On
Saturday, 23 November, 1963, Doctor Who
aired on BBC television for the very first time. Twelve weeks from
today, it will be Saturday, 23 November, 2013—fifty years to the
day after that original airing, and the show is still going strong.
It’s had its ups and downs, of course, including sixteen years
during which only one new television production aired. But even
during that time, it continued in other forms. Doctor Who
is the world’s longest-running science fiction television series,
and also holds the Guiness World Record for most successful sci-fi
series in the world. It has become an enduring icon of British
television, and in recent years, has achieved phenomenal success in
the rest of the world as well. According to a recent international
trailer for the 50th anniversary, the show has over 77 million fans
worldwide, a number that seems to be continually growing.
Doctor
Who has also had a huge effect
on me throughout my life, both growing up and as an adult. While
other TV shows—many of which I fondly remember,
while others lie
forgotten—come and go, Doctor Who
lives on constantly in my mind and thoughts. It has shaped me in very
perceptible ways. I became a full-fledged fan at the age of ten, but
I was well aware of the show for years before that—scared stiff of
it, yet somehow intrigued and drawn to it.
In
recognition of all this and of its upcoming 50th anniversary in
November, I’d like to take a look back at my own history with the
show. A couple of years ago, when I wrote my review
of The Sarah Jane Adventures episode “Sky”,
I also wrote about my introduction to Doctor
Who.
Last year, on the 49th anniversary, I mentioned that I might write
a more detailed account of it this year. Well, that’s what this
is—and more. Over the next twelve weeks, I’m going to examine my
life with Doctor Who
one Doctor at a time, one per week, and then on the final week, a
look at the spin-offs and expanded universe. I will look at my
earliest childhood memories of the show, how and when I fell in love
with it, and all the way up to my current experiences and how I
struggle with loving a programme that I now find so problematic. Of
course, my exposure to Doctor
Who
wasn’t in order. After all, the show is older than I am. However,
the Doctor is a Time Lord. He doesn’t have to do things in order,
so neither do I. So I will look at the Doctors in order, even though
it’s not in the order of my life. It just seems fitting somehow. So
naturally, I begin with the first Doctor, William Hartnell.
The
show was nearly ten years old when I was born in August of 1973.
William Hartnell had already left the programme. So had Patrick
Troughton. Both Hartnell and Troughton had already returned for the
10th anniversary story, “The Three Doctors”. Jon Pertwee was the
current Doctor and the first Doctor I ever saw, although (as I’ll
get to in my reflections on the third and fourth Doctors) Tom Baker
later somehow insinuated
himself into my original memories of Jon Pertwee. As such, for quite
some time as a young boy, Tom Baker was the only Doctor I was aware
of. I had never heard of William Hartnell. The first I ever heard of
other Doctors was when a school teacher (I can’t remember the
context) mentioned that there had been several Doctors. However, my
young mind at the time rationalized that as meaning there were
different Doctors for different countries in the world. Here in
Canada, we had Tom Baker. Yeah, I was really young.
That
mention of other Doctors went out of my mind—I forgot it
entirely—until several months after I became a fan in full. That
year, my parents bought me the Doctor
Who Annual
for Christmas and it had a picture of Peter Davison on the cover. I
looked at it and my first reaction was, “That’s not the Doctor!
Who’s that?” I was confused, but at my mother’s urging, I
opened the book and looked inside. The first thing in the book was a
short article about the five Doctors, complete with artwork of each
one. For the first time, I began to learn the history of this show
that I had recently fallen in love with, and this was my first ever
exposure to William Hartnell.
At
the time, that exposure was little more than a name, a picture, and a
few very brief details about his period of the show. It would be a
long time before I actually got to watch any episodes with the first
Doctor. Until then, there were the novels. During my early years of
reading Target Doctor Who
novels at various local libraries,
I often gravitated very quickly to any that had pictures of the
earlier Doctors on the cover, as I really wanted to know about the
early years. It often bugged me that not every book pictured the
Doctor on the cover. Since I didn’t have access to any episode
guides, I often had no idea which Doctor a story might involve if
there wasn’t a picture on the cover, and the back cover blurbs
never specified which Doctor. Sometimes, a companion might be
mentioned on the back cover and I’d recognize which Doctor that
companion travelled with, but often, no companion was mentioned, or I
didn’t recognize the one that was. At that time, I knew of Susan,
and I soon came to learn of Ian and Barbara, but the first Doctor had
a lot of other companions that I knew nothing about.
