Doctor Who (3 page)

 

One symptom of this is his hatred of scientist, inventors, improvers. He can get into a rare paddy when faced with a cave man trying to invent a wheel. He malignantly tries to stop progress (the future) wherever he finds it, while searching for his ideal (the past).

 

Adjacent to the description of this secret background information, a handwritten note from Sydney Newman reads: “Don't like this at all. Dr. Who will become a kind of father figure—I don't want him to be a reactionary.”

Webber's pitch also brings in another revelation of the Doctor's background:

 

Wherever he goes he tends to make ad hoc enemies; but also there is a mysterious enemy pursuing him implacably every when: someone from his own original time, probably. So, even if the secret is out by the 52nd episode, it is not the whole truth. Shall we say:—

 

The Second Secret of Dr. Who: The authorities of his own (or some other future) time are not concerned merely with the theft of an obsolete machine; they are seriously concerned to prevent his monkeying with time, because his secret intention, when he finds his ideal past, is to destroy or nullify the future.

 

Newman strongly disagreed with this as the Doctor's goal, writing a single dismissive word: “Nuts.”

Webber proposed an introduction story entitled “Nothing at the End of the Lane.” Biddy would be walking through the fog with her teachers Lola and Cliff, discovering the mysterious and amnesiac Doctor wandering in a daze. He would lead them into his time machine, sending it into flight before they understood what was happening.

At the bottom of Webber's pitch, Newman's overall judgment was: “I don't like this much—it reads silly and condescending. It doesn't get across the basis of teaching of educational experience—drama based upon and stemming from factual material and scientific phenomena and actual social history of past and future.” Newman also insisted that the mysterious Doctor should be a character who would “take science, applied and theoretical, as being as natural as eating,” in other words: a figure who embraced progress rather than disrupted it.

The program's pitch altered again. Lola McGovern became Barbara Wright, a history teacher. Cliff became Ian Chesterton, a science teacher and Barbara's trusted friend. Biddy became Susan, a teenage student already traveling with the Doctor. Rather than implying any criminality, Newman's newly generated character description suggested another explanation for why the Doctor left his world:

 

A man who is 764 years old—who is senile but with extraordinary flashes of intellectual brilliance. A crotchety old bugger—any kid's grandfather—who had, in a state of terror, escaped in his machine from an advanced civilisation on a distant planet which had been taken over by some unknown enemy. He didn't know who he was any more, and neither did the Earthlings, hence his name, Dr. Who. He didn't know precisely where his home was. He did not fully know how to operate the time-space machine. In short, he never intended to come to our Earth. In trying to go home he simply pressed the wrong buttons—and kept on pressing the wrong buttons, taking his human passengers backwards and forwards, and in and out of time and space.

 

Meanwhile, Newman was assembling the team that would directly head
Dr. Who.
Rex Tucker acted as interim “caretaker” producer until an official one was hired. David Whitaker joined as script editor and Anthony Coburn joined as a staff writer. Whitaker would maintain character consistency and Coburn worked closely with him on further developing the main characters. He was also set to write the show's second story, involving an adventure with cavemen. Written by Webber, the opening story “The Giants” would
be a multi-episode tale conceived by Newman in which the Doctor's ship temporarily shrinks its travelers.

Finally, Newman contacted Verity Lambert about leaving ABC and becoming his full-time producer. In the documentary
Doctor Who Origins,
Lambert explained, “He phoned me and said, ‘Verity, what do you know about children?' And I said, ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing at all.' He said, ‘Well, there's a new children's series that we're going to make, and we're looking for a producer, and you're one of the people who I have suggested be seen for the job.'”

Along with now being the BBC's only female producer at the time, Verity Lambert was also the youngest (just twenty-seven years old). Though Lambert may not have been Newman's first choice, he later said—and said often—that she had been the right choice. In 1993, he told
Doctor Who Magazine,
“I think the best thing I ever did on that was to find Verity Lambert. I remembered Verity as being bright and, to use the phrase, full of piss and vinegar! She was gutsy, and she used to fight and argue with me.”

