Alan Kistler's History of Doctor Who - First Doctor
Tuesday, January 8, 2008 at 09:48AM This is a companion piece to my Chronology of the First Doctor.
This is part of my series of essays concerning the In-Depth History of Doctor Who.
IN THE BEGINNING . . .
It started with an episode called "An Unearthly Child." Audiences knew the show would be called Doctor Who, but few really knew what it was about. Many guessed it was supposed to be a medical drama such as Dr. Kildare. The show began with a theme song that was incredibly unique for 1963, sounding more akin to a techno tune one might have composed in more modern times. Strange swirling shapes filled the screen as the "haunting music" got louder and the title materialized in the center of the screen. We then faded into a foggy London night. Gates that read I.M. FOREMAN SCRAP YARD opened before us. Amidst the junk, we saw a police box humming mysteriously.
Police boxes were an invention that served English police before they all began using portable radios. Essentially, a police box was a tiny prison cell with a phone attached to it. If you needed help, you just picked up the phone and had a direct line to the police department rather than having to find the nearest pay phone or knock on someone’s door. If you had a suspect with you but wanted to have back-up before you brought him in, you could lock him inside the police box and call the department for assistance. Police boxes could be found on the street in different areas of a city. So why, audiences wondered, was this particular police box in a junkyard, humming as if it were a machine?
Cut to the Coal Hill School. Two teachers, Ian Chesterton (science) and Barbara Wright (history), were discussing an unusual student, 16-year-old "Susan Foreman." Susan was absolutely brilliant in fields of science
and certain parts of history, but was very ignorant of every day things. She didn’t know how many shilling made a pound, explaining that she thought English money worked on a decimal system. When Barbara said that wasn't so, Susan then remarked "of course, the decimal system hasn't started yet" (in fact, England wouldn't adopt a decimal system for their money until years later). Ian also noted that Susan had once remarked how one of the problems he'd posted was impossible to solve if you only used "three of the dimensions," claiming that the 4th and 5th dimension needed to be considered as well.
When Barbara asked Susan if she could meet with her parents, Susan said that was impossible. She only lived with her grandfather, a doctor, and he refused to have visitors. Out of curiosity, Barbara went out to the address on Susan's record but found out that 76 Totter's Lane had no house, only Foreman's scrap yard. Susan's last name was Foreman. Did her family own the place and for some reason she stayed here rather than her own home?
Barbara couldn't let go of such a mystery. Convincing Ian to join her, they drove to I.M. FOREMAN SCRAP YARD on 76 Totter's Lane and waited for some time. Later that evening, Susan showed up and went inside the yard. They followed but couldn't find her. There was nothing but junk and the police box. Ian frowned as he touched the box, feeling a strange vibration as if it were a machine. "It's alive!" he remarked.
Moments later, a strange old man in a Victorian coat, checkered pants and a dark cloak walked into the yard. The old man was played by William Hartnell, a popular British actor. He didn't realize it but this role would truly make him immortal.
As the old man began to unlock the door to the police box, Barbara and Ian heard Susan's voice from within. The old man then noticed he had visitors and he quickly put his keys away and acted as if he'd just been wandering about the scrap yard. When the teachers approached him, he evaded questions about who he was and tried to persuade them to leave. Each time they said they'd heard Susan's voice coming from inside the box, the old man would smile and either give a remark about the foolishness of it all or would act as if he'd suddenly become distracted by some random object lying nearby. Ian didn't trust him, realizing this old man was more cunning than he was trying to let on.
The teachers then heard Susan's voice again from the police box and this time they forced their way inside, fearing that the girl was being held prisoner for some reason. Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton were stunned when they found themselves stepping into an enormous room with strange walls, a chair, a grandfather clock and a hexagonal control console decorated with dials, switches, buttons and levers and possessing a large glass cylinder in the middle (the "time rotor"). Barbara and Ian realized that this was where Susan lived and that this cagey old man was actually her grandfather, but they couldn't understand where they were. Here was a room that couldn't possibly fit inside a police box. What's more, there were corridors leading to yet other rooms and hallways.
Susan called their lair the TARDIS, from the initials which stood for "Time And Relative Dimension In Space." Apparently, the TARDIS had its own dimension within its walls, allowing it to be larger inside than the dimensions outside let you believe and enabling it to travel anywhere in time and space. Years later, the third incarnation of the Doctor would call the TARDIS "dimensionally transcendental."
Although the TARDIS had many rooms and corridors, the Control Room (which started to be called the Console Room when the Fifth Doctor appeared) held the control console, the time rotor and the scanner screen
(allowing you to see what was outside the ship) and so it was this room that became the place audiences would see the most often.
Barbara and Ian tried to explain to Susan that this place was impossible and must have been an optical illusion performed by her grandfather. The Doctor said to Susan that Barbara and Ian's reaction was natural considering how primitive Earth technology was. He remarked to Ian, "The children of my civilization would be insulted."
"Your civilization?" Ian asked. "Yes, my civilization," the Doctor answered, enjoying that Ian was off-balance. He added, "I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it."
The mysterious Doctor then stood beside his grandchild and asked the teachers, "Have you ever wondered what it's like to be wanderers in the 4th dimension? Have you? ... To be EXILES? Susan and I are cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day, we shall get back … yes, one day …"
Susan confirmed this claim of his, explaining to Ian and Barbara that she was not from Earth nor could she be considered a human being. "I was born on another world. Another time."
The Doctor decided it was too dangerous for the teachers to be allowed to leave because of the risk that they might speak to others about the TARDIS and its occupants. It seemed strange that he feared discovery from human authorities when he had the means to leave England and 1963 all together. The Doctor's fear of being found was the first clue to audiences that there were others beyond Earth who may have been hunting the strange old man through time and space, perhaps the same people who'd exiled him.
Concerning this exile, another clue was given in the Doctor's third TV adventure "The Edge of Destruction." During this story, the Doctor was knocked unconscious. When he was roused at one point, he muttered in a daze, "I can't take you back, Susan. I can't!" This remark was never explained. Maybe Susan had stowed away on her grandfather's TARDIS, not realizing this would make her an exile like him, or maybe he took her for his own reasons. Whatever the circumstance, the Doctor confirmed in the later adventure "The Sensorites" that he and Susan had been traveling alone for at least a few years before landing in 1963 and had visited a few of Earth's other historical periods.
Back to the intro story. Not knowing what else to do to prevent Ian and Barbara from talking (killing them was not an option he even considered), and wishing to prove to the subborn Ian that this machine was everything he said it was, the Doctor began activating the controls to make a time-jump. Realizing what he was doing, Susan tried to get her grandfather away from the console. The two struggled, causing the controls to go wild and forcing the TARDIS to make a completely random trip.
