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The First Doctor

 

Portrayed by :- William Hartnell

Tenure :- 1963–1966

First appearance:-  An Unearthly Child

Last appearance:- The Tenth Planet (regular)

The Three Doctors

The Five Doctors (played by Richard Hurndall)

Number of series:- 4

Appearances:- 29 stories (134 episodes)

Companions:-

Susan Foreman

Barbara Wright

Ian Chesterton

Vicki

Steven Taylor

Katarina

Sara Kingdom

Dodo Chaplet

Polly

Ben Jackson

 

Chronology

 

Succeeded by:- Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton)

Series Seasons:- 1 to 4

 

The First Doctor is the name given to the first incarnation of the fictional character known as the Doctor seen on screen in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by the actor William Hartnell during his tenure from 1963 to 1966, and by Richard Hurndall in 1983, after Hartnell's death.

 

Biography

 

Very little was known about the Doctor when the series began except that he had a granddaughter, Susan Foreman.  They were from another time and another world and he had a time machine, the TARDIS, which was disguised as a police box and was bigger on the inside than on the outside. He and Susan were in exile, for unspecified reasons. It would not be until the last adventure of the Doctor's second incarnation that the name of the Doctor's people (the Time Lords) would be revealed, and the third before the name of his home planet (Gallifrey) was first spoken.

 

The series began with schoolteachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright investigating the mystery of Susan, a student who appeared to possess scientific and historical knowledge far beyond her years. Discovering the TARDIS in a scrapyard, they were involuntarily taken by the Doctor on a journey back to the year 100,000 BC, and spent two years adventuring through time and space with the Doctor.

 

It was during this incarnation that the Doctor first met the Daleks and the Cybermen, races that would become his most implacable foes. The TARDIS crew also observed many historical events such as the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France, meeting Marco Polo in China and The Aztecs in Mexico. When Susan fell in love with the human resistance fighter David Campbell, the Doctor left her behind to allow her to build a life for herself on 22nd century Earth (The Dalek Invasion of Earth), although he promised to return someday. The TARDIS crew were soon joined by Vicki, whom they rescued from the planet Dido.

 

At the conclusion of a chase through time, Ian and Barbara used a Dalek time machine to go home (The Chase), and their place in the TARDIS was taken by a space pilot named Steven Taylor. Together, they met another member of the Doctor's race for the first time in the form of the Meddling Monk and had an adventure in Galaxy 4. During the siege of Troy, Vicki decided to leave the TARDIS to stay with Troilus. The Doctor and Steven were next briefly joined by Katarina and Sara Kingdom, but both were killed during the events of The Daleks' Master Plan.

 

After narrowly missing the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, the Doctor and Steven took on board a young girl named Dodo Chaplet. Dodo brought a cold virus to the far future, which nearly annihilated the humans and Monoids travelling on The Ark. One of the First Doctor's most deadly foes was the Celestial Toymaker, who forced him and his companions to play deadly games. Eventually, the Doctor managed to win the Trilogic Game allowing them all to escape the Toymaker's domain.

 

Eventually, Steven and Dodo left the Doctor. Steven remained on an alien planet as a mediator (The Savages), and Dodo decided to remain on Earth in 1966. The Doctor was then joined by Polly and Ben Jackson who would be the first companions to witness a most remarkable event.

 

The toll of years put strain on the Doctor's elderly frame. After defeating the Cybermen at the Antarctic Snowcap Station (The Tenth Planet), the Doctor collapsed inside the TARDIS, and before the astonished eyes of his then-companions Ben and Polly, his cells renewed themselves for the first time, giving him a completely new physical appearance and character — the Second Doctor.