Newman wanted true universal viewing rather than a children's show that parents and older siblings had to endure. Lambert agreed and advocated morality lessons at the center of the stories. She also insisted time and time again to actors, writers, and directors that stories not be dumbed down. In the commentary for “The Time Meddler,” Lambert said, “I was absolutely adamant that the actors played it for real. . . . Children know when they're being patronized. I mean, more than adults actually.”

Along with finding the heart of the program that Newman had conceived, it was also Lambert herself who cast the first actor to play our strange, paradoxical hero.

The Music of Who

“Everyone remembers the music . . . and the way the music would sort of cook through the walls. You could hear it down the street.”

—Paul McGann, Eighth Doctor

 

The theme music of
Doctor Who
remains one of the most famous tunes in science fiction programming. The television show has had many versions, various bands have covered it, and there have been remixes and parodies.

Verity Lambert wanted the theme music to immediately establish a mysterious atmosphere. She went to the Radiophonic Workshop, since they worked at lower prices than other studios, and showed the
Doctor Who
title sequence to Ron Grainer, who had composed a memorable theme for the documentary
Giants of Steam
(and later composed music for
The Prisoner
).

Grainer noted the timing of the title sequence's distorted images and the flying words “Doctor Who.” He quickly wrote down an outline, with notes marking how sounds would evoke wind and bubbles, and handed it to staffer Delia Derbyshire to realize it. Later nicknamed a “sculptress of sound,” Derbyshire, a counterculture woman known for creating horror soundtracks, orchestrated “hymns for robots” and arranged the sound of the world's first electronic music fashion show. Working before the age of synthesizers, midi, and modern sequencing equipment, she individually hand-cut the notes with tape and brought Grainer's composition to life using feedback, filtered white noise, manually operated swoops, and high harmonics.

When she played it for Grainer, he reportedly was so impressed that he asked, “Did I write that?” To which Derbyshire responded, “Well, most of it.” She took pride that people couldn't quite figure out how she had produced the piece and heavily disapproved of how often producers later altered the theme for different Doctors. Eighteen years later, John Nathan-Turner had the theme redone with a synthesizer, an instrument that Derbyshire discouraged since she believed electronic music should
be handmade. Hearing the
Doctor Who
themes of the 1980s, she told her friends that she had disowned the music.

Although Ron Grainer received credit as composer in the television credits, he tried to split the royalties with Derbyshire, but BBC rules didn't allow it. It wasn't until 1973, when the music of
Doctor Who
was released for purchase, that Delia Derbyshire finally received credit for her work, gaining her many Whovian fans.

The music of
Doctor Who
was celebrated in a whole new way in 2006, when a charity concert for Children in Need was held at the Millennium Center in Cardiff, Wales. David Tennant hosted
Doctor Who: A Celebration,
featuring the BBC National Orchestra of Wales performing incidental music of the modern program's first two years, composed by Murray Gold, as well as the theme. Cybermen, Ood, and other strange beings walked among the audience, looming over children before disappearing into the shadows.

In 2008 and 2010, the Royal Albert Hall held
Doctor Who
concerts as part of the annual Proms series. David Tennant couldn't appear for the first in person due to prior commitments, but he did make an appearance via a mini-episode broadcast in the Hall. Matt Smith, Arthur Darvill, and Karen Gillan hosted the 2010
Doctor Who
Prom.

To this day, the end credits of
Doctor Who
mention Ron Grainer but not Delia Derbyshire.

2

Who Is 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.”

—First Doctor, from “The Sensorites” (1964)

 

The core of the Doctor's character was still being formed. While Sydney Newman did not like the Doctor seeming dangerous, Lambert believed it was an excellent quality. But instead of having him act with deliberate malice, she suggested that the Doctor have obvious character flaws that invited or created danger: insensitivity, overconfidence, a short temper, and an occasionally narrow-minded focus on his goals. She also wanted the character to have a childlike spirit to counter these flaws, believing the paradox of his personality would interest older viewers.