When the TARDIS landed, the Doctor found that one of his instruments (what he called his "year-o-meter") had finally kicked out, now making it impossible for him to navigate the ship's trips through time. And since he and Susan had accidentally entered random coordinates, he couldn't simply reverse the journey and return the school teachers back to England 1963. If he was going to get Ian and Barbara home, he'd just have to keep trying and hope that he eventually landed back on Earth 1963 by sheer luck.
Ian was still not convinced that this thing was a time/space ship until the Doctor opened the doors and shocked him by revealing that they were no longer in England but in some primitive part of Earth's past. When Ian tried to question the Doctor further, he called him "Doctor Foreman" (since he was, after all, Susan Foreman's grandfather) and the mysterious alien muttered "Doctor WHO? What’s he talking about?" Obviously, then, Susan took the last name "Foreman" from the gate on the junkyard. Whether "Susan" was even her real name or a name she had adopted, like "the Doctor", was never revealed.
IAN: "Who is he? Doctor WHO? Perhaps if we knew his name we'd have some clue about all this."
Ignoring Ian's questions, the Doctor stepped out onto the landscape of primitive Earth, ready to explore. But he
was shocked to see that his ship still looked like a blue police box.
Susan then explained to Ian and Barbara that the TARDIS had a special device (later referred to as a "chameleon circuit") which allowed it to disguise itself as something different depending on wherever or whenever it landed. If you were in ancient Rome, it would look like a statue or a pillar. If you landed in a swamp, it might take the appearance of a gnarled tree. When the Chameleon Circuit was turned off, the TARDIS looked like a stand-alone booth with a sliding door that looked just large enough to hold two adult people. But obviously the chameleon circuit of the Doctor's TARDIS was as fault as much of its other equipment. It had gotten stuck on the disguise it had adopted when they first arrived in England in the early 1960's.
And so, for the rest of the show, wherever the Doctor went he knew he could never disguise his presence completely. Many aliens on many worlds would talk about the strange adventurer who could always be identified by the mysterious blue wooden box he traveled in.
THE FIRST DOCTOR AND HIS CREW
Thus began the series. Ian and Barbara were lost in time now, stuck with Susan, an alien teenager, and her grandfather, a man who was unwilling to reveal anything about his past, even his name or exactly what kind of Doctor he was (or if the title was honorary or self-appointed). In their first adventure in time and space, the Doctor seemed to tolerate his new human companions at best, not really wishing their company and finding their behavior primitive and naive. He was a crotchety and opinionated man who seemed to be motivated by an obsessive need to explore the unknown. To simply leave a planet without finding out its name and nature was completely unacceptable.
This obsession to investigate anything that was even remotely a mystery often led the Doctor and his crew into dangerous situations, such as when they explored a seemingly abandoned city on the planet Skaro only to find it teeming with Daleks, a race of alien warriors who would become the Doctor's most hated enemies. But rather than run away whenever he found danger, the Doctor would become determined to stop the forces of those he considered evil. First they'd been school teachers, then accidental abductees. Now Ian and Barbara found themselves time and time again in the roll of heroes.
As they spent more time together and were forced to cooperate in order to survive various threats, the relationship between the Doctor and his new companions changed. Despite his gruff disposition, he obviously loved his granddaughter and was deeply protective of her. Seeing that Ian and Barbara also acted protectively of Susan, and of each other, the Doctor was moved and began to display a gentler nature towards them. He still argued with Ian on several points, but he also came to appreciate the human man's friece determination, moral code and survival instinct. Likewise, while he found Barbara too sympathetic for her own good at times, the Doctor recognized a great emotional strength and cleverness in her. She was compassionate but not weak and the alien gentleman respected that greatly.
By the end of their third adventure together, the Doctor had eased his gruff manner enough to show he had true loyalty to his new human companions and that he would not allow harm to come to them if he could help it (even if they did annoy him at times). Ian and Barbara at last felt like members of a crew rather than unwilling prisoners and the Doctor did his best to try and get them back to England.
"Back when I first started at the very beginning, I was always trying to be old and grumpy and important. Like you do when you're young." - The Tenth Doctor, Time Crash
Although it was an ensemble cast, the Doctor became the focus of the show becuase he was the most mysterious and had the shiftiest personality of the TARDIS crew. He was grumpy, patronizing, and often eager for a chance to make a sarcastic comment that advertised how much smarter he was than you. But he was also kind towards young people and loyal to his friends. He'd fuss about how physical exertion annoyed him, but was quick to act with a fearsome nature if he saw innocent people being threatened. Although he was a generally moral person, disgusted by tyrants and prejudice, the Doctor was not above breaking into places, telling manipulative lies and tricking those around him if he felt it would get the job done and serve a higher good.
With all this in mind, the title Doctor Who became not just a nod to the fact that we didn't know the man's name or origins but a remark on the hero's seemingly contradictory nature. It was hard to really predict him or know what he was thinking.
Children became enamored with the Doctor, wishing they had such a grandfather and protector, and adults became fascinated by this mysterious, strange man who was able to fight off evil every week even though he never carried any weapons himself. He was an action hero who relied on intelligence and allies to save the day. Being acknowledged for his actions was not important and he was fine with leaving as soon as the battle was done rather than staying behind to relax and celebrate. After all, he didn't go traveling around the universe looking for trouble. He only wanted to explore and trouble just had a way of finding him. When he did meet a villain who tried to intimidate him, he'd simply laugh in their face and ridicule them or would let his anger flash and explain just how dangerous he could be. Fear was not a consideration.
SENSORITE: "You're in no position to threaten us."
THE DOCTOR: "I don't make threats. But I do keep promises. And I promise you, I shall cause you more trouble than you bargained for ..."
When he wasn't being chased by monsters or facing villains, the Doctor was usally tinkering in the TARDIS, displaying his skill as a mechanic and an inventor (though he was usually more adept at jury-rigging things around him rather than building from scratch). In the novel "Doctor Who and the Daleks" (an adaptation of the first two TV adventures), the Doctor was said to possess "ever-lasting matches" that he'd invented himself. Although these were never seen in the TV show, they were later mentioned in audio plays of both the 5th and 8th incarnations of the Doctor (where it was revealed they lasted only a several minutes, actually).
