Peter Hawkins | Through the Shattered Lens

In 1966, Doctor Who changed forever.

William Hartnell was in failing health and having difficulty remembering his lines. He was also not getting along with the current production team and was unhappy with the direction of the show. (He felt that it was getting too violent and dependent upon the bug-eyed monsters who he had originally been told would have no part of the show.) It became obvious that Hartnell would not be able to continue as the Doctor. At the same time, Doctor Who was an unqualified hit and one that the BBC wanted to keep going.

Producer Innes Lloyd and story editor Gerry Davis decided that since the Doctor was an alien, they could just say that he could transform himself physically at will, which would allow them to recast the role. Hearing the news, Hartnell is said to have replied, “There’s only one man in England who can take over, and that’s Patrick Troughton.”

William Hartnell was correct. Patrick Troughton, 46 at the time, was a stage-trained character actor who had become a television mainstay. As opposed to Hartnell, whose Doctor was stern and stubborn, Troughton played the Doctor as being “a comic hobo,” (to quote show creator Sydney Newman). The Second Doctor enjoyed his travels and had an unquenchable curiosity. Like an interstellar Lt. Columbo, The Second Doctor often played the fool to get the better of his enemies. He also become a father figure to many of his companions, a role that Troughton also played offscreen as well.

Unfortunately, many of the Second Doctor’s adventures are missing or are only available in audio form. When I was growing up, my father and I would watch Doctor Who on PBS. PBS started with the Fourth Doctor and the Fifth Doctor before then going back to the Third Doctor and then finally broadcasting what they had of The First and Second Doctor. There were so few of the Second Doctor’s serials available that it only took PBS a month and a half to finish up with Troughton. People like me got to know Troughton’s Doctor more through his later guest appearances (The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors, The Two Doctors) than through his original adventures.

The Tomb of the Cybermen is the earliest serial known to exist in its entirety to feature Troughton as the Second Doctor. In this 4-epiosde serial (which also launched the show’s fifth series), The Doctor and his companions Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Victoria (Deborah Watling) materialize on the desolate planet Telos and discover an expedition of humans are trying to enter the Tomb of the Cybermen.

In those days before The Master, The Cybermen were one of the Doctor’s main recurring enemies. Former humanoids who sacrificed their emotions and individual personalities to become cyborgs, the Cybermen were relentless and ruthless and just as dangerous as the Daleks. (The Cyberman also had something Daleks lacked, the ability to climb stairs.) In Tomb of the Cybermen, the expedition assumes that the Cybermen buried in the underground tomb are no longer functioning. It turns out that the Cybermen are just waiting for someone to revive them.

Tomb of the Cybermen is a classic Doctor Who serial. The plot borrows considerably from the legends about mummies and cursed Egyptian tombs. The expedition arrogantly enters the tomb, despite being warned not to. It turns out that the expedition’s leaders want to use the Cybermen as their own army and their willing to sacrifice everyone with them to try to achieve that goal. The revived Cybermen aren’t interested in an alliance. The Doctor and his companions try to escape the crypt while also ensuring that the Cybermen will never escape again. The plot is simple but exciting. The Second Doctor pretends to be baffled by the tomb and its technology but later reveals that he always understood more than he let on.

The Tomb of the Cybermen is not only a great Troughton showcase. It’s also historically important as one of the first serials to really upset Britain’s moral guardians. Reportedly, British children were left terrified and unable to sleep after witnessing the Cybermen bursting forth from their tombs. The infamous Mary Whitehouse would often cite Doctor Who as being detrimental programming for children. The Tomb of the Cybermen was one of the serials that she often cited as just being too violent and frightening.

It’s a shame that we don’t have more of Patrick Troughton’s serials to watch because The Tomb of Cybermen reveals him to be the prototype for almost every Doctor who would follow. (There’s a small moment where The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria hold hands while stepping into the Tomb and it says so much about who the Doctor was, post-Hartnell.) I’m glad, though, that we do have this showcase of the Second Doctor at his best.

It’s easy to forget that Doctor Who was originally meant to be an educational show for children.

When the BBC’s Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, first developed Doctor Who, he envisioned it as being a show in which an eccentric old man known as the Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan, would travel to past eras and meet actual historical figures and witness great events firsthand. Accompanying them would be two teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, who would make sure the kids at home understood what they were watching. While Newman allowed that, in order to keep the kids watching, there would be occasional episodes that would focus more an adventure than learning, he also said that the show would not feature any “bug-eyed monsters.”

