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Four of the first Doctors stories involved the Daleks, who became stars in
their own right, spawning annuals to accompany the Doctor Who annuals, a
stage play, “The Curse of the Daleks”, lots of merchandise and two full
colour feature films! Hammer Films stalwart Peter Cushing played Doctor Who,
in the movies. The Daleks are still with us, appearing twice in the 2005
series, and twice with David Tennant’s Doctor.
A comic strip of Doctor Who adventures began
in 1964, in ‘TV Comic, and one has been running ever since via various
publishers.
By 1966, poor health forced William Hartnell
to quit the role he loved so much, but he went out in style, his ‘swan song’
tale introducing the Cybermen, a part human, part machine predecessor of
‘Star Trek’s Borg. These were to become as popular as the Daleks, and have
featured regularly throughout the shows long run. featuring most recently
with the 10th Doctor.
Faced with the dilemma of either cancelling
the show, which was popular, or re-casting the lead (unheard of in those
days), the production team came up with a novel idea.
Since it had been explained from the first
episode that the Doctor was NOT human, why shouldn’t he simply adopt a new
body?
It was worth a try, and on November 5 1966 the
viewing public was stunned to see their hero collapse on the TARDIS floor
and change his face, build, hair, and even his demeanour!
Whereas Hartnell had been a bit short tempered
and argumentative, the new, younger Doctor was whimsical, a bit scatty, and
had a more lighthearted approach.
Patrick Troughton stepped into the TARDIS, and took Doctor Who into a new
era.
Where Hartnell had adventures in space, the
future, and met a lot of bizarre aliens, the historical adventures, with the
likes of Marco Polo and Emporer Nero had NO aliens or monsters at all.
This all changed during the tenure of the
second Doctor, kicking off with old favourites the Daleks, no less than four
encounters with the Cybermen, fan favourites the Ice Warriors were
introduced, and returned to face Doctor no 2, as well as tackling the third
Doctor in the 1970’s!
Patrick Troughton’s Doctor was accompanied in
all but one of his adventures by the longest serving companion on the show,
Jamie McCrimmon, a survivor from the battle of Culloden. Fraser Hines, later
to become a regular in ‘Emmerdale Farm’, played him. Together with other
companions Victoria, and later, Zoë, they faced robot Yeti, in the
Himalayas, and later in the London underground! A veritable zoo consisting
of giant crab creatures, fish people, robots called Quarks and some
body-snatching aliens gave the second Doctor and his companions a hard time.
As with William Hartnell’s era, the show was
running almost continually throughout the year, and for the regular cast to
get a holiday meant the script writers finding ways to have one or more of
them be missing for an episode or two.
Usually, this meant someone being captured and
out of sight in a cell or dungeon.
This eventually took its toll on Troughton,
and he decided not to renew his contract after his third year. Fraser Hines
and Wendy Padbury (Zoë) decided to leave also.
It was then that we discovered that the
Doctors own race was called ‘Time Lords’, and that the Doctor was a fugitive
from them.
Another change was imminent, as the Time Lords
captured the Doctor and his companions, returned Jamie and Zoë to their own
time zones and exiled the Doctor to Earth, with the memory of how to operate
his TARDIS removed!
They also changed his appearance…
1970 saw the first colour episodes of Doctor
Who, and a new face for our hero.
Jon Pertwee had been a successful comedy act
for some years when he took on the role of Doctor Who, and so it was assumed
that he would take that route with the character.
As Troughton had taken a more humorous
approach, it followed that his successor should take a different road.
Pertwee came across as a kind of debonair,
flamboyant ‘James Bond’ action man.
Trapped on Earth, the Doctor threw in his lot
with a paramilitary organisation called U.N.I.T, an international team for
investigating extraterrestrial phenomena. Sort of ‘S.G.1’, without the
doughnut! The Doctor had met with the British head of U.N.I.T before, when
they had tackled the Yeti in the London underground, and the Cybermen in
London.
Despite the Earth bound setting, Monsters and
Aliens continued to crawl out of the woodwork, sometimes literally! Some of
the most memorable scenes from this period of the show involve the Sea
Devils, aquatic invaders rising from the sea, giant green maggots in an
abandoned mine, and a man being suffocated by a living inflatable plastic
chair!
This era of the programme saw the first
appearance of an foe that has been a regular feature ever since, popping up
every now and then to plague our hero; The Master!
A renegade member of the Doctors own race, the
Time Lords, The Master seems to have a personal grudge against the Doctor.
Although the viewer gets the impression that the pair enjoy sparring
occasionally, and one would miss the other if ever they should be no more!
In 1973, the show celebrated its 10th
anniversary with a special four part serial. The Earth bound stories had
limited the show somewhat, and it had lost the variety it had when the
writers could set the stories in outer space, or in some historical period.
