The first ever episode of Doctor Who was an episode called ‘An Unearthly Child’, but because of various problems in the course of its production, it had to be refilmed. (Strangely enough, the same thing happened to the first episode of Star Trek.) This gap between the two versions produced a number of important changes. For a start, the Doctor gained a kindlier temperament than his original, grouchy character. There were also changes to costumes and special effects. But as far back as that, all the elements that have maintained the series were there: the sonic screwdriver, the near magical powers which were to get the doctor out of many a sticky scrape and, of course, his companion.
‘The Unearthly Child’ is, in fact, a reference to that companion, Susan Foreman, played by the actress Carole Ann Ford. Susan was a 15-year-old schoolgirl (at least the assistants have always been very young), but after some unease on the part of the producers at the idea of a young girl travelling alone with a late middle-aged man, it was decided that Susan would be the Doctor’s granddaughter. This went on to produce some conundrums that the series has never entirely resolved. If Susan was his granddaughter, then presumably the Doctor must have had a child – and, indeed a spouse – somewhere along the line, but in every subsequent series the Doctor is seen as utterly alone, the last of his race. When David Tennant became the Doctor, he managed to produce a child in a slightly different way from the conventional one (a machine produced her – long story) and there were also heavy hints that the character played by Alex Kingston was once, or would one day become, his wife – but the Doctor has not ever really been portrayed as a married man. In the 1990s, there was some suggestion that Susan was not his natural granddaughter, but that was not the situation posited at the time.
And so the story kicked off. The Doctor and Susan (presumably also a Gallifreyan) are living in London, where they settled to make repairs to the Tardis; Susan takes the name Foreman from a junkyard near where they live. Like her esteemed grandparent, Susan appears to have talents that rather set her apart from her fellow schoolchildren, so much so that her schoolteachers Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) have their suspicions aroused. To find out what is really going on, they follow Susan back to the junkyard where she is living in the Tardis with her grandfather. After hearing her voice in a police box, they enter and find themselves in a very different place from the one they thought they had seen from the outside. And so they, too, became companions, establishing the tradition of a main Doctor’s assistant and a couple of extra voyagers, again a tradition that exists to this day.
The very first episode of Doctor Who, when it was broadcast, received just about no notice at all. The timing couldn’t have been worse: it went out at 5.15pm, on 23 November 1963, a difficult day to debut any television series, given that President John F Kennedy had been assassinated the day before. And if that were not enough, there was a power failure in some parts of the country and those few people who might actually have been interested in watching wouldn’t have been able to do so. Indeed, the situation was so dire that the following week the BBC actually repeated the first episode before showing the next.
Nice ploy; shame no one was really interested. The Doctor described himself and Susan as ‘wanderers in the fourth dimension’, but they might have been wandering into oblivion for all that the majority of television viewers cared. These days, when a show must become a hit instantly or not at all, Doctor Who might not even have been re-commissioned, but Verity Lambert and co. knew they had a gem on their hands, and were determined to make it work. And so in the second series, appeared the final ingredient in the mix; the one that made the nation sit up and take notice. It was the introduction of the Daleks.
However, that almost never happened as well. Terry Nation, a scriptwriter, and Raymond Cusick, a designer, came up with the idea of the Daleks. The characters’ back-story went through several changes, but the original idea was that they had been a species called the Dals. After a war with the Thals, they mutated into hideous and malevolent beings, which resided inside powerful, individual travel machines; both the casing and the inner mutant has changed in the course of the series, but the basic prototype was laid down here. Daleks, as someone once memorably put it, could be said to resemble giant salt-and-pepper shakers with an arm that resembles a sink plunger; their powers, however, were terrible to behold. They have a single mechanical rotating eye, an exterminator arm containing a death ray, and a ‘sink plunger’ that can do anything from crushing a man’s skull to measuring his intelligence. In short, they are not creatures to be messed with. In their earliest incarnation they appeared to glide an inch or so off the ground, their traction provided by a large, omni-directional rotating device; later on it was stated they move by psychokinetic power. In 1988, by courtesy of the hover power they adopted, they also learned to climb stairs.
