The Doctor Who fans in the audience (and come on, there must be some of them out there) may have already suspected as much from my witterings about Kennedy's assassination last time, that I would make some mention of Doctor Who's 41st Anniversary. The debut of the show, on 23rd November 1963 as if you needed reminding, is so indelibly tied in with the assassination of President Kennedy (at least in fan circles) that we rarely think of one without the other. As the Daily Mail of the time said, in its Monday review of the weekend's debut episode, "Circumstances were hardly auspicious..." for the start of the BBC's new show, and yet in fact in the long-run it hasn't really done any harm; indeed, to Who fans it seems to add an extra frisson of historical significance to the birth of the programme, even though there is no real connection between the two events (unless you believe all that nonsense about Ray Cusick and Verity Lambert having been on the grassy knoll).

Kennedy's assassination is for whatever reason a major historical event in terms of public awareness, as I tried to express in the last column, and although I don't think this is because of its association with Doctor Who (we fans may be vain in terms of how important our show is, but we're not that vain) it does mean that we can feel some sort of link to those happenings in Dallas. Daniel O'Mahony (the author who depressed me with his NA "Falls the Shadow" before going on to impress me with his MA "The Man in the Velvet Mask") recently made reference to this fact in a series of articles in DWM, making the point that if the programme had started transmitting in June 1963 its closest relation in the news world would have been the Profumo affair. Of course it was tremendously scandalous at the time, but is rarely remarked upon nowadays (indeed, Mrs C has just come across me checking the dates on our beloved www, and apparently she has never heard of it) and as O'Mahony says, that would have formed a far less auspicious and impressive 'real world' start to the show. On the other hand, it might have been interesting to hear Sylvester McCoy enumerating the horrors of the 20th Century to Ace in Silver Nemesis if this had been the case: "1938 - Hitler annexes Austria; 1963 - Profumo caught with his trousers down..." Incidentally, the next date in the 25 year cycle will be 2013, which is the date for the end of the world in the Mayan calendar. Bloody living-metal statues...

So, then, given that this column is intended as some kind of commemorative celebration of Doctor Who's birthday, where better to look than at the very first man at the top, William Hartnell. Incidentally, he was busily recording an episode of the first Dalek story the day Kennedy was shot, so despite his 1965 comment, "I once went to the Texas book suppository.... depository, hm? Hmph!" I think he can be unequivocally exonerated in that regard.

In the days of yore, before video and DVD, we could only really assess the first Doctor on the basis of what fan bible Doctor Who Weekly (later Monthly) told us, and although I can remember avidly lapping up every word at the time, it's probably true to say that some of it, from today's point of view, appears to be a little... well, 'inaccurate' I suppose is the kindest word. According to that magazine, this Doctor was "a crotchety old man" (by the way, does anybody ever use the word crotchety except when describing the first Doctor?) and often "irascible" (ditto). Much was made, rather out of context, of the Doctor threatening to turn Ian and Barbara off the ship (at the end of "The Sensorites" in a scene that isn't driven so much by the concerns of characterisation as by the need to tag on a cliffhanger into the next story). Even more was made out of the scene where the Doctor tries to (allegedly) kill a caveman in the third episode, almost as if the first Doctor went around casually clubbing innocent people to death on a weekly basis.

Nowadays most fans will have seen every episode that survives from the Hartnell era released onto commercial video, and we are thus able to make rather more informed judgements for ourselves. Actually, I'd better amend the above sentence, before I'm brought up on a point of order, to say that we've seen every episode that survives from the Hartnell era released onto commercial video except one which was only discovered earlier this year, and was thus released onto DVD rather than VHS. We fanboys (and indeed fangirls) are meticulous in our drive for accuracy, and I wouldn't be able to sleep at nights knowing I'd perpetrated such a blatant factual error on the internet.