This isn't to say that the Doctor was the only interesting character. Barbara and Ian were both strong, independent characters in their own right. As a woman, Barbara perhaps got kidnapped a little more often than Ian and certainly screamed more. But she was confident and forthright and not afraid to tell even the mysterious and intimidating Doctor when she had a differing opinion. Ian, being younger than the Doctor, often found himself filling out the role of the show's action hero. He was a reluctant fighter, forced time and time to kill in order to protect himself and others, a far cry from his days as a school teacher.
Susan's character depended a bit on who wrote her. There were a few adventures where she seemed to be just
another teenager, making rash decisions and occasionally getting kidnapped or twisting her ankle, thus forcing herself into a vulnerable position. But in many other adventures, she displayed very clearly that she was wise beyond her years, a girl who'd been raised on a different planet and had spent years encountering creatures and planets that most folks couldn't imagine. If the Doctor wasn't around, she wasn't helpless and could often think of clever ways to get out of situations on her own thanks to her higher-than-average intelligence and alien education. Though the Doctor was later implied to be a couple of centuries in age, the old man confirmed that Susan was indeed a teenager as she appeared to be during the story "The Sensorites."
As the adventures went on, she began to become more and more self-assured and displaying more dependence from her grandfather, questioning why she was still being treated as a child when she was a woman now with her own opinions and philosophies. She was also vocal in her desire to find a home where she could settle down, not sharing her grandfather's obsession with exploration for its own sake. It was an understandable development considering this was a character going through her teenage years.
This forward-thinking towards the show's female characters being strong-willed and opinionated were in part due to producer Verity Lambert, who wanted young girls to have characters they could relate to and look up to.
And thus we had our crew of four, traveling across time and space in their seemingly magical ship. Because the TARDIS could go literally anywhere, this meant that the possibilities for stories were endless. If you wanted a horror story, the Doctor would wind up on a planet of witches or fighting zombies of some kind. If you wanted a mystery in a historical setting, he could be in early 19th century England just in time to stumble onto a murder. If you wanted serious sci-fi, he'd wind up in the far future in the middle of an interplanetary war three galaxies away from Earth.
Of course, what helps make a hero great is to have at least one or two memorable recurring villains, those who can become arch-enemies. In only his second adventure, the Doctor encountered a race of aliens that would fit this role.
THE DALEKS
In the 1960's, Nazis and World War II were still strong in the minds of people. Many adults in England still remembered when they were children and had to suffer through their country being bombed on a regular basis by German planes. Terry Nation was a writer who wanted to give the Doctor an enemy that emulated this sort of evil. Watching a dance production, he saw dancers who glided across the stage on roller skates and long dresses, giving them the illusion of wraiths who didn’t need legs to move. Nation decided that his villains would be legless. They would not look like men in monster costumes, as many aliens in science fiction looked. In his script, he described the alien creatures as living inside metal travel machines (essentially, personal tanks) that glided across the floor and gave no impression of human features, only an eye-stalk, a gun and a claw/grip-like device (later made into a plunger due to production restrictions on supplies). The BBC production team took this and created the Dalek.
On first appearance, it is fairly silly looking, resembling an enlarged pepper shaker or a ticked off version of
R2-D2. When I first saw a Dalek, I didn’t understand why it creeped out friends of mine. But after I learned their origin and actually saw them in a story (and heard their awful voices), I understood. Daleks are not robots, first off. Let’s clear that up. Within that machine is a pilot, an alien creature that is about a foot in diameter and looks like a gelatinous blob or an exposed brain with tentacles and sometimes a single evil eye, giving a hint of Lovecraft’s "Old Ones."
The Daleks were not always like this. Once they were a humanoid race known as the Kaleds living on the planet Skaro and they looked just like us. But after a war with their neighbors the Thals, a combination of nuclear weapons and germ and chemical warfare led to widespread mutations and a general destabilization of the society.
A scientist named Davros did his best to create a new race from the ashes of the old, mutating the Kaleds into "Daleks" and installing them in their personal "travel machines" which he had armed with a variety of weapons. Internal computers hooked into the Dalek brains allowed them to have instantaneous weapon targetting and aided them in calculating strategies and breaking codes. With their artificial arm, they could hack into any computer system and create a small force-field powerful enough to pull someone as if they were on a leash or to crush a human skull within moments. Over the centuries, the Daleks have improved on their technology, adding more powerful force-fields and minor flight/hover capabilities.
To ensure that the Daleks would survive no matter what, Davros genetically removed what he considered to be weaknesses in their brains, nameley the capacity for pity, mercy and compassion. All that was left was fear and hate. Although Daleks claim they are without fear, their desire to destroy all other races that are "impure" stems from a paranoia concerning their own security. They are so afraid of polluting their own race that if a Dalek suffers a mutation or is deemed impure, it is immediately destroyed (if it hasn't already killed itself, that is). All other races are to be used as slaves or destroyed. As far as a Dalek is concerned, if you are a different species then your life is worthless. As a race that despises inviduality and the "chaotic" nature of having differnet opinions, they neither understand nor tolerate pluralist cultures.
The Kaleds used to cry “Extermination of all Thals.” The Daleks screamed “Extermination of all alien races!”
When the Doctor first met the Daleks, it was in the early centuries since the birth of their race. He quickly
realized that these creatures were a different kind of evil, because they could not be reasoned with due to their incapability of feeling any desire other than to conquer or kill everything else. Fortunately, the Doctor had the aid of his human companions and several survivors of the Thal race. It was this adventure that truly began cementing the TARDIS travelers as a team. When the Doctor left Skaro, he hoped he’d seen the last of the Daleks.
But the audience wouldn’t allow it. Although the producer thought that Daleks were awful characters (in fact, he was against having any aliens in the Doctor Who series, preferring to keep adventures focused on historical periods of Earth), fans felt differently. The Daleks became an instant hit among viewers. Children would go out into the school yard, shrieking the Dalek battle-cry of "EX-TER-MI-NAAAATE!" as they chased each other. Eventually the Daleks would return to the TV show and kids would hide behind the sofa when they saw those machine rolling into view and heard the distorted voices that sounded like a robot on the verge of freaking out. Adults also found the Daleks rather unnerving, imagining the horrible creatures piloting the machines from within and seeing how they paralleled the Nazis.
If you wish to learn more about the Daleks, their heirarchy and the specifics of their origin, check out my Dalek file.
THE DOCTOR'S PEOPLE
As the show went on, we still didn't really hear about the Doctor's people. As for the planet he was from, there was a very brief description in the story "The Sensorites." Susan said that her home planet was much like Earth, but with a "burnt orange sky" and that the leaves on the trees were silver. The Tenth Doctor would repeat this description in the TV adventure "Gridlock."