I
remember reading Doctor Who in
an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks
at some point early on. I had found a hardcover copy in my school
library. I had never seen a hardcover Doctor
Who book
before, so this one particularly intrigued me. It was also written in
first person, which was utterly strange for Doctor
Who
novels. Of course, I now know a great deal more about the mysterious
book. It was written by David Whitaker, Doctor
Who’s
first script editor, and was a novelization of the original story
featuring the Daleks. Originally published in 1964, it was the
first-ever Doctor Who
book (although I have no idea if the copy I read from was a first
printing or not).
Through
reading those old Doctor Who
novelizations, I slowly started to piece
together
a bit of the show’s history, and I slowly started learning about
the earlier Doctors. But it was a very incomplete view. The majority
of the novels always seemed to feature
the third or fourth Doctor, and ones with the first seemed to be
exceedingly rare. And while I know now that Doctor
Who episode
guides existed, along with other behind-the-scenes material, such
things were nowhere to be found where I was growing up. It was hard
enough just finding old copies of the Target books. My knowledge of
the first Doctor remained at the level of two Dalek stories (“The
Daleks” and “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”), and maybe one or
two other stories. That was about it.
It
wasn’t until the mid-eighties that I finally got a more complete
impression
of the early Doctors. My great uncle wrote to the BBC on my behalf
asking for background information on the show. In return, they sent
me a complete episode guide! For the first time, I knew the names of
all the William Hartnell stories (and Patrick Troughton and so on),
including how many episodes each one had.
On current Doctor Who,
it was rare for a story to be anything other than four episodes, so I
was quite surprised
to see all sorts of bizarre lengths: seven episodes, three, even
twelve! Unfortunately, this episode guide had no information beyond
titles, number of episodes, and brief notes on companions joining and
leaving, but it was a start. Over the next few years, I would finally
start to find copies of various information books (the local book
stores were finally starting to carry them), such as Peter Haining’s
books: A Celebration,
The Key to Time,
and 25 Glorious Years.
Throughout
all this time, however, I still had never actually seen
a William Hartnell episode. How could I have? The only TV station we
got that carried Doctor Who
was TVOntario, and they never repeated sixties stories. They even
skipped “The Five Doctors”, so I didn’t get to see Richard
Hurndall’s version of the first Doctor. Home video was only just
starting up. The very few Doctor
Who
stories released locally were exclusively
Tom Baker stories. In recent years, I’ve heard fans reminisce about
passing around bootlegged, multi-generational copies, but I certainly
knew nothing of that at the time. I doubt it was going on in my home
city of London, Ontario. In London at the time, it was incredibly
difficult to find anyone who would even admit
to watching Doctor Who
(or any science fiction other than Star
Trek),
never mind anyone who might actually possess copies of episodes!
Nevertheless, I did manage—quite unexpectedly—to acquire a VHS
copy of “The Seeds of Death” before
it was released on video in North America. That story became the
first sixties story I ever watched. But I’ll go into details about
that next week when I talk about the Second Doctor.
My
first ever viewing of William Hartnell finally occurred when “The
Five Doctors” was released on VHS in North America. A friend and I
specially ordered copies from a local comic book store, which carried
some science fiction videos. We were initially looked at
unbelievingly when we said we wanted Doctor
Who videos.
We didn’t specifically order “The Five Doctors”. We were just
interested in getting any.
The store staff
said they’d look into it. Well, a few weeks later, they got three
stories in (the three most recent releases at the time), and carried
them exclusively for close to a year, refusing to order any other
stories (because the other stories weren’t “as popular”). One
of those was “The Five Doctors” and I grabbed that one first. The
story opens with a brief clip from “The Dalek Invasion of
Earth”—the Doctor’s famous departing speech to Susan. For the
first time ever, I heard William Hartnell’s voice and saw him move.
I was ecstatic. He was the only Doctor I hadn’t seen yet, so seeing
him briefly in this story was like the fulfilment of a long quest.
There was still so much more I hadn’t seen, but at least I had seen
something!
I also had Richard Hurndall’s performance to go by, since I had
read that he had given a remarkable William Hartnell impersonation in
the story. Alas, that’s something I actually disagree with now. I
don’t think Hurndall did a very good Hartnell impersonation at all,
which is disappointing as, for about a year or so, his performance
was virtually all I had to go on, and it coloured my initial
impression of William Hartnell.