 

 

Personality

 

From the beginning, the First Doctor was a mysterious figure. He appeared to be a frail old man, despite the eventual revelation that he was actually the youngest of the Doctor's incarnations, and yet was possessed of unexpected reserves of strength and will. (An early writers' guide by script editor David Whitaker describes "Doctor Who" as "frail-looking but wiry and tough as an old turkey".) He obviously held tremendous knowledge of scientific matters, and yet was unable to pilot his TARDIS time ship reliably. He was abrasive, patronising and cantankerous towards his human travelling companions, yet shared a deep emotional bond with his granddaughter Susan. He also harboured a streak of ruthlessness, being willing to lie — and in one case attempt to kill — to achieve his goals. Initially, he distrusted his first two human companions, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, who were forced on him. Over time, however, as they shared adventures together, he grew closer to them and the TARDIS crew came to share almost a family bond.

 

Eventually, the Doctor began to enjoy his travels through time and space, taking people along for the ride and was always reluctant and sad to see them go, even when he knew it was for their own good. The Doctor's personality mellowed around the time of the serial Marco Polo, and he evolved into the more familiar grandfatherly figure that children loved. Despite his age, the Doctor was never conservative, and was always a bit of an anti-establishment figure, opposing tyranny and overreaching authority in all its forms.

 

It was also during this time that the Doctor first met what would become his most persistent adversaries — the Daleks and the Cybermen. It would be the latter encounter that would see the Doctor first regenerate; stating "This old body of mine's wearing a bit thin," he collapsed at the end of the serial, regenerating inside the TARDIS into the Second Doctor.

 

William Hartnell described the Doctor as "a wizard", and "a cross between the Wizard of Oz and Father Christmas". One quirk of the First Doctor was his tendency to become occasionally tongue-tied and stumble over words. Sometimes this was a deliberate acting choice: William Russell recalls that it was Hartnell's idea for the Doctor to get Ian Chesterton's surname wrong, calling him "Chesserman" or "Chatterton". This character choice also gave the series' producers the ability to use takes in which Hartnell fluffed his lines. Due to the series' tight production schedule, it was rarely possible to reshoot such scenes and dubbing the dialogue was usually not an option. Hartnell suffered from undiagnosed arteriosclerosis, which affected his ability to remember lines, increasingly so as his time on the series progressed.

 

In the original pilot, the Doctor wore a tie and relatively contemporary clothes. When the pilot was reshot, however, his costume changed to a more Victorian ensemble.

 

 

Story style

 

The original First Doctor episodes had individual titles. This led to a problem as to the naming of the serials into which the episodes were grouped.

 

The programme was designed to be educational, so the stories were divided into two genres: historical (to teach about history) and futuristic (to teach about science), and in fact these two genres alternated with each other. However, by the end of the second season it became apparent that the futuristic stories were much more popular and the production team began to phase out the "historicals".

 

The debut of the Daleks in the second serial turned the programme from a children's series to a national phenomenon. It soon became a show that the whole family gathered to watch, with monsters that children viewed from between their fingers or from behind the sofa. Intelligent and witty scripts filled with far-out concepts compensated for the relatively low-budget and unsophisticated special effects, laying the foundation for decades of stories to come.

 

 

Later appearances

 

Despite the regeneration, television audiences would see the First Doctor on screen twice more (not counting flashbacks or charity specials like Dimensions in Time). In 1973, for the 10th anniversary of the programme, Hartnell appeared in The Three Doctors which also saw Patrick Troughton reprise his role as the Second Doctor. Due to failing health, however, Hartnell could not participate in any of the regular filming, and his scenes were shot separately at Ealing Studios (not his garden or garage at home, as long suggested by fan legend).

 

William Hartnell passed away soon after, in 1975. In the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors, the role of the First Doctor was played by Richard Hurndall, although the episode began with a clip of Hartnell as the Doctor from The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Where the two specials fit in the First Doctor's chronology is unclear.

 

In season 3 of the new series, the First Doctor is seen as a sketch in John Smith's book alongside four other Doctors in the episode "Human Nature". The Fifth and Tenth Doctors discuss his grumpiness in "Time Crash" as being a product of the Doctor being "young".

 

The character has also appeared in many licensed novels, comic strips, and audio dramas.