Way back in 1996, when I was but a high schooler living on glorious Staten Island, New York, the Doctor Who TV Movie was broadcast on the USA's Fox Network. I was duly excited, but nobody else in my class had even heard of Doctor Who -- except for one cute Scottish girl. The day after the movie aired, I asked her what she thought of it.
Apparently, she had switched off her TV after the first twenty minutes because the movie was "stupid." She confidently asserted to me that the oldest, black-and-white episodes of Doctor Who starring William Hartnell were the best and most realistic stories, better than the stupid movie and even the sacred Tom Baker classics.
I thought she was nuts. Surely she didn't really believe that those old, fuzzy, dull-as-dirt episodes were the best? Nobody ever talked about William Hartnell's stuff back then; he was hardly mentioned in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, he bottomed out in all the "favorite Doctor" polls, and videos of his serials were released few and far between. In most fan circles, Hartnell was dismissed as that old guy who flubbed his lines.
A few months later, I decided to rewatch an early Hartnell adventure, The Aztecs. It was much better than I recalled; in fact, it was so good I could hardly believe what I was seeing. John Lucarotti's script examined the concept of time travel with sensitivity and intelligence, focusing on the tragedy of exploring history without the power to change it for the better. Unusually, the Doctor was allowed to have a genuine romance, while his companion Barbara took center stage in one of the strongest roles for a woman in the history of science fiction television. I was surprised and impressed.
Pretty soon, I was devouring every Hartnell episode I could find. The best and most addictive thing about them was the Doctor himself. Far from being a cardboard heroic stereotype, the First Doctor was a sensitive, complex and sometimes selfish character. And he evolved. In the earliest serials, he pursued his own self-interests, first kidnapping Ian and Barbara (in An Unearthly Child) and then leading them into danger in order to satisfy his own scientific curiosity (The Daleks). As he gradually learned to respect the schoolteachers -- and humans in general -- he grew into the stalwart hero we all love.
But mystery was still always at the heart of his character. During Hartnell's era, nothing concrete was revealed about the Doctor's home planet, his past history, or the extent of his powers. Back then, the title Doctor Who actually made sense.
The Doctor's behavior also made more sense. Have you ever wondered why the character chases around the cosmos with hot teenage girls and never sleeps with them? In the Hartnell era, it's clear that the Doctor dearly loves his granddaughter, Susan, and when she leaves him he seeks the company of other girls her age. In other words, his companions are substitute granddaughters -- suddenly, the reasons for his abstinence are a whole lot clearer!
Though most Doctor Who fans have an amazing ability to overlook Hartnell completely, the era's extremely high audience figures confirm his place as one of the most publicly popular Doctors. His ratings far eclipsed what Troughton, Pertwee, Davison, Baker II and McCoy could muster (also Eccleston and Tennant, come to think of it). In Hartnell's time, Doctor Who was a legitimate phenomenon, inspiring two films, surreal spin-off songs and countless items of merchandise.
Over the past few years, Hartnell has enjoyed a modest spike in fan recognition, perhaps due to the release of his serials on DVD. He still, however, suffers from the stigma of allegedly "boring" episodes and the occasional botched line. While I think it's fair to criticize some of his weaker, faltering performances, I do also wonder why Tom Baker gets a free pass for his frequent overacting, and Sylvester McCoy is not taken to task more often for his laughable attempts at righteous anger. Surely Hartnell, who worked under tougher conditions than either of those guys, deserves to be regarded with the same respect that other Doctors enjoy?
I don't want to come across as a Hartnell apologist here; he is, after all, my favorite Doctor. His wonderfully alien and arrogant performance in An Unearthly Child has never been topped, and for every subsequent miss, he scored big hits in serials like The Crusade and The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Far from being the batty old Doctor that I have to tolerate, Hartnell has become the Doctor I actively seek out nowadays. Maybe I'm just burnt out on superior 1970s Doctor Who and I'm in the mood for something different -- or maybe the 70s stuff really is inferior, and Hartnell is secretly the very best Doctor of them all.