. The 3rd Doctor was usually quite serious and just got on with things with no messing around, so some of his stories didn't need so much padding. They should have suited his hit-and-run style. The stories I'd cut down: The Silurians, Ambassadors of Death, Colony in Space, The Mutants, The Time Monster, Planet of the Daleks, Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Monster of Peladon.
I think they should have just kept Inferno, The Mind of Evil, The Sea Devils, Frontier in Space, The Green Death and Planet of the Spiders as the epic stories. Keeping the 6-part (or more) episode format to just 1 or 2 a season, making it feel more special.

- Too many Earth stories. I like the idea of him having to do missions for the Time Lords instead of being stuck in the same place.

- Would have been nice to see Liz get treated like a proper companion, travelling with The Doctor in the Tardis and getting a proper goodbye. Also seeing The Brigadier, Yates and Benton in the Tardis and on more alien planets would have been good, instead of watching them shoot at bulletproof aliens invading Earth each week.

- Unfortunately there was a bit too much of The Master. He should have appeared in his first story then had a mini-break and do alternate stories or something. At least they should have developed it further, instead they got stuck in the usual routine where The Master helps an alien invade and conquer Earth, only for him to change his mind and help The Doctor defeat them at the last minute.
I liked it when he was finally captured at the end of The Daemons and in prison for the next story he appeared in. If they're going to be stuck on Earth they may aswell have some continuity to it.

Pertwee's era was pretty solid and consistent, IMO. There weren't very many really stand-out stories, but there also weren't very many rubbish stories.

As many have mentioned, cutting down the length of some of the stories may have been a good idea.
I think the sort of format they followed for much of Tom Baker's era worked well where they had 4-part stories making up the bulk of the season with a 6-part "finale" (though I doubt they used that word much back in the 70s).
A lot of the 6-part and 7-part stories dragged on too long with only a few actually working well.

I think the Earth-bound idea worked quite well so I don't think I'd change that.

It's interesting how tastes and opinions can change over different audiences & simply the same audience but time itself can sway views & memories. I wasn't around in the 60's and only started watching Who in the mid 70's onwards. So for me the 3rd & 4th Doctor felt like both my Doctors, even though both were very different. I still like the 4th Doctor a lot, but now find the 3rd Doctor too pompous, serious and self righteous. Time is a funny thing,

I didn't see anything of the 2nd Doctor until 1985. I thought at the time of first viewing Troughton's portrayal was too silly, a bit of buffoon and too childlike. That opinion has now improved as I've got older... Reading your comments above about the 2nd Doctor, watching some of the extras on the DVD's and reading some articles online about 1960's opinions of the 2nd Doctor, you get the impression that the 2nd Doctor actually wasn't that well liked (during the 60's particularly by adult viewers) and they were the ones who had been switching off, the general view being it was becoming more silly and more of a kids show with monsters & hammy stories & so forth, hence the lower viewership. Sure this is simply an impression & maybe a generalisation but there maybe some truth to what happened, hence the radical departure executed for Season 7.

Speaking of which, although I'm not that keen on Pertwee's Doctor now, especially in this first year, I still like season 7. Sure some of the stories were too long, but I think this most applied to Ambassadors of Death (could have been 4, 5 max), Inferno (could have been 5) & The Silurians I think at 6 episodes, would have then been the best 6 parter of the 3rd Doctor. Why I wouldn't cut down The Silurians any more is -well it was such a great Malcolm Hulke story! It had a great twist to it, and to lessen it to under 6 parts I think would have meant you would have to depart from some of the story and build up across the episodes.

As for other changes -yes the longer 6 part stories that followed Season 7 were often the more boring stories too (aside from The Green Death & Invasion of the Dinosaurs), so I would have reduced them back as well. The Silurians themselves could have even made a reappearance in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, & you could have limited the use of some of the Dinosaur model work & making the Silurians less of a one trick pony (although it may have detracted from the story, I don't know..).

Agree about the Master being over used in season 8. I would have dismissed Colony in Space altogether -a poor story with little need for the Master either. I would have told the writer -sorry it doesn't work, write a story so we can get the Doctor somehow into space -yes, but as a quick fix let's bring back the cybermen (Jon, we know you don't really like them but tough).

Season 9, The Time Monster aside, was generally okay. Not sure if I would have tried to tweak. shorten that story or get rid of it altogether & replaced it with something else (no Master or Daleks though here in any replacement story -both over used during Pertwee's time).

Season 10 -no problems, all stories were okay to very good.

Season 11, I didn't like the last 2 stories, both overlong boring 6 parters. I also thought Sarah Jane's character (although like most other fans, I absolutely adored her), didn't really work nowhere as well with Pertwee as with Baker. So (in hindsight) maybe you could have beefed up Death to the Daleks (called it something else as it would be the 3rd Doctor's swan song) and ended it there with the Daleks causing him to reincarnate -that would have been original in itself ...although I'm sure Jon would have not agreed to his downfall being at the hands of the Daleks!

I could never understand why "The Doctor has to face his greatest Fear!!" (or words to that effect).
After Daleks, Axons, Silurians, Sea devils, The Master, Drashigs and Autons.......he's ermm....scared of spiders?? Come on - let's get real!