Until the release in earnest of Doctor Who onto video, I had seen precisely three stories that featured the first Doctor, and somewhat ironically if you wanted to choose three totally unrepresentative stories for his character then those three would be the ones to choose. I'd seen the very first story (note that, again in the interests of fanboy accuracy, I have avoided naming it, for fear of finally having to choose a side in the on-going An Unearthly Child/100,000 BC/The Tribe of Gum debate) which, although showcasing an excellent performance from William Hartnell is hardly the first Doctor as he came to be - since the scripts were written before he was even cast, this story is inevitably an instance of Hartnell playing the Doctor as written, rather than, as would later be the case, the scripts being written for the Doctor as played. I'd also seen the tenth anniversary get-together The Three Doctors which uses Hartnell only very sparingly - as is well-known, by 1972 he was very ill, and although it's pleasing and highly appropriate that he was able to appear in the story in at least some capacity, it's sad to see him looking so different, and clearly past his best. Indeed, watching that story again after seeing a great many other stories from his era, it's almost heartbreaking to see him evidently struggling with the most basic of lines...

The third story to feature the first Doctor that I had seen, by the way, didn't actually include William Hartnell at all, and was the twentieth birthday shindig The Five Doctors. That special story actually featured Richard Hurndall doing a passable representation of the character, although it did mean that for many years the stock fan view of the first incarnation was of a rather grumpy and patronising old sod whose best line of dialogue was the still-quoted-to-this-day (well, by me at least) "Easy as pi???!!!!!"

My personal enlightenment on the subject of the first Doctor began the day I turned 18, when I got The Daleks in all its black & white glory on video. The first William Hartnell story to be commercially released, it was only the second story ever made, but even here there are some signs of the Doctor as Hartnell would eventually play him beginning to emerge. Although early on he sabotages TARDIS just so that he can go exploring in the Dalek city (again, another momentary scene given huge significance in the early days of DWM, when they seemed to suggest that he was constantly throwing his dummy, or indeed his mercury link, out of the cot just to get his own way) by the later episodes of the story he is clearly settling into a far more heroic, and more genial, role. In episode six, when he and Susan smash the Daleks' monitoring device (some drivel about shorting it with the TARDIS key - but never mind the science) he is positively gleeful, giving a look and a smile that would appear again and again in the following years.

Of course, I suppose this leads to the question of how much the character of the first Doctor was driven by the production team, and how much of it was 'dictated' by Hartnell himself. Although I would tend towards attributing the softening of the character to the acting, it seems only fair to admit that there does seems to been some indication that the production team never intended him to remain the harsh and abrasive personality of the original four-part story. For one thing, there's the fact that although he comes across as fairly unfriendly and curt, particularly in the very first episode, the episode as shown is actually a toned-down version, having been rewritten from an even more abrasive and patronising first attempt. Indeed, it was only a lack of a replacement script that forced producer Verity Lambert and script-editor David Whitaker to go ahead with that first story anyway, which suggests that their vision of the Doctor was not entirely represented in those first few scripts. There are other signs, such as the two-part third story The Edge of Destruction (or is it Inside the Spaceship? Damn, I've chosen sides on this one now...) which ends in a beautiful scene between the Doctor and Barbara where he effectively apologises for his behaviour towards her.

Perhaps most significant of all, though, is what can be read between the lines of the often-told story of Hartnell's casting. Just as Kennedy's assassination is mainly, to Who fans, something that happened the day before episode one, so the 1962 Richard Harris film "This Sporting Life" is, mainly, the film that helped William Hartnell get the part. In that film, he plays an aging Rugby talent scout, a quiet, sympathetic, indeed rather pathetic, character - and, or at least so legend has it, Verity Lambert wanted Hartnell to play the Doctor because having made a career out of playing tough, no-nonsense Sergeant-Major characters, it showed that he could combine that with an ability to be very moving and emotional.

Maybe I'm just reading too much into that anecdote, and maybe the point is simply that the contrast showed that Hartnell had range. But I like to think that it in fact shows that what they wanted, right from the start, was for the Doctor to be a combination of stern authoritarian, with a softer, more compassionate and caring side. Certainly, there are many moments where it's clear that the Hartnell Doctor is, to misquote the seventh Doctor, "far more than just a crotchety old man." The farewell to Susan at the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth is one such moment, where he heartbreakingly makes the decision for her to leave because he knows she would never make it by herself; or perhaps even better, the end of The Chase where he is so reluctant to lose his friends Ian and Barbara that he tries to pretend the Dalek timeship won't work. Later on again, and there's his soliloquy in the lost story The Massacre (and call me a traditionalist if you want to, but I refuse to call it The Massacre of St Bartholomews Eve). For a few minutes he is utterly alone for the first time since we met him. On the basis of the surviving audio recording of the scene it was beautifully played, a soft, breaking voice quite in contrast to the imperiously certain tones the character more often employed: "Perhaps I should go home," he says, "Back to my own planet. But I can't... I can't..." If you have tears prepare to shed them now.

