Best Of Who: The First Doctor- A Retrospective

Our personal evalaution of Doctor Who's defining era, featuring thoughts on William Hartnell's incarnation and four of his key adventures.
Welcome to London, 2164. The city is silent, despondent as its inhabitants relinquish the realization that for the first time in years, their home and their planet is free from alien rule. Somewhere in the distance, the iconic bells of Big Ben chime, resonating throughout the streets as an aural symbol of hope and enduring human perseverance.

A band of weary travellers stand alone on a street, and hear those same bells. One of them, a wise, elderly man listens for a moment, his second battle with his oldest foes complete, and says only this: "Just the beginning...It's just the beginning." These contemplative words signal the conclusion of the 1965 Doctor Who adventure The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but moreso they help us to define an illustrious and naturally experimental era of the show- that of its inception.

Our Best Of Who Awards feature series will continue on a weekly basis throughout the year leading up to November 23rd, yet on top of that, we can promise an extra series of eleven retrospectives based around each incarnation of the Doctor. Today, it's the turn of William Hartnell's wise, oft-enigmatic and scheming Time Lord to go under the radar, as we explore the formative initial years of Who and the quality of various stories within them. Here, then, is our retrospective on the First Doctor in all of its black-and-white glory:

• AN UNEARTHLY CHILD (1963)- Any self-respecting fan of Doctor Who will rightly know that this groundbreaking four-part adventure marked the very first story in the show's history. An Unearthly Child takes the viewer from 1960s Earth to the Dark Ages, as two schoolteachers- Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright- investigate their mysterious student Susan's home, only to discover her to be an extraterrestrial hiding out with her grandfather the Doctor within a police box in an old junkyard. The scene where William Russell's Ian and Jacqueline Hill's Barbara see the truth behind Carole Ann Ford's Susan and Hartnell's Doctor unravelled, entering the TARDIS to find a bigger-on-the-inside time machine, makes for captivating viewing even to a 2013 audience, a surprising revelation unto itself. Ravaged by justified fears of humans uprooting his shadowy existence, Hartnell's Doctor here is rash and temperamental, an intriguing haunting presence aboard the TARDIS in his unwavering decision to steal the two teachers away from their ordinary lives in order to preserve his own secrets. It's a shame that once the extraordinary opening episode of Unearthly is done, events take a more pedestrian turn, with the remaining three episodes spent moving back-and-forth between the TARDIS and a series of caves containing primitive human societies, but there's still plenty of compelling content here for the viewer, as we discover how Ian and Barbara can bring out pure humanity in their Time Lord captors in the midst of a developing team dynamic.
• THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH (1964)- Judging by the mass success of Terry Nation's 1963 story The Daleks in introducing one of Doctor Who's most iconic monsters, it would be acceptable to assume that his sequel The Dalek Invasion of Earth reaches a similar level of success. However, that's not wholly the case- while Bill Hartnell and Carole Ann Ford are on beautiful form as the latter's character departs the TARDIS at the story's conclusion, the rest of the adventure is fairly rudimentary. The famed pepperpots of old are treated in a similar manner to their previous outing, which lends an air of inherent familiarity to the piece, which doesn't help the case of a lengthy six-part adventure. Whereas The Daleks introduced the Doctor's oldest foes with a bang, Dalek Invasion proved that it was still possible for a story involving these arch-enemies to seem more like a whimper.
• THE WAR MACHINES (1966)- Undoubtedly, we find Doctor Who and its cast in more confident territory here. William Hartnell's portrayal of a courageous, ever-inquisitive incarnation of the Doctor is clear to see in The War Machines, a transitional adventure which heralds the departure of one companion and the arrival of two others. Admittedly, the former eventuality is handled with such callous disregard for the character of Dodo that it seems something of an afterthought, but never mind. Doctor Who's ability to recognize and respond to the growing contemplations and fears of the society from which it derived was developing on strong form here as well, with the use of a living, scheming computer interface just as relevant to a 1960s audience as it still would be to a viewer today in 2013. Despite some iffy special effects and a poor companion arc resolution, then, The War Machines remains one of the finest tales of William Hartnell's era, a defining piece in every sense of the word for the actor's portrayal and the series' ongoing narratives.
• THE TENTH PLANET (1966)- Few viewers could ever forget this particular denouement. On the one hand, The Tenth Planet is known for its introduction of the Cybermen, at this stage a race whose voices appeared to resemble those of humans suffering from the common cold or who were a bit high. Thankfully, despite the sound-boxes of these new foes needing a bit of work, their hooded guises and their unwavering beliefs based on a total lack of emotional perception provide a chilling initial depiction of these soon-to-be iconic menaces. On the other hand, of course, Tenth Planet marked the final Doctor Who story to feature William Hartnell as its incumbent Time Lord, the reigns being swiftly passed on to Patrick Troughton with Hartnell in the midst of a growing muscular affliction. This naturally meant that viewers witnessed the first on-screen regeneration of the Doctor, although at the time this process was swiftly dubbed a mere 'renewal' of the character. Hartnell's illness has a clear effect on his physical contribution to proceedings here, but all the same The Tenth Planet is a decent conclusion to a successful formative era of the show, an era which helped define many of Doctor Who's later attributes.

For all the latest Doctor Who news, reviews, previews and features, keep it On-Screen in the days ahead!