The First Doctor

Wanderer in the Fourth Dimension

(1963–1966)

Basic Data

First story: “An Unearthly Child” (1963)

Final story: “The Tenth Planet” (1966)

Final appearances: “The Three Doctors” (1972, played by William Hartnell) and “The Five Doctors” (1983, played by Richard Hurndall)

The Changing Face of Doctor Who In June 1963, Verity Lambert was hired by Sydney Newman, the head of drama of the British Broadcasting Corporation, to become producer of a new family science-fiction series. Lambert had never produced a television series. She had previously been an assistant to Newman, who had been brought in from Canada by one of the independent networks that was part of the private network ITV.

At ITV, Newman had created a string of hits, including Armchair Theatre and The Avengers, before being poached by the BBC. One of his first problems to solve was the gap between the sports results and the family entertainment programming later in the evening. Newman’s solution was Doctor Who, a program that evolved from a tortuous process that began as a committee-led investigation into how the BBC should do science-fiction serials. After much discussion and a few dead ends, Newman shepherded the development — which was mostly conceptualized by writer C.E. Webber — until it took shape as the show Newman envisaged: an older time traveller, a young girl and her two schoolteachers who have adventures in space and time. Newman wanted it to painlessly educate about history and science while avoiding bug-eyed monsters.

Newman felt that Lambert was the person to make this new series happen. She brought the program together, often through sheer force of will, struggling with scripts that weren’t quite right, abandoning many of them (the first story originally called for the time travellers to be shrunk to a few inches tall) and casting the main roles. In September 1963, she produced a first episode from a script by Anthony Coburn, which adapted C.E. Webber’s ideas … and had to remake it when Newman objected to, among other things, the harsh characterization of the older time traveller known as the Doctor.

The first episode was remounted with more polished direction, some tweaked dialogue and a softer Doctor. Lambert then had to fight the BBC upper echelons, who perceived the series to be too expensive. She managed to get a second broadcast of the first episode when the debut was overshadowed by the assassination of President Kennedy, which occurred the day before the series’ original airing. And somehow, over the objections of her boss, she managed to make the second serial, which featured mutants from a post-atomic world (and definitely not bug-eyed monsters) known as the Daleks.

By January 1964, six weeks after its debut, Doctor Who was more than just a schedule-filler on BBC Television. It was a hit.

Who is William Hartnell? Though he couldn’t have known it at the time, 1963 was the best year of William Hartnell’s career.

The 55-year-old veteran actor had played his fill of heavies (most notably in 1949’s Brighton Rock), police inspectors and army sergeants (most famously in the first Carry On film and the 1957–1961 comedy series The Army Game). But in 1963, everything changed.

January saw the release of This Sporting Life, Lindsay Anderson’s unflinching look at the life of a professional rugby player, portrayed by Richard Harris. Hartnell played a talent scout — an older, slightly unworldly relic of a bygone age of amateur sport. It was a beautiful, sensitive performance, what would now be considered a breakout role for the actor, in a hugely acclaimed film. Hartnell’s performance was noticed by Lambert, who thought he could play the character of the Doctor with the same quality that Frank Morgan played the Wizard of Oz in the eponymous 1939 film. Hartnell wasn’t as convinced, but liked the departure it offered from his usual roles.

The Doctor was originally envisioned as an anti-heroic figure who was quite harsh and almost villainous. The harshness was toned down when the first episode was re-made, and it gradually softened over the initial episodes. Hartnell ultimately settled on playing the Doctor as a grandfather figure and loved the positive public attention he received as a result.

But Hartnell was not well. As a heavy smoker, he suffered from arteriosclerosis, a hardening of the arteries that made it difficult for him to remember lines and made him irritable on set. After the original cast and production team moved on, and the rigours of producing a show 48 weeks a year took its toll, Hartnell became even more difficult; he was proprietorial about the role and outright hostile to anyone who challenged him. Production staff used code phrases to deal with Hartnell: “We should talk to the designer” meant “Get a producer to the studio floor, now.” Hartnell could often be placated, but not without considerable tension.

Eventually, this led to one of the bravest decisions ever made in Doctor Who’s history: that the show would continue without its lead actor. While this meant the end of William Hartnell’s association with the part, his portrayal was still hugely influential: he is the original Doctor.

Top Companion Initially, the Doctor is deeply mistrustful of his human companions, kidnapping them and going head to head with them on more than one occasion. But through history teacher Barbara Wright, that dynamic shifts. The Doctor becomes particularly affectionate towards her, while she in turn challenges him to be less cynical and mean. The Doctor becomes more humane, and human, in his attitudes thanks to Barbara’s influence.

