Season 1 (Doctor Who 1963)

This article is for the 1963-64 season of Doctor Who; for other initial seasons of other programmes, see Series 1.

Season 1 of Doctor Who ran between 23rd November 1963 and 12th September 1964. It starred William Hartnell as the Doctor.

Overview

It consisted of eight serials (listed below) and 42 episodes, and a pilot episode which never aired on television. (More accurately, the production team made several version of the pilot episode.) The inaugural season established many of the concepts that continue to the present day, as well as introducing the hugely popular Daleks. Two of the three historical stories this season are presently considered lost, although audio recordings of all episodes remain.

Stories

An Unearthly Child aka "100 000 BC"
The Daleks aka "The Mutants"
The Edge of Destruction aka "Inside the Spaceship"
Marco Polo
The Keys of Marinus
The Aztecs
The Sensorites
The Reign of Terror

Notes

Unseen by the public, several versions of The Pilot Episode preceded this.

Main Cast

The Doctor - William Hartnell (Introduced in An Unearthly Child)
Susan Foreman - Carole Ann Ford (Introduced in An Unearthly Child)

Ian Chesterton - William Russell (Introduced in An Unearthly Child)

Barbara Wright - Jacqueline Hill (Introduced in An Unearthly Child)

Season 1 was the last season before Season 6 to retain the same core cast members for an entire series.

Production

Creation

The series was essentially the creation of a committee, with the following amongst the many who created the various parts that went into the series: Donald Wilson (time travel), Sydney Newman (the Doctor and Susan), C. E. Webber (Ian and Barbara, scenario for the first episode), Anthony Coburn (Susan's name, the TARDIS looking like a police box), David Whitaker (Susan as the Doctor's granddaughter).

Production overview

Verity Lambert was chosen by Sydney Newman as Producer of the series and Mervyn Pinfield was assigned as Associate Producer, picking up on the mainly technical side of the series such as dealing with the in-camera SFX.

Initially, the series was only ordered for the first four episodes that made up 100 000 BC and came close to going no further. This was extended to thirteen episodes, but the production team had either eleven (100,000 BC and The Mutants) or eighteen (100,000 BC, The Mutants, Marco Polo). To solve this problem, David Whitaker wrote the two episode Inside the Spaceship, something that normally wouldn't have happened due to an existing rule that prohibited Script Editors writing for the series they were editing. (Otherwise they could simply have "hired" themselves and deprived other script writers of work.)

The first through to third season story titles have been a contentious issue for more information. See Disputed story titles.

Stories considered during this season, but ultimately going unmade included: