The William Hartnell Era: A Retrospective

The purpose of watching all of William Hartnell’s stories in order was firstly to experience quite a large number of stories which I’d never seen before, and secondly, as close as possible to replicate the experience that original viewers would have had when they watched them.

The second aim was only ever going to be partially achieved. The inhibiting factors were: -

I had already seen at least part of five stories in the past

I had read Target novelisations of some of the other stories

I wasn’t going to be able to watch them at the rate of one episode per week, watched at the same time on the same day of the week

I wasn’t going to wait several weeks between seasons.

I already had experience of watching other doctors, which the original audience wouldn’t have had the benefit of.

So, allowing for the inhibiting factors, what observations should I make about the experience?

Firstly, William Hartnell

William Hartnell was a terrific choice for the lead role. The fact that he makes your feelings about his character transform the way they do throughout the first season is testament to the levels and facets he brought to the character – and remember, he had no predecessor to either draw upon or react against if he so chose. In my opinion he excels in the small emotional scenes, when a character is leaving for example. The way he develops the Doctor’s relationships with his companions and some of the guest stars is terrific – the developing relationship with Barbara through the first season is one of the reasons which would have kept me coming back for more had I been around at the time the stories were first broadcast.

The fact that William Hartnell managed to become the undoubted star of his own show is another demonstration of the gifts he brought to the table. By the time that Ian and Barbara leave he will clearly miss them, but he doesn’t need them in the same way he did in the early stories. And although new companion Steven does come to be foregrounded in several stories, there is a subtle difference between the way that he is used, and the way that Ian was used. He acts heroically, but he is not the hero in the way that Ian certainly was in the earliest of the early days. 

I’ve already mentioned in some of the reviews of third season stories that I do find the way that Hartnell’s Doctor was sidelined for parts of the third series to be rather shabby treatment. “The Massacre” and “The Celestial Toymaker” are only two examples. It is true that Hartnell fluffs his lines in quite a lot of stories, but these ‘Billy fluffs’ as they are known I always find rather endearing, and actually they serve as another facet of character. I’ve read explanations of why the last two production teams of his time seemed to want to sideline him, and even to replace him, but what the plain truth is I don’t know. But I’ve found that I’ve developed a bit of an affection for his Doctor, in a way that I never thought I might. This was a time when we didn’t know who the Doctor was, or what the Doctor was, or why he left his people, or why he couldn’t go back, and there’s this quality of pathos on the occasions that he muses about going back.

Secondly, the Companions and the supporting cast

Starting with the Companions, considering that the title of the first episode was “An Unearthly Child”, Susan pretty quickly got bumped out of the series. I can understand why to some extent. It’s natural that the relationships that the writers/ script editor/ producers would want to explore was the Doctor’s relationships with the intelligent and gutsy Barbara, and the heroic and physically able Ian, both of whom just want him to take them back where they came from, something he is unable to do. Both William Russell and Jacqueline Hill were very well cast, and in Jacqueline Hill they had as fine an actress as any who were ever cast in the role of companion to the Doctor.

Things were never going to be the same once Ian and Barbara had departed, but Maureen O’Brien’s Vicki made a decent contribution to the show during her tenure, as did the underrated Peter Purves as Steven. Poor old Jackie Lane has come in for a fair bit of stick in her role of Dodo Chaplet, and I can understand why. This may just be the scripting, but Dodo only ever runs the gamut of emotions from A to B, and she is not the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer by any stretch of the imagination.

To return to speaking of fine actors, I was a little surprised at the number of ‘name’ actors who do actually appear in Hartnell stories. George Colouris in “The Keys of Marinus” was the first, but there were a surprising number of others. “The Massacre” alone featured Andre Morell and Leonard Sachs. Michael Gough was ill used, or under used in The Celestial Toymaker, but he was there. Amongst the maybe lesser known names there were some great performances in different stories too – I’m not going to mention all of them, but if we pick on just one story, John Ringham and Margo van der Bergh in “The Aztecs” come to mind. Then there’s Bernard Kay, Julian Glover and Jean Marsh in “The Crusade” I could go on.

Thirdly, the Historicals

When we talk about the true Doctor Who Historicals, as opposed to the sci fi stories which use a historical background, like The Time Meddler, then almost all of them belong to the Hartnell era. Only Troughton’s “The Highlanders” and Davison’s “Black Orchid” are true historicals in the rest of the whole of classic Doctor Who. I don’t know if this is sacrilege to say it, but if you look at the list of Hartnell historicals –

Marco Polo

The Aztecs

The Reign of Terror

The Romans

The Crusade

The Myth Makers

The Massacre

The Gunfighters

The Smugglers

- they contain some of my absolute favourite Hartnell stories. I love both “The Aztecs” and “The Massacre” – and like “Marco Polo” very much too. All scripted or co-scripted by John Lucarotti, it’s worth noting. Even looking at the ones I didn’t like quite so much, Dennis Spooner’s “Reign of Terror” and “The Romans” it’s not that they weren’t well written or well acted, it’s just that they didn’t happen to light my particular candle. I’m not entirely sure why they stopped doing them. If you look on the surface, there were 3 historicals in the first season (4 if you include An Unearthly Child) – 3 in the second season, and 3 in the third season. That seems fairly even, until you consider that it was 3/8 in season 1 – 3/9 in season 2, and 3/ 10 in the 3^rd season, a season in which a massive 12 episodes were taken up by the Daleks’ Master Plan. So I suppose that they were on decline throughout the Hartnell era in real terms.

I suppose – and I don’t know – but I suppose that they could be a little slow moving and wordy for the younger members of the audience, drawing as a lot of them do on the rich BBC heritage of period and classic serial dramas.

Fourthly, the Daleks

Like them or loathe them you can’t ignore them. With “The Daleks’ Masterplan” Terry Nation has penned his last black and white Dalek story. I respect the Daleks for making the show the success that it was, and for the fact that my 8 year old self found them very scary, in a good way. But as for my 50 year old self, meh. I just find them very two dimensional – in some stories literally so since some of them were obviously cut out blow ups. The thing about the Daleks is there’s a real lack of depth about them. They want to control the Univese, that much is clear. But why? Their leader is the Dalek Supreme at this point of their history. OK – but how did he get to be Dalek Supreme? I never voted for him. What’s in it for the other Daleks under his control? There doesn’t seem to be any promotion or demotion in the Dalek world. So what’s in it for them?

Well, anyway, I enjoyed The Dalek Invasion of Earth – my best Dalek story so far. I also liked bits of The Chase, although frankly a lot of it was very silly. As for the Dalek’s Master Plan, well it had a lot of magic moments throughout its marathon run time, but few of these involved the Daleks.