Classic Foe Doctor Who would have been a fondly remembered, briefly run 1960s series — a minor curiosity for British TV geeks — were it not for the Daleks. Writer Terry Nation’s idea that these robotic creatures glide instead of walk, brilliantly realized by designer Raymond Cusick, was a game changer for the nascent series. Science-fiction television and film had lots of Robby the Robot–type lumbering men in suits, but the way the Daleks moved, and even spoke, made them seen genuinely alien. Nation’s further innovation — that they were mutants inside a robotic casing, not machines — gave them the xenophobic characterization that has made them so compelling over 50 years. The Daleks turned Doctor Who into an overnight sensation and defined the direction of the series, changing it from a program with forays into history and futuristic parables to a show with monsters.

Who is the Doctor? We know almost nothing about the Doctor when we first meet him. He says he’s from another time and world and lets out occasional hints about his past. (He says he can’t go back to his home planet in 1966’s “The Massacre.”) There’s no backstory; he’s just an old man with an impossible time machine.

Even so, when we first encounter the Doctor, he is not the hero he later becomes. The first glimpse of him in 1963’s “An Unearthly Child” finds him suspicious, bordering on paranoid, supercilious and even malicious. In his very first adventure, he contemplates killing a wounded caveman simply because he’s slowing them down. The following adventure, 1963’s “The Daleks,” is predicated on the Doctor manipulating his companions into believing they need to go to the Dalek city for mercury for a fluid link that is actually working — and he nearly kills his party from radiation poisoning as a result of that ruse.

In short, the Doctor is an absolute bastard. But this doesn’t remain the status quo.

The Doctor changes mostly through his relationships with Ian and Barbara. The Doctor at first is clearly not happy with having others question his decisions (he never quite gets over that in 50 years). After he almost forcibly ejects them from the ship because he believes they’ve caused a fault in the TARDIS, Barbara confronts the Doctor, insisting that their presence has helped him survive. Shamed by this, the Doctor comes to realize the value of having human friends. Barbara, in particular, becomes a confidante, and he trusts Ian with his life repeatedly. Perhaps it is the building of these friendships, and the softening of the Doctor as a result, that allows him to let his granddaughter, Susan, leave.

His enemies define him too. While his first encounter with the Daleks is something of an ordeal, by the time he meets them again, when they’re occupiers of the Earth in the 22nd century, he is ready to take them on as enemies, decrying their claim to be masters of Earth and immediately resisting them. As time goes on, the enemies he faces are not so much obstacles to getting back to the TARDIS as they are foes that need to be defeated.

The Doctor becomes less of an anti-heroic autocrat and more of a grandfather figure, not just to Susan but to everyone he travels with. He’s less malicious and more mischievous, giggling with delight when he’s outwitted an enemy. He’s charming to the string of companions he takes on after Ian and Barbara, though he still has moments of grouchiness. It’s as though travelling with humans has helped him define himself and his values. By the time of 1966’s “The Savages,” the Doctor is seen as a very moral figure — so much so that his sense of justice is actually transplanted into another person. That’s a far cry from the man who contemplated murder in the first story.

Even so, the Doctor remains alien. There’s no greater reminder of this than the final episode of 1966’s “The Tenth Planet” when the Doctor becomes mysteriously infirm and, at the end of the story, he falls to the floor of the TARDIS … and transforms.

Three Great Moments In 1964’s “The Aztecs,” Barbara has impersonated a god and is attempting to change history so that the Aztec people will survive the Spanish conquest. The Doctor gives her an impassioned speech, saying, “You can’t rewrite history. Not one line.” He then goes on to say that what she is doing is utterly impossible and adds, for emphasis, “I know. Believe me, I know.” Hartnell’s acting here is superb, hinting at a wealth of past pain solely through these two lines of dialogue.

“The Romans” (1965) finds the Doctor, through a chain of comic circumstances, mistaken for a popular lyre player who has to perform in the court of Emperor Nero. The Doctor borrows a page from Hans Christian Andersen and claims he’s playing the lyre so quietly it can only be heard by the most discerning ear. He then proceeds to entirely mime his “recital.” It’s performed exceptionally well by Hartnell, who excelled at comedic scenes like this.

