William Hartnell’s health was deteriorating considerably by 1966, and he was written out of Part 3 of The Tenth Planet entirely in a case of art mirroring life, the first Doctor was said to be suffering from exhaustion and spent the episode convalescing in bed. The twelfth Doctor points out that his earlier self is suddenly a lot stronger than he had been a short time ago, and he’s not wrong. They stuck around through the transition from William Hartnell to Patrick Troughton before departing in his sixth story, 1967’s The Faceless Ones. Originally played by Michael Craze and Anneke Wills, seaman Ben Jackson and personal assistant Polly (who was given no surname on screen, though ‘Wright’ – initially used at Wills’ audition for the part and adopted by the novels of the 1990s) were introduced two stories prior to The Tenth Planet, in 1966’s contemporary London tale The War Machines. The first Doctor’s companions Ben and Polly appear briefly. Said final line, with its mention of “the long way round”, is a reference to that 2013 special, with the eleventh Doctor defining his destination as “home, the long way round”. That’s good, keep warm.” This is presumably why Steven Moffat felt able to craft new final lines for this Doctor, something he’d deliberately avoided doing for David Tennant in 2013’s The Day Of The Doctor. However, director Derek Martinus elected not to film the line as he was running short on time, and as a result the first Doctor’s final dialogue is the rather more lacklustre “Thank you. Unlike Twice Upon A Time, The Five Doctors made no attempt to explain the recasting – nor did it give a reason for the past Doctors looking older, something Steven Moffat addressed in 2007’s Children in Need special Time Crash (as an aside, The Five Doctors also aired during Children in Need!).Ī line written into the original script for The Tenth Planet had the Doctor refusing to give in (to his regeneration). This isn’t the first time that black-and-white footage of William Hartnell has been used to open a story in which he doesn’t appear 1983’s The Five Doctors, in which the first Doctor was played by Richard Hurndall (Hartnell having passed away eight years previous), began with a snippet of the Doctor’s farewell speech to granddaughter Susan from 1964’s The Dalek Invasion Of Earth. The copy of the episode lent to the Blue Peter offices was never returned, so if somebody can have a word in Lesley Judd’s ear… The snippet of regeneration footage seen towards the story’s end only exists because of its use in a 1973 edition of children’s magazine programme Blue Peter. The recap contains footage from the first two episodes but nothing from Part Four, as it is one of 97 episodes still missing from the BBC’s archives. The four-part adventure contained episodes 131-134 of Doctor Who, while Twice Upon A Time is episode 840 – so the figure of 709 seen on screen refers only to the first part of the serial. We kick off proceedings with footage from William Hartnell’s final serial The Tenth Planet, which aired from 8-29th October 1966 and was also notable for the introduction of the Cybermen – specifically the ‘Mondasian’ variety last seen in Series 10 finale The Doctor Falls. It’s our longest one ever, so grab a mince pie, raid the spirits cupboard and join us for our traditional festive viewing notes. They’re certainly going out on a high though, at least judging by the number of references and callbacks in the episode. One Doctor dying at Christmas is unfortunate, but two? That’s just cruel.
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