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Doctor Who: The Regeneration Game

2016-11-05T08:00:00+00:00

Patrick Troughton's Doctor consults his 500-year diary as he prepares to face an old enemy in The Power of the Daleks

We love an anniversary here at the Genome Project, hence last Wednesday’s post to celebrate the 80th birthday of high-definition television. This week we’re a day early for a similar reason, to commemorate a pivotal moment in one of the BBC’s best-loved programmes – Doctor Who. BBC Store is also celebrating the anniversary by releasing an animated reconstruction using the original soundtrack.

Fifty years ago, on 5 November 1966, the first episode of the Doctor Who story The Power of the Daleks was broadcast. As well as the start of yet another adventure featuring the programme’s most enduring villains, it was also the debut of the second actor to play the lead role – Patrick Troughton.

Troughton had appeared fleetingly at the end of the previous week’s episode, the last of a four-part story called The Tenth Planet. That story was also a milestone in the series’ history for two other reasons: as well as the last regular appearance of the show’s founding star, William Hartnell, it introduced the race of aliens who became the second most popular monsters in Doctor Who’s history – the Cybermen.

William Hartnell had become typecast in military and ‘hard man’ roles when he was offered the role of the Doctor in 1963. Three years later, many things had changed, with original producer Verity Lambert and familiar regular cast members having moved on. Hartnell was unhappy with the direction the show was taking, and, not in the best of health, was persuaded to stand down. He agreed to make one last story in order to be written out of the programme.

When new producer Innes Lloyd joined the show in early 1966, he and his story editor Gerry Davis decided that Doctor Who was drifting too far into the realms of whimsy and fantasy. They also wanted to steer the programme away from its original mix of science fiction alternating with historical adventures, ranging from the educational Marco Polo (1964) to the comical The Gunfighters (1966). Lloyd and Davis also did away with the individual episode titles for each Doctor Who adventure, giving the stories a more obvious discrete structure.

The Who crew - outgoing Doctor William Hartnell, with newly arrived companions Ben (Michael Craze) and Polly (Anneke Wills)

Lloyd and Davis next looked round for a scientist who would be able to help make stories more credible, and one of those they spoke to was Kit Pedler, an ophthalmologist. He came up with a storyline, which was turned into scripts by another writer, based on the idea of the Post Office Tower – then being built – taking over the world. On the strength of this Pedler became Doctor Who’s semi-official scientific adviser.

Pedler’s next idea was based on his concerns about the topical area of transplant surgery. What would happen if people had so many transplants that they were no longer sure if they were human, if metal and plastic replacement organs and limbs meant they lost their emotions?

These thoughts developed into the concept of the Cybermen, and were linked with an idea about the Earth having had a twin planet, Mondas, which had drifted away into space millennia ago, to form the basis for Pedler's scripts. This time he intended to write by himself, however, after completing two episodes, he was stricken with a serious illness, and it fell to story editor Gerry Davis to complete the remaining two episodes from Pedler’s storyline. They shared the writing credit, and Pedler and Davis began a long professional relationship as a result that led to, among other things, the 1970s science fact/fiction drama Doomwatch.

The Tenth Planet would itself become a template for the series’ development over the next few years, concerning as it did a future Earth, a remote base besieged by alien creatures, and the Doctor and his friends helping the base personnel defeat the invaders. A further topical element in this instance was the backdrop of a manned space mission, being tracked from the base, which was in Antarctica.

The Cybermen were an immediate hit with viewers, despite what seem, compared to later versions, somewhat primitive costumes. Their hands were visible (and sometimes their eyes, although their heads were covered in a kind of stocking mask as if they were en route to a bank job), to show that they were not robots, but had once been human.

Their costumes comprised plastic coveralls with metallic sections added, notably a chest unit, and a skull-cap with a large lamp perched on top of the head, to give extra height. However, despite the Cybermen supposedly being very powerful, the costumes were flimsy, with parts held together with sticky tape, and hot – some of the actors fainted under the studio lights.

William Hartnell had not been required for the filming session at Ealing studios that preceded the main recording of the episodes, as he was not to appear in close-up, so his place was taken by a double. As it was, he was almost making a cameo appearance in his own show.

