Where do I start?

[Mark_Nguyen]

He also started playing the role that was originally meant for an older actor, such that Harry could do all the actioney stuff. As it didn't turn out that way, Baker eventually makes the role his own, though losing Harry was definitely an improvement.

Mark

 

[Iamnotspock]

He also started playing the role that was originally meant for an older actor, such that Harry could do all the actioney stuff. As it didn't turn out that way, Baker eventually makes the role his own, though losing Harry was definitely an improvement.

Mark

I don't think the role was necessarily intended for an older actor was it? I understood that they were keeping their options open by bringing in Harry in case they ended up casting an older actor.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Well, this is what I read into it:

"At this stage, the new Doctor had yet to be cast, but Dicks and producer Barry Letts -- who would himself be leaving Doctor Who at the end of the recording block -- were seriously contemplating casting an elderly actor in the role. They decided that this would necessitate the introduction of a new character who would be able to handle the physical aspects of the storylines, in the vein of Sixties companions such as Ian Chesterton and Jamie McCrimmon. Letts and Dicks therefore created a UNIT surgeon named Lieutenant Harry Sullivan (after possibly considering the surname Sweetman) to accompany the Doctor. Although UNIT was being gradually deemphasised, it was felt that Harry would also provide an enduring link to the organisation, thereby adding a familiar element to the new Doctor's adventures."

http://www.shannonsullivan.com/doctorwho/serials/4a.html

The article later points out that by the time Ian Marter had been contracted, they'd abandoned the notion of an older Doctor but kept the Harry character anyway.

Mark

 

[Lance]

losing Harry was definitely an improvement.

I'm not sure I can agree with this. Yes, his role as a surrogate Ian Chesterton or Jamie McCrimmon was basically made redundant when Tom Baker was cast as the Doctor, but Harry does show a definite chemistry with both Baker and Lis Sladen, and the more ensemble feel (Doctor, Sarah, Harry) of Season 12 gives it something that I felt some of the following seasons sometimes lacked. I'd have liked to have seen Harry retained to see how far they could develop that dynamic.

 

[Professor Zoom]

losing Harry was definitely an improvement.

I'm not sure I can agree with this. Yes, his role as a surrogate Ian Chesterton or Jamie McCrimmon was basically made redundant when Tom Baker was cast as the Doctor, but Harry does show a definite chemistry with both Baker and Lis Sladen, and the more ensemble feel (Doctor, Sarah, Harry) of Season 12 gives it something that I felt some of the following seasons sometimes lacked. I'd have liked to have seen Harry retained to see how far they could develop that dynamic.

Agreed. I liked Harry, and even though Baker could be more of the "man of action" than someone older (though, what the hell, Pertwee's Doctor really was a man of action, action, action), Harry's masculinity was a nice foil for Baker's childishness and brains.

It was an interesting dynamic.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I wish Davros would have given a shout out to Harry when he meet Sarah Jane in season 4?

 

[Lance]

^ IIRC, I think the SJA spin-off series gave him a nod or two.

 

[Guy Gardener]

CLYDE: What do you google, Tardis?
SARAH JANE: It works. No, I can't be sure, but there's a woman called Tegan in Australia, fighting for Aboriginal rights. There's a Ben and Polly, in India, running an orphanage there. There was Harry. Oh, I loved Harry. He was a doctor. He did such good work with vaccines. He saved thousands of lives. And there's a Dorothy something. She runs that company, A Charitable Earth. She's raised billions. And this couple in Cambridge, both professors. Ian and Barbara Chesterton. Rumour has it, they've never aged. Not since the sixties. I wonder.
CLYDE: That'll be us, one day.
RANI: Still out there, fighting.
SARAH JANE: Echoes of the Doctor, all over the world. With friends like us, he's never going to die, is he?

Face in a crowd.

But imagine if Davros had said "Where's that hot friend of yours Harry, oh what I wouldn't have done to take him back to my workshop and bend him over a bench."

Imagine... Everything Dalek could have been stopped just by distracting a younger Davros with sex.

"Harry old chap, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but you could save billions of lives, for thousands of years, if you can just find it in your heart to make out with this man a little and hold his hand when he is feeling down."

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Can't say I'm much of a Harry fan. Ian Marter played him nicely (and very English, wouldn't you say old girl?), but IMO my memories of him trend more to the Mickey side of goofiness and getting into trouble rather than as any sort of proactive man of action. Granted, that's what the Doctor ends up doing for the most part, but he was no Jamie, Steven or Turlough.

Mark

 

[diankra]

^ IIRC, I think the SJA spin-off series gave him a nod or two.

Sarah sugests Harry as a name for the Archetype before they settle on Luke. There was going to be a line in another episode which implied but didn't state outright that Harry had died, but it didn't make it onscreen.
Wider stuff.... it seems that the idea of having a young male companion started before Pertwee left, as Pertwee's back problems meant he'd have had increasing trouble doing the fight scenes if he'd stayed for a sixth year. Richard Franklin says that originally it was going to be Mike Yates rather than a new character, which makes a sort of sense (He'd have struck up a friendship with Sarah by that point, and have no reason to stay on Earth rather than go in the TARDIS), but maybe not. As a side note, Ian Marter was first choice to play Mike Yates, but was already booked for another job, so they hired Richard Franklin as choice two.
And Philip Hinchcliffe has admitted (in Lis Sladen's biography) that if he'd seen how Tom/Liz/Ian worked onscreen before he decided to drop Harry, he would have kept him. He reckons it was a mistake to break up that team, even though he saw the 'chap' as an unnecessary role in principle.

 

[Sindatur]

I would've enjoyed seeing Harry in the rest of SarahJane's Stories with Four (He actually was in 27 of the 54 episodes, and 7 of the 13 Serials)

 

[bbjeg]

William Hartnel is growing on me but his snaps keeps Patrick Troughton as my favorite Doctor. I feel Troughton had the most street smarts to go with his book smarts.

I wasn't a fan of Ark in Space but Pyramids of Mars and Horror of Fang Rock were pretty good. Though I like Leela's better than Sarah, she is a bit crazy and on the wild side (threatening to stab people, enjoyed killing the alien, and ready to commit suicide when she thought she was blind).

 

[bbjeg]

I'm almost through watching the Classic Doctor Who series. Just watched City of Death (and I didn't expect to see John Cleese). Tom Baker grew on me and I enjoyed the last few stories. I'm a sucker for shows like this (Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Hitchcock films, etc.) and should have watched this awhile ago.

 

[bbjeg]

It's strange. I watched Classic Doctor Who to watch the new series and I enjoyed the classic series more than the first season of the newer show. It's kinda all over the place.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

So was the first season of the classic years, no? Happens a lot.

Mark

 

[bbjeg]

I'll give it time, I assume it gets better.