The Doctors Who's Who (5 page)

Lambert approached Hartnell’s agent to see if he would be interested in taking on the role of Doctor Who. She must have
displayed much charm in persuading the agent to ask his client – it wasn’t his type of work at all. He had started out doing Shakespeare and adult comedy, and then became the tough-guy actor. But perhaps this was why Lambert’s offer was so appealing – it was something completely different, something wonderful, like the role of ‘Dad’ Johnson. The agent made the call and said, ‘I wouldn’t normally have suggested it to you, Bill, to work in children’s television, but it sounds the sort of character part you have been longing to play.’ The agent went on to explain that the part was ‘of an eccentric old grandfather-cum-professor type who travels in space and time’.

Hartnell wasn’t too sure about the part, but did agree to meet Lambert to find out more. He said of the meeting: ‘The moment this brilliant young producer, Miss Verity Lambert, started telling me about
Doctor Who
I was hooked.’

Perhaps it wasn’t so clear-cut as that, though. Hartnell did go away and consider the offer and perhaps it was the diversity – the break from typecasting – that persuaded him to take it on, as Lambert recalled, ‘[he] was interested but wary’ when first offered the role. However, he soon made a decision and called her to accept.

Hartnell would find the work gruelling. Now in his mid-fifties, he was suddenly working 48 weeks a year, learning a variety of scripts and performing an action role. He admitted that it was ‘very hard work’ but despite the strain, he ‘loved every minute of it’.

The show became a smash hit and Hartnell obviously liked the idea of working for a young audience, as he said, ‘To me kids are the greatest audience – and the greatest critics – in the world. You know, I couldn’t go out into the high street without a bunch of kids following me. I felt like the Pied Piper.’

This was an impression echoed by his wife Heather, who
used to pick him up from the railway station after a day’s filming. She was to recall how he would get off the train and walk down the road with a stream of children behind him – not unlike the Pied Piper.

Hartnell fitted Sydney Newman’s perception of the Doctor beautifully. He was the crotchety old man and this behaviour was most prevalent in the opening scene of the fourth
Doctor Who
story, ‘Marco Polo’. His rudeness to his fellow companions is almost embarrassing in its childishness and selfishness, but somehow they still respect him.

‘Marco Polo’ was the first historical adventure story in
Doctor Who
, perfectly showcasing Newman’s original intentions for the show. It was informative and engaging, with narration from the Marco Polo character himself (played by Mark Eden, who had appeared in
Heavens Above!
with Hartnell in 1963), promising further adventure and intrigue as the story progressed. It was ‘Marco Polo’ more than ‘The Reign of Terror’ (the last story in
Doctor Who
’s first season) that paved the way for the great historical
Doctor Who
stories and showed the quality of the children’s entertainment that Hartnell was getting himself into.

William Hartnell played Doctor Who for three years and became quite wealthy on the back of it, earning the equivalent of about £4,000 per episode in present-day money, which was a very good regular salary at the time. Out of the seven stories in his first season, only three have SF connotations: ‘The Daleks’ (featuring the debut appearance of the Daleks), ‘The Keys of Marinus’ (featuring the Voord) and ‘The Sensorities’ (featuring creatures by the same name). The other stories were mainly historical, featuring cavemen (well, historical in idea), Marco Polo, Aztecs and the French Revolution. So there was a strong balance between the educational stories
and the more fantastical ones (but even the fantasy had its moral implications).

Hartnell said he quit
Doctor Who
because he didn’t see eye-to-eye with the BBC over the use of ‘evil’ in the show. In a letter to a fan – Ian McLachlan – of 1968, he wrote: ‘It was noted and spelled out to me as a children’s programme, and I wanted it to stay as such; but I’m afraid, the BBC had other ideas. So did I, so I left.’

In her preface to Jessica Carney’s biography of William Hartnell, Verity Lambert said that
Doctor Who
‘emanated from the Drama Department and not, as was the norm, the Children’s Department’. This may be the reason why the show started to develop more ‘adult’ themes and ideas. As the old production staff, including Lambert, moved on, more drama-based staff would take over in order to beef up the darker side of the show. This became more prevalent during Patrick Troughton’s time as the Doctor – so clearly the series was naturally progressing through the department it had originally come from (Drama, not the Children’s department). This genesis could explain why the show has continued to attract a broad fan-base of people of all ages, not just children. But Hartnell’s reasons for leaving do make sense, as some of his later
Doctor Who
stories suggest. Sadly these later stories no longer exist in the BBC archive, so it is difficult to appreciate the visual violence and increasingly adult situations. Looking at the titles, we can infer that a harder edge was being introduced: ‘The Massacre’, ‘The Savages’ and ‘The Smugglers’ leave little to the imagination. Even though these stories fitted Newman’s original historical remit, it was clear that the whole direction of
Doctor Who
was pointing towards a darker realism. Perhaps the turning point was the epic story ‘The Dalek Master Plan’, where two companions are killed off: Katarina, who was
introduced in the previous story, ‘The Myth Makers’, and Sara Kingdon (introduced and killed off during ‘The Dalek Master Plan’ itself). It was during this story that the first-ever Christmas special, ‘The Feast of Steven’, was broadcast. Sadly this too no longer resides in the BBC archive. A confusing audio still exists, but unfortunately it doesn’t appear to have much of a storyline and is difficult to analyse as a consequence.

Some older fans consider the one-off episode that acted as a prequel to ‘The Dalek Master Plan’ to be one of the scariest stories ever. Entitled ‘Mission to the Unknown’, it features grotesque plants and scary monsters and no reassuring Doctor and companions. All of this information vindicates Hartnell’s belief that the show was evolving away from the children’s programme he’d originally signed up to.

Many critics believe that Hartnell was pushed out of the show because he cost too much money (other regular actors were getting a quarter of what he was earning per episode), but the original six-page treatment clearly stated as a first paragraph that
Doctor Who
was ‘an exciting adventure – Science Fiction Drama serial for Children’s Saturday viewing’. Again, this vindicates Hartnell’s reasons for leaving: the job-spec had changed and he didn’t like it.

Hartnell loved children and saw
Doctor Who
as their show. This is reinforced by the fact that in 1964 he came up with an idea of a series called
The Son of Doctor Who
, in which a wicked son would wreak havoc across the universe and the Doctor would have to step in to sort things out. The BBC was not keen on the idea but sometime afterwards Hartnell said, ‘I still think it would have worked and been exciting for children.’

One could argue that Hartnell’s
The Son of Doctor Who
idea anticipated the new series’ story, ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’, in which the audience is given the distinct impression that a spin-off
series was highly likely and, above all, had the potential to be successful. In ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’, Georgia Moffett (the real-life daughter of the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison) would take on the part and play it exceptionally well. Does this vindicate Hartnell’s idea? Conversely, does Mary Whitehouse’s outrage at the violence in the show, from Patrick Troughton’s Doctor onwards, back up his perceptions about the direction of the show? Perhaps not – Mary Whitehouse’s intervention caused a lot of unnecessary changes to
Doctor Who
, as well as many headaches for directors and writers such as Barry Letts and Terence Dicks (during Jon Pertwee’s tenure as the Doctor).

During his reign as Doctor Who, Hartnell preserved the dignity of his ‘grandfather’ character. In truth, and with hindsight, his ailing health meant that he couldn’t have stayed much longer in the role, even if he had wanted to. A shame really, as four years later the show would be made in colour and Hartnell always commented on the wonderful sets and costumes, some of which can be glimpsed in all their splendour in rare colour photographs of the early years in the BBC archive, especially for ‘Marco Polo’. That said, a story like ‘Spearhead from Space’ (the first Jon Pertwee – and colour – story), in which walking shop-window dummies killed innocent civilians and subsequently attracted the wrath of real-life parents, would have been the final heartbreak for William Hartnell; the fulfilment of his nightmare: the death of
Doctor Who
as a children’s programme. Although Pertwee’s first season would appeal largely to a more teenage audience, it was quintessential in reinventing the programme for young and old alike.

