The History of Doctor Who. Start

You can say a lot about Doctor Who, but it’s simply impossible to deny its phenomenality. If only because of the idea, brilliant in its simplicity, especially for its time. “The ability to travel absolutely anywhere, absolutely anytime” – yes, this gives the writers a free hand. And I have two favorite themes in science fiction: parallel realities and time travel. So, it was only a matter of time before I got to know this series.

However, despite all the cult status of “Doctor”, when most people mention him, they remember only his so-called “New Generation”, which started in 2005, from which many began their acquaintance with this phenomenon (including me). And so, timed to coincide with the almost (or maybe already completely) ended new season with the new Doctor, I decided that it would be cool to go deeper, and at the same time tell you about the history of this television epic from the middle of the last century to the present.

Based on Doctor Who: The Life and Times

FIRST DOCTOR

It all started in 1963, when a BBC working group set out to invent a completely new type of television broadcast. After going through the waste paper, they came up with the idea of ​​making a TV series in the Sciece Fiction genre, in order to comb through even more waste paper on how to implement all this, at least on paper. As a result, it was decided to direct the series to a children’s audience.

They decided to offer the main role to actor William Hartnell, who by that time had managed to appear in “The Army Game” and “Talent Scout”, in which he appeared in opposite roles: extremely aggressive and extremely sad. After hearing from his agent that he was being offered the role of a time-traveling grandfather-professor, the actor was not particularly delighted, but agreed to meet with the producer. There he became convinced that he had disappeared, and he himself said: “This series will definitely survive for five years.”

Initially, they wanted to make the Doctor overly irritable, but Hartnell added more humor and emotion to the role, which is especially ironic for this Doctor, because he is considered one of his most callous incarnations, if not the most. At his core, he was an eccentric (both on the screen and on the set): he loved, in ordinary conversation, to go into tirades about how harmful steel is to our planet; He was also quick-tempered, and there was a whole person present on the set to lift Bill’s spirits.

The plot of the first episode was about two ordinary school teachers who discover that their student Susan is living in a police box. But this booth makes a hum as if it were alive, and inside it is larger than outside, in its center there is a certain pre-scientific control panel, behind which was Susan’s grandfather named Doctor. And teachers have to come to terms with the fact that their lives depend on these two alien creatures in every sense.

And where is the Doctor and his worst opponents, the most important of which, of course, are tin buckets with plungers at the ready – the Daleks. Fundamentally, they didn’t want to make them beetle-eyed monsters, otherwise it wouldn’t turn out to be science fiction, but cheap. And even they were not happy with them at first, but, as we already know, only at first. The series was focused on education, and the Daleks did not fit this concept, and they decided to give the green light to the idea only because all the other scripts were not yet ready. Ultimately, the Doctor’s antipodes were instructive in showing the dangers of war, pacifism and racial hatred.

Less popular, but no less dangerous enemies of the Doctor are the insensitive Cyborg machines, which still amaze with their creepiness. The creators of the series managed to terribly show the budget of their costumes. Behind the white socks with cut-out eyes and mouths on the actors’ heads, a human face was visible, which served as a reminder to the audience that these monsters were once human. And in fact, they are not villains, and their goals are not villainous, they are just soulless and cold methods.

Since the idea of ​​the series allowed it, it was developed in two directions: Ancient Antiquity and Saifai Saifaiche. For the whole team (and for Bill to a greater extent) it was most pleasant to embody historical stories rather than futuristic ones. The main images due to the fact that filming in ancient robes was a blast.

The executive producer wanted the opening credits of the series to be unusual in appearance and sound, and the BBC had a radio sound workshop department. The composer and arranger threw themselves into the idea of ​​creating a screensaver, because they had never had such freedom of action before. As for video, the BBC also had a department where they experimented with various concepts. For example, they had a camera directed inward, which created classic wonderful patterns in the canonical credits to an equally canonical melody.

