The Doctors Who's Who (3 page)

The simple answer is: she may well have been the Queen – not the President – of Gallifrey, and the Doctor decided to let her stay human and find love (see ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’) to protect her; or at least to leave her safe until it was time to reclaim her throne…

Newman needed the death threats taken out and the whole section about the Doctor and Suzanne’s history removed. He didn’t want to set the Doctor up as a bad guy, nor did he want his past – and that of Suzanne – explained: he wanted it left unknown. Who is he? Doctor Who? And it has remained that way for 50 years. Although we know what planet the Doctor came from (Gallifrey), we still know precious little about his youth.

Tony Williamson was sent a six-page story/character breakdown, along with a copy of the draft script of ‘An Unearthly Child’, by Newman. He had written for
Coronation Street
and would later write for
The Avengers
, among other projects, but decided not to take part in
Doctor Who
because of other work commitments. He preserved the script until his death and ten years later his widow sold it to a private collector, whereupon it was used in the research for this book.

Once the script was rewritten (with the character names changed), it was sent out with a six-page brief of the show. And there the great mystery began: the aliens’ history had been taken out. We learn that the Doctor and Susan are exiles from their own planet and they travel in a TARDIS, a name Susan claims to have created out of the phrase ‘Time and Relative Dimensions in Space’. All this came later and truly justified
Newman’s decisions regarding what material was cut and what was added.

So who is Doctor Who? And what relationship does Susan really have with him? That was the liquid gold that captured children’s imaginations. The intrigue and legend had begun and it is fitting that only now, during the 50th anniversary of the show, we find out the original intention as to the Doctor and Susan’s relationship and, as far as the modern
Doctor Who
TV series is concerned, what they now consider to be the worthy origins of the Doctor.

‘Orders are changed. Do not capture, repeat, do not capture Thals. Exterminate. Repeat… exterminate.’

Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks
David Whitaker

The Daleks are a major part of
Doctor Who
’s success. After the introductory pilot, the first story, featuring cavemen, received poor viewing figures – between two and three million people – a disaster by BBC standards. And although 4.4 million sat down to watch the first ever episode, the following three episodes, ‘The Tribe of Gum’, lost some of those viewers as the story progressed. Verity Lambert confessed that the drop in viewing figures was the result of a poor choice of opening story. In interview, she stated that she would never have commissioned a caveman story, but the decision was not hers to take at the time (Anthony Coburn’s script had already been accepted before she became producer). When looking at the original six-page synopsis, we find that Coburn had been selected to write the second story too. Set in the 30th century, it would feature a world only inhabited by robots, and where humanity had ‘died away’. The Doctor and his companions would discover that the robots had created a
superior robot capable of ‘original thought’ – but not before they accidentally brought it ‘to life’.

Thankfully this second story was not commissioned for production. Instead a work by former comedy scriptwriter Terry Nation introduced the Doctor’s most fearsome enemies, the Daleks. Suddenly viewing figures soared to between eight and ten million viewers. Children in playgrounds the length and breadth of Britain started shouting the word ‘EXTERMINATE!’ and Dalekmania gripped the nation for the first time.

Newman was outraged. The show had very quickly fallen into the ‘bug-eyed monster’ category that he was so keen to avoid back in his original notes. Lambert denied the accusation, saying the Daleks were humans who lived inside protected casings in the future. It was a good effort but Newman wasn’t happy.

Hindsight is of course a wonderful thing and, to his credit, Newman eventually admitted that the Daleks were what made such an enormous success of the programme – and they’ve continued to wreak havoc ever since.

Terry Nation, not unlike Russell T. Davies, was an influential Welshman, who almost missed out on the chance to write for
Doctor Who
in the first place. When Whitaker approached Nation through his agent, the writer was in Nottingham writing a stage show for comedian Tony Hancock. Hancock apparently joked, ‘How dare the BBC approach a writer of your calibre to write for children’s television?’