Fifthly, Sci Fi

It’s difficult to point to a Hartnell sci fi story which really holds water as a piece of hard science fiction, or even as a piece of good, tightly scripted television drama. Let’s leave the Dalek stories to one side as they have already had special consideration. That leaves : -

The Keys of Marinus

The Sensorites

Planet of Giants

The Rescue

The Web Planet

The Space Museum

The Time Meddler

Galaxy Four

The Ark

The War Machines

The Tenth Planet

In terms of concept, the first two episodes of the Ark come closest to an interesting piece of well plotted hard sci fi, and I also feel that the first episode of The Space Museum is worthy of a mention. Both of these stories become mired in traditional shoot-em-up space opera plotting, though, after their early promise. The Time Meddler succeeds because of the concept of another Time Traveller with a very different agenda to the Doctor’s, and the chemistry between Hartnell and Butterworth. The War Machines does well with its contemporary Earth setting, but for me it really doesn’t quite match The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The Web Planet deserves marks for trying, and I didn’t mind the Sensorites. The rescue was a bit of a bore, and Galaxy Four was just dire. But I have to say that I loved Planet of Giants, though maybe more for the effects than anything else. Which brings me to –

Sixthly, The Special Effects.

The conception of classic Doctor Who as being riddled with ‘rubber suit monsters and baco foil scenery’ is a cliché, and obviously you can’t judge the effects used in a story made in 1964, against one made 50 years later. But it is difficult to judge it by the standards of its time, simply because it was so long ago. For what it’s worth, my observations are –

Scenery/Interiors/Exteriors – There is a heavy reliance on painted backdrops, which I really don’t mind so much. They probably do have a tendency to look better on stills than in live action, which may be why the recons of Marco Polo look as good as they do. Generally the Historicals fair better for this then the other stories, although the jungle planets, and the jungle interiors in The Ark are very good indeed. Spaceship interiors are less convincing though – thinking of both the Sensorites and The Rescue the spaceship interiors just look like 1960s offices. The Dalek city interiors in “The Daleks” created a template with their endless shiny corridors, and their assymetrical doors which disappeared into the walls (highly impractical) which would recur, with some variations, throughout the show’s run.

A word about the TARDIS interior though. There are very few stories which showed as much of the TARDIS interior as “The Edge of Destruction” and it’s worth watching for that. The TARDIS interior, the control room especially is much bigger and more impressive than it would be from the Pertwee era onwards.

One story which stands out for me due to the quality of exteriors/interiors was Planet of Giants, which probably had a budget of tuppence ha’penny, but actually looked every bit as good as Hollywood movies such as the Incredible Shrinking Man – which actually had the money to do it properly.

Costume/Alien Design Again, the Historicals fair well, possibly because the designers didn’t have to rack their brains thinking about what people in this situation would actually look like, and historical costumes were fairly easy to source. The show owes so much to the Raymond Cusick realization of a very basic Terry Nation sketch of what the Daleks might look like. Next up were the Voord. Full marks for making us say – they look like men in diving suits, then showing us that they were actually in diving suits, but no marks for not showing us what they looked like under their helmets. The Sensorites’ masks are actually rather good, but their very basic costumes and those ridiculous feet are distracting. I can’t make up my mind whether having the robomen in those ramshackle headpieces in The Dalek Invasion of Earth is just shabby, or a stroke of genius. As for the Web Planet – well, where do you start? So much time , effort and energy – and possibly money as well – was spent on this show, but the technology just wasn’t available to do it justice in the 60s.

If you’re designing aliens for a show like Doctor Who, then you have basically two choices. You either use machines, or you use actors in suits. As for machines – well the show hit paydirt with their first attempt with the Daleks. There were others in the Hartnell era – but somehow the Mechanoids, the Chumblies and the War Machines just didn’t make the same impact. I quite like the Mechanoids, but it’s difficult to see how they could really have hurt the Daleks with their lack of weaponry.

As for men in suits, well, the trouble is that it’s very difficult to make a man in a suit not look like a man in a suit. So you have an impressive number of men in different suits in The Daleks’ Master Plan for instance, but they all look like men in different suits, apart from one who looks like an evil Christmas tree (not an original observation, but I can’t think of a different way of putting it). In the Ark, the Monoids represented a genuine attempt to get away from a basic humanoid shape, and it works in the first two episodes when they don’t speak. When they speak in episodes 3 and 4, though, the illusion is shattered. Maybe that’s what makes the cybermen in The Tenth Planet such a potentially good idea. Their shape is humanoid, because that’s where they started from. The realization on screen isn’t brilliant, but then there was only time and money to virtually thrown the first cybermen costumes together anyway, according to David ‘Cyberleader’ Banks’ book, published in the 80s. They would develop throughout the coming Troughton era.

Space Hardware/Models – While I was watching each episode I can’t say that I was sitting with a jotter in one hand and a pen in the other, noting down whenever I saw a nifty bit of model work, or space hardware, so this is just based on my recollections. I liked the start of Keys of Marinus, where the mini subs were approaching the Keeper’s island. I thought that the crashed spaceship in “The Rescue” was well up to the standard of what Gerry Anderson was producing at the time – and remember that he had the services of Derek Meddings to call on. There’s a couple of shots in “The Ark” – where we see the burning Earth, and where we see the Monoid statue being effected from the spaceship which don’t look bad now, and must have seemed highly impressive back in the day.

Seventhly, Interfering with Time and History

Well, can you or can’t you? If you take the Hartnell era as a whole, the picture is a confusing one. The first season Historicals all tow the party line, outlined clearly in “The Aztecs” that you cannot change History. The we get The Time Meddler. In The Time Meddler the Doctor has to stop one of his own kind from meddling with Earth history, so that Harold can eventually win the battle of Hastings. Why does the Doctor have to do this if it’s impossible for the Monk to actually change History? For that matter, why does the Doctor have to stop the War Machines? That’s part of Earth History – or it will be, as will the Dalek Invasion of 2064.

The doctrine that you can’t change History is untenable for the series in the long run. A more sensible attitude is that there are events in History that you absolutely shouldn’t change, and this is pretty much the attitude that the series will go on to take, leading to the post 2005 concept of fixed points in Time.

Finally, Legacy

William Hartnell’s era gradually established a template for the show, and while different teams and different writers would push the envelope, a lot of the show’s quintessential values are already apparent before the end of the Hartnell Era. The Doctor’s eccentricity, his cunning, his basic decency and his willingness to stand against injustice, and help those who need help are all seen at different times. It’s clear right from the start that the Doctor will never travel without a companion. (Alright, he does in The Deadly Assassin, but that’s a special case) This hints at the essential loneliness which is a part of every Doctor’s character – even Jon Pertwee’s and Tom Baker’s.

29:The Tenth Planet

Before Watching

Well, here we are then. William Hartnell’s 29^th story – his swan song. An important last, but also an important first too. The first regeneration scene. The first appearance of the Cybermen – I’ll say a bit more about them later. The first ‘base under siege’ story – that’s a Doctor Who staple that’s going to recur, especially through the coming Troughton Era. If you look at the four Patrick Troughton Cybermen stories – The Moonbase – The Tomb of the Cybermen – The Wheel in Space and The Invasion – two of them – the Moonbase and The Wheel in Space – are both ‘base under siege stories.

Cards on the table – I always loved the cybermen more than the Daleks – you’ve probably picked up my mixed feelings about Skaro’s finest as you’ve worked your way through previous reviews. This is partly just an accident of History. Although I have a very early memory of Daleks being assembled on a production line from The Power of the Daleks, I only really remember watching whole stories from Patrick Troughton’s last season, and thought that the Cybermen in The Invasion were amazing.

My first exposure to the Tenth Planet was in the Target novelization. Now, one of the first Target novelizations made from the early years was Doctor Who and the Cybermen, which was based on The Moonbase – and I loved that one. Yet when I read the novelization of “The Tenth Planet” I didn’t think it was a patch on the later story. Add to that fact years of reading about cybermen with cardboard chest units and Swedish accents, and you’ll understand why I can’t help approaching this one with more than a little trepidation.

After Watching

The story turned out to be set in 1986. It looked like the production team were deliberately going out of their way to stress the multicultural nature of future society. On the base itself there seemed to be more Americans than anything else, but also a British boffin who looked like a bearded Elvis Costello. There is also a terrible Italian cliché. It was interesting to see that the two astronauts were a white Australian, and black American, who seemed to be the commander. I felt genuinely cold during the scenes set outside the base during the snowstorm. So far so good.

Right, the cybermen. There’s nothing I can probably say that hasn’t already been said. The hands were conspicuously still human. As for the voice. Well, maybe it is just me, but they didn’t sound the least bit Swedish to me. There was some electronic treatment of the voices, but they weren’t as highly treated as I thought they would be, and the first cyberman to speak actually has quite a posh English accent, for all the fact that he is varying the rhythms of his speech as far away as he can get from the rhythms of normal speech. In fact, if anything it his voice reminds me just a little bit of Michael Palin playing the leader of the knights who say Ni. Which just isn’t threatening. Their voices needed to be both deeper and more mechanical. Although having said the fact that there is not the slightest irritation in the cyberman’s voice when he keeps repeating his question about the humans’ names and ages does underline the fact that the cybermen have no emotions. In fact these are the most emotionless cybermen we will ever see. They are less instantly threatening than they will become, but actually far more convincing in what they claim to be. As regards their appearance, it’s nowhere near as bad as some have claimed it to be. Having cast tall actors works, and this is emphasised by the light on top of their heads I didn’t realise from stills photos I’d seen that the big circular thing on the bottom of their chest units was actually a detachable weapon, and that’s actually an important plot point, since it enables  Ben and the base personnel to use them on the cybermen. In fact Ben is almost in tears when he fired on a cyberman. I think that on reflection the decision not keep the cloth masks for their next appearance was the right one, though.

Having read up on this since watching the whole story, I now know that William Hartnell was taken ill at the end of episode 2, which is why he spends all of episode 3 spark out on the floor. It shows how much of a template this story was for much of what would come later when there were scenes which looked very familiar to me from later stories – taking back the base and holding off the invaders – crawling along a ventilation shaft (to be fair it was the male companion who did it in this story. The commanding officer (General Cutler in this story) going off tonto and losing it completely is something which will become quite a familiar motif as well. Cutler’s solution is to try to nuke Mondas, and the wrongness of being so ready to bomb what you don’t understand is another motif which will recur.

As regards the story, it really helped that it was only 4 parts. Any more and it would have needed some serious padding. As it was, though, this story surprised me since the Doctor did little or nothing to save the day. The main plot point is that Mondas, the home of the cybermen, is Earth’s virtual twin, having left the solar system a very long time ago. When it comes back, it automatically begins absorbing energy from earth. It seems that this is a natural process, since the cybermen cannot turn it off when they realise that Mondas is going to be destroyed if it keeps absorbing energy. The only solution they can come up with is to destroy Earth to stop it. So basically all the people on the base have to do is to stop them destroying Earth long enough for Mondas to absorb enough energy to destroy itself.

I was struck also by the way that the goalposts have continually shifted in the destroying a cyberman stakes. In the book of The Moonbase – and I’ve no doubt, in the show as well – the cybermen’s chest units are destroyed by a cocktail of chemicals including nail varnish remover, and the army of cybermen are destroyed by a  gravity device which is used to control Earth’s weather. In “Revenge of the Cybermen” they have a previously unknown susceptibility to gold. In this first cybermen story it’s radiation, the slightest hint of it and they start dropping like 9 pins. Well, some of them. For the rest, they are apparently drawing all of their power from Mondas, so when Mondas dies, so do they. Pretty convenient, I’d say.

The great irony of the current situation with The Tenth Planet is that the first three episodes exist, but the 4^th, containing the first ever regeneration scene, does not. Footage of the regeneration does, but that’s all. Still, it must have come as a hell of a shock when it happened without tons of warning and pre publicity which is the norm nowadays.  Off the point completely, watching the animation of episode 4 it struck me how much Michael Craze’s voice is like Bradley Walsh.

Overall, then, it’s remarkable how far the show has come by the end of this story.

What Have We Learned?

Earth had a twin planet called Mondas

Originally cybermen were not evil, in fact they had no concept of good or evil, just survival.

The original Mondas cybermen were susceptible to radiation.

Whatever species the Doctor belongs to (we didn’t know at the time) he can change and regenerate

28: The Smugglers

Before Watching

I could say much the same as I said before The Savages. Except then, at least , I did know that Steven was leaving. Now, well, no. It’s the last Hartnell Historical, in fact the penultimate Hartnell of all. There will be one more pure historical in the Troughton era – The Highlanders which will be notable for the introduction of Jamie if for nothing else, and then the rather strange Black Orchid when we get to Peter Davison.  It’s got Ben and Polly, who impressed me in The War Games. The wind of change is blowing across the face of Doctor Who . . .

