Rehabilitating Hartnell
When I became a Doctor Who fan, I tried to consume as much of the show as I could get my hands on. Much of this was out of order, a Davison followed by a Pertwee followed by a Tom Baker. And like all DW fans, I put together my personal ordered list of Doctors. This would ebb, flow, and convulse from time to time -- during part of 1993 I actually claimed Colin Baker as my favorite for some reason I still don't fully grasp today. But in the wake of the Fox movie, my "Doctor List" looked something like this:
1. Tom Baker
2. Patrick Troughton
3. Jon Pertwee
4. Colin Baker
5. Peter Davison
6. Paul McGann
7. Sylvester McCoy
8. William Hartnell
Tom and Pat traded top spots on my list a lot. Especially when Tomb of the Cybermen was recovered. Part of it is my iconoclastic nature -- everyone loves Tom so having him not be first was something between a protest vote and an attempt to show I was hip because I didn't toe the fandom line. But part of it is that I just really liked Troughton's Doctor. Tom's Doctor is great, but is at times overbearing and too self-confident (most of the first episodes I saw with Tom were from Season 17). Tom would walk onto a scene and piss off people by acting in charge, but Pat would piss people off by playing something between obsequious and dumb. Another reviewer described it as giving the bad guys enough rope in the hopes they'll realize they're about to hang themselves.
I'm willing to believe there is also a certain romance involved with the whole Missing Episode thing. So much of his tenure was destroyed, and so much of what's left was from Season 6 which was very grab-ass since so many of the original scripts fell through that it seemed like he wasn't getting a fair shot. That some of the partially retained stories like The Evil of the Daleks and The Web of Fear happened to have episodes intact that are really quite good helps a lot. Plus, The War Games was just so epic and was such a hinge for the series. And having arguably the best companion ever -- Jamie -- didn't hurt at all.
Well, now we're almost 20 years on since I first heard of the show, and through the miracle of the Loose Cannon reconstructions I've had a chance to experience several stories that have been otherwise lost -- both for Hartnell and for Troughton. And I've noticed an amazing thing. If I sit down and decide I want to watch an old DW I haven't seen before (which by default means one of the "recons") I find myself gravitating to, and highly enjoying, old Hartnells!
As much padding as there is in the 12-part The Dalek Masterplan, it's still an enjoyable story. The same for The Reign of Terror. There is just something about Hartnell's performance that is so very watchable. Aloof, yes, but (usually) not smug, and highly principled. I used to write his crotchety and otherwise understated performance as a function of his developing symptoms of MS, and to some extent I think this is visible toward the middle of 1966 when he was getting sick enough and the shooting schedule was brutal enough that he needed to be written out of large swaths of stories (The Celestial Toymaker and The Tenth Planet especially) because he was too weak to come in that week. (That he disagreed with the direction John Wiles and Innes Lloyd were taking the series didn't help, I'm sure.)
But from early 1965 to early 1966 he's very much in command of his character. Tom Baker once shambled into a table read after a liquid lunch and lit into a writer (who later script edited Blakes 7) slurring that any idiot could recognize that he of all people knew best what The Doctor would or would not do or say. But Hartnell was making the same argument in 1965 at a time when the star of the show was still primarily the Daleks, not The Doctor. That Hartnell would only ever give a nod and a wink to the audience during the Christmas Day broadcast in 1965 -- which was a well-established BBC tradition at the time, by the way -- gives him an understated quality.
So although my list may change as soon as I hit the post button, I'm rather astounded to say that my Classic Doctor List at this moment looks like this:
1. Tom Baker
2. William Hartnell
3. Patrick Troughton
4. Jon Pertwee
5. Sylvester McCoy
6. Peter Davison
7. Colin Baker
8. Paul McGann
1. Tom Baker
2. Patrick Troughton
3. Jon Pertwee
4. Colin Baker
5. Peter Davison
6. Paul McGann
7. Sylvester McCoy
8. William Hartnell
Tom and Pat traded top spots on my list a lot. Especially when Tomb of the Cybermen was recovered. Part of it is my iconoclastic nature -- everyone loves Tom so having him not be first was something between a protest vote and an attempt to show I was hip because I didn't toe the fandom line. But part of it is that I just really liked Troughton's Doctor. Tom's Doctor is great, but is at times overbearing and too self-confident (most of the first episodes I saw with Tom were from Season 17). Tom would walk onto a scene and piss off people by acting in charge, but Pat would piss people off by playing something between obsequious and dumb. Another reviewer described it as giving the bad guys enough rope in the hopes they'll realize they're about to hang themselves.
I'm willing to believe there is also a certain romance involved with the whole Missing Episode thing. So much of his tenure was destroyed, and so much of what's left was from Season 6 which was very grab-ass since so many of the original scripts fell through that it seemed like he wasn't getting a fair shot. That some of the partially retained stories like The Evil of the Daleks and The Web of Fear happened to have episodes intact that are really quite good helps a lot. Plus, The War Games was just so epic and was such a hinge for the series. And having arguably the best companion ever -- Jamie -- didn't hurt at all.
Well, now we're almost 20 years on since I first heard of the show, and through the miracle of the Loose Cannon reconstructions I've had a chance to experience several stories that have been otherwise lost -- both for Hartnell and for Troughton. And I've noticed an amazing thing. If I sit down and decide I want to watch an old DW I haven't seen before (which by default means one of the "recons") I find myself gravitating to, and highly enjoying, old Hartnells!
As much padding as there is in the 12-part The Dalek Masterplan, it's still an enjoyable story. The same for The Reign of Terror. There is just something about Hartnell's performance that is so very watchable. Aloof, yes, but (usually) not smug, and highly principled. I used to write his crotchety and otherwise understated performance as a function of his developing symptoms of MS, and to some extent I think this is visible toward the middle of 1966 when he was getting sick enough and the shooting schedule was brutal enough that he needed to be written out of large swaths of stories (The Celestial Toymaker and The Tenth Planet especially) because he was too weak to come in that week. (That he disagreed with the direction John Wiles and Innes Lloyd were taking the series didn't help, I'm sure.)
But from early 1965 to early 1966 he's very much in command of his character. Tom Baker once shambled into a table read after a liquid lunch and lit into a writer (who later script edited Blakes 7) slurring that any idiot could recognize that he of all people knew best what The Doctor would or would not do or say. But Hartnell was making the same argument in 1965 at a time when the star of the show was still primarily the Daleks, not The Doctor. That Hartnell would only ever give a nod and a wink to the audience during the Christmas Day broadcast in 1965 -- which was a well-established BBC tradition at the time, by the way -- gives him an understated quality.
So although my list may change as soon as I hit the post button, I'm rather astounded to say that my Classic Doctor List at this moment looks like this:
1. Tom Baker
2. William Hartnell
3. Patrick Troughton
4. Jon Pertwee
5. Sylvester McCoy
6. Peter Davison
7. Colin Baker
8. Paul McGann