Back in 1964, however, they were utterly unintelligible, and given that the series had had a very shaky start indeed, seemed a very unnecessary risk. It is not putting it too strongly, however, to say that this particular battle of the Daleks was the element that made Verity Lambert’s name. Donald Wilson, her boss, was very anti the idea of putting them on screen and advised her to drop Nation’s script. Verity, however, insisted that they would have to go with it, not least because there was nothing else they could use. And so the Daleks were born.
The series in question had several titles throughout its production stages but came to be best known, quite simply, as The Daleks. The Doctor and his travelling trio land the Tardis in a petrified jungle, and after some debate and a little deception (the Doctor pretends the Tardis is out of mercury), manages to persuade his travelling companions to explore the futuristic city just visible on the horizon. Once there, Barbara is separated from the rest of them – and at the end of the first episode, there is the first ever sighting of a Dalek. Or rather, at the cliffhanging end of the first episode, a long metal arm attached to a being that is as yet unseen.
In the second episode, Susan is sent back to the Tardis to fetch anti-radiation drugs, where she meets the Thals, who are at war with the Daleks. Despite the Doctor’s avowed intent to avoid violence, the time travellers are finally forced to advocate just that: initially, Susan attempts to broker peace between the two races, and believes she has succeeded. However, the Daleks double cross her and attack the Thals when they are supposed to be exchanging food. The Doctor, his companions and the Thals manage to escape and get back to the Tardis, where the Thals, avowed pacifists, are taught by the travellers not to give peace a chance. They attack the Daleks and believe they have wiped them out – although, of course, that proves to be completely wrong.
Doctor Who Kremlinologists, of whom there are a fair few, might be interested in the following: this is the only time the Daleks depended on static electricity from the floor of the city to move. It is also made clear that the Daleks require radiation to survive; again, the only time this appears to be the case. The fourth episode of the story is the one in which the Daleks’ incredibly famous catchphrase is used. The Doctor and his friends have managed to escape via a lift. ‘Make no attempt to catch them, they are to be exterminated, you understand, exterminated,’ one Dalek proclaims. ‘Exterminate…’ – it was to become one of the most fearsome commands of them all.
The series caused a sensation. Whereas the first Doctor Who had been largely ignored, now the public couldn’t get enough of it. All the elements came together – the police box that was a vast space machine inside, the Time Lord cast apart from the rest of his species (except for his granddaughter, of course, the source of future continuity problems), a few more hangers-on, and fearsome monsters the likes of which television had never seen before – this was the breakthrough the show’s producers needed. Doctor Who was now very firmly established in the public eye. Donald Wilson, he who had initially been so Dalek-averse, was a big enough man to admit that he’d made a mistake: it was said that he told Verity he wasn’t going to try to overrule her aga
in. She clearly knew what worked.
And the Doctor’s character itself was able to evolve. Although he was always on the side of good, the earliest incarnations of the Doctor were also very grouchy, and they evolved into something much warmer before the public noticed what was taking place on their television screens. He even occasionally displayed signs of ruthlessness (as, indeed, he did during the very last stages of his incarnation as David Tennant – or, at least, a slight problem in the ego department), and this was largely gone by the time the public had noticed who he was. The Doctor was able to evolve, both as a performance and in the mind of his creators, before he had the pressure of mass audiences. With the Daleks’ popularity, viewing figures were to be upwards of 12 million, making it a massive success.
Even so, it was not plain sailing. In 1965, plainly destined for greater things, Verity left to become one of the all-time greats at the BBC. She was replaced by John Wiles who, by all accounts, did not get on very well with William Hartnell (later it was to become apparent that Hartnell was in the early stages of the arteriosclerosis that would claim his life, a decade later). At the time, however, it merely appeared that Hartnell was having problems learning his lines. Various writers left and by 1966 it was apparent that William would be forced to do the same. His ill health was becoming increasingly apparent; though by this time a hugely popular figure, he just couldn’t cope with the demands of the role any more.