After Watching

The first thing I noticed was that this one was scripted by Brian ‘Ice Warriors/ Celestial Toymaker’ Hayles. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t have been scripting a historical, I suppose, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting. I suppose that I was influenced by my disappointment over The Celestial Toymaker, which is silly really considering that what was seen on the screen was at least a couple of drafts removed from Hayles’ vision of the story.

Speaking of the story, Ben and Polly weren’t actually invited on board the TARDIS, but the Doctor dropped his key and they nipped in to give it back to him just as he was setting off. I loved the way that he admitted openly that he couldn’t control the TARDIS and had no idea where it was going to land. How often have we seen other Doctors in a state of denial over this?

I noticed that they didn’t go overboard on the disbelief from the companions angle, which was probably wise – it had already been done in The Time Meddler, and they weren’t going to top that. There’s some nice location shots in Cornwall in this story. It was mildly amusing to see the church warden Longfoot deciding that Polly was a boy. Was he blind? He gets his anyway. There’s not a lot of film of this one left, but one of the sequences clearly shows Cherub, played by George A Cooper – Billy Fisher’s Dad in Billy Liar – throwing a knife into his back, surprisingly graphic, that. Actually reading about this story after watching it, I think that the film that survives are all bits cut out by the censors in Australia, which kind of makes sense with the knife throwing bit anyway. Cherub is great. I always think that with a pirate, you have to lay it on with a trowel, and Cooper gives Cherub full throttle. All in all it becomes quite an eventful first episode. Cherub has been watching the Doctor talking to Longfoot, and is convinced he tells the Doctor a secret he wants. He accosts the Doctor in the inn, kidnapping him and taking him aboard the pirate ship of Captain Pike, and wounds Ben in the process. To add insult to injury the Squire turns up and imprisons Ben and Polly under suspicion of murdering Longfoot.

Pike seems to have a very nifty swiss army hook on the end of his arm. Alright, it’s not a hook, in fact, it’s like the end of a pikestaff, no doubt hence his name. He also does a nice line in pirate dialogue, saying to Cherub as he does, - one more word from you and I’ll slit yer gizzard, right? – Is David Blake Kelly, who plays Kuper the innkeeper the same David Kelly who played O’Reilly the Builder in Fawlty Towers? Absolutely not – hence the helpful middle name. Having convinced dim witted yokel Tom to let them out of their cell by pretending they are going to do some voodoo on him (honest to gosh)  Ben and Polly return to the church to investigate, knocking out Blake the Revenue man whom they mistake for the real murdered. And who is Blake? Why, it’s our old mate, Tlotoxl from the Aztecs – or John Ringham as he was otherwise known. Fine actor, and he gives just as convincing a turn as in his earlier appearance, albeit in a totally different, and at the end of the day, rather heroic role.

In the third episode the whole thing became for me just a little tedious. The pirates and the Squire make an alliance. At least we could see how the Doctor’s moral compass has developed. Ben and Polly work out at one point that it looks like an ideal time to return to the TARDIS, and the Doctor tells them that he can’t, that he feels moral responsibility for the fact that the whole village may be destroyed if he doesn’t act. That’s the Doctor! Basically the whole denouement of this shaggy dog story revolves around looking for the gold of the pirate Captain Avery. The Doctor was passed the secret by Longfoot. Which brings me to another observation. Looking at it I can’t help feeling that we’ve seen in “The Smugglers” is a real departure from everything we’ve seen in the Historicals so far. Up to now, ever when the Historicals haven’t featured real historical figures – like The Aztecs – or have only featured them briefly in the background, like “The Reign of Terror” – they have been based on real historical events, even when they’ve taken a few liberties with them. “The Smugglers” is different. It isn’t pegged to a specific and documented historical event, rather it has its roots in literature. The smuggler linked with a church is taken directly from Thorndyke’s Doctor Syn books. OK – they’re set in Kent, and Syn is a vicar rather than a church warden, but it’s a clear parallel. It also has echoes of Treasure Island as well. The more I think about it the more this seems to be a conscious choice on the part of Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis. Perhaps this sounded the death knell for the Historicals, since it’s a clear abandonment of the educational intention that the series set out with.

Coming back to “The Smugglers” it all ends up with a bit of a free for all up in the crypt of the church, and I couldn’t help thinking that I didn’t really care what happened, and who ended up with the treasure, if anyone. Nice to see John Ringham getting the chance to do a stint as a goody, mind, and it’s he who saves the day in the end.

Overall I enjoyed the first couple of episodes, but it lost my interest after that. 

What Have We Learned?

It looks as if the production team have run out of steam with the Historicals

Season Three

Was Season three the longest season ever? I wouldn’t be at all surprised. It was a massive 10 stories long for a start, and even if you say, yes, well, Mission to the Unknown was only 1 episode, the fact is that the Daleks’ Masterplan was 12 episodes!

Season three for me saw the best of the comedy historicals, in Donald Cotton’s clever and funny The Myth Makers. John Lucarotti’s “The Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve” was right up there with his own “The Aztecs” as the most enjoyable of all of the historicals, and maybe even better. If we’re trying to characterise Season Three, I think I can discern at least a couple of trends, namely –

A hefty turnover of companions. Yes, this season saw the Doctor say goodbye, for one reason or another, to Vicky, Katerina, Sara and Steven. Alright, Sara was maybe never conceived as a long term companion, and Jean Marsh has gone on record as saying that she had no intention of carrying on the role even if they had asked her to. The haste with which Katerina was discarded, though, smacks of a lack of foresight and planning. Somehow as well I get the impression that nobody really sat down and worked out what Dodo was going to be like either. So I don’t know whether Dodo was just poorly written, or poorly acted by Jackie Lane, but she never convinced me. What was she doing on the TARDIS? She just sort of arrived. What did she get out of being on the TARDIS? Probably exactly the same as what she would have got out of sitting on a chair in Wimbledon Common for a couple of months. Stupid is as stupid does.

The sidelining of William Hartnell. – In both “The Massacre” and “The Celestial Toymaker” the Doctor disappears for much of the story. In “The Savages” he spends a whole episode comatose. By the end of the third season William Hartnell only has 2 stories left as the Doctorand it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that for producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davies this wouldn’t be a moment too soon.

Stories that had interesting concepts, but were not properly realised on screen. Of course I’m referring to the Celestial Toymaker – I’ve already seen how cuts affected the script and what eventually appeared on screen, but it’s also largely true of the Ark, which started so brilliantly, but finished as a rather tame piece of space opera.

I do think we’re in a position to make some reflections on the Hartnell era as a whole, but as there are two stories still to go it is only fair that we watch them first. So let’s have a look at how the stories of the third season rated.