That should have been the end of it, but that night Nation and Hancock had a huge row and the writer found himself on a train back to London the following day with no job. Remembering the offer made through his agent, he called her and asked if she had turned the job down yet. She said that she hadn’t had a chance to do so – so he changed his mind. He wrote a treatment for Whitaker, who loved it, and history was made.

Although, in actual fact, it wasn’t. Donald Wilson didn’t like the original script and asked if they (Lambert and her team) had anything else ready to make instead. They hadn’t. In later years Lambert confessed that she had been made to feel so bad about the first Dalek story, that if they’d had anything else ready, they would have definitely made that instead. The Daleks would never have existed.

Although Terry Nation came up with the idea of the Daleks and wrote clear instructions as to what they would look like, it was Raymond Cusick who would design the first Dalek. However, his idea was too expensive to make, so he sat down with two other designers, Jack Kine and Bernard Wilkie, and between them they created the armoured pepper-pot much loved by
Doctor Who
audiences for the next 50 years.

Lambert said that when the first Daleks hit the studio floor, there was something magical about them. Everybody wanted to get inside one – including the producer herself – and she truly felt that they were onto something.

Surely though, the success of
Doctor Who
wasn’t just down to the production team and writers? What about the star himself – Doctor Who?

William Hartnell relished the part of the Doctor and made Newman’s ‘crotchety old man’ a mystical and compelling being that even Colin Baker, decades later, would use as a blueprint for aspects of his own interpretation of the Doctor. It must be stressed that, unlike other Doctors, William Hartnell was given a character to play; he wasn’t allowed to shape it to his own specifications. Although Hartnell would make the role his own, the Doctor was very much part of Sydney Newman’s vision.

Along with Verity Lambert and the original
Doctor Who
family, Newman had another major success on his hands. Yet again, he had created a quality team of individuals. The blend
of young and old; the experienced and the young and innovative, was magical. It has never been forgotten and the decisions made in 1963 by the original
Doctor Who
family are still at the core of the programme’s success today. In fact, when David Tennant made his final farewell as the Doctor on 1 January 2010, the Doctor is seen attending a book signing of a female descendant of a woman the Doctor nearly married when he was made human (like Suzanne?). The jacket of the book shows that her name is ‘Verity Newman’.

Doctor Who
was a joint effort from many different talented people, not just the programme makers, but one cannot underestimate the influence of the great William Hartnell.

Hartnell was the first ever star of the show, the man who would convince the viewing public to suspend disbelief for a while and travel through the universe with him in his time machine. That gentle mocking smile, that knowing twinkle in the eye, belonged entirely to Hartnell, and many of the first fans of the show will maintain, to this day, that he was the very best Doctor Who. Indeed, he was the most mysterious. But how did
Doctor Who
change Hartnell’s life, both personally and professionally?

An interesting question, and one that requires a detailed answer.

‘I leapt at the old man and we fell heavily to the ground. I could hear him snarling at me to let him go and not meddle in his affairs, but the words didn’t make too much impression on me because all I could think about was that whatever it might look like from the outside, I knew perfectly well that this was no ordinary police box on Barnes Common.’

Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks
David Whitaker

CHAPTER TWO

WILLIAM HARTNELL

‘Space travel? Quite honestly, it scares me to death. I haven’t the slightest wish to get in a rocket and zoom through the stratosphere. Somebody else can be the first man on the moon. It doesn’t interest me at all. I do, however, believe that there is life on other planets – and that they know we’re here but haven’t got the technology to get through.’

William Hartnell

WILLIAM HENRY HARTNELL
was born on 8 January 1908 at 24 Regent Square, South Pancras, London. His mother, Lucy Hartnell, was a commercial clerk. To his dying day, Hartnell never knew who his father was, or from where he had originated. His mother came from Taunton and Hartnell maintained a love of the West Country throughout his life. This may explain why he lied about his birthplace on
Desert Island Discs
in 1965, claiming he came from Seaton in Devon.

