An Adventure in Space and Time (TV story)

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You may be looking for the 1999 documentary.

An Adventure in Space and Time, released in 2013 in time for the programme's 50th anniversary, was a docudrama largely about William Hartnell's era as the First Doctor. Though marketed as the story of how Doctor Who was made, it was in fact much more of a limited biopic, giving much of its screentime to an investigation of Hartnell's portrayal of the Doctor. Because the script dealt with the entirety of Hartnell's reign on the programme, and ended with the regeneration in The Tenth Planet, Verity Lambert's struggles to produce the programme, though strongly featured, were a subplot.

The show was a labour of love by writer and executive producer Mark Gatiss, who had been trying to make it since before the 40th anniversary in 2003.

Synopsis

A young producer frustrated by British television's glass ceiling, a new executive at the British Broadcasting Corporation, a young director of Indian descent, and an older actor struggling for artistic legitimacy come together in 1963 to start a brand new television programme called Doctor Who. After initial difficulties, the show becomes a hit, leaving the actor alone to carry on the show's traditions — and to face his increasingly ailing health.

Plot

When boisterous Canadian TV producer Sydney Newman joins the BBC, he finds himself needing to fill a timeslot on Saturday afternoon. He decides to commission a science-fiction serial with an educational element. To produce the serial, he breaks with convention and hires a woman named Verity Lambert, who had previously worked with him as an assistant. He also hires Waris Hussein, the BBC's first director of Indian descent to helm the first few episodes.

Lambert encounters two challenges from the start: she isn't taken seriously by some of the "old boys club" at the BBC, and she has to find a suitable actor to play the lead character - a scientist known as the Doctor.

She approaches William Hartnell, an esteemed character actor who, of late, has become frustrated with being typecast as military or gangster figures. Although skeptical at first, Hartnell agrees to take on the role.

Initial production is beset with problems, from doors malfunctioning to fire sprinklers going off in the middle of a scene. Even more concerning is the fact Hartnell is dissatisfied with how his character is written. Newman rejects the first episode and considers firing Newman and Hussein before deciding to let them remount the first episode after making improvements to the character of the Doctor. Lambert, however, refuses his order to replace the theme music.

The revised version of Doctor Who goes over much better, and the greenlight is given for more episodes to be made, although Newman is initially upset at plans to introduce an alien menace known as the Daleks as it violates his No. 1 rule that there be no BEMs (bug-eyed monsters) in Doctor Who. The first broadcast is ultimately overshadowed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, so much so that Lambert convinces Newman to authorize a rebroadcast the following week.

The introduction of the Daleks launches the series into popular consciousness, and Hartnell finds himself the idol of children, at one point leading a group of children around a park, pretending to be on the hunt for Daleks.

The blush of success begins to fade over time, however, as Hartnell finds himself -- much as the Doctor does -- having to move on as his companions and real-life friends leave the series. As Verity Lambert herself prepares to leave the series, Hartnell's wife informs her that William's health is fading due to arteriosclerosis brought on by smoking and drinking which, among other problems, has made it increasingly difficult to remember his lines. At other times, his condition makes him exhibit dementia-like symptoms.

As Hartnell finds himself at the centre of an ever-changing parade of co-stars, Newman takes notice of the actor's failing health and ultimately makes the difficult decision to replace him in the lead role, as the writers figure out a way to keep the character of the Doctor going, but with a new actor, Patrick Troughton.

Hartnell reports for his final day on the set, where he meets Troughton and prepares to shoot his final scene. As he does so, he has a vision of the future: a young man in a tweed jacket and bow-tie standing across the TARDIS console, signifying a long life ahead for the character he originated.

As the film ends, the real William Hartnell is seen delivering his farewell to Susan.

Cast

Uncredited cast

Crew

General production staff

Script department

Camera and lighting department

Art department

Costume department

Make-up and prosthetics

Casting

General post-production staff

Special and visual effects

Sound



Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources.


References

William Hartnell sees the future of the show.
  • The final scene shows William Hartnell filming his final scenes in TV: The Tenth Planet. In this sequence, he literally looks into the future of Doctor Who, and sees Matt Smith next to him. Matt smiles at him and begins flipping switches on the console, possibly a reference to the famous closing scenes of The Tenth Planet where the switches on the console begin moving by themselves.