Mighty 200 Positions

The Daleks Masterplan – 42

The Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve – 86

The War Machines – 108

The Myth Makers – 126

Mission to the Unknown – 133

The Celestial Toymaker – 151

The Ark – 154

The Savages 162

Galaxy 4 – 172

The Gunfighters – 175

Now my rating

The Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve

The Myth Makers

The Daleks’ Masterplan

The Savages

The Ark

The Gunfighters

The War Machines

The Celestial Toymaker

Mission to the Unknown

Galaxy 4

The War machines so far down? Well, this is a personal list, and it comes down to enjoyment. The fact is that the last two episodes of The Ark are poor, but I enjoyed the first two episodes so much that I can’t honestly put it any further down the list even though the last to episodes are rubbish. Am I really saying that I enjoyed The Gunfighters that much more than the War Machines? Too right I am. The Gunfighters has it hands down for me. I’ve already put on record how much I enjoyed the Massacre, and while The Daleks Masterplan has some wonderful moments, it is uneven, which is only what you’d expect from such a mammoth twelve parter. 

27: The War Machines

Before Watching

The reputation of this story precedes it. The first Doctor Who story entirely set on contemporary Earth. The first ‘megalomaniac giant computer’ story. The first story in which not one companion remains from the previous story by the end of it. Think about that one for a minute. In “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” Susan leave, but Ian and Barbara stay. In “The Chase” Ian and Barbara leave but Vicky stays. In “The Myth Makers” Vicky leaves but Steven stays. In “The Savages” Steven left but Dodo stayed – unfortunately.

It’s often been said that the UNIT era during Jon Pertwee’s tenure owes a lot to this story, “The Web of Fear” and “The Invasion”. So it will be interesting to see just how true this will prove to be, and whether there is a recognizable development, or whether it’s just a superficial similarity based upon the fact that “The War Machines” is set in contemporary Britain.

After Watching

Well, yes, on reflection, you can see some of the features of the UNIT era which are also apparent in this story. WOTAN, the megalomaniac supercomputer, capable of mind control, seems to me to be a close cousin of BOSS, the computer in The Green Death.

The Doctor seems to be no stranger to officialdom either. He effortlessly talks his way in to see WOTAN, and is quite chummy with the Minister all the way through. Professor Brett, the unfortunate inventor of WOTAN – why does everyone call it VOTAN by the way – seems very chummy with the Doctor as well. In fact the first 15 minutes or so of the first episode remind me a lot of a number of stories from the Pertwee era, with the Doctor popping in to look at some research project or other which is just about to be hijacked, or to go terribly wrong.

This story seems to be pretty much a sea change for the Doctor and for the series as a whole– something you can tell right from the way that the title – the Machines together with the number of each episode, is typed up on the screen in that futuristic and asymmetrical font they used to use in the 60s and 70s to make things look futuristic. The story is an interesting inversion – by this stage of the show the Doctor is our point of fixed reference, a point of normalcy with which we the viewers can identify. Here, though, presumably the original viewers could have identified with a great deal more in this story. Blimey, I was only born in 1964, but a lot of the London in which the story is set still looks pretty familiar to me. This does affect the atmosphere of the show, in a way which is going to be picked up by The Web Planet and The Invasion in the next few years.

I kind of think that the machines themselves are the last attempt for this season at least to make something with the popular appeal of the Daleks. In some shots they are pretty impressive, but the fire extinguisher guns are a mistake – not unlike the guns the Daleks use in the two Peter Cushing films. They’re a decent enough attempt, and some of the scenes of them trundling along the streets of London are effective.

There were some pretty funny things going on with the regular cast by this time. Apologies if what I say is inaccurate, but it’s what I’ve read. Clashes with William Hartnell allegedly led to John Wiles quitting the show as producer, and Innes Lloyd was reputed to want to replace him asap. Actually, as far as screen time goes, The War Machines plays a lot fairer by William Hartnell than the Massacre, The Celestial Toymaker, and even The Savages did. But the messing around with Hartnell really pales into insignificance next to the very cavalier way that Dodo is dropped from the show. because that’s exactly what she is. There’s no leaving scene at all. Dodo’s mind – what there is of it – is put under the control of WOTAN. After the Doctor uses hypnosis to free her from its control he sits her on a chair, then arranges for her to go to the Minister’s place in the country to recover. She never comes back! All that happens is she sends a letter to the Doctor telling him that she’s off in the last scene. I suppose it’s better than sacrificing yourself like Sara or Katarina, but at least they got to do it on screen.

Which brings me to the new companions, Polly and Ben. Polly, played by stunning Anneke Wills, former Mrs. Michael Gough, is a PA (what else in the 1960s?) working for Professor Brett. Ben is a sailor that Polly meets when she takes Dodo to a fab and groovy nightspot – a place which the Doctor visits and finds he is actually really on trend clothes wise. It’s probably right that the crew was refreshed at this point. Steven lasted for 11 stories, and that isn’t actually a bad length of time – it’s longer than Susan for example, but I think the possibilities of his character were becoming exhausted, as were the possibilities of finding more and more humiliating things for Peter Purves to do. Good old Peter Purves – always gave full value for money whether in Doctor Who or Blue Peter. As for Dodo, well she only stuck around for 5 stories – 6 if you count her appearance right at the end of the Massacre. She only arrived halfway through this same season, but frankly, that was more than enough. I don’t know that any writer ever really had much of a handle on what she was all about, and she was a bit of a dud. These two at least have a bit of  life about them. Mind you they are going to have to work hard in the Smugglers and The Tenth Planet, because by the end of the Tenth Planet they are going to have to be the focus of normality for the viewers to tide them as gently as possible through the Hartnell to Troughton regeneration.

Back to the War Machines.  I can’t say that I think it’s a classic, because I don’t. I think it’s importance lies in the fact that it is the first story to be set on contemporary Earth – in fact, contemporary London, and as such it was setting a template for a significant amount of what was to follow. As a story in its own right, though, well it’s OK, but I can’t help comparing it with another megalomaniac mind control super computer story, “The Green Death” from the 10^th season during Jon Pertwee’s tenure, which knocked this into a cocked hat.

What Have We Learned?

The Doctor seems to have some friends or at least familiar acquaintances in high places – maybe accumulated during the months that he and Susan were on earth immediately prior to An Unearthly Child. 

26: The Savages

Before Watching

I can say but little about this one. All I remember is that Steven stays behind at the end of the story, and this is Peter Purves’ swansong.