“I rather liked the cantankerous bit,” Lambert told
Dreamwatch
in 2004. “Getting [people] into terrible scrapes because he wouldn't listen, and always thinking he knew best. But when he was being sweet, he was quite touching and vulnerable.”

But who was this actor behind the alien? Though he said at times that his father was a farmer, William Hartnell was born out of wedlock in 1908, the son of Lucy Hartnell and a father he never found. Raised by his mother and his aunt Bessie, Hartnell later found a father figure in art collector Hugh Blaker. A great lover of horses, Hartnell trained as a jockey before entering the theater in 1925. During World War II, he served for eighteen months in the Tank Corps, leaving due to mental distress and saying later that military life was too much for his nerves.

Many of Hartnell's subsequent roles were militaristic or authoritarian characters and he gained great recognition as Sergeant Major Percy Bullimore in
The Army Game.
When Lambert approached him about
Doctor Who,
he initially resisted, frustrated by type-casting as gruff authority figures. But Lambert, with director Waris Hussein, convinced him that this was a
very different role that would appeal to kids, a character his own grandchildren could enjoy.

Lambert wanted Hartnell for the role because she believed he would deliver the element of danger that she wanted in the Doctor.

 

There was a malevolent side to Bill, which I had thought was important in the Doctor. . . . He was terribly sweet and terribly kind when he wanted to be, but you always had that thing that he could get everyone into trouble by . . . not being quite the way he should. . . . That combination of he's a rather gentle and kindly person who could then turn into a bit of a rogue.

 

At age fifty-five, William Hartnell became the first and, until recently, oldest actor to portray the program's hero. Around this time, the show was retitled
Doctor Who
and the main character was now simply called the Doctor rather than use the program's full title as his alias (we'll discuss the hero's name in more detail in the sidebar “The Hero with No Name”).

An Element of Magic

“Then what are you like?”

“I don't know—Gandalf. A space Gandalf.”

—Amy Pond and the Eleventh Doctor in a scene cut from “The Vampires of Venice” (2011)

 

Webber's script for the initial
Doctor Who
story “The Giants” did not impress interim producer Rex Tucker, and he finally rejected it on the grounds that it would be too difficult and costly to film. After Tucker left, the script went back into the production schedule, partly due to a lack of completed stories. Lambert and Whitaker, however, thought it was “thin on incident and character,” so it was rejected again (though its concept became the basis of a later adventure, “Planet of the Giants,” scripted by Louis Marks). Coburn's cavemen story would now immediately follow the program's first episode, already written by Webber and entitled “An Unearthly Child.” Coburn adapted this script to work as the opener to his cavemen tale
and made some changes, such as making the character Susan the Doctor's granddaughter.

After reading the new script, Whitaker added a note that read: “Regarding Doctor Who, I feel that he should be more like the old Professor that Frank Morgan played in
The Wizard of Oz,
only a little more authentic. Then we can strike some of the charm and humour as well as the mystery, the suspicion, and the cunning.” Hartnell agreed, thinking Coburn's script made the character too “bad tempered.” Wishing to appeal to children rather than frighten them, he asked for more pathos and humor in the role, later suggesting that the Doctor combine “the Wizard of Oz and Father Christmas.” In an interview with
Radio Times
in December 1972, Hartnell said, “The original Doctor was pig-headed and irascible, certainly, but there was also an element of magic in him—and that was what I wanted to bring out.”

Although the Doctor was no longer going to have amnesia, the production team kept the idea that he didn't quite know how to pilot his old and unreliable ship. This was partially due to the fact that he had stolen the ship, although this fact wasn't actually revealed to audiences until the end of the sixth year. Why the Doctor had stolen a time ship and run from his people was never decided, though, and as far as Verity Lambert was concerned it wasn't important. For her, the mystery surrounding his past helped foster his air of danger and she enjoyed Webber's suggestion that the Doctor was a criminal who left his planet to flee punishment.