All seemed to be going well after two episodes had been videotaped at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, but then Hartnell was taken ill with bronchitis, and had to be written out for a week – his double returned to show the Doctor collapsing and he spent the episode in bed, covered by a blanket. Fortunately, Hartnell recovered sufficiently to be able to appear in episode four – the last of his era as the Doctor.

Dateline: Antarctica, December 1986 - or in the real world, BBC Television Film Studios, Ealing, September 1966. The original Cybermen do look as if they have been through a series of unpleasant medical procedures - no wonder they have it in for doctors...

His replacement as the Doctor, Patrick Troughton was a very experienced television actor, having made his debut on the medium in the 1940s, and among his early credits was a production of the 1920s science fiction play, R.U.R., which brought the word Robot into the language.

He was known more as a character actor than a leading man, although he had played the title role in a production of Robin Hood in 1953. He had nearly been cast in the Doctor Who story The Gunfighters a few months before, and one of his most recent roles was in fantasy series Adam Adamant Lives!, in which he had played an incongruously bearded British Army general.

When Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis determined that they would replace the lead actor in Doctor Who, there were long discussions about how they would go about this, and about who they could get to replace their iconic star. While it was not unknown for a part to be recast, it was unusual in such a prominent role – so they made a feature of it rather than hope nobody would notice…

The process in this case would be dubbed a renewal or rejuvenation, rather than regeneration as it was in later years. While not explicitly stating that Troughton was supposed to be a younger version of Hartnell, in purely physical terms he was, although there was only twelve years’ difference in age between the men – Hartnell had played as if older than his actual age, 58. Troughton retained an air of mystery and other-worldliness, but was far more sprightly.

Both actors met only briefly on the recording day, 8 October 1966. The technically complex changeover scene was recorded first, as an insert. At this time, although most programmes were no longer made live, they tended to be recorded in story order, with the minimum of edits. Recording this scene first however removed the danger that such a crucial moment would be rushed, at the end of the day’s work.

Director Derek Martinus and vision mixer Shirley Coward devised the visuals for the change of actor using a defective piece of kit to white-out the images of both actors, so the fade from one to the other was almost seamless. With this scene achieved, the rest of the episode was recorded.

With the Cybermen defeated, the Doctor announces that his body is worn out, and his two companions, Ben and Polly, follow him back to the Tardis where they find him about to change…

The Doctor collapses in the Tardis at the end of part 4 of The Tenth Planet - moments later he would be transformed...

To give Troughton a breathing space and find his feet, a week’s break was allowed before work on the next serial began. This was playing with fire, as episodes were not recorded far ahead of transmission – there were only three weeks between episodes of The Tenth Planet being recorded and being shown. The Power of the Daleks would now be only two weeks away from catching up with itself. Over the Christmas period a few weeks later, the gap shrank to one week, and remained such until the summer of 1967.

Troughton was a shy man, rarely giving interviews, but he was also worried that a lead role in a series like Doctor Who might hurt his career by typecasting him – ironically, given that it had rescued Hartnell from the same fate. However, it was a steady job and he accepted the challenge.

At first he favoured playing the part in some kind of disguise, but instead indulged himself with a costume that was a parody of the stylish Edwardian garb of his predecessor. He sported a baggy frock coat, broad-checked trousers, and at first, a battered stovepipe hat. Over the next few months the costume department toned the look down, but he retained a somewhat scruffy appearance.

Oddly enough, he was already wearing the costume when he first appeared clearly at the start of The Power of the Daleks, as if it had changed with him. Ben and Polly, his companions, took the place of the viewer in wondering if this strange figure could really be the Doctor they knew, but over the course of the story they gradually came to accept him.

In fact, this was a time of crisis for Doctor Who. Though it had been a hit in its early days, thanks largely to the sensational popularity of the Daleks, viewing figures had gradually declined. The BBC was not yet ready to replace it, especially as it had a strong advocate in the Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, who had been responsible for its commissioning in the first place. But the show was in need of rejuvenation if it was to survive.

Daleks, seemingly dormant, in their capsule on the planet Vulcan: but are they as dead as they seem? Or do they just need Power...?