In "The Sensorites", we also learned that the Doctor and his people were slightly telepathic in nature, more so if they were born with a greater talent for it and/or recieved the proper training. If they wished to, they could exchange information with other members of their race (usually having to focus their minds and saying the word “contact” first), but most of them couldn’t just read the brains of people around them (though occasionally they could sense certain vague things). The Doctor himself was surprised to learn that Susan could recieve and transmite telepathic messages, something he said he couldn't do himself. The Doctor did have enough training to enable him to occasionally hypnotize willing subjects or people with weak minds (usually with the aid of a tool like a watch or a pendant). This hypnosis was usually pretty simple and relied on a specific command ("lower your weapon", "forget you just saw me"). The seventh incarnation of the Doctor was able to hypnotize people by simply staring at them and speaking in a soft, controlled manner (as long as the subject's attention wasn't diverted). He was also able to cause mental seizures if he placed his fingers on a subject's head. More on that in the Seventh Doctor History File.
Along with the hypnotic abilities, the Doctor also seemed to have senses beyond normal human perception. In some adventures, he seemed to sense when outside forces or energy fields were affecting time and space.
While the Doctor's race was still largely a mystery, fans at least learned more about the TARDIS. Inside, it was a veritable fortress, with various corridors and rooms, including a library and an enormous wardrobe with clothing from various worlds and time periods.
Concerning the TARDIS's time flight capabilities, audiences soon realized that not only was the ship's equipment not in the best shape to being with (the Doctor also referred to it several times as an old ship), but the mysterious alien time traveler was also not a great pilot by any means. In a later short story, it was said that the Doctor had never piloted a TARDIS before leaving his home planet in exile, as the actual piloting of such crafts was often left to technicians. And in the TV episode "The Shakespeare Code", the Doctor remarked that he had actually failed his exam on TARDIS piloting.
To learn more about the Doctor's ship, check out my Guide to the TARDIS.
CHANGING HISTORY
In the story "The Aztecs", the TARDIS crew found themselves among the Aztec people long before Cortez would find their civilization. The Aztecs mistook Barbara for a god and the Doctor said to go along with this, as it aided their own agenda. But then, Barbara wanted to use her new status to convince the Aztecs that human sacrifices were unnecessary, thus preventing any future sacrifices they might make. The Doctor was strongly opposed to this, saying you couldn't alter an entire culture becuase you were from a future that considered it barbaric. He argued you couldn't change major things in history no matter how hard you tried, that he knew from experience that it was impossible.
As hard as Barbara tried, people and events kept moving against her agenda and in the end she admitted the Doctor must have been right. They left, a little wiser and less hopeful about the good they could do for their own planet. This adventure was also significant in that the Doctor seemed to grow genuine affection for the Aztec woman Cameca, who herself clearly wished the alien traveler to be her husband.
Later adventures would show that history could indeed be changed on slight levels. The Fourth Doctor would
later claim that it took a being of incredible power to truly alter the course of history. To explain then why the First Doctor had told Barbara that changes were impossible, Simon Guerrier wrote the book "The Time Travellers" that took place soon after "The Aztecs." In the novel, the TARDIS crew found themselves on an alternate Earth of 2006. During this, Barbara brought up their adventure with the Aztecs and the Doctor conceded that she was ready and calm enough now to learn the exact truth. First, he explained that TARDISes were specifically designed to prevent its users from interfering with history. Your TARDIS was disguised to look like part of the scenery and you watched everything on the scanner screen and that was it. Becuase the moment you stepped out of the ship, you had joined that part of the timeline and planted yourself in history. You now influenced events on a small level. But it was pointless and dangerous to try and change history in large ways because that was too hard. And if you did somehow accomplish it, your actions would likely just create a new parallel timeline that branched off from your own. Thus, your past would remain unchanged. And creating such divergent time lines could have chaotic effects on the environment around you and make things worse.
Thus, the Doctor was fine with fighting off Cybermen trying to invade England in the 1960's, but he would not go back and stop the rise of Hitler. Furthermore, it would be explained later that the Doctor's own people made a habit of preserving the "web of time" and thus anything that changed things on too large a scale would immediately attract their attention and possibly lead to their direct involvement in setting things right anyway. So no matter what, the odds were against you being able to change the whole course of history (unless you were someone like the Doctor who had a better understanding of such matters and could literally sense the flow of time).
THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH!
In the show's second year, the Doctor and his friends met the Daleks again when they traveled to a future version of Earth and found that the whole planet had been conquered by the alien monsters. These Daleks
were many generations more advanced than the ones the Doctor had first met, able to glide along various surfaces due to low-yield hover capabilities (in later years, the hover power would be improved on so that they had limited flight). Teaming up with a resistance movement based in England, the Doctor only barely achieved victory against the Daleks, allowing humans to overthrow the villains and become masters of their own destiny once again.
During this war, Susan met and fell in love with an English freedom fighter named David Campbell. When the battles were over and the Doctor was returning to the TARDIS, he saw that Susan clearly didn’t want to leave David behind. This troubled him and perhaps his mind was going back on all the times Susan had expressed a desire to stop traveling.
The Doctor, Ian and Barbara then watched Susan and David via the control room's scanner screen. When Susan admitted to David that she loved him, the Doctor looked to his two human friends and then shut the TARDIS doors, double-locking them. Susan banged on the doors, saying that it couldn’t end like this, that her grandfather needed her to look after him. The Doctor said sweetly but sternly that Susan was and always would be his granddaughter but that she deserved to have her own life and home rather than live as a fugitive while taking care of him.
Using the TARDIS’s speaker-system, the Doctor said these last words to his granddaughter. “One day, I shall come back … Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs … and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine … Good-bye, Susan. Good-bye.”
The TARDIS then left to continue its adventures and Susan was now gone from the show. Audiences were surprised. Not only was there no permanent setting for the series, but they’d now just learned that even the supporting cast was subject to change. Susan was gone, but eventually came young Vicki, the survivor of a space crew from 25th century Earth. Vicki joined as the Doctor's newest "assistant" (as his companions came to be known for quite a few years). Though she was another teenage girl, she was not at all like Susan, far more assertive and prone to making jokes.
In the novel "The Time Travellers", Simon Guirrier added another reason for the Doctor leaving Susan behind. In that story, which took place just before "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", the TARDIS crew became involved in various time experiments that went horribly awry, creating divergent branches. The Doctor was concerned that these disruptions would attract the attention of his own people and that if they found him then Susan would likewise be punished for traveling in his company. He expressed the idea that perhaps it would simply be safer for Susan to be separated from him, since it wasn't her who had committed the crimes that led to his exile.