As for the Doctor’s main attribute called TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) – it was originally intended that it would be designed for one person with panels close to each other. The designer wanted something unique and equally appropriate in all times and spaces. The walls were supposed to be made of wood with polychlorois… polychloroorvin mother-rewind transparent grooves that pulsated when the TARDIS moved. The idea of ​​a space police box came to the mind of the screenwriter of the first episode, and the already familiar BBC recording studio came up with its own original sound for it.

And yet, the genius of the series’ idea lay not only in the possibilities of moving the permanent Doctor with quickly changing companions, but also in the way of changing the actor in the leading role. No, the option presented in Santa Barbara also wildly appeals to me, but this one, it seems to me, is a LITTLE more elegant. The fact is that representatives of the alien race of Time Lords, to which the main character belongs, are able to live almost forever due to the long duration of one life (it can stretch for hundreds or even thousands of years), as well as thanks to regeneration. In its process, the aliens may change appearance, gender and even character, which continues to maintain audience interest in the Doctor for more than seventy years.

First of all, the BBC management took such a step because of disagreements with Hartnell himself, who wanted the series to remain for children, and in general the actor was pretty exhausted playing this role.

There is only one man in England capable of filling this role and that is Patrick Troughton!

To create the transformation scene, slotstarscasino.co.uk two actors had to lie on the floor on either side of the set while the assistant director entertained everyone. It took a whole day to shoot this scene perfectly and turn the old man into a middle-aged actor.

SECOND DOCTOR

Initially, they wanted to make the second Doctor a kind of Sherlock Holmes, who loved disguises and chatted incessantly. Ultimately, the disguise was abandoned, but at Patrick’s suggestion they decided to replace the character with a more attentive one.

Troughton was an actor with extensive experience in diverse roles under his belt. At that time, he was in demand and had leadership qualities, and in his eccentricity he was in no way inferior to his predecessor. For three years he wore the same shoes, Hush Puppies, but he wore them “like Patrick Troughton in the rehearsal room and like the Doctor on screen.”. With his arrival, the atmosphere on the set changed to a much brighter side: he talked a lot and had fun with his colleagues, and by the end they learned to understand each other without words, they just looked at each other – and together they did what they wanted. His Doctor turned out to be much softer and nicer.

Due to Patrick Troughton’s great fatigue with the “one per week” release schedule, towards the end of his tenure, fewer episodes began to be released, but of better quality, and according to the plot, they decided to exile the Doctor to Earth for less effort in building new locations. Subsequently, “UNIT” was invented (a military organization to combat the alien threat in the Doctor’s universe), which then resulted in a whole series… of series called “War Games”, which many consider the best and most exciting with this incarnation of the main character.

This period of Doctors introduced viewers to Zoe Hariot, a 21st-century teenage genius with a photographic memory, martial arts skills and skintight catsuits. She was an astrophysicist, she could outsmart a computer (and you know how computers were thought of in those days), and she didn’t let the Doctor get away with it.

It was also under Patrick that the Time Lords and Ice Warriors (a race of mechanical reptilians from Mars) first appeared in the series. And, of course, we cannot forget about another symbol of Doctor Who – a sonic screwdriver, capable of vibrating at a certain frequency to unlock various doors, break windows, etc.n. "Too imbued! — you tell me, Annette, it doesn’t work on wood.

Patrick initially didn’t want to stay long and said that he wouldn’t stay for more than three years (and that’s what happened). When the time came to replace the “mysterious man from TV” who did not like to give interviews, the change in his appearance was carried out with an open outcome, since the next actor for his role had not yet been confirmed.

When people ask me if anything funny happened on the set, I’m afraid that everything that happened is not for publication!

THIRD DOCTOR

When Jon Pertwee was working on a sitcom, one of his colleagues suggested that he try out for the role of the Doctor. John told his agent, and he didn’t particularly appreciate the idea, but still called the producers – there was deathly silence on the phone. He tells them: “I reacted the same way, okay, forget it.”. And they said to him: “No, we’re just a little shocked, your client has been on our list of candidates for a year and a half now.”.