As for the story, well, I must have read the synopsis somewhere along the line, but I can’t remember one thing about it. Still, as my grandmother used to say, “Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed.”

After Watching

Maybe I’m going soft, but at least the basic concept of this one seemed to hold a little more water than some. Not for the first time in the show’s history, this is a story which seems to draw some of its inspiration from HG Wells’ The Time Machine. The Doctor and his companions land on a planet in the far future where there seem to be two distinct groups of humans – those who live in the city led by the Elders, and those who live outside in a virtually paleolithic existence, and dubbed by the city dwellers as the savages. By the second episode it becomes clear that the Savages are being kept almost as farm animals. They are harvested, and their life force is technologically drained from them, to augment the life fore of the city dwellers. The average city dweller doesn’t know what is going on, it is all down to their nefarious Elders, led by Frederick Jaeger’s Jano. So, dirty and smelly as they may be, the noble Savages are cast in the role of the Eloi, and the self satisfied and smug city dwellers are the Morlocks. Although the word vampire hasn’t been mentioned I could argue that this is Doctor Who’s first take on the theme of vampirism. It won’t be the last. As I say, at least I can see a motive behind the nastiness that is going on, and that’s always a plus point.

In the first episode as the TARDIS lands the Doctor says we’re so far in the future we’re in an unprecedented age of peace and prosperity. After he goes off wandering with a piece of funny looking equipment called honest to God, a reacting vibrator, for reasons he never really explains, Steven and Dodo deduce that we’re back in the Stone age after seeing one of the Savages. The city soldiers who come to welcome the Doctor have by far the silliest hats since the Robomen.  When the Doctor met the Elders, there was a surprise when I saw that their leader Jano was played by Frederick Jaeger. He appeared in two memorable Tom Baker stories, Planet of Evil, and The Invisible Enemy – he was the creator of K9 in that story. Lot to answer for in my opinion. Jano at least seems to be blacked up – I wonder what made them take that particular decision?

The leader of the soldiers, Exorse has a lightgun which in some shots looked like a seaside telescope – I couldn’t help but wonder if he had to put a shilling in it to fire it? The city set looked quite impressive in some of the snaps.  The light gun has the effect of sapping the will of anyone caught in its beam, and the unlucky recipient in the first episode was a savage girl called Nanina. She looked to be dressed in a costume which reminded one of Raquel Welch’s One Million Years BC. The Savages may have been short on technology, but judging by Nanina they’re not short on hair care products.

Coming back to the City Dwellers, I’ve already drawn the comparison with “The Time Machine”  Actually with the people who show Steve and Dodo around the city not wanting to look through the windows to the outside, and insisting that they have everything they need in the city, I’m also reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s “The City and the Stars.”

Now, here’s a thing. In the end of the first episode Dodo wandered off, and accidentally blundered into the corridor where the scientists release the de-vitalitised savages back into the wild. The two city dwellers who had been showing her and Dodo around, called Avon and Flower suggested that maybe she was hiding playing a game, and Steven replied, “Not even Dodo’s stupid enough for that!” Heartfelt words by the sound of it. Was this a sign that the production team had had enough of Dodo? I know that she disappears for good before the end of the next story.

Hartnell is superb when he confronts the soldier sent to follow him out of the city. He is full of righteous indignation saying “They are men, human beings – like you and me!” Of course the presumably unintentional irony is that he isn’t a human being himself! Which he already told us many stories ago. This continues even more so when he confronts Jano – again a terrific performance from Hartnell. When the Doctor is having his vitality removed, the third assistant is played by Tony Holland, who would go on to create Eastenders just a couple of decades later.

In the third episode Jano takes the intransference – the vitality transfusion – from the Doctor himself. Edorse follows Steven and Dodo into the cave of the savages, and this bit goes on a bit too much. It turns out that it’s another wordless week for Hartnell, as he’s unconscious. There’s just a hint of possible future romance between Exorse and Nanina after she prevents Tor from killing him. You just knew that when Jano recovered he was going to be doing a William Hartnell impression. Which makes no sense. If that was how it worked, then every time someone intransfers savage vitality, then they’d start acting like the savages do.

Oh well, it was nice to get a sudden flash of video towards the end of the third episode, although it only lasted for a couple of seconds. As for the last episode, the big question is how will Jano act when the party of soldiers goes out with him to try to recapture the Doctor, Steven and Dodo? Back in the cave Nanina is having a hard time convincing the rest of the savages not to listen to Tor, and to leave Exorse alone. Her hair still looks lovely though. The Doctor is still suffering from the effects of the vitality transfusion, and Dodo once again shows that she is no mental giant when it turns out that she has had capsules from the Doctor which could have helped him all the time, but forgot. D’oh! Once the Doctor starts to recover he gives us an interesting contrast which shows just how far he and the series has come since An Unearthly Child. That story was all about getting back to the TARDIS and leave well alone. In this one he absolutely refuses to go back to the TARDIS because he wants to stay and help the oppressed people (his words).

Yes, this is a story with its heart in the right place, and you can only applaud the Doctor’s determination to get back into the city to destroy the machinery. Knowing that Jano has been changed through being transfused, the two of them come up with a plan to convince the Elders and soldiers to let them in and start smashing the machinery, which they do with true luddite abandon. Then almost immediately after Jano turns to the savages’ leader Chal and says they will have to all find a new leader, Steven shows leadership quality when the soldiers under Edal burst in. That was handy. Steven is unsure when both the Chal and Jano say he is the man for the job, but the Doctor pushes him forward with almost indecent haste. At least they got a handshake, and he told Steven he was very proud of him. Don’t expect anything like that for you Dodo.

Good old Peter Purves. It didn’t matter how silly the lines he was given were, or how humiliating the things he was asked to do, he always gave it his all.  As for this story, well, it wasn’t at all bad. For all that you could accuse it of being a bit preachy, the fact is that this story had its heart in the right place.

What Have We Learned?

Dodo has the memory of a goldfish

The Doctor is very proud of Steven

25: The Gunfighters

Before Watching

Before it became possible to watch old episodes of “Doctor Who” the wisdom we received from our olders and betters was that “The Gunfighters” was one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever made, and a good reason why nobody should mourn the passing of the historicals as a genre. As good as the reputation of The Celestial Toymaker used to be – the reputation of the Gunfighters has been the complete opposite. I have a clear memory of reading that this story, together with (surprisingly) Planet of Giants, was one of the worst that classic Doctor Who has to offer. It’s a funny thing – while “The Romans” has been approvingly compared with “Carry on Cleo”, “The Gunfighters” has been unfavourably compared with “Carry on Cowboy”.

Television didn’t become a popular mass medium in the UK until the 1950s, when the Coronation was the real catalyst for many households buying or renting their first television. In those first couple of decades of popular television, the 50s and 60s, imported American western ‘cowboy’ shows were a staple of both channels, as they were in the cinema throughout the 50s. When “The Gunfighters” was first broadcast, shows like “The Virginian” and “Gunsmoke” for example were still going strong. If I’m honest, the western genre never really appealed to me in the slightest. To me all that stuff was my Dad’s generation’s thing – he did actually love Westerns, especially those starring John Wayne – and they were not for me. Also, the fact is that Brits just don’t do Westerns very well. Which means I don’t look forward to this show with a great deal of anticipation.

On the other hand, and this may just be perversity on my part, but of the stories with a very poor reputation that I’ve already watched – I found that only “The Web Planet” and “Galaxy 4” really deserved a lot of what was said about it, and even with the Web Planet so much can be forgiven because they were trying something so different to everything that had been done before. “The Keys of Marinus”, and even “The Sensorites” had something to offer. Also, this is scripted by Donald Cotton, who gave us the consistently enjoyable “The Myth Makers” So what the hell. Bring it on.

After Watching

No, this isn’t bad Doctor Who. By whichever standards you might want to judge it, you cannot claim that this is bad Doctor Who. Let’s examine some of the criteria: -

The story and the script: - Like other historicals, this story is based on a real event. The Gunfight at the OK Corral saw a 30 second or so shoot out between Marshal Wyatt Earp, Earp’s brothers and his friend ‘Doc’ Holliday, and the Clantons and Claibornes, in which three of the Clanton side were killed, and men on both sides were injured. It actually only became the most famous shoot out of the Wild West about 50 years later in the 1930s, when a highly romanticised biography of Wyatt Earp was published. It has been the subject of several Hollywood movies.

Donald Cotton, the writer of this story, also wrote “The Myth Makers” and as you would expect, this is not short on comedy. Much of it revolves around a combination of coincidences that see the Doctor being mistaken by the Clantons for Doc Holliday. I wouldn’t claim that it’s laugh a minute, but there are certainly a few laughs, and more importantly the story never really flags. I mean, I don’t even particularly like Westerns, but I found myself hoping that the Doctor, Steven and Dodo would disappear for a while so we could get on with the story. That’s a common failing of Historicals – the fact is that the Travellers can never be that much more than observers to the main story, and as such can come to seem surplus to requirements.

One odd thing about the script was the decision, presumably the director’s, to continually punctuate the action with Lynda Baron’s rendition of The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon. Lynda Baron is best known as Nurse Gladys Emmanuel in the joyous “Open All Hours”, but she began as a singer as well as an actress, and it has to be said that she does have a terrific singing voice. As an idea it’s neat and original, but the effect is lost because my God, that song is repetitive. We get the same lines over and over again to punctuate the action, and so even when it is actually commenting on what we’ve just seen it’s just annoying.

Sets and Locations: - I have seen it said that this is the first ever television Western filmed in Britain, and this may well be the case, but all of the sets are recognisably ‘wild west’. After all, what do you need? A main street exterior, a saloon bar interior, and a jail lockup. I don’t say for one minute that the sets in “The Gunfighters” looked any cheaper than those in the US made western series which were being aired at the same time.

Performances: It’s easy to be distracted by some of the accents, because the Clantons, for example, are spectacularly bad. God alone knows where Billy’s accent came from, but it certainly wasn’t much further west than Weston Super Mare. In fact everything on the baddies’ side for the first two episodes is purest cardboard, until the arrival of the eponymous Johnny Ringo after whom episode 3 is named. The offhand way in which he shoots the barman at least underlines that there is some threat and menace there.

On the positive side though, Wyatt Earp is acted by John Alderson, who did spend part of his career acting in the USA, and he brings a world weary credibility to the show, especially after his youngest brother Warren is killed by the Clantons. Above all else, though, there is Anthony Jacobs’ Doc Holliday. Jacobs even looks a little like Kirk Douglas’ Doc Holliday from the 1957 film “Gunfight at the OK Corral”, and he’s probably the main character in the story. It’s important that he comes across as a rogue and a cheat, but still one with a little charm and humour, and Anthony Jacobs for me plays this to perfection. As compared to the Clantons, his attitude towards an American accent is to throw the kitchen sink at it, ah doo dee-clare, but it kind of works, and just emphasises his credentials as a genuinely larger than life character.

Given at least a respectable amount of air time in this story, William Hartnell seems to be having great fun. He was an actor who could handle comedy with ease. In the previous story poor, game Peter Purves was expected to dance, and in this one the cringe factor was ramped up to a whole new level by having him sing a different arrangement of the ubiquitous Ballad of the Last chance Saloon. Being Peter Purves he gives it his all. Fair play to him, others might have just gone through the motions.

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Wobbly accents aren’t a good enough reason for panning a story. Neither is the use of a little comedy either. In fact this story does turn from broad farce to the darkest of black humour about halfway through when Ringo enters, and there’s real pathos in Wyatt Earp’s reaction to the murder of his brother Warren. There is also an understated examination of the concept of vigilantism, and whether a lawman such as Wyatt Earp is ever justified in taking the law into his own hands. So “The Gunfighters” may not be to everybody’s taste, but it’s just not fair to call it a bad story, because whichever way you look at it, it isn’t.

What Have We Learned?

Both Steven and Dodo are professional-level piano players

Steven is not a professional level singer

For all that the Doctor says that you can’t change History he still can’t resist trying to now and again

24: The Celestial Toymaker

Before Watching

I love the surreal. One of my earliest memories of Doctor who was watching “The Mind Robber” when it was first broadcast in the late 60s, and seeing Zoe trapped in what I thought was a giant drum. Actually it was a jar. Why? It was all to do with the riddle – when is a door not a door? Now, I can’t say that my love of the surreal can be traced back to watching The Mind Robber when I was a kid – but on the other hand, I can’t swear to it that it wasn’t either.

When I was formulating my mental list of the ‘missing’ stories I most wanted to see, back in the late 70s, “The Celestial Toymaker” was almost universally viewed as a ‘lost, surrealist classic’. If you just read the synopsis, and consider that the Toymaker himself was played by an actor of the calibre of Michael Gough, then you can see why it enjoyed the reputation that it did.

Well, it’s probably not unfair to say that few if any Doctor Who stories have suffered such a drastic critical reappraisal over the years. I’m afraid that many fans don’t have much nice to say about it at all. I intend to try to find out why.