Hartnell and Newman both wanted the stories to describe science and science fiction elements in basic concepts and ideas rather than technical jargon that might confuse children. As Hartnell told
Reveille
in 1965, “It's an adventure story, not a scientific documentary. And Doctor Who isn't a scientist. He's a wizard. . . . I see Doctor Who as a kind of lama. No, not a camel. I mean one of those long-lived old boys out in Tibet who might be anything up to 800 years old, but look only 75.”

“An Unearthly Child”

The first episode of
Doctor Who
was almost as far as the program got. Initial footage of “An Unearthly Child” didn't impress Sydney Newman. He criticized
technical difficulties, direction choices, and cast performances. In particular, Susan seemed too alien, and the Doctor still felt too sinister. But rather than scrub the project, Newman had the episode redone from scratch, even though this would delay the intended November 16 airdate. A new version of “An Unearthly Child” produced much better results and became the official first episode, with the original unaired version later nicknamed the “pilot,” even though the BBC was not in the practice of filming pilots then. Some believe that this extra effort on the first episode ensured that the show still holds up today as an engaging and entertaining story.

A few overt changes were made for the final version of “An Unearthly Child.” A remark that the Doctor and Susan were from the forty-ninth century was removed, with Susan now vaguely remarking that they were from another time, another world. Susan was given a new outfit so that she seemed younger. While the Doctor had worn a modern jacket and tie in the pilot, he was now to be a visual paradox, someone who lived in a spaceship but looked as if he belonged in the nineteenth century. He was given a high-wing collar, cravat, and checkered trousers. Many years later, Fourth Doctor Tom Baker remarked during interviews that this facet of the show established the Doctor as “anti-fashion,” a trait that carried on into different incarnations.

With the premiere episode reshot and ready to go, filming continued and marketing began. Sadly, some publications decided not to pay much attention to the show, thinking it odd and with little potential for a real audience. In the autumn of 1963, BBC Radio broadcast an audio trailer featuring William Hartnell explaining the premise:

 

The Doctor is an extraordinary old man who owns a time and space machine. He and his granddaughter, Susan (played by Carole Ann Ford), have landed in England and are enjoying their stay until Susan arouses the curiosity of two of her schoolteachers (played by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill). They follow Susan and get inside the ship, and Doctor Who decides to leave Earth, starting a series of adventures which I know will thrill and excite you every week.

 

And so, on Saturday afternoon, November 23, 1963, several viewers watched as wispy images shifted across the screen, accompanied by a haunting tune and the flying title: “Doctor Who.” The theme music plays on as we approach the large wooden gate of I. M. Foreman's scrap yard at 76 Totter's Lane in Shoreditch, London. The gate opens, and we move forward to see a strange object surrounded by junk: a police public call box humming with power.

Many years later, Sixth Doctor Colin Baker recalled the program's strange music and opening scene in the documentary
The Story of Doctor Who
: “I was a law student. . . . I'd been out, and I came back and my four or five flatmates had just turned the television on . . . and I can remember very clearly, a kind of, almost an eidetic image of coming into the door, leaning on the banister, which is inside the door, and I was actually still there twenty-five minutes later. I hadn't moved.” When I brought up the initial adventure to Fifth Doctor Peter Davison in an interview, he remarked how effective this episode had been for children like himself. “You're at school, and you think of all the adventures you want to have, especially when you feel that others may not understand you. . . . So you have this girl who's clever and interesting, but people wonder about her and laugh. So you connect to that, and then she goes off, and you find out her home is this police call box that can go off to space. . . . And on top of all that, it's piloted by this mysterious and funny man. Fantastic.”