John by that time was well known as a comedic actor, and this was a great opportunity to show that he was capable of more than just comedy. Despite his age, he had plenty of adrenaline in his life: he was involved in skiing, motorcycles and car racing. And his acting career was at its best, he coped well with the attention attached to him, which intensified after receiving a new role. However, he was a very vulnerable person. At the first rehearsal, he said that his father was not delighted when he decided to become an actor, and yet John hoped that he would come to see his performance, and one day he saw his father in the audience. Coming home after the performance, he asked his father if he had seen the performance, and the answer he received was: “No, I couldn’t find a minute.”. When John told this story, there were tears in his eyes. He was a very nice person and you could feel that those around him were important to him.

In the seventh season, the series changed dramatically – suddenly it became colorful and bright, and the episodes in the season were reduced by almost half, subsequently the budget was increased quite significantly, the number of characters in the series was increased, and it no longer looked like some kind of student short film, but like a quite expensive project. And along with the color picture, greenery also came into the series, which was then used not so much to replace the background, but to create a framed perspective when entering a room or window. The Doctor himself was exiled to Earth, given a job with UNIT as a consultant, and acquired a permanent yellow car, Bessie.

The series itself began to touch on more and more pressing problems for people, such as global warming and the prevalence of plastic in the world. The latter resulted in a whole separate race of plastic monsters Nestine, coming off store windows, which is why the series first received public condemnation due to its cruelty. The BBC was constantly bombarded with angry letters and articles like “Why my children won’t watch Doctor Who anymore.”. There were rumors that the writers were even asked about their souls in the Houses of Parliament.

In the Pertwee era there were two types of series: fairly local ones, about the problems of the Earth, where the Doctor saves the Earth from outside invasions, and large-scale ones, about problems in space, where the Doctor saves the WHOLE UNIVERSE.

As the Doctor became more confident and powerful, comparisons to Sherlock Holmes began to circulate. In the end, one of the writers decided that he needed his own Moriarty. So the Doctor’s co-planet named the Master, played by Roger Delgado, appeared, and the public loved him (although they rather loved to hate him). He was daring and smart enough to baffle not only the audience, but also the protagonist himself.

In the “Time Warrior” series, two iconic characters for the series were introduced: the Sontaran race (warlike alien conquerors) and Sarah Jane Smith (a tribute to adequate feminism).

Also (I love my vocabulary) in the ninth season with the return of the Daleks in, oddly enough, “Day of the Daleks”, where the writers first touched on timy-wimy paradoxes, in which events in the present and future happen simultaneously, which is why it’s impossible to simply go back a day and fix everything. It’s funny, but they never properly explained why this is so, except perhaps by brushing aside the mysterious “Blinovich effect”.

In the thirteenth year, everyone was amazed by the duo of Doctors of the “New Generation”, and back in the seventy-third in the series “The Three Doctors”, you won’t believe it, as many as three Doctors appeared on one screen in the form of Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and Bill Hartnell (even though the latter was very ill and in the series itself occasionally flashed in some kind of space bubble). All three were terribly… happy to return to their roles, that is, two.

So who will replace me – a dandy and a clown

Unfortunately, during the tenth season while filming in Turkey, Roger Delgado died in a car accident. The Doctor’s old companion left, and Jon Pertwee was not satisfied with the salary, and he did not want to become an actor in one role. In John’s last episode, the writer decided to give the actor a real break by writing a real chase for her, starting with Bessie and the Whomobile and ending with a hovercraft. During the filming of this episode, after a successful take, John did not stay to chat with his colleagues, but decided to answer fan letters. Everyone on the set was sad. The matter was not helped by the appearance of Tom Baker. They looked at each other, and then John left and the director began working with Tom.

