The Doctors Who's Who (6 page)

Further evidence of the reality of the show for children comes from Hartnell’s last
Doctor Who
companion, Anneke Wills, who said: ‘My own children got wound-up in it. One day, while I was away rehearsing, they saw an episode in which I got carried off by monsters. They were very worried about whether I was going to come home that night. They didn’t realise that the episode they had been watching had in fact been recorded the week before, and they half-believed their poor mum had been gobbled up by the wicked monsters!’

So Hartnell had made a credible character and starred in a show that had a strong young audience, but was there life after
Doctor Who
? If he was a TV icon and had an impressive film career behind him, was he allowed to move on after he left the show?

‘No’ would be the general answer.

Hartnell was already booked to appear in pantomime that first Christmas after leaving
Doctor Who
. Handbills for
Puss in Boots
(Odeon Theatre, Cheltenham) highlighted the fact that ‘Television’s original Dr Who’ would be a major star (when in actual fact he was Buskin the Cobbler, looking like Doctor Who). If that wasn’t enough, other promotional lines for the pantomime read: ‘Meet the monsters from Outer Space… Super Win-a-Dalek Competition’. Clearly Hartnell wouldn’t be allowed to forget his greatest role so quickly.

Although the pantomime played to large audiences, it had its fair share of criticism, which stemmed largely from technical problems. Acoustics were a nightmare, with the orchestra too loud and actors, including Hartnell, too quiet when reciting their lines.

Regardless, Hartnell continued to act and, in February 1967, he recorded an episode of
No Hiding Place
entitled ‘The Game’. Suddenly he was back in a military role, this time an ex-Indian army sergeant turned rent collector. One reviewer was quick to spot the former Doctor Who, saying that he wished one of the cast would turn into a Dalek, and observed, ‘He [Hartnell] is Doctor Who’ (James Hastie,
Scottish Daily Express
).

Critics were harsh on Hartnell. He wasn’t allowed to truly move on; actors who have since played the Doctor might possibly be wary of typecasting simply because of the way Hartnell was treated after leaving the show. Patrick Troughton was particularly aware of this.

William Hartnell tried to carry on, taking a guest spot in the popular BBC drama
Softly, Softly
, in January 1968. It was here that he seemed to emerge from a low point. Due to the lack of work, harsh criticism and health problems, he had been drinking a great deal, but suddenly he perked up and delivered a great performance.

On 25 April 1968, Hartnell discussed doing a Robert Bolt
play at the Bristol Old Vic. It was called
Brother & Sister
and would co-star Sonia Dresdel, but it appeared that he had problems grasping the nuances of the part. The play ran for four weeks but didn’t go on tour thereafter, for unclear reasons. Just a few more TV spots came his way after that, finishing with his return – in colour – in the anniversary
Doctor Who
story, ‘The Three Doctors’.

So it appears that
Doctor Who
overshadowed Hartnell’s career after he ceased to play the role, but it was his escalating health problems that were the main reason for this, not typecasting or a lack of acting skills. His consequent depression led to more drinking bouts and after brave efforts to restore his health and seriously begin acting again, he fell short of expectations. In hindsight, perhaps he should have retired after
Doctor Who
, but he loved his work and didn’t want to give in to illness.

In retrospect, Hartnell had done enough to secure his memory in the hearts of the nation. He was Doctor Who. When he played the part, no one knew who the character was or where he came from; he was exciting and intriguing. Indeed, it was never explained in the original show if Susan Foreman was his granddaughter or not, as Carole Ann Ford explained, ‘It was never really explained how she [Susan] came to be with him, but it was sort of accepted that they’d escaped together from another planet.’ Was she a fellow alien, or an Earth child – perhaps an orphan? Although Anthony Coburn’s draft script of ‘An Unearthly Child’ explains, it takes nothing away from the intrigue that surrounded the show in its formative years. People didn’t know, and that was interesting.

During the Hartnell years, there was a real sense of wonder and eccentricity about the character of the Doctor and his origins. Even the theme music was strange, and its eeriness,
coupled with the grainy black and white of the show, helped achieve greater thrills for the expectant audience.

