Happy 47th Anniversary
My name is William Hartnell and, as Doctor Who, I make my debut on Saturday 23 November at 5.15.
The Doctor is an extraordinary old man from another world who owns a time and space machine.
He and his granddaughter, Susan (played by Carole Ann Ford), have landed in England and are enjoying their stay, until Susan arouses the curiosity of two of her schoolteachers (played by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill). They follow Susan and get inside the Ship, and Doctor Who decides to leave Earth, starting a series of adventures which I know will thrill and excite you every week.
- From a specially made trailer for BBC Radio, read by William Hartnell, November 1963
Posted by Graeme on Tuesday, November 23 at 9:03 am
3 Comments...
Happy Birthday to the greatest show in the history of television. This time of year always makes me reflect on how long I have been a fan of the show, which is itself a bit of a milestone. It makes me feel old a little when I realize that I have been watching Doctor Who since 1981. Back then the ONLY Doctor that I ever saw was Tom Baker and thanks to channel 17 Buffalo, I enjoyed, for a long time, a constant rotation of everything from ROBOT to LOGOPOLIS. I would have to say that one of the things that attracted me to the show at the beginning was that even back then in 1981 how much history the show had. I hadn’t even heard of the Doctor Who Monthly magazine yet but magazines like STARLOG were a buzz as the show approached its’ 20th year and you would find articles about Doctor Who in many magazines of that genre. And to think how amazing I thought that was back then. Now fast forward to today and the show is bigger and more popular than even I thought it would ever achieve. I always knew it was a great show but back in the 80’s Doctor Who wasn’t “main stream” because it never got further than Public Broadcasting in North America. Now today it has been seen on television stations like The CBC, SPACE, The Sci Fi Channel, and BBC America. (Well I know the series was on YTV in the 90’s but we really can’t count that as it was on in the middle of the night.) The only thing left now is for them to do a movie franchise and if ever such a thing looked possible it is now. On that note I think what might work would be have it separate from the TV Series and maybe have it as a sort of prequel where it takes place before An Unearthly Child. How about a story that takes place back when the Doctor was young and we see events that lead up to him stealing the TARDIS from Galifrey. Ya that, like bow ties, would be cool.
Posted by Doug Grandy on 11/23 at 03:18 PM
That trailer is quite a find! Does it exist anywhere in audio form or has only the text survived?
Posted by Alex on 11/23 at 07:27 PM
Only the text has survived—like so much of the BBC, the paperwork survives while the actual recordings of their work don’t!
Posted by Graeme on 11/23 at 07:46 PM
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