FOURTH DOCTOR

Tom worked at a construction site, there was a catastrophic shortage of roles, and he wrote to his friend from the BBC, who, on the very day when he received the letter, became the head of the department of television series and serial films (at that time they didn’t even really have candidates for the role of the Doctor), having received the letter, the next day he proposed the Baker as a candidate. He invited Tom to meet the next day and at the meeting said that they wanted to cast him as the Doctor, but they couldn’t tell anyone about it. And he didn’t speak. At the construction site they teased him, calling him "Sir Lawrence" because they knew he was an actor and they didn’t care. By the end of the second week he asked for a day off. They answered him: “Of course you can, Sir Lawrence,” and he told them: “I’m getting a job at the BBC.”. When Tom arrived at the BBC office at ten o’clock in the morning, photographers were waiting to shoot him for the front page of the Evening Standard. Signed: "New Doctor Tom Baker". The guys bought the issue to look at the horses, and on the front page is the same guy they’ve been making fun of for months. And the children fell in love with him – they began to see him as a hero, and even advised all sorts of unimaginable ways to escape from the Daleks.

The costume designer came up with the idea that the Doctor’s costume should be similar to the clothes of a Parisian student – naturally he chose a scarf.

Tom was both similar and different from all his predecessors, because all Doctors are just different facets of one person. The actor was characterized by an unusual wildness, an alien quality, and with all this, he was incredibly humane. And he became friends with his fellow actors. They worked as a team, criticized each other, gave advice, etc.d.

With changing times, the approach to series has become a little different. One of the main producers delved into the style of horror films. Fear became an integral part of the series, and the design of the monsters became more impressive, without slipping into shock content. The presentation of the main character has also changed. The world began to need characters with weaknesses, so the Doctor began to strongly doubt his own righteousness, which is perfectly shown in the episode “Origin of the Daleks”, where he can erase the Kraang on wheels from history with a snap of his fingers, but rightly wonders whether he has the right to do this.

In the same episode, viewers were introduced to the creator of the Daleks, Davros, who is a rotting body moving around in a high-tech wheelchair. Not particularly threatening? Well, somehow he was able to turn the inhabitants of his planet Skaro into Daleks. What, it already looks more dangerous?

As the atmosphere deepened into some darkness, attacks on the series due to cruelty became more frequent. Mainly from Mary Whitehouse, who condemned… eh, in short, you yourself are well aware of all the modern persecution of games, so you can just transfer it to Doctor Who. Despite this, the ratings for seasons 13 and 14 were through the roof, which even the departure of Sarah Jane did not prevent.

However, with the change of producer, the BBC management decided to once again change the direction of the series, removing all the horror from there, but also so that it was not entirely for children. The main achievement of the new producer was the creation of another character for “Doctor” K-9. The kids liked this tin dog, but Tom Baker not so much, but considering how much they tinkered with it, it was a shame to throw this thing away. Either it didn’t work very well, then it won’t be assembled properly, then it will break, or even completely fall apart. The real opposite on set was her voice actor. He came to the set and rehearsed with everyone, called the Doctor master, looked up and made everyone laugh.

After some time, the producer changed again (this time John Nathan-Turner came). He changed a lot in the series: the screensaver, music, logo, the Doctor’s costume, computer special effects, K-9 left the series, a new Master appeared, the Doctor’s companions increased in number. Then Tom realized that it was time for him to leave.

Sorry if I stayed too long, but I just couldn’t bring myself to leave. And when I submitted my resignation, I was a little surprised at how quickly they accepted it. Well, I can’t blame them for that, I just can’t

INTERIM CONCLUSION

This series became a real symbol of its era, hundreds, or even more children managed to grow up, finish their studies, start working, and Doctor Who was still on screens. Even despite all the local absurdity and obvious budget, over time the series draws you in with its lamp-ness, interesting plots and entire worlds.

Next time I’ll talk about the very changes that Nathan-Turner brought about and the death of Classic Doctor Who (these two events are not intentionally placed next to each other).