Hartnell’s formative years were in a tough, working-class environment. His illegitimacy would have caused him some embarrassment and, as a young boy, he would get into scrapes.
If we are to believe a journal he left behind after his death (written in the early 1920s and mentioned in his granddaughter’s biography,
Who’s There
? (Jessica Carney, Virgin, 1996)), he was fostered by a family called Harris while his mother took up employment as a nanny in Belgium.
Who’s There?: The Life and Career of William Hartnell
, states that Hartnell would again live with his mother in Holborn some time later, but he continued to be a wild-card into his teens, until of course he had to choose a profession.

At the age of 16 (1925), Hartnell went into theatre, but not as an actor. He joined Sir Frank Benson’s Shakespearean Company as an assistant stage manager, property manager, assistant lighting director and general dogsbody. It was a two-year apprenticeship in theatre and classical acting skills, with the occasional opportunity of a walk-on part. As Hartnell explained, it was tough work: ‘It was good training, not only in Shakespeare, but in keeping fit. Sir Frank Benson believed in keeping actors in good health and we were organised into hockey teams and cricket sides.’ Benson was in his late sixties by then, so there was little chance of him exerting himself too much.

Hartnell’s early performances were minor parts in Shakespearean plays; but he also performed in
School for Scandal
and
She Stoops to Conquer
before taking a part in
Miss Elizabeth’s Prisoner
in 1928, where he met Heather McIntyre, whom he married the following year.

By the age of 18, Hartnell was touring the country as an actor, the bug to perform finally consuming him. He no longer wanted to hide away; he wanted to be out there on stage, in front of an audience, and to pursue his love of comedy. For six years, he would tour in comedy and song and dance shows, understudying respected actors like Bud Flanagan (from the infamous Crazy Gang). From this, he progressed to understudying in London’s
West End; but would take the main role when the production left London and toured the provincial cities.

Slowly, Hartnell built his skills and became quite well known in the acting world as a player of farce. This progressed to short comedy films in the 1930s, such as
I’m an Explosive
(1933). Although only a 50-minute feature, this was one of Hartnell’s favourite roles. He plays Edward Whimperley, a man who drinks an explosive liquid and causes chaos as a consequence. The film was directed by Adrian Brunel and, despite being low budget and short in length, became very popular with audiences on its release. The pay-off is that Whimperley finds he hasn’t drunk explosive liquid but not before suing the government for a lot of money. He then decides to marry his sweetheart with the proceeds and lives happily ever after. Contrived, but funny and endearing, Hartnell scored high with his first leading role.

Comedy was a love of Hartnell’s as he later confessed, ‘My real guiding light was Charlie Chaplin. He influenced me more than any other factor in taking up acting as a career.’ A lot of actors adopt an initial love of comedy before settling down to another genre – for example, horror icon (and one time Doctor Who) Peter Cushing had an early role opposite Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in their movie
A Chump at Oxford
(1940) before he moved into more mainstream roles and eventually a string of highly popular Hammer Horror movies. Hartnell played in over 20 films before the outbreak of the Second World War, not all of them comedy, but many quite short character roles with his respective parts fairly minor.

Hartnell’s career was hindered by the war. He was drafted into the Tank Corps but very quickly had a nervous breakdown and was invalided out after 15 months. ‘The strain was too much,’ he said. ‘I spent 12 weeks in an army hospital and came
out with a terrible stutter. The colonel said, “Better get back to the theatre. You’re no bloody good here!”

‘I had to start all over again. I was still only a spit and cough in the profession and now I had a stutter which scared the life out of me.’

Hartnell worked hard to overcome his illness, which he did with gusto. In 1942, he had an uncredited role as a German soldier in the Will Hay classic,
The Goose Steps Out
. Although his part in the film was very minor, Hartnell was working with a major comedy star of his day, which gave him considerable exposure. In fact, his cold image in the film, set against Hay’s chaos, is noteworthy and a taste of what was to come. As Hartnell’s roles grew larger, they also grew colder, and
The Goose Steps Out
really shows the beginning of this transition from comedian to hard man, something he would grow to loathe.