1. BIRTH OF A TIME LORD

It was in late 1962 that the BBC Drama unit were approached by the controller of BBC Television to produce a new, weekly drama series for children, to fill in the slot between the afternoon sport magazine and the popular music programme, Juke Box Jury. The Head of Serials, an Australian by the name of Sydney Newman, recalled in his autobiography [1] how he came up with the eventual idea:

 "I had always been fascinated by the idea of time travel, and one of my favourite books was that marvellous The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, which was very educational as well as being a lot of jolly fun. I began to think about a television programme that would entertain, but also educate the children. I could see this white haired old man, who had invented a machine that could travel through time......."

Newman immediately spoke to one of his top staff producers, Verity Lambert, who was equally thrilled by the idea, and together they came up with the concept of a time traveller called Doctor Who, who was not human and could ride through space and time in a machine called TARDIS, which looked like a London police box but was actually bigger on the inside than on the outside. Together with his granddaughter , Doctor Who fought evil on distant planets, and met famous historical figures. Lambert and Newman were so excited by the idea, that they commissioned some early scripts without even getting the go ahead from BBC executives. Although the whole concept was scorned by everyone who heard it, a decision was taken to try out the programme as an experiment, to begin in November 1963. Doctor Who was born.

 Verity Lambert knew exactly who she wanted to play the good Doctor - character actor William Hartnell, who had recently starred in the hard-hitting film, This Sporting Life. In a book about his life written by Nigel Carter [2] his wife Heather Hartnell recalled that he was "very excited about getting the role" and called it a "magical idea", predicting it to last for "three months, at least". Hartnell signed a provisional contract in early 1963, as did Carole Ann Ford, who was to play Doctor Who's granddaughter, Susan.

Despite his early optimism about the show, Hartnell had no experience of science fiction, and was initially confused by a lot of the concepts, particularly time travel. In a BBC interview in 1964, he recalled the problems that he had:

"I didn't understand what it was all about at first, you see, mm? Mmm? I didn't believe that you could go back to the Middle Ages, and I didn't like fighting monsters on alien planets, because as everybody knows, there is no such thing. Still, I felt there was very powerful magic around the people involved, so I just carried on, and I soon picked it all up."

To join Doctor Who and Susan in TARDIS, Verity Lambert and David Whittaker, who she had appointed as script editor decided to introduce two extra companions, who would provide a more human dimension. It was decided that they would be teachers who were worried about one of their pupils, and follow her home one night to find that she apparently lives inside a scrapyard, inside a police box. The teachers were initially to be made a married couple, called Mr and Mrs Chesterton, but William Hartnell objected, saying that it was a family programme. Instead, the characters were created as Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, who were just friends. Verity Lambert chose character actor Russell Enoch to play Ian and former theatre actress Jacqueline Hill to play Barbara. Both agreed, although Enoch insisted on using his other stage name, William Russell, which in the beginning caused problems with William Hartnell, who was confused by people having two names.

With the cast in place, Lambert and Whittaker began to commission scripts, including one entitled The Survivors, by Terry Nation, a respected television writer. It concerned a race of aliens who were destined to become legendary in Doctor Who history, the dreaded Daleks. However, Sydney Newman was not impressed:

"I hated the Daleks, because I had told Verity not to allow any B.E.Ms in the scripts. Unfortunately, I had to forgotten to explain what this BBC code meant and so dear Terry came up with the Daleks by mistake. It was all alright in the end, but I gave Verity a bloody good talking to about it at the time!" [3]

Other stories that were commissioned included Inside The Spaceship, a tense, psychological thriller, and Marco Polo, which was historically based, but the story chosen to open the series was 100,000 B.C. by Anthony Coburn. The story was about caveman hundreds of thousands of years ago, but the first episode, "An Unearthly Child", which introduced the character of Doctor Who, was set in contemporary London. Production on this story began in October 1963, in preparation for the first broadcast on 23rd November.

A new setback occurred when the BBC sent an internal memo to Verity Lambert, saying that the character should never be referred to as Doctor Who. She acquiesced to their demand, and from that point on, William Hartnell's character was known simply as, the Doctor [4] just in time for the completion of the first story, and all seemed well. However, the day of Doctor Who's first broadcast was fraught with tension and problems for two reasons. Firstly, because of the tragedy that had occurred the night before in Dallas - the assassination of President Kennedy - and secondly because William Hartnell suddenly attempted to leave the series, fearing that a curse had been put on him. "He went a bit strange", recalled David Whittaker in Doctor Who Magazine,  "but I think it was just nerves". Despite the trouble, the programme was eventually broadcast at 5.25pm, but because nobody watched it, it was rescheduled for a repeat the following weekend, the BBC believing it's low viewing figures were down to the recent tragedy. However, the following week, it achieved similarly low audience levels. Doctor Who had arrived on our screens.