Bringing back the Daleks was one way of giving the new Doctor at least a fighting chance of bringing viewers back to the series. The scripts for The Power of the Daleks were by David Whitaker, who as the first story editor of Doctor Who had worked with their creator, Terry Nation, on their original appearances. With Gerry Davis busy rescuing The Tenth Planet, when Whitaker had problems getting his scripts into shape, another former story editor, Dennis Spooner, was drafted in to help.

Terry Nation, having become hot property because of the success of the Daleks, was now too busy on lucrative ITV dramas to write for the series that made his name, but was happy for others to take over – though his agent had to prompt the BBC to give him a ‘created by’ credit. He was also working on a proposed Dalek series he hoped to sell to American television, and as a result would withdraw permission for the BBC to use the creatures after one last story in mid-1967.

In the end nothing came of the series idea, but the Daleks would not return to Doctor Who until 1972. For the rest of the 1960s, the Cybermen became the show’s new chief baddies.

Whitaker meanwhile turned in an imaginative twist on the Dalek story. In The Power of the Daleks, seemingly lifeless Daleks are found in a crashed spaceship on the planet Vulcan (nothing to do with the planet in Star Trek, which had just started on American television: it was not seen in Britain until 1969, ironically replacing Doctor Who in the Saturday evening schedules).

A misguided scientist brings the Daleks back to life, hoping to make them into servants to the colonists on the planet. There are also a group of rebels who think they can use the Daleks to their own ends. Of course both are mistaken, as the Daleks are pretending to be docile in order to create an army of their own and take over.

The new Doctor steps out into a new adventure - as captured by the cameras at BBC Riverside studio 1

Over six exciting episodes, the adventure played out, until the Doctor won in the end, and was accepted by Ben and Polly. The final shot of the last episode has a seemingly dead Dalek show signs of life – as if they could never be fully defeated…

From this auspicious start, Patrick Troughton made the role of the Doctor his own, and spent three years in the part. The concept of renewal/regeneration of the lead was one of the master strokes in the history of Doctor Who, and like the Daleks and the concept of the Tardis, it has proved to be part of what made the series an enduring hit, still going (with occasional breaks) fifty-three years since it first started.

So when Troughton called it a day in 1969, and the BBC decided (after some uncertainty) to go on with Doctor Who, the hunt was on for a third actor to star in the series. In the end, the choice was someone who, co-incidentally, was the storyteller on Jackanory in the week between the showing of the last part of The Tenth Planet and the first episode of The Power of the Daleks… Jon Pertwee.

The Power of the Daleks is among many episodes of Doctor Who which no longer exists in its original format, but it is now available as an animated reconstruction through BBC Store.

Doctor Who is back on Christmas Day in The Return of Doctor Mysterio.

Swapping actors in roles – from Ann and Harold to Doctor Who

2016-01-17T10:00:00+00:00

A 1938 episode of Ann and Harold when Ann Todd was actually present.

Choosing the cast for any drama or comedy is one of the most important factors in its success. Many things have to be taken into account, not just the suitability of a performer for a role, but how they balance against the other actors, whether they are available for the shooting dates, whether – if they are a star name – the production can afford their fee… Sometimes, however, despite all these efforts, for one reason or another an actor has to be replaced even in the most successful programmes.

There are generally two options when an actor has to be replaced, to recast the role, or in some circumstances to ‘kill off’ the character and devise a replacement – as sometimes the problem is not with the performer, but with the character itself.

In an earlier Post I mentioned the situation with the 1930s comedy series Ann and Harold, where lead actress Ann Todd got a part in a West End play during its run and asked to be released early from the programme. Television at that time was not in a position to argue it seems, as the series was shortened from 6 to 5 episodes to accommodate her.

Examples of actors being replaced at the last minute include Dame May Whitty, a legendary figure in theatre and film, who had to withdraw from the second performance of the drama The Royal Family of Broadway on 14 February 1939 due to illness. In this case as she was a major attraction of the production, the producer George More O’Ferrall made an on-screen apology for her non-appearance before the transmission. Her role was taken by Betty Romaine, who had played another part in the first performance.

Less high-profile substitutions occurred in series such as Dixon of Dock Green, first broadcast in 1955. For example in the series 2 episode The Rotten Apple (which had a young Paul Eddington among the cast), the regular character of Inspector Cherry was played by Stanley Beard instead of Robert Cawdron, and A.J. Brown played Alderman Mayhew in place of the billed Geoffrey Wincott.