The Doctor is presented as a mercurial personality, either easily distracted or pretending to be because it annoys the inquisitive schoolteachers who have unwittingly discovered his time ship, and whose questions he dismisses as childish and ignorant. After gentle mockery, the Doctor explains that he and his granddaughter Susan are exiles, unable to return to their home planet, now traveling through space and time “without friends or protection.” That is all the detail he gives. He doesn't say his people are called Time Lords (which would be revealed six years later), nor that his planet is named Gallifrey (as established more than ten years later).

The Doctor grows concerned about the teachers, believing that they'll lead others to learn about him and the TARDIS (evidently, he fears an enemy beyond the simple Earth authorities he can easily evade). Susan
argues that they're kind people and should be released. What's more, she wants to stay in England rather than continue wandering through time and space. The Doctor pretends to concede but then activates the ship's controls. Susan grabs him, and he either throws the wrong switch or doesn't finish inputting the data. In either case, it's too late. The ship takes flight. Moments later, the TARDIS lands somewhere, the Doctor looks alarmed, and someone's shadow looms outside. An intertitle then announces: “Next Episode: The Cave of Skulls.”

Although many families enjoyed the show and positive reviews were forthcoming, the ratings didn't stack up as hoped. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy overshadowed much of television over the following days.

With this in mind, the BBC decided to rebroadcast “An Unearthly Child” the following week, with the second episode of the series following. As a result, more people came to enjoy the strange Doctor, his odd grandchild, and their two unwilling traveling companions. “An Unearthly Child” brought 4.4 million viewers. The next episodes of the initial story arc were “The Cave of Skulls,” “The Forest of Fear,” and “The Firemaker,” bringing in 5.9 million viewers, 6.9 million viewers, and 6.4 million viewers respectively.

“Senile Old Man”

Sydney Newman's initial proposal envisioned the Doctor as scatterbrained and forgetful. Hartnell's episodes have some line flubs, which have been attributed to the actor being forgetful himself, but several who worked with him have pointed out that flubs are an inevitable consequence of limited rehearsal time and episodes that were mostly taped “live,” as the budget could only afford one or two takes for most scenes. According to Carole Ann Ford, who played Susan, “I think a lot of it was mischievousness as well. . . . He did actually delight in changing a few words here and there. . . . Little word things [made him laugh].”

In several episodes, the Doctor refers to companion Ian Chesterton by the wrong name, calling him “Chatterton,” “Chesterfield,” or some other approximation. William Russell, who played Chesterton, often said that Hartnell deliberately did this to add humor to the role, which the
audience could interpret as the Doctor being addlebrained or intentionally teasing.

While many spoke lovingly of William Hartnell and his fatherliness, he was occasionally difficult. Carole Ann Ford felt that he sometimes spoke to her as if she actually were a teenager rather than a young woman. Some have cited his rush to judgment when he believed others weren't behaving professionally, with increasing periods of frustration later on.

An age paradox is at work here. Hartnell was one of the oldest actors cast for the part, but is, of course, actually the youngest Doctor. In the Big Finish audio drama “Quinnis,” Susan flippantly remarks that the First Doctor was practically a teenager by Time Lord standards. In the 2007 mini-episode “Time Crash,” the Tenth Doctor directly referenced this paradox: “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 Need for Others

“Just promise me one thing. Find someone . . . 'cause sometimes I think you need someone to stop you. ”

—Donna Noble to the Tenth Doctor, from “The Runaway Bride” (2006)

 

In the first story arc, curiosity and scientific interest motivate the Doctor, but he has little care for others around him and is, possibly, murderous. While fleeing from unfriendly cave people, the heroes come across an injured man. The schoolteachers insist on stopping to help, but the Doctor argues that their pursuers are closing in and it's best to hurry back to the TARDIS. They overrule him, but, while no one is looking, he picks up a rock—before Ian grabs his wrist a moment later. The startled Doctor stammers, claiming he intended to ask the injured man to draw a map. Was the Doctor telling the truth? Was he about to kill the man? Perhaps he only considered the man's death for a moment and would have ultimately decided against it.