The first serial, An Unearthly Child, stayed true to Newman’s concept. After stumbling across the TARDIS while investigating the homelife of their newest pupil, Ian and Barbara found themselves traveling to pre-historic times with The Doctor and Susan. Susan was played by Carole Ann Ford while Ian and Barbara were played by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill. Playing the role of the Doctor was veteran actor William Hartnell. Hartnell was 55 years old when he first played the Doctor but he looked and came across as being much older. He played the Doctor as being a crotchety old man, one who resented being saddled with two new companions and who could be quite rude to those he considered to be his inferior. This was early in the series so there was no talk of Time Lords or anything else that Doctor Who fans now take for granted. Susan even took credit for naming The TARDIS, the Doctor’s time machine that, on the outside, appeared to be a blue police call box.

An Unearthly Child introduced the UK to the Doctor. It got respectable ratings and reviews. Viewed today, it’s also pretty boring and it’s easy to see the limitations in Newman’s original concept. Hartnell plays the Doctor as being so ill-tempered that it was a surprise that he didn’t just jettison Ian and Barbara into space. (I used to watch Doctor Who on PBS with my father. The first episodes that we got were the Tom Baker years, followed by the Peter Davison and the Jon Pertwee episodes. It was only then that PBS started showing the Hartnell episodes. To go from Baker, Davison, and Pertwee to the grouchy Hartnell was indeed jarring.) If the show had continued in the style of An Unearthly Child, it probably would not have lasted for more than two series.

Fortunately, the second serial changed everything.

Written by Terry Nation and originally called The Mutants, the second serial introduced The Daleks, the shrill-voiced cyborgs whose cries of “Exterminate! Exterminate!” made them almost as popular as The Doctor himself. Squid-like creatures who lived in tank-like robotic shells and who spoke in electronic voices, the Daleks lived on the planet Skaro. Centuries of nuclear war against the Thals had left the Daleks mutated and trapped in their shells but they were still obsessed with exterminating all of the Thals and eventually conquering the universe. With their robotic exteriors, the Daleks were bulky and often moved awkwardly. (The recurring joke is that all the Doctor has to do to escape the Daleks is find a staircase.) But because the Daleks were so relentless and so determine to exterminate everyone who wasn’t a Dalek, they were still intimidating. Writer Terry Nation based the Daleks on the Nazis, a comparison that was undoubtedly easy for British audiences in 1963, less than 20 years after the end of World War II, to see.

A seven-episode serial, The Daleks premiered on December 21st, 1963 and ran through February 1st, 1964. While the serial was airing, word spread about The Daleks. The first episode was watched by six million viewers. The seventh and final episode was watched by ten million. Four million people were brought to the show by The Daleks. Sydney Newman may not have wanted bug-eyed monsters on Doctor Who but no one could argue with ratings like that. While the First and the Second Doctor would still have a few strictly historical adventures, The Daleks paved the way for the future of the series. The Daleks would return many times. The cavemen from An Unearthly Child were never seen again.

The Daleks opens with TARDIS materializing on the planet that will later be identified as Skaro. The Doctor and Susan want to explore. Ian and Barbara are upset because they want to go back to 1963. (Ian and Barbara always annoyed me but, of all the companions on the original series. they probably did have the most realistic reaction to being swept up in the Doctor’s adventures.) The Doctor flat-out lies about needing to get mercury to repair the TARDIS and uses it as an excuse to explore a nearby city. Soon, The Doctor, Ian, and Barbara are the prisoners of the Daleks while Susan meets the peaceful Thals in the forest. The Daleks and the Thals have been at war for centuries and it has destroyed their world. The Doctor tries to broker a peace, which just leads to the Daleks killing even more Thals. The Doctor can be excused because this was his first meeting with the Daleks. The Thals should have known better than to trust the people who specifically decided to become cyborgs because they didn’t want to ever have to stop fighting.

Seen today, The Daleks holds up fairly well. At seven episodes, it runs a bit long and, for those of us who grew up with Tom Baker and Peter Davison in the lead role, William Hartnell’s Doctor takes some getting used to. The nonstop bickering between The Doctor and Ian gets old quickly. The Thals are almost too naive to be believed.

But the Daleks themselves remain a brilliant creation and, even when seen in grainy, black-and-white, it is easy to understand why they became a phenomenon. Their relentless determination to destroy and exterminate make them intimidating but what really stands out about the Daleks is how forthright they are about what they want. It’s not just that the Daleks want to exterminate you. It’s that they’ll tell you that they want to exterminate you, as if it’s the most reasonable desire that any creature could have. (One reason why The Thals are so unsympathetic is that they keep falling for Dalek tricks, despite the Daleks being pretty honest about their hatred of the Thals.) From the minute that the Daleks make their first appearance, cornering Barbara in their city, they give Doctor Who a jolt of energy that it very much needed.

This serial ends with The Doctor convinced that the Daleks have been destroyed and will no longer be a threat. Of course, The Doctor had never been so wrong. The Daleks would return and Doctor Who would never be the same.