Z Cars and other products of the BBC drama department documentary unit in the 50s and early 60s did not make public any cast substitutions, as they did not publish cast lists in Radio Times. But being live they were still susceptible to accidents of fate. In the case of the episode The Share Out in 1965, an actress died just over a week before transmission and had to be replaced. Even when Z Cars returned as a twice-weekly, videotaped series in spring 1967, its relentless schedule occasionally meant that lead actors missed a week and replacement characters were hurriedly written in to cover the gap.

Not the Lad 'Imself

Another notable substitution in another genre occurred with the second series of the radio Hancock’s Half-Hour in 1955. Tony Hancock was under a lot of pressure with stage commitments, and as the second series was about to start, producer Dennis Main Wilson was informed that Hancock had left the country… It was the first major indication of the nerves that were to afflict the rest of Hancock’s career and contributed to his battle with alcoholism. While attempting to locate his star and coax him back, Main Wilson still needed to produce a show, and turned to a friend and colleague, who he knew from the early years of The Goon Show – Harry Secombe. While Secombe was a very different character to Hancock, he was willing and able to step in and replace him for three episodes.

Cast substitutions happened with the Goon Show too, though the circumstances were different. Over the long run of the show, from its early days under the title Crazy People in 1951, there were occasions when all of the main cast missed episodes. In the case of Secombe and Peter Sellers it was minor illness that prevented them appearing, and various colleagues stepped in – more difficult in the case of the multi-voiced Sellers, who required more than one replacement, including the likes of Kenneth Connor, Dick Emery, and, resurrected from ITMA, Jack Train’s Colonel Chinstrap, who was anyway not too dissimilar from Sellers’ character Major Bloodnok.

It was Spike Milligan who suffered the longest absence however, when he had a full blown nervous breakdown, caused by, among other things, the pressure of producing scripts every week, and the after-effects of post-traumatic stress, as it would now be termed, a result of his service in the Italy in World War Two. The fourth original cast member was Michael Bentine, but he clashed with Milligan over the direction of the series and decided to leave after two series.

The first of the Last of the Summer Wine.

One series that had a large number of cast changes over the years was Last of the Summer Wine. Originally a Comedy Playhouse transmitted in January 1973, with Michael Bates as Cyril Blamire, Bill Owen as Compo Simmonite and Peter Sallis as Norman Clegg, a series followed the same year. After the second series Bates left due to ill-health, although he continued in his role in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, presumably as, being mostly studio-based, it was less arduous. Blamire was replaced by Foggy Dewhurst, played by Brian Wilde, who stayed for nine years. Foggy was then replaced by Michael Aldridge’s Seymour Utterthwaite, before returning briefly in 1990. Illness forced his replacement by Frank Thornton as ex-policeman ‘Truly’ Truelove, and though Wilde had wanted to return, this never happened. Bill Owen himself died in 1999, and was replaced by his son Tom Owen, playing Compo’s son. As the programme continued, while some secondary characters were not replaced, the regular cast gradually increased, in part to lessen the burden on the central trio, and by the last series a completely new group of characters were roaming the Dales, with Peter Sallis’s Clegg making cameo appearances – though it was he who delivered the series’ last line when it finally ended in August 2010.

A similar thing occurred more recently with the popular police series New Tricks, which shed the original cast members in its last few years, until by the end the four leads were all different (but at least they kept Dennis Waterman singing the theme tune). Waterman, the last of the originals to go, had been in the situation before when he left the ITV series Minder after many successful years, and back at the beginning of his career, when he had starred in the BBC William series in 1962. He was replaced by Denis Gilmore in the 1963 series – well, the name was close enough...

It is clear that the replacement of a character is a far more common occurrence than the replacement of the actor playing a part. Obviously there are reasons for that, not least the credibility problem of a character suddenly having a different face. In ensemble dramas that can be got round in part by having the character disappear for a while, and when they return hopefully people will accept the new actor – although obviously their performance is likely to be different from the original.