When one appreciates how poor and unhappy Hartnell’s formative years were, one can understand why he was a little over-sentimental towards children as the Doctor, not unlike the sensitivities Charles Dickens would show his young characters
in his novels (he himself had a bad time as a child while working in a blacking factory, and his heart and soul was always with the younger generation). In that sense
Doctor Who
was the show Hartnell had been searching for throughout his whole career. Not hard man roles, not comedy roles; but something else, something different – for children. And
Doctor
Who
was exactly that.

William Hartnell left
Doctor Who
at exactly the right time, unaware of the legacy he would create by doing so. The show was still popular, for he had quit while he was ahead. The BBC wanted it to continue, so another actor had to take over; the idea of regeneration took shape and gave the show its own excuse for reinvention. It is widely accepted that Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis came up with the idea of regeneration; indeed, they were writers of the very last William Hartnell
Doctor Who
story, ‘The Tenth Planet’, also the first ever Cybermen adventure.

Heather Hartnell has said that her husband was happy that Patrick (Pat) Troughton took over the role of the Doctor. Hartnell was familiar with his work, so he believed the future of the show was in good hands.

Hartnell would make one further appearance as the Doctor, for the tenth anniversary story, ‘The Three Doctors’, playing alongside his successors, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee. He was a very unwell man at that time and had to read the lines for his cameo role from dummy boards, but he did it and enjoyed the experience too, spending some time with Troughton and Pertwee for publicity photographs, although he looked terribly frail.

Within two years of the photo call, Hartnell would be dead from arteriosclerosis. He died on 23 April 1975, aged 67. Until her death in 1984, Heather Hartnell wrote to fans all over the
world and attended several
Doctor Who
events, such was the impact and legacy of the first ever Doctor Who.

Today William Hartnell’s place in TV history is secured. He was the man who made
Doctor Who
popular – magical – with children all over the world. He was also the star of the very first
Carry On
movie, and appeared in some other truly great British films:
The Way Ahead, Brighton Rock, Hells Drivers
and
This Sporting Life
. More than that, he was very much a part of the genesis of the British comedy movie, with
I’m An Explosive, Will Any Gentlemen, The Mouse That Roared, Heavens Above!
and, of course,
Carry on Sergeant
.

Perhaps one of the best epitaphs Hartnell could have had, albeit inadvertently, was in a two-page feature in the 1965
Doctor Who
annual. Entitled ‘Who is Dr Who?’, the piece talks fondly of Hartnell’s time traveller: ‘He is mostly very gentle and kind-hearted and he has the utmost respect for life of any kind and his heart is big enough to respect every one of the countless forms life has taken in all the ages and all the worlds.’

Hartnell believed wholeheartedly in
Doctor Who
, so much so, in fact, he lived the part more than any other he had ever played, as he told Jack Bell of the
Daily Mirror
on 23 April 1966: ‘
Doctor Who
has given me a certain neurosis – and it is not easy for my wife to cope with. I get a little agitated, and it makes me a little irritable with people. In fact,
Doctor Who
seems to be taking over.’

Was this the reason why he left the show, the character taking him over? No, but the irritability was the first sign of his growing illness, something not totally appreciated when he was in the role. He found it difficult to remember his lines; he lost his temper with cast members very quickly, especially new ones. All the original cast and crew had left to pursue other projects
and, coupled with his failing health, he began to feel at odds with the show he so deeply loved.

Why did he love it so much? Let us consider that in many of his post-war roles he had played an army officer and, with such a traumatic exit from the war himself (and his love being comedy, not tough-guy roles), a general dissatisfaction is clearly evident regarding the path his career took.

Another reason for his love of
Doctor Who
is encapsulated in a quote from the
Doctor Who Tenth Anniversary Radio Times Special
, where he recalls his lasting memory of the show. He had been asked to open a fête, so he dressed in his
Doctor Who
clothes and turned up in an old car owned by a friend. ‘I’ll never forget the moment we arrived. The children just converged on the car, cheering and shouting, their faces all lit up. I knew then just how much
Doctor Who
really meant to them.’