The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: A Hartnell Era Overview

As I reach the end of the Hartnell Era in my blog, a new era has started on TV with Jodie Whitakker taking over the role. It's an exciting time, akin to when Russell T Davies revived the show back in 2005, but while I digest last night's episode, I thought I'd have a look at how I reacted to William Hartnell's time on the show, and how my opinions as I watched it episode by episode from 2003-2006 differ or have remained about, basically, my favourite of all the Doctors.

Firstly, let's look at the seasons. The first basically follows the Series' remit – to have educational Historical stories, Science Fiction tales set in the future which could help to educate on a scientific level and 'Sideways' stories (which include the opening serial of the second season). Verity Lambert almost immediately ignored the command to include 'no bug-eyed monsters', but this is basically what made the programme great. The first half of Terry Nation's debut Dalek story is brilliant and atmospheric, and given that there was very little like it on television at the time, I'm not surprised that even the rather dull second half still managed to keep the audience engaged. Season One flip-flops between Sci-Fi and History with varying success – Nation's second attempt is a real turkey, but with distance I now don't think it's all that bad. The Sensorites is by far the most interesting story from the Sci Fi selection, and I still remember being gripped by the tension of the first half and the mystery of the second half. Marco Polo is the stand-out of the Historicals, and the Season, making 7 episodes seem to fly by with even the dips in pace being entertaining. The Aztecs is more accessible (largely by still existing on film) but sidelines Susan due to Carole Ann Ford's fortnight's holiday.

Season 2 becomes more adventurous and experimental. It's here that we have the first outright Comedy story with The Romans, followed by an adventure devoid of Humans (other than the regulars) which plays with speech-patterns, the concept of other planets, and tries to show something truly alien whilst still providing an entertaining story. We have the first (and second) return of an old foe, the departure of ¾ of the series regulars and the concept of introducing new companions to travel with the Doctor, who is confirmed as the show's focus. We also end the series with the introduction of another of the Doctor's people who also has a TARDIS and isn't nearly as moral in a story which blends Earth's history with elements of Science Fiction for the first time. Lots of firsts!

Season 3 (and the start of Season 4) takes the show even further. With the departure of Verity Lambert, the series becomes darker and more adult. The Daleks' Master Plan brings back the Doctor's primary foe and makes them more frightening and dangerous than ever before. The show itself feels edgier and more dangerous as first Katarina, then her presumed replacement, Sara Kingdom, are killed. It all comes to a head with The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew's Eve which has the Doctor largely absent, and Steven left on his own to deal with four days surviving the build up to a Medieval French Religious 'cleansing'. His outrage at the Doctor in the wake of this gives us one of the strongest and most shocking scenes of the 'Classic' series; having learnt that the friends he made while in France have all been slaughtered he storms out the TARDIS leaving Hartnell to deliver one of his best monologues as the Doctor. It's emotional and potent and, fortunately, gives way to Steven's rapid return and the arrival of Dodo. The conclusion to this often gets criticised, but I can understand Steven, finding himself hundreds of years in his past, not especially willing to stay and using the approach of a couple of Policemen as an excuse to leave with the Doctor. And Dodo's arrival isn't really very different from many other companions' (Yes, my high opinion of this story hasn't diminished over time - I still count it as the best the series has ever been!). The second half of the Season has a much lighter tone (John Wiles having left with Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis now at the helm), but is still notably more adult in places. It finds itself amongst other family adventure serials and provides us with a run of varyingly entertaining four parters with the Doctor and his two companions encountering the weird and the wonderful and the wild (West). The era concludes with the introduction of Swinging Sixties couple Polly and Ben, replacing the Hero-style Steven and not-so-swinging Dodo. It's clearly Lloyd's attempt to reflect modern culture and Season 4 would go on to channel that ethos further with increasing adventures in the here and now as time went on.

So, to the Companions. As much as I loved Susan, Ian and Barbara from the off, Susan became very underused and badly scripted very quickly. It's unsurprising that Ford left after one year. It's clear that the Production team took her reasons on board, though, because Vicki is much better written from the very start. In fact, I often state that Polly and Ben are my favourite companions from the 1960s, but reading back my journal entries it seems very clear that it might easily be Vicki. For a start, she has a wonderful relationship with the Doctor, and stories regularly see them paired up for the light-hearted side of the adventure while the more serious and practical Ian and Barbara are given the more serious and practical storylines. When they are separated, Vicki goes off and starts a revolution! Much less a screamer than Susan, far less frightened, and much more proactive, Vicki's arrival coincided with the softening of the Doctor's character and helped bring the focus of the show onto him rather than Ian and Barbara who, basically, were the touchstones for the audience throughout the first series. Their departure toward the end of Season 2 saw a shift in the show from a family serial with educational leanings to an action-adventure series – a shift which it had slowly been making since that Season's beginning. Vicki's departure coincided with the greater shift when Verity Lambert left the series. With Vicki went the security and familiarity of the show until that point, and with the quick departure of her roughly-sketched replacement, the Doctor and Steven became the keystones to the show for a while. Much of the third series feels very testosterone-y with wars in history and outer space, lots of politics and social commentary and even the new female lead being very much a Tomboy. Dodo is often overlooked as a companion, but despite an awkward start in her first two serials, I think she was very good and developed quite well. It's just unfortunate that she was replaced so quickly.