As for the Daleks, they soon became even more dangerous when they discovered the technology of time travel. They figured out how to make ships created limited “time-tunnels” they could travel through. Even though this technology was not as advanced as the TARDIS, the Daleks had now crushed any doubts in fans’ minds that they would be the arch-enemies for a long time to come.
But out of evil there can still come some good. When the TARDIS crew recovered a Dalek time-ship, Ian and Barbara saw it as their opportunity to return home (unlike the TARDIS, it had readable controls that could determine a destination). At first, the Doctor refused to help them set the controls. This was suicide, he told them. And what's more, he was obviously offended by how determined they were to leave his company. The two school teachers pleaded to the Doctor that they cared for him and treasured his friendship, but they wanted to settle back down with normal lives and get out of this constant danger from travels through time and space. Finally, the Doctor grudgingly agreed. With the Dalek time-ship, Ian and Barbara were able to return to England and didn't even mind that they had arrived three years after they'd left. Vicki was happy her two friends were home, safe and sound, but the Doctor became quiet and sullen. He finally whispered, to himself more than to his young friend, "... I shall miss them ... Yes, I shall miss them."
We finally began to realize how lonely the Doctor truly was. And with only this mysterious alien left out of the original cast of four characters, audiences came to believe that the only things permanent about the show were the TARDIS and, naturally, the Doctor himself.
Ah, if they only knew ...
NEW ENEMIES, NEW ALLIES
As Vicki and the Doctor continued on, they found they had a stowaway, a young man named Steven. Steven was skeptical that the Doctor's space ship could actually travel through time, but soon found it was true enough when the TARDIS landed in the times of the ancient vikings in the next story "The Time Meddler." This story was significant for two reasons, the first being the appearance of a character called the Monk (also known as the "Meddling Monk").
The Monk seemed to be manipulating things from behind the scenes, though why no one was sure. Investigating the villain's lair, Steven and Vicki were shocked to
realize that the Monk had a TARDIS of his own. The Doctor confronted the Monk soon afterwards and they both obviously recognized each other, confirming for the audience that this new character was actually another being from the Doctor’s home planet (which hadn’t been mentioned in so long you could’ve almost forgotten he was supposed to be an alien). Armed with a more advanced model of the TARDIS, the Monk wanted to deliberately alter history for his own gain. The Doctor defeated him, only to fight him again not too long after that. In years to come, we would meet other members of the Doctor’s race who, like the Monk, sought to use their knowledge, intelligence and technology for their own purposes.
"The Time Meddler" was also quite significant in the show’s history in that it involved the subject of rape. At one point, a woman was seen being kidnapped by Vikings who began harassing her and laughing fiendishly. When she was found later, she was in an obvious state of shock and seemed almost like a wounded animal. It was never directly said what had happened, but from her behavior and how her friends treated her afterwards, it was clear she had been raped by her attackers. Quite a big thing for a series still designated as a children’s program.
The series went on and other adventures were enjoyed. Steven and Vicki proved to be brave, quick-thinking
companions who were always ready to rush into action and whose good humor always reminded the Doctor not to take himself too seriously.
VICKI: "[The Doctor's] the crew. We're just the passengers."
THE DOCTOR: "And both very welcome ones, my dear!"
When the heroes later landed in ancient Troy, Vicki fell in love with a man there and decided to settle down (evidently she was fine spending the rest of her life in a primitive culture where there were no toilets, dentistry or music players that she'd enjoyed in the future). She was renamed Cressida, thus becoming the inspiration for the woman of the same name who appears in many retellings of the Trojan War.
The Doctor found that a young girl native to ancient Troy was very anxious to take Vicki's place aboard the 
TARDIS. Katarina was a handmaiden to the oracle Cassandra who saw the Doctor as a demi-god possessing a magic ship and was eager to join him. Realizing the TARDIS had taken her away from the world she knew, she believed that perhaps she was dead and the Doctor was transporting her into a new life. The Doctor allowed her to stay by his side, a decision he would later come to regret.
In Katarina's first adventure aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor wound up facing the Daleks once again. The story "The Daleks' Master Plan" would become hailed as one of the best and most horrifying stories of the original Doctor Who series. Throughout the entire tale, there was the grim feeling of danger and death and the BBC got a few letters from parents complaining that parts of it were too frightening for their children.
The "Daleks' Master Plan" was the first appearance of a Supreme Dalek (evidently, there was a Supreme Dalek Council who served directly beneath the Emperor Dalek). And the story was also the first apperance of actor Nicholas Courtney in the Doctor Who series. Although he played a Space Patrol agent in this tale, Courtney would retun in a couple of years as military man Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, who would become a recurring character in the show.
"Daleks conquer and destroy! EXTERMINATE!"
During this story, Katarina began to realize that she was not in some spirit world but still very much alive. She didn't really understand the difference between technology and magic or the difference between demons and Daleks, but she came to realize that the people around her were mortal like herself and she became naturally curious to learn more. For instance, after boarding a space craft, the Doctor showed Katarina how to use some of the basic controls, such as opening and closing the air-lock.
At one point during this story, the Doctor, Steven, Katarina and several took off in a space ship to escape a purusing Dalek ship. When it seemed they were safely away, Katarina went into the air-lock chamber to make sure the door was secure. She was then surprised by a stowaway, a psychotic convict named Kirksen. Kirsken grabbed Katarina and locked them both inside the airlock, cutting them off from the rest of the ship. He ordered the Doctor to alter course to a nearby planet so he could escape to freedom. The Doctor knew that this planet was filled with Daleks and feared they would all be killed within minutes if they landed there but he couldn’t convince Kirksen of this. After minutes of argument and threats, the Doctor and Steven couldn’t find any way out of the hostage situation but to do as Kirksen asked.
Katarina was clever and intelligent enough to understand what was going on and that her friends would likely be killed if they took this action to save her own life. Seeing no other option, she wrenched herself free from Kirksen and opened the air-lock's outer door. The Doctor and Steven screamed for her to stop, but it was too late. Katarina and Kirksen were hurled into the vacuum of space and died within moments.