To remedy this, and celebrate ten years of the show, a story was conceived
that pitted an enemy so powerful and dangerous against our hero, that it
took ALL THREE of the Doctors so far to defeat him! Since this was another
renegade Time Lord, and a threat to the Doctors own people, the three
incarnations were allowed to meet in a bid to defeat this formidable foe.
After successfully banishing the threat, the Doctor was given his freedom to
travel, and so the show took to the stars once more.
Jon Pertwee had one more season of ‘phone box
travel’, making four years in all, before moving on to make a success of
‘Worzel Gummidge’, and his tenure is one of the most fondly remembered by
long term fans of the show.
The next incumbent, however, was the longest
running actor to play the lead in Doctor Who, and is, by many, remembered as
‘The Definitive’ Doctor Who!
Tom Baker could not have been more different
from Jon Pertwee. Gone were Pertwees velvet jackets and silk lined capes,
and instead the wild, bulging eyes and shabby bohemian look, completed by
the long, multi coloured scarf.
The first season with Tom Baker as the Doctor
featured the return of the Daleks, the Cybermen, and a foe introduced in
Pertwees last season, the Sontarans. These are a short, stocky warrior race
that has returned occasionally to the show. Although the previous Doctor had
faced the Daleks three times, Tom’s first skirmish with them went right back
to their origins, and the viewers met their creator, Davros.
After this first season, the fourth Doctors
shows rarely relied on returning adversaries. For most of the seven year run
with Tom in the leading role, the show moved on to pastures new, with the
occasional brush with ‘re-making’ classic horror films Who style.
‘Pyramids of Mars’ and ‘Brain of Morbius’ come
to mind as a sort of “ Doctor Who does ‘Curse of the Mummy’ and ‘Doctor Who
meets Frankenstien’. Classic viewing, all the same!
Despite the show reaching a peak of popularity
in the later part of the ‘70’s Toms personality took over, and script
writers seemed to pander to his sense of the absurd, leading eventually to a
descent into slapstick and self parody. Even so, it remains one of the shows
most memorable eras, and boasts TWO stories written by ‘Hitchhikers Guide’
author Douglas Adams, who also script edited for a year.
In 1980, a new producer was appointed. The
show had been through a few changes of production crew over the years. This
is one of the things that kept it fresh.
The difference this time was that John Nathan
Turner had been a fan for years!
John’s first season as producer was also Toms
last, as he felt it was time for him to move on to other things.
It was time to re-cast the Doctor yet again,
and Nathan Turner took the bold move of casting a young actor in a role that
had traditionally been given to actors in their 40’s or ‘50’s.
Peter Davison was an actor already well known
to the general public for many roles, not least as Tristan Farnon in ‘All
Creatures Great and Small’.
Peter’s greatest threat as the Doctor, though,
was the change of time slot from Saturday evening to twice weekly slots that
continually changed from season to season, eventually clashing with
‘Coronation Street’!
Despite this, Davison’s first season was
refreshing and progressive, featuring some complex, if sometimes confusing
to some, storylines mixed in with some more ‘traditional’ monster tales.
Peter’s vulnerability and the sense that the
Doctor was struggling to overcome the odds was miles away from Tom’s total
confidence and flippancy.
The new production team re-introduced The
Master for every season, and the Daleks and Cybermen made a pilgrimage to
the show also.
To be fair, ‘Earthshock’ was a taut thriller,
and the Cybermen were a surprise, but for later seasons, with the next two
Doctors, they were used poorly.
When Peter Davison left the show after three
years, Colin Baker was cast in the role.
Colin was ecstatic, and pledged to stay with
the show for as long as the BBC wanted him.
It was 1984.
Problems arose around this time, as some of
the newer BBC hierarchy had no love for the programme. Add to this the
appallingly garish costume that Colin Baker had to wear, in complete
contrast to what he had wanted, and scripts which, generally, started well,
but failed to deliver, and the general public started turning off.
The show returned to Saturday night BBC1, but
in a forty-five minute format, although the scripts had been written for the
old twenty-five.
Programme controller Michael Grade postponed
the next season, Colin Bakers second, for 18 months, allegedly to give the
production team time to revamp the show.
Despite the new season starting with probably
the best visual effect the programme had ever seen, and had reverted to
25-minute episodes on Saturday evenings, the ratings, and Grade’s opinion
were not good. The casting of Bonnie Langford as the Doctors companion was
controversial, to say the least, although to be fair to her, she didn’t get
to play the part of Mel as she would have liked.
At the close of the season, it was unsure if
the show would return the next year.
Return it did, but with another new Doctor!