This presented the makers of the programme with a problem. Doctor Who had become a hugely popular series and though the lead actor was about to depart, there was a strong feeling within the BBC itself that there was a good deal of leeway for the series to carry on. It seemed simple: replace him with another actor. John Wiles, the new producer, and Donald Tosh, a screenwriter, set about actioning this plan: they wrote a story called ‘The Celestial Toymaker’, the idea being that the Doctor would be invisible for a part of the show, and when he reappeared, it would be as another actor.
The new head of serials, Gerald Savory, however, point blank vetoed this idea, with the result that Wiles and Tosh both left the show. That didn’t solve the problem, though. By now William Hartnell’s health was such that it was obvious he was going to have to leave and when Savory, too, moved on, the producers of the show finally got their chance.
Wiles had been replaced by Innes Lloyd and it was he, in conjunction with the story editor Gerry Davis, who worked out a plan. They were going to have to bring in another actor, there was no doubt about that – but previously, the idea had been to bring in someone else to play the same role. Now they began to toy with the idea of making it the same Doctor – but with a totally different character and personality as well as a different appearance. Why not? He was an alien being. He didn’t have to subscribe to the rules that the rest of us did.
And so began another part of the Doctor Who legend. Initially it was to be called a process of ‘renewal’; in the future, of course, it became a process known as ‘regeneration’. And so the Doctor regenerated – this time into the actor Patrick Troughton. Troughton appeared at the end of an episode called ‘The Tenth Planet’, which also introduced another of the iconic villains the Doctor would have to face – the Cybermen.
Like his predecessor, Troughton, who was born in London on 25 March 1920 and died on 28 March 1987, was a competent character actor, who was also to become best known for playing the part of Doctor Who. Like Hartnell he spent three years in the role, and the two had even acted together, in a film called Escape in 1948. He also had a distinguished career in theatre, but from the mid 1950s onwards preferred to work in television. Doctor Who was not his first iconic role (in point of fact, it wasn’t even iconic back then), that honour going to Robin Hood, and he was a well-known face on telly by the time he stepped into the Tardis. But that is the role he is most certainly remembered for now.
Just as David Tennant voiced approval about the appointment of Matt Smith, so William Hartnell gave his blessing to Patrick Troughton, saying, ‘There’s only one man in England who can take over and that’s Patrick Troughton.’ Troughton was to prove a popular figure with fellow cast members and crew, and played the role quite differently – as a ‘cosmic hobo’ à la Charlie Chaplin, an approach suggested by Sydney Newman.
Indeed, there was now a comic dimension to the role that hadn’t existed before, although this Doctor, too, had a dark side, occasionally manipulating the truth when it suited his ends. The Cybermen were proving very popular and the Daleks made a welcome return (however many times they were to be wiped out, somehow the producers always found a way for them to make a comeback), but it was a very heavy workload – 40 to 44 episodes per year. (Due to the BBC’s policy of wiping tapes in order to save money, not many of those episodes still exist.) That workload, combined with a fear of being typecast, finally got to Troughton, and in 1969, he, too, prepared to step down.
As has happened time and again in the history of Doctor Who, the programme, like its central character, needed to regenerate, and now proved to be just such a time. Viewing figures were beginning to fall (indeed, there is talk, hotly denied in some quarters, that the show was threatened with the axe even as far back as that); in addition, time travel was proving extortionately expensive – for the BBC, that is. Every time the Doctor landed somewhere new and exotic, it required vast amounts of props and costumes and they simply couldn’t afford to keep on spending at that rate. And so great minds began thinking about what the step would be.