The Doctor was shocked by this but understood that Katarina had known exactly what she was doing. She may have been ignorant and naive, but she was not stupid. He sadly mused to himself, "I shall always remember her as one of the daughters of the gods …"
The battle against the Daleks and the Supreme Dalek continued. Joining the TARDIS heroes was a new woman
named Sara Kingdom, a Space Patrol agent. Sara Kingdom was headstrong, aggressive and single-minded. Discovering her brother was a traitor, she shot him down and was prepared to do the same to the Doctor and Steven until circumstances forced them to work together. While she was with the Doctor, Kingdom learned that her unquestioning obedience had led both to her brother's unjustified death and to Earth not finding out about the Dalek plot against it.
Realizing she had much to make up for becuase of her narrow-minded attitude, Sara Kingdom joined the Doctor's fight, feeling loyalty to the man who'd helped open her eyes. At the end of the seventh episode of "The Dalek's Master Plan", the Doctor decided they needed a breather to gather their strength and figure out how to renew their attack against the Daleks. He got into the TARDIS with Steven Sara Kingdom and they took off.
In the novelization of this adventure, it was said that some months took place between the seventh and eighth episode, during which time the Doctor, Sara Kingdom and Steven had several adventures together. This was to allow later writers to fully develop Sara's character in other media, considering what would happen by the end of "The Dalek's Master Plan."
In the final episode of this adventure, the Doctor got hold of a Dalek device called the Time Destructor and tried using it to destroy their forces. Concerned that his plan might not work, Sara ran out of the protection of the TARDIS to check on the Doctor. As a result, both of them were exposed to the Time Destructor's effects. Since the Doctor was of an alien race that was apparently extremely long-lived, the effects were slower on him and he was able to get close enough to the TARDIS for Steven to save him. But it was already too late for Sara. Being human, she was unable to survive as long as the Doctor. Her last thoughts were of the phrase “dust to dust” as she collapsed and then withered to a skeleton moments later. In one epic story, two members of the TARDIS crew had died (although the BBC website does not list Sara as an official "companion", many fans feel otherwise).
The Doctor and Steven escaped in the TARDIS when all was said and done, having thwarted another Dalek plan, but felt no victory. Katarina and Sara were both dead, as were many others caught in the battle. And audiences found a new element of danger in the show, as it was now evident that there was no guarantee that the Doctor’s friends and assistants would always survive.
Jean Marsh, who played Sara Kingdom, made other appearances in Doctor Who. Previously, she had played Princess Joanna in "The Crusade." She would also play the sorceress Morgaine in the Seventh Doctor adventure "Battlefield." And for a time, Jean Marsh was also married to Jon Pertwee, who would play the Doctor's third incarnation.
It was said that William Hartnell himself grew a fear of the Daleks. With the exception of their first story, the appearance of the Daleks always ensured that a fellow cast member was leaving. Carole Ann Ford (Susan) left during "The Dalek Invasion of Earth." William Russell (Ian) and Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright) both left at the conclusion of "The Chase." And Adrienne Hill (Katarina) and Jean Marsh (Sarah Kingdom) had only just joined when both their characters were killed during this most recent storyline. For William Hartnell, the power of the Daleks was very real and their presence meant a sad good-bye was in store for him.
REFLECTIONS
The Doctor was an adventurer and an explorer but there were times when he was against meddling, such as in "The Aztecs" and "The Time Meddler." In his battle with the Monk, the Doctor spoke of the fact that he and the villain came from a society where the "golden rule of time travel" was to never interfere with the main course of history. Now, Steven was about to be faced with that same attitude in a tragic way.
During the adventure "The Massacre", the TARDIS landed in Paris, 1572. It was a dangerous time, as tensions were high between Protestants and Catholics. During the story, Steven and the Doctor befriended a housemaid named Anne Chaplet. After spending several days in that time-zone, the Doctor and Steven barely got back to the TARDIS in time just as the famous massacre that would last for weeks was about to start. Steven was worried about Anne and wanted to go back for her rather than leave the girl behind. But the Doctor told him that it was too dangerous for Steven to go back out into danger like that. And besides, he added, it was likely that Anne was one of the many people that history says died during the massacre. Furious and thinking the Doctor heartless, and perhaps still disturbed by the events of "The Daleks' Master Plan", Steven thought it was time to leave the Doctor's company. As soon as the ship made its next landing in England, 1966 Steven left the TARDIS. For the first time ever in the TV show's history the Doctor seemed to be alone in his time-ship. Saddened, the Doctor reflected on what had just happened.
THE DOCTOR: "And now they've 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 to their own time ... Perhaps I should go home, back to my own planet ... But I can't!"
A young girl then wandered into the TARDIS, thinking it to be a police box she could use to report a nearby accident. Steven returned soon afterwards, having cooled off noticed police nearby who were handling the same accident. He was surprised to see the girl looked remarkably like Anne Chaplet. The girl introduced herself as Dorothea "Dodo" Chaplet, an orphan who lived with her aunt. The Doctor wondered if this was a fated meeting, as he came to believe that perhaps Anne had indeed survived the Massacre and that this girl was her descendant. Learning the Doctor was a traveler through space and time, Dodo asked to join him. Steve decided to remain and the Doctor once again had two friends to join him on his travels.
Dodo was a plucky young girl who enjoyed adventure, especially when she, Steven and the Doctor wound up in Tombstone in the 19th century and met Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. This story was entitled "The Gunslingers" and I warn you that you must look at it as a fun, tongue-in-cheek romp and not allow yourself to be annoyed by the ridiculous American accents and complete ignorance of the true history of Tombstone. Half of the story revolves around the Doctor having a toothache.
Dodo was also with Steven and the Doctor when they encountered the powerful being known as the Celestial Toymaker. Played by Michael Gough (who would later appear again in the show again as Time Lord in "Arc of Infinity" and later became known for playing "Alfred" in several Batman movies), the Toymaker was a being of enormous cosmic power who had apparently fought the Doctor before when the time traveler was much younger. The Toymaker delighted in snatching people up and forcing them to play his deadly games. Despite the Toymaker's cosmic abilities and power to manipulate matter itself, the Doctor was able to trick him into a defeat and apparently destroyed the Toymaker's world in the process, escaping back to the TARDIS during the chaos. Although this was his only appearance in the TV series, people would remember the Celestial Toymaker for years to come and he'd show up again in novels and comics.
During one adventure, Steven found himself forced into the role of mediator and diplomat between two warring civilizations. Believing he'd found a new purpose in life, he decided to remain rather than rejoin the TARDIS. Later, during a trip to London, 1963 in the story "The War Machines", the Doctor met a young sailor named Ben and a lab assistant named Polly. After Ben and Polly helped the Doctor and Dodo against some nasty villains, Dodo abruptly decided to stay rather than risk not being able to return to her home time period for months or years to come. She gave her TARDIS key to Ben and Polly, told them to wish the Doctor her best, and
then took off. The Doctor was quite insulted to have not even been given a personal farewell (naturally) and muttered “That’s gratitude!” as he went back into his mysterious police box.