Story notes

  • David Bradley and Jessica Raine both guest-starred in Doctor Who episodes that were broadcast during Series 7 (the telefilm was shot during the hiatus between the two halves of the season): TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and Hide, respectively.
  • In addition to the cameos by William Russell, Carole Ann Ford, Anneke Wills, Jean Marsh and Matt Smith, another Who veteran appearing in the film is Mark Eden, who played the title role in TV: Marco Polo.
  • Nicholas Briggs, here playing Peter Hawkins who was hired to provide the voice of the Daleks, has performed the same duties for the TV series since 2005. He is also producer of the long-running Big Finish Productions Doctor Who audio dramas range and, with Gatiss, was involved in numerous independent spin-off projects during the 1989-2005 interregnum and was also the longtime host of the Myth Makers interview series.
  • The actors playing Peter Purves, Jackie Lane, Michael Craze and Anneke Wills are not credited, with Purves and Lane (and by extension, Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet) only appearing for a few seconds.
  • The finale of the film includes footage of the real William Hartnell from TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth. This same footage was used to open the 20th anniversary special, TV: The Five Doctors, in which another actor, Richard Hurndall, stood in for Hartnell.
  • The film's original broadcast on BBC Two was immediately followed by a rebroadcast of all four episodes of An Unearthly Child on BBC Four.

Ratings

to be added

Filming locations

Differences with documented history of Doctor Who

  • The film artfully suggests that Sydney Newman was coming to grips with the scripts for The Daleks while Lee Harvey Oswald was shooting John F. Kennedy. However, on 22 November 1963, Serial B was fully commissioned and well into production. In fact, the day Kennedy was shot, "The Survivors", was recorded. The record shows that it was during production of "The Survivors" that the cast and crew saw the complete Daleks for the first time; this is depicted as occurring sometime after the assassination as well.
  • Hartnell holds up an annual on the set of The Reign of Terror. However, the first Doctor Who Annual wasn't released until September 1965, well over a year after Reign was filmed. The cover art for the book has been altered to more closely depict David Bradley as opposed to Hartnell. This is made more obvious by the presence of a Zarbi on the front cover.
  • Though Daleks speak of extermination and people who need to be exterminated, they did not actually use their future catchphrase "Exterminate!" in The Daleks. In this production, the catchphrase is wrongly shown to have become popular just after the broadcast of Serial B. Indeed, Hartnell is shown to shout "Exterminate!" to kids in a park, which is unlikely because it wasn't in the script for The Daleks.
  • The speech with which Hartnell has trouble near the end of the story is from "The Bell of Doom". However, The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve was directed by Paddy Russell, and the apparent director speaking to Hartnell from the booth was male in this production. (Although it's possible, as the speaker is never identified by name, that this was an assistant director.)
  • The first episode of An Unearthly Child is shown to end with a scene in which Susan checks the radiation counter; this in fact was the closing scene of Episode 4, "The Firemaker", which in the film hasn't been shot yet.
  • During production of what would come to be called The Pilot Episode, a male actor walks off the set after refusing to have his teeth blackened for the role of a caveman. In the actual production, it was a female actor who did this, but during production of Episode 2, and no caveman actor was present on set during production of Episode 1, as the sequence with the caveman viewing the TARDIS was filmed separately at another studio several days earlier.
  • The film also indicates that production of the first version of Episode 1 was shut down due to the fire sprinklers going off and also due to the allotted time in the studio running out. Neither happened in real life.
  • Hartnell's apparent inability to remember the name "Chesterton" is used to illustrate his fading health, but in reality most of those errors were scripted as a running joke by the character.
  • While Matt Smith's cameo never really happened in real-life but was mainly added in to show that - after 50 years - the show is still going, Hartnell himself once said to Carole Ann Ford that he believed the show would go on "for ever and ever more."
  • Several individuals intimately involved in the early production of the series are omitted from the film, including David Whitaker, CE Webber, Donald Wilson and Anthony Coburn.
  • Lambert's departure is suggested to take place during production of TV: The Web Planet (actors in Zarbi costumes are visible during her party). In reality, she left after production of TV: Mission to the Unknown during the next season. A deleted scene included with the DVD release from the same sequence shows her encountering an actor dressed as a Monoid from TV: The Ark, even though that story wasn't made until well after her departure.
  • It is suggested that talk of replacing Hartnell takes place after the introduction of Steven Taylor and Dodo; however the pairare photographed with Hartnell in their costumes for The Celestial Toymaker - a serial where it was considered for Hartnell to regenerate in

Home video releases

DVD releases

to be added

Blu-ray releases

to be added

External links

to be added


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