After Watching

There’s bad stories and there’s bad stories. Let me put that another way. You can get a bad story where you just kind of accept it, because it could never be any better bearing in mind the unpromising raw material from which it’s made. Then there’s the kind of bad story which gets you really frustrated because, bearing in mind the raw material it’s made from, it ought to be a lot better than it really is. Such a story is the Celestial Toymaker. Why?

Five Reasons Why The Celestial Toymaker Should Be Better Than It Is.

Michael Gough. The late Michael Gough, who passed away in 2011, was a terrific actor, and had a very fine career both in Britain and in Hollywood – he’s maybe best remembered for playing Alfred the butler in the Tim Burton Batman films. Yet he gives a disappointingly two dimensional performance in the title role of the Toymaker. This is an immortal being of seemingly limitless power. Yet . . . he’s a bore, and he’s made of cardboard. Michael Gough does manage to imbue him with a little bit of feline charm, I suppose, but it’s very tame stuff when compared with what he was capable of. I’m willing to put that down to the script and the direction – although it should be noted that Michael Gough’s later appearance in Doctor Who was as renegade Time Lord Councillor Hedin in another turkey called “The Arc of Infinity”. To appear in one poor story may be seen as unfortunate , to appear in two . . .

William Hartnell. If he was hard done by in “The Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve”, he is almost criminally underused in this. In the cliffhanger at the end of “The Ark” we saw the Doctor starting to fade. For most of this story he’s either invisible or just his hand can be seen (which wasn’t even William Hartnell’s, so the story goes), and for much of this time he is not allowed to speak either. All of which means we never get a really good confrontation scene between the Doctor and the Toymaker – and the irony is that Hartnell is absolutely brilliant at that sort of thing. Just think back to his scenes with the Monk if you want to know what I mean by that. It would surely have helped the character of the Toymaker come across better too.

The Surreal and Nightmarish concept. The unknown is frightening. However, when you can take something that is real, well known, and normally not in the least bit frightening – the trappings of childhood for example – and twist them so that they take on a frightening and sinister aspect, then that can make for great and scarey television. “Doctor Who” would go on to do it on a number of occasions in the future. Yet, and I’m sorry to say this, it just doesn’t come off. The reason is – well – and I admit I have only seen recons of the first three episodes, together with the 4^th episode which does exist – the script and direction consistently undercut any really frightening qualities that the story has. Take the clowns in the first episode. Joey and Clara, well, for all that they are playing a game of Blind Men’s Buff with Steven and Dodo with the stakes being the companions’ continuing humanity – well, they’re just not sinister at all. The only thing they do is to cheat. Big deal. Yet it really isn’t a difficult job to make clowns sinister. Just think of The Greatest Show In The Galaxy , for instance.

In the second episode the game involves Steven and Dodo playing against some playing cards to find the safe chair out of seven. Now, the way the other 6 chairs deal with the sitters is suitably macabre – but it’s all so matter of fact. For the most part it’s just dolls who get their comeuppance, and who cares about that? The level of threat is so downplayed that one suspects even Mary Whitehouse could have watched this story without foaming at the mouth and reaching for her green biro.

The third episode has a protracted game of hunt the thimble, which is punctuated by a long and pointless episode with two characters, Sergeant Rugg and Mrs Wiggs. I presume that this part was meant to be funny – although I wouldn’t presume for one moment that anybody has ever found it the least bit amusing, but whether it is funny or just tedious ( it is just tedious) that misses the point. This is totally the wrong place for comedy – and there’s far too much of it anyway. Then Steven and Dodo have just to dance their way around some dancing dolls, and the speed and ease with which they do it suggests that this wasn’t much of a challenge in the first place.

A supporting cast who give their all for a dying cause. That’s a bit mean, but give credit to Campbell Singer, Peter Stephens and Carmen Silvera (Madame Edith from the seemingly endless ‘Allo ‘ Allo) who give it 100%, and they each have to play several roles. Peter Stephens in particular is excellent as cheating schoolboy Cyril. Yes, of course he’s meant to be Billy Bunter. Why they bothered I don’t know. Bunter was a bit of a fool, but he wasn’t renowned for cheating at games or being a bad loser, really. I did read somewhere that Frank Richards took exception to this usurpation of his most famous character - well , it could only have happened through a medium since he died in 1961 – but I digress. Each of them deserves a hell of a lot better than the lines they get given to say, although to be fair Campbell Singer and Carmen Silvera do manage to squeeze just the tiniest bit of pathos from the fact that it seems that if they lose to Steven and Dodo, then what tiny bit of their humanity remains will be lost forever. Now that might have been worth exploring properly in the script. Fat chance.

The Script. Actually you might ask which script. Take one – the original script was written by Brian Hayles. The same Brian Hayles who later created the Ice Warriors, and wrote a further three stories to feature them.  Take two – it was never uncommon for the production team to request rewrites, but Brian Hayles was unavailable to do them. So then script editor Donald Tosh did the rewrites, and it was agreed he would take the writing credit, with Brian Hayles credited with the original idea. No worries there – Donald Tosh co wrote The Massacre so he knew how to write for Doctor Who. Take three. Donald Tosh’s tenure as script editor came to an end, and Gerry Davies took over with new Producer Innes Lloyd before the story would be aired. The budget for the show was cut, which meant that Davies had to do re-writes, which Donald Tosh didn’t like – hence his name being removed from the production, and the writing credit returning to Brian Hayles. So what you actually have is a script by committee, which has undoubtedly been watered down from the original versions in order to save cash. So what ends up on screen is still an intriguing idea, but poorly realised, because they couldn’t afford to do it properly. You can’t blame the cast for that.

How Bad Is The Celestial Toymaker?

It’s not easy to strip away the two layers of reputation that have attached themselves to this story over the years. First of all it was viewed as ‘the great lost classic’ back in the 70s and 80s when it was unavailable in any form, and then, when people could actually hear it and see parts of it the disappointment led to its reputation as a turkey of epic proportions. Even ignoring all of this, and trying to judge it solely on what I’ve seen over the three recons and the surviving episode, it’s very hard to find much that is very positive to say about it. This isn’t a great Doctor Who story, it isn’t even a good Doctor Who story. It isn’t awful though – for example it never descends into the levels of tedium already plumbed by Galaxy Four. It is, though, a good example of why, however good the idea, if you can’t do a particular story properly, then you’re better off not doing it at all. A missed opportunity.

What Have We Learned?

The production team at this point just seem to want to keep Hartnell off screen at all costs

The Doctor has escaped from the Toymaker at some point in his past

The Toymaker is immortal and indestructible. . . and a bit of a bore