DOCTOR
WHO

The Hartnell Years : An Era Of Excellence, Variety And Daleks...
by Timothy Farr

Mention the words 'November fog' to any telefantasy fan, and one of two images will come forward in their minds. The first is a tall wooden box with a flashing light on top, the fixed guise of the most famous TARDIS on television. A Police Box, monochrome in this instance, though to be blue from 1970.

The second image is of a face. A tight chin tucked under a thin but flexible mouth. Above this the wing-like folds of the cheeks flutter from a delicate Roman nose. The eyes are alive and grey and charming. Above there are two slight eyebrows and from there the lines of the forehead, like broad steps set into the pale skin, climb high before culminating in a fountain of ghostly white hair. It is the face of William Hartnell, the first and definitive Doctor, for he made the role and he shaped the mould.

Of course, he didn‘t do this all on his own. First there was Sydney Newman and his two or three year old idea of a forgetful traveller with a time machine bigger inside than out. Doctor Who was not, of course, created in 1963, it is merely the year in which a combination of circumstance and creative talent meant that it could be first produced.

The first of these circumstances is of course the appointment of Sydney Newman (the first of our creative talents) as Drama Head of BBC television (just the one channel in those early days). A crude Canadian who had made a name for himself at ABC tv, where he had created The Avengers. He also has two other telefantasy credits, at the BBC, Pathfinders In Space and after Doctor Who, Adam Adamant Lives! which was actually inspired by his opinion of Mary Whitehouse as a Victorian living in the 1960s.

The other important circumstance was the search for a programme to replace the children‘s classic serials that would retain the child audience and capture the sports fans of Grandstand before it and the teenage viewers of Juke Box Jury after it. Newman submitted a three-page memo, outlining his idea and in the absence of anything better, he was told to get on with it.

Newman passed the idea onto Donald Wilson‘s serials department, thus guaranteeing another vital element in the character of Doctor Who, particularly during the Hartnell era — the cliff-hanger.

Before Newman had even appointed a producer, Wilson chose David Whitaker as the series first, and most dedicated script (or story) editor. Between September 1963 and his death in April 1980, Whitaker story edited 52 episodes, wrote 40 episodes, the screenplays for both films, a stage play, two novels based on televised stories and 104 Dalek comic strip instalments for TV Century 21, as well as numerous short stories and articles for books and annuals.

As Whitaker worked to flesh out Newman‘s memo into a writer‘s guide, Verity Lambert, the series inexperienced but decisive first producer, found the face that would front all this talent, the late, great William Hartnell.

Though the BBC and Newman insisted he tone it down, Hartnell initially played the Doctor as truly alien. In the pilot episode in particular, he creates a vivid impression of a man living amidst a civilisation and a species with which he has neither sympathy nor common ground. That this is because he has remained on Earth for considerably longer than he intended would only be confirmed at the end of the sixties by the second Doctor‘s horror at his sentence of exile there. Certainly he has been there longer than expected because when Susan says she loves England in the twentieth century, she continues 'the last six months have been the happiest of my life'. The next three episodes, dubbed The Tribe Of Gum, are rather lack-lustre and none of those involved were truly happy with them. The story that followed, however, is a real classic. The impact of the seven episodes of The Daleks sent shockwaves throughout the science-fiction audience in a way that nothing (not even Star Trek) has done since, though the film Destination: Moon had done so a decade or two earlier. Both Doctor Who and a young writer by the name of Terry Nation now had it made. There are so many details that make the Daleks inhuman: their voices, their travel machines, their lack of individual identity, their lack of compassion, - even their city is visibly built for Daleks, with doors too low for humans and an absence of any furniture or decoration. Having witnessed the debut of the most famous fictional aliens ever created, viewers eagerly awaited the next temporal terror. They were to be disappointed. A clever two episode character study followed The Daleks and then:
For the next seven weeks, accurately demonstrating Doctor Who‘s integral variety, never more prominent than during the Hartnell years, viewers were treated to the superb historical costume drama Marco Polo. With excellent dialogue and exquisite design work, it easily supported the BBC‘s reputation in this area.

The patience of the monster hungry viewers was rewarded in The Sea Of Death, which opened Terry Nation‘s second serial, The Keys Of Marinus. One story wonders, the Voord, were introduced. They proved to be a race of characterless assassins in wetsuits, but they were the protagonists of a pacey quest saga as the travellers seek the eponymous keys during five adventures within the six episodes.

Back to Earth for The Aztecs, a four part fifteenth century study of the indelible nature of recorded history as Barabara tries to dissuade the eponymous civilisation from human sacrifice. Special mention for the late Jacqueline Hill amidst a whole host of polished performances — I‘ve yet to see a negative review of this story.

Then there is the somewhat neglected six part The Sensorites, a timid civilisation who are the victims of man‘s inhumanity to his fellow species, with the time travellers the victims of the Sensorites reaction to this outrage.

Season one concluded with a classic, long overdue for video release, in The Reign Of Terror. This, perhaps more than any story, is where the Doctor starts to be seen as a hero, albeit still a cunning and devious one, as he struggles by all manner of deceptions to free his companions from the conciergerie.

Irwin Allen‘s Land Of The Giants was pre-empted by Doctor Who‘s Planet Of The Giants, but then: 'The Daleks Are Back', screamed the classic Radio Times cover, as Skaro‘s most dangerous export invaded Earth (both televisually and, at least in toyshop and Christmas list terms, literally). Daleks underwater. Daleks manipulating human minds. Daleks assisted by nightmarish pets and engaged in a fiendish scheme to transform the entire planet. The story is also notable for the first, and one of the most eloquent, farewell scenes: 'Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.' We seem to have come full circle, and yet there‘s so much more to this remarkable and magical period: The dramatic Dalek/Mechonoid fight at the conclusion of The Chase. The simple but effective shattering and reconstitution of a glass of water in The Space Museum to illustrate jumping a time track. Hartnell‘s brilliant dual performance in The Massacre and his regeneration after encountering the earliest Cybermen in The Tenth Planet. The comedy of The Romans. The pan-galactic high drama of The Dalek Masterplan. The playful suspense of The Celestial Toymaker. To give the last word to Hartnell‘s Doctor, as scripted by the industrious Mr. Whitaker: 'If you come with me, I‘ll show you all this and it will be, I assure you, the dullest part of it all'

© Tim Farr, 2006