Luckily,
I would soon get to see the first Doctor stories for real. In 1989,
YTV acquired the Canadian license for Doctor
Who.
The very first episode they aired was, oddly, “The Happiness
Patrol” part one. They were starting with season 25 (season 26 was
just starting in England), but aired “The Happiness Patrol” and
“Remembrance of the Daleks” in reverse order. They did this with
every future repeat, too. I have no idea why. Anyway, the voice-over
during the closing credits of “The Happiness Patrol” part one
suddenly announced that not only were the new episodes airing on
Sunday evenings, but on weekday evenings, they would be airing
everything,
starting with the very first Doctor—every episode in order (well,
minus the missing episodes, but they didn’t actually announce
that).
I
rushed home from school the very next day and, to my pure delight,
got to see “An Unearthly Child”. Not only that, I taped it! It
annoyingly had commercial breaks. It took a while to get used to that
on YTV, as TVOntario didn’t have commercial breaks, but it was a
minor annoyance. I had finally gotten to see a William Hartnell
episode of Doctor Who!
And over the next few months, I would get to see (and
tape)
all the William Hartnell stories that still existed in their
entirety. Of course, I knew all about the missing episodes by then,
but I often wondered during that time what less-informed viewers
thought about what seemed to be unexplained jumps. The first two
seasons were fairly complete, so it probably wasn’t as noticeable,
but starting in the third season, companions would suddenly change
from story to story. YTV made an announcement when the second Doctor
stories started up that seasons four and five would “not be seen
outside of the U.K.”, but other than that, there was no information
ever offered about the missing stories. To be honest, I’m not
really sure what they could have said.
Although
I had finally seen all the complete William Hartnell stories, there
were still the episodes from incomplete stories—stories where only
some, but not all the episodes were missing. Eventually, those
started to become available on home video releases such as The
Hartnell Years.
But even once those were available, the missing episodes remained
unseen. Naturally, they remain unseen, apart from the very few that
have been rediscovered in recent years, such as the third part of
“Galaxy Four” two years ago. But nonetheless, there’s still a
way to experience those episodes: the audio recordings. In much the
same way that I taped Doctor
Who
on VHS in the 80’s, fans in the 60’s taped them on audio
cassettes. Those have all
been
gathered and professionally restored and made publicly available.
It’s
actually only in the last couple of years that I’ve finally been
able to acquire the audios of all the missing episodes and listen to
them. Although there’s added narration to fill in the missing
visual details, it’s not quite the same experience as watching the
episodes. Nonetheless, it’s still a way to experience these
episodes, and many of them have left me hungering to see them one day
for real. I hope against hope that all those episodes will one day be
recovered and I’ll be able to watch stories like “The Myth
Makers” and “The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Eve”.
Animated
stories is another way to view missing episodes. The two missing
episodes of “The Reign of Terror” have been animated, and the
final episode of “The Tenth Planet” will soon be available in
animated form on its DVD release. There are telesnap reconstructions
as well. Many 60’s Doctor
Who
episodes were professionally photographed during transmission. If
watched in succession, timed to the audio, they can provide another
way to experience the episodes. Nothing will ever quite measure up to
the real thing, however. Rumours of the recovery of a large haul of
missing Doctor Who
episodes have been circulating for quite some time now. While I
remain cautiously sceptical, I sincerely
hope some part of those rumours turns out to be true.
William
Hartnell was immensely important to Doctor
Who.
Without him, there would be no show. His Doctor laid down the
foundation from which all other Doctors have sprung. His importance
in the show’s history should never be understated. However, I can’t
deny his time on Doctor Who
is not the time that has most affected my life as
a viewer and fan.
His period on the show is a highly enjoyable one, but it didn’t
shape me the way other periods have. This isn’t any sort of
indictment against Hartnell. He was a brilliant actor and a damn good
Doctor. However, he wasn’t my first Doctor. He was actually my
eighth Doctor, and discovering him was so piecemeal, it’s not
surprising he’s had less of an impact on me and less of an
influence. Still, I will never forget the thrill of seeing that
opening moment of “The Five Doctors” or watching “An Unearthly
Child” for the first time. Moments like those are priceless.
Next
week, I’ll look at the Patrick Troughton years, which in many ways,
came into my life in an even more piecemeal way than the Hartnell
years.
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