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This is a further look at the stories of the First Doctor, portrayed by William Hartnell, during the 1960s.
The First Doctor, Part 5
The Celestial Toymaker
This is a wonderful story, and the Toymaker is another foe many Doctor Who fans wanted to see return, and in 2023 it happened. In the story The Giggle he returned, played this time by Neil Patrick Harris, and it is a very good story. But in this introduction of the character he is played by Michael Gough in a Fu Manchu-like costume, and he has great powers, but is bound by certain rules, which makes this interesting. When the Tardis lands in his world, he sets them games they have to survive to escape. They are games based on children’s games you might be familiar with, but they have a twist. The Doctor is told he must solve the Trilogic puzzle in exactly 1023 moves, and Steven and Dodo must win their games before the Doctor wins his. This story is pure entertainment but very well done.
But Hartnell’s decline continued. In this story there are scenes of The Trilogic Puzzle where a hand moves a piece, but it is not Hartnell’s hand, it is another actor. And Hartnell does not appear at all in episodes 2 & 3. Producer John Wiles had a plan to replace Hartnell whose contract was up at the end of the season, but he was over-ruled by BBC Head of Serials, Gerald Savory, who extended Hartnell’s contract, leading to John Wiles quitting the production. Hartnell would continue for now, but something would have to happen eventually.
The Gunfighters)
This is another historical story, but is embarrassingly bad. It takes the Tardis to Tombstone, Arizona at the time of the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral. Steven Taylor is mostly silly trying to act out childish fantasies of cowboys. The set up comes from the end of the previous story when the Doctor bites into a candy and yells in pain. He needs to see a dentist, and Doc Holliday, aside from being a gunfighter, is a dentist. Mistaken identities happen all over. This is light fluff, but is enjoyable if you give in to the silliness.
The Savages)
This is another story about who are the bad guys really, similar to Galaxy Four. In this case, Dodo and Steven are captured by what appear to be Stone Age savages. The Doctor, meanwhile, is taken to the city of the Elders, is greeted warmly. It seems they have been following his travels for some time and are great admirers of him. Steven and Dodo are rescued by soldiers from the City, and reunited with the Doctor. Then Dodo slips away and stumbles on experiments being conducted on human beings. So the Elders turn out to be the real Savages here. The lab is destroyed, the two groups decide to live together in peace, but they realize they need a leader who is from neither group and choose Steven to be their leader. So another companion goes. Only Dodo is left.
The War Machines
This is an “AI gone bad” story. A professor has built a computer to help manage the communications in the new Post Office Tower, which in fact was a new building in London. But the computer turns out to be more than anyone realized. But Doctor gets it right away when the computer correctly gives the meaning of TARDIS. Then it turns out that the computer can hypnotize people and make them its slaves. It does this to several of the professors involved, and has them build the War Machines that will enable it to take over the world. Dodo is hypnotized and tries to trap the Doctor, but he figures it out and restores her, then she is sent away to recuperate. We won’t ever see her again. Meanwhile the secretary to one of the professors, by the name of Polly, and young sailor named Ben, join up with the Doctor, and they defeat the computer. At the end, they realize they have Dodo’s TARDIS key and enter just before it takes off. So now we have two new companions.
This is a fun episode. The props are the usual for this time in Doctor Who, cheap. But the writing is good, and story has enough twists and turns to carry you right along. Hartnell was really good in this story despite the problems he was having.
The Smugglers
This is another historical story, but instead of being based on any particular incident it tells of a general occurrence in English history. The English government chose to support itself primarily through customs duties on imports, which of course created an incentive to avoid those duties by smuggling, and that definitely happened a lot in the Cornwall area. It was also one the issues that started the American Revolution, but that is not our story here. The TARDIS crew encounters a former pirate, now turned church warden, who tells them a secret before being killed by another pirate. Ben and Polly capture a man who they think is the murderer, but he is in fact an undercover Revenue agent, and in the end helps to defeat the pirates. It is a good story, and the most memorable character has to be Cherub, the pirate who murdered the church warden and who kills other people and is very sinister.
This is a story where all episodes have been lost, so I had to get it through reconstructions.
The Tenth Planet
This is Hartnell’s final story, and it takes the TARDIS to Antarctica, where the travelers are taken to the Snowcap base of the International Space Command. They are managing the return of the manned space mission Zeus IV, and everything goes wrong when a new planet appears, dooming the mission. Then we meet the second most memorable enemies of the Doctor, the Cybermen. They explain that they are from the planet Mondas, which is Earth’s twin (hence the Tenth Planet), and need the energy from the Earth to keep their planet going. The General running the base is of course pig-headed and does everything possible to make things worse than they have to be. This adventure turns out to be too much for the Doctor, who explains that his old body is just wearing out, and when they get back to the TARDIS he collapses and starts to change. In the end his replaced by the of Patrick Troughton.
Hartnell was becoming increasingly difficult to work with as far back as The Time Meddler, where you could really see him losing his lines, and there are lots of stories about him hiding notes to remind himself of what he was supposed to say. But the BBC didn’t want the show to end, so they did something unprecedented and replaced the lead actor in a popular series. To explain it away, they invented regeneration, something the Doctor’s race could do. We now call them the Time Lords of Gallifrey, but that part did not appear until the end of Troughton’s run as the Doctor. For now, the Doctor was just a member of an unspecified alien race, and the only other member we had met was the Meddling Monk. At least we assume he is of the same race since he has a TARDIS.
The First Doctor Era
Whatever else you might want to say about Hartnell he created a franchise that has lasted for over 60 years at the time I write this. And after a slow start, he really developed the character and became identified with it. In the beginning he was a very stubborn and unlikable old man, but as the series progressed he mellowed and his humor started to come through even more. Hartnell himself returned to the role one more time in the Third Doctor story The Three Doctors (1973), which was the first time Doctor Who had a story featuring multiple incarnations of the character, in the case the First Doctor (William Hartnell), the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), and the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee). But due to his declining health he has a limited role appearing only on a TV Screen. He passed away in 1975.
He was portrayed by Richard Hurndall in another multiple Doctor story, _The Five Doctors_ (1983), which was broadcast for the 20th anniversary of the program during Peter Davison’s run as the Fifth Doctor. In recent times David Bradley has portrayed the First Doctor, particularly in the docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time (2013) which was produced in honor of the 50th anniversary of the program. This show tells the story of the First Doctor and the how the program came together in a dramatic form, and I recommend it highly. Bradley would reprise the role in 2017 in _The Doctor Falls and Twice Upon A Time) where he played opposite Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor, and then again in The Power of the Doctor_ (2022), where he appears alongside other previous Doctors. It is perhaps notable that the first three Doctors, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee, have all passed away, but only Hartnell’s First doctor has been revived so often.
Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Celestial_Toymaker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gunfighters_(Doctor_Who)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Savages_(Doctor_Who)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Machines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smugglers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tenth_Planet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Doctors_(Doctor_Who)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Doctors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Adventure_in_Space_and_Time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doctor_Falls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_Upon_a_Time_(Doctor_Who)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Doctor
https://www.palain.com/science-fiction/intro-to-doctor-who/the-first-doctor-part-5/
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