But the Doctor had forgotten to ask about Dodo’s spare key to the TARDIS. Polly used the key to enter the TARDIS and convinced Ben to join her, wishing to return the spare key to the Doctor and wondering just why on Earth the old man would enter a police box. As the doors shut behind them, the engines started and it was too late. They had unwittingly joined the TARDIS crew.
BEHIND THE SCENES ...
Okay, we've talked a lot about the Doctor. Let's take a second to talk about WIlliam Hartnell.
William "Billy" Hartnell was the born in 1908, the only son of Lucy Hartnell, a single mother. He tried to find out who his real father was but never tracked the man down or even learned his name (it was left off the birth certificate). Ashamed, he used to make up stories to cover up the fact that he was illegitimate. He later entered the world of theatre and when World War II broke out he joined the military but was later released when he suffered a nervous breakdown.
Returning to acting, Hartnell spent the next several years finding that most people type-cast as a gruff army sergeant or the like, such as in the TV show The Army Game. When he was offered the chance to be the gruff but eventually loveable adventure on Doctor Who, he leaped at it and producer Verity Lambert said that he absolutely adored knowing that kids in England looked on him as a hero and took their appreciation very seriously.
Hartnell had been praised before for often bringing complexity and a sense of depth to his characters and many felt he did the same to the Doctor. Hartnell's acting allowed the Doctor to shift gradually but naturally from the aloof scientist who claimed to only tolerate humans and their world to the kindly old man who would give his life for them. It was the kind of character development no one expected from a children's show in the 1960's.
There are different opinions of how it was to work with Hartnell. Nicholas Courtney once remarked that Hartnell had made it a point to inform the actor who on the cast was Jewish. Some actors said he was very opinionated, much like the Doctor himself, and was occasionally very vocal about his judgments on the actions of those around him.
And yet, other actors speak very well of him. Many agree that yes, he was a bit irrascible, but that he was also very loving and very loyal. Producer Verity Lambert has often spoken positively about Hartnell and what he brought to the program. Peter Purves (who played Steven) and Carole Ann Ford (Susan) have both spoken about how William Hartnell was always ready and willing to give advice and support to the younger actors, telling them tricks he'd learned and encouraging them in their performance. Carole Ann Ford said that she and Hartnell would occasionally sit together and discuss their characters, creating a backstory and what kind of home planet they might have come from and imagining what the Doctor and his granddaughter got up to in the years before they
landed in that junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane.
Incidentally, here's a funny fact. Originally, Susan was just going to be a teenage girl the Doctor had picked up as a traveling companion with no blood relation to him at all. But Anthony Couburn, script-writer of the first episode "An Unearthly Child", was disturbed by the implication that there may be an amoral sexual relation happening between an old man who traveled around with a young and attractive teenage girl who'd decided to tag along with him in his mobile home, so he had Susan refer to the Doctor as "grandfather" and all the other writers and producers accepted that the two were indeed family and from the same planet.
William Hartnell enjoyed portraying the Doctor as easily distracted and absent-minded. It was his idea to have the DOctor constantly screw-up Ian Chesterton's last name. But along with this, the actor was fairly absent-minded himself at time. He would occasionally forget his lines and would adlib something like "hmm? what's that?" in order to buy himself time. These came to be known as Hartnellisms or Billy-Fluffs among the production team. Also, Hartnell actually posted little cue cards around the set so that he could look at them from time to time. The audience assumed that the reason the Doctor was looking about randomly at times was just because it was part of his odd behavior and nature.
After nearly three years, although he loved the role very much and enjoyed being a hero to children, William Hartnell retired. The reasons for this aren't entirely clear. The BBC stated that the actor chose to leave because his failing health made acting every day a very hard strain on him. But this doesn't really sound likely since Hartnell returned to doing stage theatre work after leaving the show. Years later, Hartnell said he didn't leave the show by choice and there were reports that he didn't get along with the production team following the departure of Verity Lambert and that it was the decision of new producer Innes Lloyd to replace the lead.
Either way, Hartnell was leaving the program. The question came ... what to do about the Doctor? The show was quite popular, they didn’t want to end it. But recasting seemed extremely risky. You have to remember, this wasn't the era of 1980s soap operas where men and women would be played by a succession of different actors over the years and everyone just accepted it. This was a children's show in 1966, a children's show that had wound up attracting almost as many adult fans who loved the wierd time traveler from an unknown planet. If you were going to recast him, you had to do it just right to make sure everyone didn't just get up and scream "That’s not the REAL Doctor!"
And that’s when the BBC got clever. What if, rather than casting someone who looked and spoke like William Hartnell and tried to pass himself off as him, they instead casted someone who was completely different and made up a reason for it in the story? This could prevent people from making unfavorable comparisons because the new actor wouldn't be a successor rather than replacement, able to put his own spin on things and not be forced to imitate exactly what came before.
Although viewers knew that the Doctor was an alien and that his race was long-lived, they didn’t really know anything else about his biology. Who was to say that the Doctor’s people weren’t capable of creating new bodies for themselves? Originally, this was called a "renewal." The idea was that the Doctor and his people could occasionally make themselves younger again. But very quickly (perhaps partly because the Second Doctor was noticeably shorter as well as being several years younger and with quite different features), this was changed to the concept that the Doctor literally made himself a new body from what was left of the old. Years later, it would be called "regeneration."
With this idea firmly planet, the BBC finally knew how they would end William Hartnell's final story, entitled "The Tenth Planet."
MONDAS: EARTH'S TWIN
In their second TV adventure aboard the TARDIS, "The Tenth Planet", Ben and Polly joined the Doctor on a visit to Earth in the 1980's. To everyone's surprise, a mobile planet called Mondas (an ancient name for Earth) appeared from nowhere. A race of cyborg creatures descended from the planet, ready to take over the human race. The Doctor recognized this race of aliens. They were Cybermen and would become a new arch-enemy, second to the Daleks.