A copy of the end of “The Massacre” doesn’t exist, but we still have the soundtrack, and it contains one of the most wonderful moments in the first Doctor’s era. Having fallen out with his companion Steven, the Doctor is left alone in the TARDIS, musing about his life: “Even after all this time he cannot understand. I dare not change the course of history … Now they’re all gone. All gone. None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan, or Vicki. And as for Barbara and Chatterton … Chesterton. They were all too impatient to get back to their own time. And now, Steven. Perhaps I should go home, back to my own planet. But I can’t. I can’t.” Don’t believe the docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time, which portrays William Hartnell doing this scene in a fog of near-dementia. In actuality, Hartnell was totally on form and captured the Doctor at his most world-weary and sad. Unforgettable.

Two Embarrassing Moments In 1965’s “The Chase,” the Daleks are pursuing the Doctor through time. At one point, the TARDIS lands on the Empire State Building, where they meet Morton Dill, a “Well, gol-l-l-eee!” stereotype of a dense American from Alabama. WATCH as he can’t pronounce complicated words! MARVEL as he says “hot diggety” and “Gol darn it”! GASP as he even gives the story its title, saying “Y’all is in a chase”! SHUDDER as he confronts a Dalek by putting his face in its weapon! Neither of us is even from the U.S. (it’s a smaller country, on our southern border), but this is not just offensive, it’s downright dumb. The only redeeming thing about Morton Dill is actor Peter Purves, whom they re-hired to play companion Steven Taylor a few episodes later. Though thankfully with no resemblance to his American doppelgänger.

We’re pretty sure we want one of the embarrassing moments from 1965’s “The Web Planet.” We’re just not sure which one. So let’s put it to the vote and see what you think. Is it “What if the power’s that’s got hold of the TARDIS has taken your pen?” Is it the Zarbi running full-force into the camera? Is it the slow-motion sky-dancing by men dressed as butterflies hanging on Kirby wires? Is it the awkward shuffling of the Optera as they hop along while wearing obvious foam extensions? Or is it the entire six-episode story? Answers to whoisthedoctor@gemgeekorrarebug.com please.

Hmm? (GB) We’re here today writing this book, and you’re probably here reading it, because in 1963 this goofy show designed to fill a need for family programming on Saturday nights caught the imagination of the British public. And the curmudgeonly, mischievous titular grandfather was a big part of that.

Or was he?

The thing about Doctor Who that’s hard to get now is that, while the Doctor was the catalyst of many adventures (he did drive the time machine after all), he wasn’t necessarily the hero. The Doctor was part of a character ensemble that included a brainy history teacher and a no-nonsense action man of a science teacher. Plots unfolded as much around Ian and Barbara as they did the Doctor.

Perhaps that’s why the first Doctor seems so different to modern viewers. Because he’s not the proactive let’s-go-adventuring-and-take-down-monsters central character we all know today. But that’s one of the reasons I find this era of Doctor Who so fascinating: watching a series take the first three years or so to develop its lead.

When the Doctor does take centre stage, it’s in little moments. Like standing up to the Daleks in their second appearance. (“Conquered the Earth? You poor, pathetic creatures. Don’t you realize? Before you attempt to conquer the Earth, you will have to destroy all living matter.”) Or sparring with the Animus in “The Web Planet.” Or outwitting the Meddling Monk in “The Time Meddler.” By “The War Machines,” at the close of Doctor Who’s third season, it’s the Doctor, not Ben (the younger male lead), taking on the monsters directly.

Through it all, we have William Hartnell, an actor vastly underrated by history. In 2013, the BBC unearthed interview footage of Hartnell from 1967 and it became instantly apparent how much a creation of the actor his Doctor was. The Doctor’s manner and inflections of speech — even his accent — are distinct from Hartnell’s own; they’re all part of the role. (Roles, even: the character he plays in the broadcast version of “An Unearthly Child” is quieter, more thoughtful and devious than the one he settled on, and that’s ignoring the unbroadcast version of the first episode.)

Here I need to make a confession: I never liked William Hartnell’s Doctor when I was growing up. Troughton charmed me; Pertwee was lovely; Tom Baker was my unofficial god. But William Hartnell was … of his time, I concluded. My co-author once quipped that William Hartnell was his favourite Doctor and I accused him of lying. (Alcohol might have been involved.) Before the restoration processes that made those early episodes more accessible, almost no one would have said that Hartnell was a favourite.

