William Hartnell

[Captain Dago]

^Well said, Piper!

 

[Peacemaker]

The Sixties remains my favourite era of Who, and, though there are lots of reasons for that, there are two main ones: Hartnell and Troughton. Pat is my favourite Doctor, but Hartnell was brilliant, and set the template for all that was to come.

Though spotting "Billy fluffs" is great fun, he was also, throughout his run, a deceptively strong actor - witness his soliquoy in Inside the Spaceship, his farewell to Susan in The Daleks' Invasion of Earth, his facing down the War Machines in that eponymous story, or even what sounds to have been a very playful, jolly performance, belying his reported ill health, in his penultimate story The Smugglers.

The first three years of Who were by far the most exciting - the show's format hadn't been settled yet, leading to a far greater experimentation in the types of story told. Sometimes they worked - The Daleks, Marco Polo, The Crusaders - and sometimes they didn't - The Web Planet - but there isn't a single story which doesn't have something interesting going on or is worth looking at again. I'd rather watch a boring Hartnell, like The Space Musuem, than a tedious Pertwee or something like The Sun Makers. And I maintain that one of the most successful Tardis crews were the initial four.

QFT!!

 

[Candlelight]

"Kindly stop buggering me!"

 

[GabeHimself]

^ Well, arguably they didn't accept him, given that OHMSS pretty much flopped at the box office.

So I guess that makes Roger Moore, the first person not called Sean Connery to make a commercial success of a Bond movie, the most important 007!

OHMSS didn't flop at the box office. That's a myth. It didn't make as much money as Thunderball, but it made good returns and is probably the best James Bond film.

Also Troughton's ratings were lower than Pertwee's or Hartnell's, but Troughton faced a very hard road. He had replaced Hartnell and Dalekmania had ended. He had a black and white show when The Avengers and The Prisoner and Star Trek were all in color. True, the show was almost cancelled when Troughton decided to leave -- and almost cancelled after Pertwee's first season. But in 1970 Doctor Who became a lot more like The Avengers than Hartnell's or Troughton's Doctor Who. It wouldn't be until Tom Baker and the end of the UNIT family that the storylines returned to the way they had been.

 

[davejames]

And I maintain that one of the most successful Tardis crews were the initial four.

Yeah I would agree with that. When you consider all the young, whiny Companions that followed, it's so nice to look back and see a couple of actual, mature adults travelling along with the Doctor.

 

[Nerys Myk]

And I maintain that one of the most successful Tardis crews were the initial four.

Yeah I would agree with that. When you consider all the young, whiny Companions that followed, it's so nice to look back and see a couple of actual, mature adults travelling along with the Doctor.

It was an intresting mix that seemed to play to a wide demographic.