Mondas, which was a twin to our planet Earth, orbiting the sun on the exact opposite side. The people of Mondas were human and their society mirrored Earth’s in many ways, though their tech was a few centuries more advanced. Mondas began shifting orbit and this caused horrible effects to their eco-system. The cities of Mondas had to be covered by metal and concrete coverings to protect them from the dangers outside. People on Mondas had become enamored with replacing organs with artificial replacements in order to prolong their lives. Eventually, things went too far and the people became cyborgs who wore armored support suits and face-plates that were grafted to their skin. They had very litle organic material or organs left. The sensation of having a mostly robotic body would drive a person insane, so it became standard to surgically alter the brain during "cyber-processing" or "cyber-conversion" so that the new Cyberman
wouldn't feel pain or even emotions in general. What had once been a human being was now no more than an animated corpse covered in metal and protetive fabric.
CYBERMEN: "Resistance is useless! WE ARE THE FUTURE!"
After fitting their planet with giant engines, the Cybermen now went around wishing to increase their population and spread their nature of physical perfection by turning other humanoid beings into new Cybermen. They were a hive-mind society now, with little concept of individuality, believing that to become a Cyberman was to become a better creature free of disease, fear, racial division and physical vulnerability. As they spread through the universe, they often spoke their mantra in their eerie robotic voices: "You belong to us. You will become like us."
If you’re a Star Trek fan, you may have realized by now that the Cybermen were very likely the inspiration for the Borg. Just as the Borg cried out “resistance is futile,” Cybermen (and Daleks too, sometimes) would yell “resistance is useless.” And just as the Borg were commanded by Borg Queens, Cybermen armies were commanded by Cyber-Leaders (identified by black coloring on their helmets) and Cyber-Controllers (who often wore translucent helmets that exposed their brains).
Although the Cybermen appeared to be robots in silver cloth suits, beneath the protective fabric and the face-plates were what looked like cyborg zombies. This, added to the Cybermen’s battle prowess (resistance to many forms of attack and gifted with the strength of ten men) and their complete lack of remorsefor killing people, made them another enemy feared by children who watched Doctor Who. Cybermen weren’t invulnerable, of course. Certain radiations, extreme damage to their bodies and gold-dust to clog up their systems were all options. The problem was getting close enough to use any of those weaknesses before they crushed your hand or head into a bloody pulp (and don’t think they didn’t do that sometimes!). The major creepiness factor was that these were monsters who tried to make you just like them.
Whether the Doctor knew about the Cybermen because he'd simply heard or read about them or whether he'd actually fought them in some untold adventure was never revealed. Either way, in the story "The Tenth Planet", the Cybermen attempted to drain Earth of its life force. They were thwarted in the end and forced to retreat, but during this adventure it became clear that all was not well with the Doctor. At one point, he collapsed from sudden weakness. When asked if he was all right, he muttered to himself, “This body is wearing thin.” He told Ben and Polly that he feared some external force was weakening him. It seemed the Cybermen energy drain of Earth was affecting him as well, perhaps because his body and mind were more sensitive to energy fields.
After the Cybermen were defeated, the Doctor returned to the TARDIS, stumbling and dazed. He looked at Ben and Polly and spoke to them as if in a daze.
THE FIRST DOCTOR: "What did you say, my boy? 'It's all over.' 'It's all over.' That's what you said. No ... but it isn't all over ... It's FAR from being all over!"
Entering the ship, the Doctor programmed it to make another space-time jump just moments before he collapsed to the floor. Ben and Polly rushed to look over him but he looked as if he'd suddenly died. As the TARDIS engines wheezed and groaned, these two Londoners became the first humans to witness a startling process known as “regeneration.” Before their eyes, the Doctor's body began glowing. The light surrounded him, blocking him from view for a moment, and then as it dimmed and vanished there was now a different man lying on the floor in his place, a younger, shorter man wearing clothes that no longer fit him.
The First Doctor was gone now. Thus began the career of the Second Doctor.
Before we move on, some memorable First Doctor quotes:
FIRST DOCTOR: “If you could touch the alien sand and hear the cry of strange birds and watch them wheel in another sky … would that satisfy you?”
IAN: “Frankly, Doctor, I find it hard to keep pace with you.”
FIRST DOCTOR: “You mean ‘to keep one jump ahead.’ THAT you will never be!”
FIRST DOCTOR: "I don't believe that man was made to be controlled by machines. Machines can make laws but they can not preserve justice. Only human beings can do that."
IAN: “Where’s your spirit of adventure, hmm?”
FIRST DOCTOR: “It died a slow and painful death when those bats came out of the rafters.”
FIRST DOCTOR: "There are two things you can do. One is to get your breath back. Two, don't call me Doc!"
STEVE: “What does THAT do?”
FIRST DOCTOR: “That is the dematerializing control. And that, over yonder, is the horizontal hold. Up there is the scanner, those are the doors, that is a chair with a panda on it. SHEER POETRY, my dear boy. Now please
stop bothering me!”
FIRST DOCTOR: “What do you think of that now, eh? A Viking helmet.”
STEVE: “Maybe.”
FIRST DOCTOR: “What do you mean MAYBE? What do you THINK it is, a space helmet for a cow?!”
FIRST DOCTOR: "Your ideas are too narrow, too crippled. I am a citizen of the universe and a gentleman to boot!"
FIRST DOCTOR: "Our lives are important, at least to us. But as we see, so we learn ... Our destiny is in the stars. So let's go and search for it."
Read the Chronology of the First Doctor
OR
Continue on to the History of the Second Doctor.
Reader Comments (4)
A few of the stories were failed experiments (Web Planet, which also suffered from too much padding) but overall, the format was original and fresh, mixing education with drama. It was, however, already starting to fall apart when Innes LLoyd became producer. The historicals were discontinued and we began to see dreck like "War Machines" and the increasingly camp approach. I think Hartnell was right to leave when he did. Like you, I am not sure how much his illness played a part and how much he was pushed by the new team (who felt he was too difficult to work with.)
I have read some comments that Hartnell was not happy with the way the series went later on; that the producers had forgotten it was primarily there for the children. The Doctor also ceased to be such a counter-cultural figure and began to side with the military in the "UNIT" stories. It was only really towards the end of the series with episodes like "Survival" that a counter-cultural message really returned.
It is a pity that the original concept of an educational program teaching history and science cannot be revived; although educational, the early stories were not didactic and still contained great drama, adventure and humour. The show has moved so far from its roots, this will probably never happen, though. :-(
And to be fair, the last historical was actually during the Fifth Doctor's reign. But you're right, it definitely began to lose some of its educational value. On the other hand, it's not completely gone. In the audio plays and the new TV series, there have been several adventures which have touched on some interesting points of history and which have commented on historical events and the wonder of Earth's own past.
It would great to see a series on this, which I still think is the best television science fiction show ever made, mainly due to the characterisation and the bleak vision of an empire in decline. ;-)