One last thought and, perhaps, final compliment to William Hartnell: when Richard Hurndall took on the role of the first Doctor in ‘The Five Doctors’ to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary, his incarnation was given much respect by his successors. It was even the Hartnell character who solved the cryptic question set by the great Rassilon himself at the end of the story, which earned nothing less than an admiring shake of the head from the third Doctor. He was ‘
the original
’ as Hurndall declared, and a great respect for the first Doctor has endured over the past 50 years.

It is clear that William Hartnell left the programme when he knew he couldn’t quite meet the demands of a gruelling production schedule any more. He bowed out of show business slowly – painfully – over an approximate three-year period after that, with his only memorable performance being his return to the show seven years later for his very last acting role. He died on St George’s Day 1975.

Hartnell was the Doctor of mystery, an eccentric old man and the original interstellar Pied Piper – something his successor Patrick Troughton would build upon.

‘All the little boys and girls,

With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,

And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,

Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after,

The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.’

The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Robert Browning

CHAPTER THREE

PATRICK TROUGHTON

‘I thought it would be very interesting to have a character who never quite says what he means, who, really, uses the intelligence of the other people he is with. He knows the answer all the time; if he suggests something he knows the outcome. He is watching, he’s really directing, but he doesn’t want to show he’s directing like the old Doctor.’

Gerry Davis,
Doctor Who
story editor, regarding
the character of the Second Doctor

PATRICK GEORGE TROUGHTON
was born in Mill Hill, London, on 25 March 1920 and educated at Bexhill-on-Sea Preparatory School and Mill Hill Public School. At the age of 16, he went to the Embassy School of Acting at Swiss Cottage, London, which was run by Eileen Thorndike, sister of Dame Sybil Thorndike. He earned a scholarship there and progressed to the Leighton Rollins Studio for Actors at the John Drew Memorial Theatre on Long Island, New York. Troughton was in America when the Second World War broke out. He returned to England on a Belgian ship, but it hit an enemy mine and sank just off
Portland Bill, within sight of England. Troughton escaped by lifeboat and always considered himself lucky to have done so.

On his return to England in 1939 he joined the Tonbridge Repertory Company and acted there for a year. In June 1940, he joined the Royal Navy (RN), undeterred by his close escape from an ocean-going death the previous year. His first duty was protecting the British coastline from enemy submarines in a RN destroyer. He was then transferred to motor torpedo boats based at Great Yarmouth, where he was given his own command after the Allied invasion of Normandy. After an ‘E’ boat incident, he was mentioned in dispatches: he was part of a team who destroyed one boat by ramming it, and, along with two other ships, destroyed another by gunfire. His decorations included the 1939–45 Star and the Atlantic Star. He left the RN in March 1945, but always retained a fondness for the sea.

Troughton returned to acting and joined the Amersham Repertory Company. From there he was asked to join the famous Bristol Old Vic Company and appeared in
Hamlet
(1947–48) and
King Lear
(1948). He then spent two years with the Pilgrim Players performing T. S. Eliot’s plays at the Mercury Theatre, Nottingham.

In 1948 he took his first film role, a cameo appearance in
Escape
, which co-starred William Hartnell. Later that year he appeared in Laurence Olivier’s
Hamlet
– based upon his recent work at the Bristol Old Vic.

Troughton also took TV roles in
Hamlet
and
King Lear,
continuing the good practice instigated by Olivier. ‘It was the early days of TV,’ he remembered later. ‘About 300,000 TV viewers in London only… I was never relaxed in live TV.’

As TV techniques grew better, Troughton settled down into more regular character actor roles, admitting in the early 1980s, ‘I like to play all kinds of people in all kinds of plays.
I’ve got a special liking for fantasy and rip-roaring adventures with plenty of action, such as
Robin Hood
and
Kidnapped
.’