At one point (being somewhat of an anorak I think it was issue 78) DWM referred to Patrick Troughton's second incarnation as "the forgotten Doctor" which, although a neat soundbite, was pretty far-of-the-mark. Although at the time there were many more Hartnell episodes in the archives than there were Troughton episodes (which is still the case today of course) until the 1990s nobody ever seriously expected to see them anyway, so it didn't really matter what existed and what didn't. So, in that sense both Hartnell and Troughton were equally forgotten, or at least equally unknown. Nowadays, certainly in a visual sense, it is true that we have much more from the first Doctor's era than we do from the second's - of Hartnell's one hundred and thirty-four episodes, forty-five are missing, only nine of those from his first two seasons; conversely, Troughton's first year is represented only by six episodes, his second year by only thirteen, and in total we only have fifty-six out of his one hundred and nineteen.

But in terms of the man himself, rather than the character, I would say that Hartnell is by far the more forgotten of the two. Although when he first left the show, Troughton was reluctant to be associated with the character again, he softened considerably as the years went on - so that, as well as reappearing in the role for three different stories, and as well as recording TV interviews on Pebble Mill at One and Nationwide, he was also interviewed by DWM, and attended a vast number of conventions, especially towards the end of his life. In that sense, we at least have some sense of the man in terms of his opinions on the show, the character, etc.

Hartnell on the other hand passed away a few years before even the first and most humble of 'conventions' was held. He did appear on Desert Island Discs, although no recording of that exists. When a fan letter recently came to light written by a young girl in the 1960s, and replied to by Hartnell, it was a unexpected delight; although it's hardly insightful (consisting of "What is your favourite Doctor Who story?" type questions) it somehow allowed us just the tiniest glimpse into the man rather than the character. The same is true of the behind-the-scenes footage shot by Carole Ann Ford in 1964, which, although silent and double-exposed, gives just a brief view of Hartnell on set, but not in character.

There's probably little more about William Hartnell we will ever know, although it is interesting that a man who spent most of his life forging out a successful career (and it was successful - he took top-billing on more than one film) playing hard-nosed, even brutal, action men, should be best remembered as a much softer, far more charismatic and eccentric hero figure, a friend and champion to children. I remember seeing the Hartnell video box set a few Christmasses ago, and thinking how extraordinary it is that, nearly 30 years after his death, this man's face is still known and recognised, and used on merchandise, around the world. What would he make of that?

Of course, he might not have been surprised (although I suspect he would). Allegedly Hartnell was so enthused by the initial idea of Doctor Who that he predicted it would run for five years. He was scoffed at, apparently, and remember that in 1963, even "Coronation Street" had only been going for a couple of years, so it was an incredible claim for the time. Whether, mind you, he expected it to run for five years with him as the Doctor is another matter...

...because of course the irony is, perhaps, that if Hartnell hadn't left when he did, the show might have ended with him. At what point it would have become unthinkable to replace the lead actor I don't know, but unquestionably, the decision and ability to do it in 1966 (two years and eleven months after Kennedy was shot) gave the show a new lease of life, and an added string to its bow, which allowed it to escape cancellation again 1969.

More to the point, and whatever one might think about the first Doctor, or indeed William Hartnell, his face has just been released onto shop shelves once again, on the Lost in Time DVD set. And more than that, whether we like leather jackets and short hair or not, or even if we think (as Mrs C vehemently does) that Billie Piper is the worst piece of casting since Beryl Reid as a hardened spaceship captain (stop snickering please) in Earthshock, next year Doctor Who is coming back to the television. To some degree, any success that Doctor Who has ever had, and will ever have, devolves from the casting and the playing of the very first actor in the role. Patrick Troughton was once asked at a convention who he thought was the best Doctor. His answer? "Billy - who created the part from nothing."

Nuff said! Happy birthday Doc!