Unwilling Adventurer

William Hartnell’s unscripted line, probably his own little joke about how funny the prop looks. 

It’s a shame that Carole Ann Ford accidentally double exposed the film of this backstage fun from her last episode… because this is the cutest thing ever.  You can still make out how adorable they all are. And Jacqueline is ruffling William Russell’s hair. Hartnell is adorable. And even though this is short bit of film and bad quality  it still makes us smile to see them larking about in colour.  We sort of imagine what it would have been like if there was a ‘Doctor Who confidential 1964.’

William Hartnell freezes up in this scene and just sort of wings it. It’s so cute the way he stares at that ring and mumbles a bit, and William Russell is just sort of nodding along hoping that he gets the scene back on track.  Then it ends with the Doctor chuckling something about the ring and he just wanders off leaving William Russell with a ‘wtf happened in this scene’ face.

Luckily it kind of works for their characters. Hartnell was a genius at making any fluffs seem like part of the Doctor’s forgetfulness, and then just dismissing it with a chuckle and a wave of the hand as Ian stands confused as usual.

The Doctor being the ultimate troll as he baffles the Moronic Morok by manipulating the thought machine process. William Hartnell is so funny in this scene. It’s hard to believe he isn’t considered one of the funnier Doctors when he has these brilliant moments of total comedic control over a scene. One of the best scenes in ‘The Space Museum’. 

This is coming to the conclusion of Episode 2 and really this part is nearly as good as the first.  The only downsides really are some of the Morok actors who don’t have much impact as their characters.

‘An Adventure in Space and Time’ Written by Mark Gatiss, and starring David Bradley as William Hartnell, Brian Cox as Sydney Newman, Jessica Raine as Verity Lambert, and Sacha Dhawan as Waris Hussein.

We are really excited about this drama and feel really happy with the casting choices. We have seen them all act in something or other and think they will all do a great job.  we’re eager to see whether William Russell, Jacqueline Hill, and Carole Ann Ford will be featured (We assume they will be) and we would love to see who will play them.

It’s fantastic that this is being made to go along with the anniversary celebrations. It’s a 90 minute piece that will be on BBC 2 and will hopefully be brilliantly acted and a great insightful look at the struggles the early team faced trying to create this programme we all love so much, and that is now in its 50th year.

We were a little disappointed to read comments that a few people were disappointed in this because it is not a new episode, but we feel that this programme will be very special, and the creators of this show need some praise and acknowledgment for the programme they built from scratch.  It’s also important to remember that this isn’t replacing the anniversary episode, it’s just a wonderful bonus to go alongside it.  If it’s anything like the other biopic type dramas we’ve seen, then it will be a wonderful addition to the celebrations, and for us, so emotional to see the people we adore come to life. We’ve never really seen William Hartnell, Jacqueline Hill etc in interviews, and the idea we can see them recreated as they go through the process of making Doctor Who, is just amazing to us.  

Verity Lambert, Sydney Newman, William Hartnell, Waris Hussein, and the cast are inspirations to us and this is a perfect tribute to their hard work. It’s a great thing for all us Doctor Who fans and everyone should be happy that this is being made. We are certainly very grateful. 

Also, just wanted to add that David Bradley is playing William Hartnell, not the First Doctor. We mean he may do the odd scene in the drama where he is acting as the Doctor, who knows? But there seems to be a lot of confusion over this. Also, we hear filming on it starts soon, and we will update whenever we hear new updates because us One era obsessed creatures are way too excited by this.

Article about it here.

The Doctor’s soliloquy.  One of the most beautiful performances by William Hartnell as he is plunged into darkness and delivers this speech. The camera slowly creeps up on him and gets closer as he has this revelation.  It builds up until he has this wonderful excited reaction about the birth of a solar system.  

William Hartnell was not generally given long speeches, in fact he apparently said upon seeing the script ‘It’s Macbeth!’ and was extremely nervous about getting it wrong. William Russell says in the documentary that he and Jacqueline Hill worked with Hartnell on that speech so that he could get it just right…and he did, and did it more than just ‘getting it done’. He stole the show here. He was given this time to really show the Doctor discovering something right in front of the camera, no interruptions, no other characters, just him and his audience. Wow.