Troughton cut his teeth on roles in classic
Boy’s Own
-type adventures, burying himself in the work. He was reluctant to give interviews, as he explained in a rare radio interview towards the end of his career: ‘It’s wrong [for a character actor] to promote their own character too much… the audience get to know you too much, which makes your job harder.’

In 1950 Troughton appeared in the Disney classic
Treasure Island
alongside Robert Newton’s infamous Long John Silver, a larger-than-life character actor who had been in the RN with future Doctor Who Jon Pertwee. Troughton’s part in the movie was small, playing a ship-hand called Roach. A little appreciated fact is that another British character actor John Laurie (
Dad’s Army
) played the part of Blind Pew.

Unfortunately, many of Troughton’s early TV performances no longer exist, which makes analysis of this work difficult, but many older people remember him as
Robin Hood
. The six-part show was written by Max Kester and recorded live at the Gaumont-British Studios in Lime Grove, London, between 17 March and 21 April 1953. The 2006–09 BBC version of
Robin Hood
featured Troughton’s grandson, Sam, alongside Jonas Armstrong and Keith Allen, and was much more sophisticated than the original BBC TV version.

Some of Troughton’s other early roles included Guy Fawkes in
Gunpowder Guy
(alongside future
Doctor Who
producer Barry Letts) in 1950 and
The Scarlet Pimpernel
in 1956. These parts were very modest compared to his film work, which in 1955 included James Tyrell in Laurence Olivier’s iconic
Richard III
. Although his was not a major part in the film, it was memorable: being summoned by King Richard and told to murder the Princes in the Tower in a very tight two-shot, before
providing a very strong voice-over during the murder scene itself. Troughton was clearly up to the job, with so much experience behind him in such a short space of time. In fact, he adds a truly sinister edge in doing the King’s dirty work against his own free will. And there was Laurence Olivier again to give Troughton’s career a little boost.

In 1956 he appeared in three episodes of
The Count of Monte Cristo
, which, incredibly, co-starred Burt Lancaster’s side-kick Nick Cravat in his usual role of a mute (something Cravat was sentenced to do since the swashbuckling classics
The Flame and the Arrow
in 1950 and
The Crimson Pirate
in 1952, because he naturally swore too much when speaking). Media-mogul Lew Grade co-produced the series. The first 12 episodes were filmed at the Hal Roach Studios (famed for shooting the best shorts and movies of comedy duo Laurel and Hardy) in the USA, while the remaining 39 episodes were shot in the UK.

Troughton appeared in the 2nd episode, ‘Marseilles’, the 15th episode, ‘The Portuguese Affair’, and the 23rd episode, ‘The Island’, as the supporting character Marcel. George Dolenz starred as Edmond Dantes but was constantly upstaged by the charismatic Cravat.

Incredibly the full 39 episodes still exist of this loosely adapted version of the great Dumas novel and were released as a five-DVD box set in the UK in 2010, which is certainly worth a look.

As well as the odd film, Troughton would take various character roles in TV plays and serials up to his time as Doctor Who. One role of particular note was that of Daniel Quilp in the BBC’s epic interpretation of Dickens’s
The Old Curiosity Shop
, 1962–63, something he mentioned as a career highlight in 1983: ‘I did a lot of Dickens… the dwarf Quilp in
The Old Curiosity Shop
was a big success and a part I look back on with great love and excitement.’

This version of
The Old Curiosity Shop
was a much-loved adaptation of the Dickens novel. Spread over 13 episodes, each one 25 minutes in length, it told the story of how the wicked Quilp heckles Michele Dotrice’s Little Nell to an early grave; but not before coming to a sticky end himself. Unfortunately, the adaptation no longer exists in the BBC archive (it’s not just episodes of
Doctor Who
that were wiped, other gems have been lost too).

Diversity was the watchword of Troughton’s career and next he played the blind man Phineas in the film classic
Jason and the Argonauts
. The movie opens with King Pelias, an evil dictator, receiving a prophecy from a soothsayer regarding a golden fleece. He learns that a baby that will grow into a man will thwart him: Jason, a man with one sandal.