But it’s thanks to those stories being released on DVD in a more watchable form that I looked on Hartnell’s Doctor in a new light. I realized how talented Hartnell was as an actor. He knew how to make a closeup say everything. He could play the hell out of a comedic scene. He did pathos equally beautifully. He fluffed lines, but he also acted the pants off most people in a scene with him. I began to realize that, even when the Doctor is taking a back seat, he’s often the most compelling character in the story.

I gradually came to realize an amazing truth: the key to understanding the Doctor is that he’s many men in one man (for the moment anyway), even with the first Doctor. He is sullen, grumpy, manipulative, mischievous, amused, affectionate, paternal, a joker and a sad old man. William Hartnell made all these qualities seamlessly part of the same man. And that man was the Doctor.

Second Opinion (RS?) In 2013, as part of the fiftieth anniversary mega-celebration of Doctor Who, Mark Gatiss produced an historical drama based on the genesis of the show, An Adventure in Space and Time. This was something of an oddity: it showed the behind-the-scenes story of the people involved in the very beginning of Doctor Who: Sydney Newman, Verity Lambert, Waris Hussein. But the star of the show is very clearly William Hartnell.

The idea that anyone other than hardcore geeks would be remotely interested in a dramatization of bureaucratic meetings, set design and science-fiction-as-designed-by-committee is astonishing. And yet An Adventure in Space and Time was the sixth-most-watched show on BBC2 that week. It’s not merely wonderful; it’s arguably the best thing that was made for the fiftieth anniversary.

Because what Adventure does is capture something at the core of Doctor Who. People struggling with something bigger than they were, facing overwhelming odds and pulling a massive success out of the fire exactly mirrors the wonder of the show itself. And by the time Hartnell himself appears, in footage from his farewell to Susan in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” you’ll be weeping buckets of tears.

As Graeme says, I loved William Hartnell’s Doctor long before it was cool to do so. I think his Doctor is a fascinating one, the era he spans is a creative potpourri that was continually pushing the envelope, and the various cul-de-sacs that they didn’t quite go down make for fascinating insights into where the show might have gone before it found its feet. Hartnell himself is a superb actor, playing to the back row of some other theatre, but in such a way that balances the strength of the character’s personality without making him over the top.

One of the things I love most about the Hartnell years is the boundary busting. Even in the ’60s, they’re simultaneously discovering and trying to invert Doctor Who’s format. The TARDIS lands in two time zones, millions of years apart, in “The Ark,” providing one hell of a shock cliffhanger. There’s the 12-episode-long epic battle that is “The Daleks’ Master Plan,” including a comedy Christmas episode in the middle. “The Rescue” is a quiet two-parter that is there solely to introduce a new companion, on the grounds that we’ve never had that happen before. There’s a story populated entirely by aliens (“The Web Planet”). Another story, “The War Machines,” anticipated the worldwide dominance of the internet by 35 years. If you look at just about any Hartnell story, you can see the attempts to prod and poke the series, to see what’s possible. It’s about the only era of Doctor Who that doesn’t have a house style, and I love it for that.

I used to have to explain to sceptics (like my co-author) that the Hartnell era didn’t survive the transition to the video age very well because it was never designed that way. You’re supposed to watch it one episode a week, not marathon a seven-episode story in one sitting. But I’m not sure I need to do that any more, because there’s been something of a sea change.

When the Modern Series appeared, I figured its fanbase would only rarely check out the Classic Series. I thought it was too old, too creaky and too monochrome for viewers raised on modern television. You also had the immediate problem of so many missing episodes in the early years. Surely all these factors would put people off? Happily, I was entirely wrong about this. Entirely. What’s more, those new fans really surprised me. I’ve seen teenage fangirls ship Ian and Barbara, cosplay Vicki and live-tweet their way through a telesnap reconstruction.

However, the reason all this is possible is because back then Doctor Who wasn’t being made as throwaway weekly television. Instead, as An Adventure in Space and Time shows, it was being made as though it were high art. That’s because those who worked on the series, who made the magic happen, weren’t the staid professional men of the old BBC. Instead, you had the first female producer at the BBC, a gay Anglo-Indian director and an eccentric Canadian who came from a background in kitchen-sink dramas. And it all pivoted around a larger-than-life film actor who was at once cantankerous, bullying and loveable. Misfits, outsiders and oddballs, every one of them. People who didn’t fit in, but who were driven by a passion for something greater than they were and who were determined to use their creative energies for all they were worth, no matter what anyone thought.

In short, they were just like us, the generations of fans who followed behind them. And that’s one hell of an adventure.