One of the most obvious examples of the replacement of the actor playing a character is of course Doctor Who, where it has become part of the format that the lead role can be played by someone else. By 1966, the original Doctor, William Hartnell, had difficulty learning lines and was generally ailing physically, but the BBC did not want to end the series – its instigator, Sydney Newman, was still head of drama and was reluctant to dispose of his brainchild. The fact that it had been established from the start that the Doctor was from another planet, led to the brainwave that he could change his face. When Hartnell was transformed into Patrick Troughton at the end of the story The Tenth Planet, it was rationalised that he had rejuvenated, as if Troughton was just a younger version of Hartnell. Indeed, his costume was similar to his predecessor’s, and actually changed along with his body...

The Doctor reads aloud from his 500-year diary, unaware that the Tardis is bugged.

A few months into the reign of the new Doctor, there was another kind of substitution when the character of Chicki was played by Sandra Bryant in episode one and by Karol Keyes in episode four of the adventure The Macra Terror – Bryant had been contracted for both episodes, but asked to be released after the first recording. At the time the show was being recorded just a week in advance of transmission. As the character was relatively minor, it’s likely the production team assumed no-one would notice the difference.

After the first recasting of the lead role, it was often uncertain whether the show would be cancelled when subsequent lead actors decided to leave. This was certainly the case in 1969 when Patrick Troughton left, and the BBC actively looked for a replacement series. On a personal note, I for one was not happy with the change at the time – aged 5 ½ I was assured by my (lovely) older sisters at the end of Troughton’s final story that he was dead; when the Doctor returned to television some six months later in the guise of Jon Pertwee, instead of being reassured, the style of the programme had changed to a much scarier, violent, adult version, which put me off watching for the next two years…

By the time Tom Baker took over in 1974, Doctor Who had become a ratings-winner, but this was no longer the case when he left seven seasons later. Through the 1980s the series did recover viewers at first, but after its ‘rest’ in 1985-6 audiences gradually reduced, partly due to erratic and unfavourable scheduling, with two more changes of lead from Peter Davison to Colin Baker, and then Sylvester McCoy. An American co-produced TV movie with Paul McGann in 1996 failed to take off despite good ratings in the UK, and it was not until 2005 that a new series emerged, starring Christopher Eccleston. Eccleston unexpectedly bowed out after only one season, replaced in turn by David Tennant, Matt Smith, and the current incumbent Peter Capaldi.

But Doctor Who is a unique case. We find it hard to adjust to well-known characters seeming to become other people. There are exceptions, though it helps if you get in early.

Recasting occasionally happens in soap operas, most commonly with child actors who cannot or will not continue to appear as a particular character – and a child actor cannot be guaranteed to turn into a convincing performer when they get older. Occasionally an adult part is recast, as in the case of Mark Fowler, following the suicide of original actor David Scarboro, replaced some time later by Todd Carty. The redoubtable Peggy Mitchell too was originally played by Jo Warne, but she was only in the series briefly; when the character returned in 1994 she had morphed into Barbara Windsor. Another member of the Mitchell family, Sam, was first played by Daniella Westbrook, but following a troubled history with the programme due to her cocaine use, Kim Medcalf was brought in to replace her in 2002. Yet when the character came back again briefly in 2009, Westbrook played the role again.

Typecasting can be the bane of an actor’s life, and being known for one part can prevent them getting more interesting and different work – it’s certainly one of the reasons for people leaving a role, they hope, not too late to escape it. Rupert Davies, star of Maigret from 1960-63, certainly felt that the series blighted his career, though he still returned to the part in a 1969 Play of the Month. Ironically he had not been in the 1959 edition of Sunday-Night Theatre which acted as a pilot for the series. It’s a testament in a way to the strength of an actor’s performance if we cannot accept them as anyone else than the part that made them famous. It is however much harder to accept someone else playing that role.

Replacement characters are another matter altogether – but viewers I’m sure are not always sorry to see the cast of long-running series refreshed from time to time. With the accidents of mortality, or just the wishes of actors to spread their wings after a time, it is something that we all have to get used to.

Have you had a traumatic reaction to a new Doctor Who actor? Do you get confused by the changing faces of soap actors? Have you missed or welcomed replacement actors in your favourite series, from Dixon and Z Cars to Casualty and New Tricks? Let us know…