As for the Doctor, I don't think at any time since has the character undergone such a radical transformation. At the beginning, Ian and Barbara were very much the focus of the show and Doctor Who was the rather crotchety old man who piloted the ship in which they were kidnapped, and whose stubbornness and curiosity got them into most of their adventures. Ian was the logical one, the brawn and the male identity-figure; Barbara was the moral one, the intelligence and the female identity-figure. In many ways, Barbara was the strongest character in the show, standing up to pretty much everyone she met and being a million miles away from the screaming companion which would later be associated with the series. And after she'd pulled the Doctor down a peg or two during the first Season, he began to take on Barbara's moral values. In a sense, by the time Barbara (and Ian) left, their presence was no longer needed because the Doctor, with the help of Vicki, had made the transition from the spiky, alien man at the controls to the caring grandfather-figure and righter-of-wrongs in the universe. It's ironic that the Doctor feels much more of a Grandfather to Vicki than he ever did to Susan. There was a caring relationship there, but he was much sterner in Season 1 and was often much more severe with Susan. Vicki's arrival seemed to awaken the Doctor's sense of fun, and as a result I think that the Season 2 team of the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki are one of the best there's been. There are so many great moments with the Doctor and Vicki, be they fighting assassins on the way to Rome, stealing clothes and ridiculing members of the court of Richard I, or investigating an alien ship by chucking rocks at Chumblies; and the fun rubs off on Ian and Barbara, too. They always had a great rapport, but there's something quite wonderful about the group's relationship at the start of The Chase, culminating with the Doctor and Barbara's exchange:

Barbara: “What's that awful noise?”

Doctor: “I beg your pardon? Awful Noise? That's no way to talk about my singing!”

Barbara: “No, Doctor, not that awful noise; the other one...!”

It's a huge contrast to their heated exchange toward the end of The Brink Of Disaster where Barbara angrily tears strips off him!

With Vicki's departure goes the warm, family feel of the TARDIS crew, but the Doctor retains his moral code and continues to step in to put things right everywhere they go. By the time he and Dodo arrive in London in 1966, he's off to investigate what's going on at the Post Office Tower within seconds of establishing he's getting bad vibes from it that remind him of the Daleks! His time adventuring with Ian, Barbara, Vicki and Steven has given him a sense of purpose, a sense of morality and humanity which will be the basic blueprint for the character from here on in. The First Doctor is so often viewed as a severe, tetchy, grumpy old man, but that was really only the character for the first three or four stories. In truth, the First Doctor was a driven and caring character with a sense of fun and a developing sense of morality, who viewed himself as 'a citizen of the universe and a gentleman, to boot!'. In the recent conclusion to Peter Capaldi's era, Steven Moffat couldn't have got the First Doctor's character more askew (it's almost as if he'd never watched an episode and was just using the character to get some cheap laughs, but that's a discussion for some other time).

What, then, do I think of the first three and a bit seasons, and what did I think when I watched them? With a few notable exceptions it looks like I really enjoyed the era. I often state that Season 3 is my favourite, so it was a surprise to me that my immediate opinion after watching each episode was so negative to serials like The Ark and The Celestial Toymaker. I was aware that I wasn't overly keen on them, or Galaxy 4, but I was genuinely surprised that I found them so dull (and wasn't a great fan of Steven at this point, either). I still maintain that Season 3 is my favourite – perhaps because the highs are so great, but also because there's so much variation. Seasons 1 & 2 are both lots of fun, but they're also uniformly good (well, perhaps if you ignore much of The Keys Of Marinus and The Chase). Season 3 sees the show shaken up and you don't know what to expect next, and that lack of safety is perhaps what makes it so exciting.

It's a great shame that Hartnell was absent for so much of his later stories, and that The Tenth Planet really isn't all it should be (or is it? Are we just accustomed now to the grand finale for the incumbent Doctor's swansong and expect what was essentially just another serial at the end of which the Production team changed the lead actor to be more than that?), but his era was the most experimental, radical, entertaining and changeable in the show's history. I certainly missed the First Doctor, but there would be plenty more waiting in the wings!