The BBC did not renew Colin Bakers contract, and had Nathan Turner appoint
another actor in the role of the Doctor
Sylvester Mcoy played the Doctor at first like
a scatty professor, gradually toning down that side of the character to
become darker, more manipulative. During this time, the production team did
take a few risks, and pandered less to the shows hardcore fans.
Some of the old sense of fun, and a wacky,
adventurous fantasy pervaded the show, but the time slot was changed again
to weeknight, fighting for ratings with ‘Corrie’ again!
In 1989, just as the Doctor seemed to be
finding his feet again, the BEEB let the show fade away, after Sylvester’s
third season, the programme ended with no announcement, not big blow out,
just another season end.
BBC bosses always stated that they intended
the Doctor to return, “When the time is right.” But it was 1996 before a
new episode was to appear on TV screens.
BBC bosses had been negotiating with American
TV companies to co- finance a new Doctor Who series, but it had taken years
to work out the legalities.
Eventually, a pilot movie was produced with
Fox TV starring Paul McGann as the Doctor. Paul’s performance was excellent,
like an over excited schoolboy in Victorian dress. Production values were
high, and there was even a cameo from Sylvester Mcoy for a regeneration
scene.
But the movie suffered in British fans eyes
for being too ‘American’, and the plot tried to encapsulate nearly 40 years
of continuity into its 90 minutes, leading to a lot of dialogue that was
purely to help new viewers catch up all in one go! And the plot was a bit
weak.
Fox held back from co producing a series,
ratings in America being borderline. They suggested four TV movies a year,
but the BBC wanted a regular series. Stalemate
It was 2005 before regular Doctor Who was to
hit our TV screens. Re-vamped with a decent budget, and the serendipitous
casting of Christopher Eccleston in the title role, along with Billie piper
as his companion Rose Tyler, the show has hit the big time again.
The first new season had all the fun, humour
and imagination of the old series at it’s best, plus the creepy gothic
horror that previous generations had got used to.
Christopher Eccleston played The Doctor with
relish, giving a gravitas to the characters confrontations with his enemies,
and playing up flippant side of The Doctor in the shows quieter moments.
In a change of direction to previous seasons
of the show, the companion Rose Tyler, played by Billie Piper, had regular
contact with her family, giving a grounding that the show had not had since
the Pertwee seasons, when the U.N.I.T soldiers had become regular support
characters. Jackie Tyler, Rose’s mum, and Mickey, Rose’s boyfriend, popped
up from time to time to lend a hand, or get in the way, whichever the script
required.
After thirteen episodes, Eccleston moved on,
having established himself as one of the most memorable actors to play the
role, and also helping to raise the shows profile and standing in the eyes
of the viewing public. There were many debates about the circumstances of
Christopher’s departure, but I personally think that it was always planned
that he would do just the one season, to bring the show back to T.V in a way
that was vastly different from the past, and yet not alienating established
long-term viewers.
With the ninth Doctors departure, newer
viewers were introduced to the concept of regeneration, as the character
that they’d become familiar with changed before their eyes!
David Tennant is, at the time of writing, the
current Doctor Who.
Younger than Eccleston, Tennant was 30 when he
made his debut in the role.
The same age as Peter Davison when he adopted
the role.
The tenth Doctor first appeared in a full
episode at Christmas 2005, in an hour long special. The following season
re-introduced the Cybermen in a two-part story, and pitted them against the
Daleks in the season finale.
Tennant made his mark as The Doctor
immediately, adopting a smart, elegant look, although a bit reminiscent of
both Jarvis Cocker and Michael Cain, this Doctor has an exuberant joy for
everything he comes into contact with, whilst retaining the ninth Doctors
passionate belief in what’s ‘right’, and a ‘No second chances’ policy, as
demonstrated to the Sycorax leader in ‘The Christmas Invasion’.
Billie Piper departed the series at the end of
this season. One that had seen the introduction of a new Doctor, the
re-emergence of the Cybermen, and the first meeting of two of the shows most
popular creations.
The final episode of ‘Season 2’ ended with The
Doctor alone in the TARDIS….. Until a mystery woman in a wedding dress
suddenly appeared!
Leading into the shows second Christmas
special, ‘The Runaway Bride’
Broadcast on December 25th 2006,
‘The Runaway Bride’ featured popular comedienne Catherine Tate as a woman
sought by aliens on her wedding day, and it’s up to The Doctor to help her.
A total contrast from the interaction between
Tennant’s Doctor and Rose, Tate’s character, Donna, was belligerent (at
least to start with), very slow to catch on as to what was happening, and
wanted NOTHING to do with the TARDIS or The Doctor, and stayed behind on
Earth at the close of the episode.
A new season will air in 2007, probable
starting on Easter Saturday.
A lot is in store, including, perhaps
inevitably, The Daleks! |