Various ideas came up. The first was that the Doctor’s travels should be confined to earth, and this premise was briefly put forward in an episode called ‘The Invasion’, in which the Doctor was captured by his fellow Time Lords (like the Daleks, the extinct Time Lords also had a habit of reappearing when the producers got stuck) and sentenced to exile on earth for the crime of interfering with other races. There was talk that he should act as Scientific Advisor to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, or UNIT for short. Troughton duly took part in that episode, but while it proved popular with the public, a Time Lord who couldn’t travel through time and space was a Time Lord short of adventures. And so the idea was dropped – although it had been enough to save Doctor Who from the chop.
The advent of the third Doctor was going to usher in some other changes, too. For a start, until now, Doctor Who had been filmed in black and white: now and from then on, the show moved into glorious Technicolor. Then there was the new Doctor. The producers had approached Ron Moody, then best known for playing Fagin in Oliver!, but he wasn’t interested, and so the role ended up going to Jon Pertwee. Pertwee, like the two Doctors before him (this was becoming a noticeable trend) had had plenty of experience elsewhere, primarily as a comic actor, but it was for this now increasingly iconic role that he was to be best known.
John Devon Roland Pertwee was born in London on 7 July 1919 and died on 20 May 1996. From a rather distinguished background (the family was descended from Huguenots and his full surname, un-anglicised, would have been de Perthuis de Laillevault), Jon attended RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) and was an officer in the Royal Navy, working in naval intelligence during World War II. With a faint resemblance to Danny Kaye, which was exploited in full in the film Murder at the Windmill, Jon began to make his name as a comic actor, mainly courtesy of two radio shows, Waterlogged Spa and Puffney Post Office, alongside a very longstanding role as Chief Petty Officer Pertwee on The Navy Lark, which ran from 1959 to 1977. He also appeared in some of the Carry On films, displaying a lightness of touch that many assumed he would bring to the part of Doctor Who.
But he did not. Jon Pertwee was a very popular Third Doctor, and outlasted both his predecessors in the role in that he stayed for four years, but Jon, the first Doctor of the 1970s, played the role totally straight. In fact, he became something of an action Who, riding motorcycles, hovercraft, the Whomobile and a vintage roadster nicknamed Bessie; he also was soon to resume his travels in time and space.
Until now, Doctor Who had been
shown up to 44 times a year, a staggering workload for everyone involved. Wisely, this was scaled back, and from the seventh season in 1970, Pertwee’s first, the runs were much shorter. That one was 25 episodes and from then on, they were to veer between 20 and 28. Another piece of Doctor Who mythology fell into place at this time: in the eighth season, they introduced another villain, The Master. But The Master was no ordinary villain: conceived as Professor Moriarty to the Doctor’s Sherlock Holmes, The Master is another Time Lord. But he is an evil creature, the Doctor’s mortal enemy, and he recurs up to the present day. His first appearance was in ‘Terror of the Autons’ in 1971, played by Roger Delgado, who stayed in the role until he was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1973. The identity of the actor playing The Master garnered a great deal of attention in its own right: he has been portrayed by Peter Pratt, Geoffrey Beevers, Anthony Ainley, Eric Roberts and more latterly, Derek Jacobi and John Simm. As a Time Lord he, too, could regenerate, which was convenient when it came time for an actor swap.
Delgado’s death shook Jon Pertwee badly, and was one of the factors in making him decide to leave the show. Katy Manning, who’d played his companion, was also moving on, as were various people employed in the production side, and Pertwee was said to have felt it was time to go. And so entered the Fourth Doctor, still considered by many to this day to be the greatest of the lot. He is also, to date, the actor to play the role for the longest time, serving for a full seven years.
When Tom Baker was chosen for the role, many in the audience were shocked. He was much younger than his predecessors – a mere 40 – and was a hard-living, bohemian character off-screen, much married (at one point to Lalla Ward, who played his assistant) – and hanging out with the Soho crowd. Thomas Stewart Baker was born on 20 January 1934 in Liverpool; like all the others he came to be defined by the role. But he stood out head and shoulders above the rest, until David Tennant finally started to beat him in the popularity stakes. But even now, there are very many fans that think he was the best.
Matt Smith--The Biography Page 3
