2. THE FIRST DOCTOR

"Young boys used to ask Bill about the forth dimension. Of course, he didn't have a clue what they were talking about" - HEATHER HARTNELL

Throughout the early to mid Sixties, Doctor Who meant watching William Hartnell battling the Daleks, whilst grasping his lapels and fluffing his lines. Mistakes on set by Hartnell were legendary, as Peter Purves, who played Steven Taylor, recalls:

"Bill was from the old school of acting, but it didn't work in the programme. He kept missing important bits of dialogue out, and we'd have to improvise around him. The producers thought the way he kept saying "Chesserman" was brilliant, but it was actually because he couldn't remember his lines. Also, he was a bit mad and started to believe he really was the Doctor. I felt sorry for his wife, but it was all bloody good fun." [1]

Despite the problems behind the scenes, children all round the country became huge fans of the programme, in particular the dreaded Daleks, which had really cemented the show's popularity and had appeared in four stories, including a twelve part epic entitled The Daleks' Master Plan, which included a special Christmas episode, broadcast on Christmas Day, 1965.

Entitled "The Feast Of Steven", the episode was little more than a pantomime, with the Doctor and Steven rushing around film studios and police stations chasing the Daleks. At the programme's climax, the Doctor even wishes all the viewers a happy Christmas, something that was entirely accidental. "It was because Bill forgot his lines" recalled producer John Wiles to TARDIS. "It was a wonderful idea, but I lost my job because he ignored the forth wall and all that. I haven't worked in television since." 

Despite all the success, it was in early 1966 that new producer Innes Lloyd took the revolutionary step of deciding to replace William Hartnell in the title role. Although BBC chiefs were shocked and disgusted by this, saying that there was no possible way that Doctor Who could survive without Hartnell, the producer was entirely justified in trying to dispose of the main actor. He explained his dilemma in an early Who fanzine in an article entitled Who Is In The Dock?:

"Bill had gone completely mad by about 1965, and it was terribly embarrassing for everyone because he thought it was all real. He believed that he was the Doctor in real life, and this caused some terrible problems for his wife, and he was always fighting with Peter [Purves] about evil powers, or some such nonsense. When Peter left I decided that the only way to save the programme was to replace Bill with somebody else - to bring in a new Doctor Who."

Lloyd and his script editor Gerry Davis devised a script where the Doctor had to "renew" himself, as his body was "worn out". There were several choices mooted for the new Doctor, including Sir Michael Hordern and Peter Cushing, the latter having appeared in the successful cinema adaptation of the series, Doctor Who And The Daleks. However, the man that Innes Lloyd really wanted was Patrick Troughton, a respected method actor, and when asked, Troughton agreed to the role.

Rather understandably, nobody wanted to tell William Hartnell the bad news, so it was decided that the news would be kept a secret from him for as long as possible. In August 1966, the press was told Hartnell would be leaving, but as the actor did not buy newspapers, he still did not find out. Eventually, it was Peter Purves who unintentionally blew the gaffe, as the actor recalls:

"I rang up Bill to say how sorry I was that he was leaving the show, and he didn't know! Nobody had told him, and he was just crying down the phone to me. It really broke his heart that he was leaving, and that nobody had told him. I tried to cheer him up by explaining about my new work on children's television [2], but he didn't care. When he was kicked out of Doctor Who, part of him died."

Hartnell was fortunately man enough to return to the studios for work the next day, and more extraordinarily, he announced his choice to replace him. In front of a shocked crew, he said "There's only one man in England that can take over, and that's Patrick Troughton".

Troughton, had grave reservations about joining the Doctor Who team, as he thought that the programme had run its course, but had he realised that the money would pay for the education of his sons, hence his acceptance of the role. It was at the end of The Tenth Planet, which had also seen the debut of the terrifying Cybermen, that the impossible happened. The programme was carrying on without the presence of the original title actor, as William Hartnell changed into Patrick Troughton.