An Adventure In Space and Time: The Origins of Doctor Who (21st November)

[Jon Masters]

Absolutely marvellous! I loved ever minute of this. David Bradley and Jessica Raine were superb. I spotted cameos by William Russell, Carole Ann Ford, Jean Marsh and Anneke Wills. Were there any others that I missed?

Nick Briggs in rug was doing Dalek voices, and I think Mark Gatiss was the stagehand who failed to get the TARDIS time rotor moving.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

So good that I've worked the Hartnell tribute and the final scene into the video compilation I'm inflicting on my partner and his friends in Walsall tomorrow

[Stuart Wallis]

Inflicting? there's hope for you yet!

Cameos? What about Matt at the end?

It's great that we had the real Hartnell at the end in order to show that he could be spiky, and that some of his opinions were addressed in passing, albeit not aimed at him personally, and mentioned by Verity and Waris. They did bring up the point that he could be very good to his friends as well, so they were as balanced as they could be under the circumstance, to the point where you did feel sorry for him when he had to go.

[Dirk Gently]

I really don't have the words to express how wonderful I thought it was. It was amazing, moving & really well portrayed by all concerned.

To put it simply, it was bloody marvelous!

[Andrew Curnow]

I've been thinking about this all day, because it made such an impact. I really would like to find the time to watch it again over the next few days, but the more I've thought about it there are just a few little things that niggled slightly - not (which I worried might be the case) the changes to the actual scripts/scenes from the show, although it seemed a bit odd to do that. But just a few little 'emphases' that didn't seem quite right:

-they seemed to focus on Bill's trouble with lines right from the off. Yes, I know that "radiation gloves" is an early one, but as far as I can recall he doesn't put a foot wrong in the first four-parter...
-...and indeed, I'm not sure the balance was quite there as to how often (or rather, not) he did get his lines wrong.
-More to the point though, I just felt it needed a bit more evidence of how good he was as the Doctor, of how his casting was perfectly justified because he was so captivating. There didn't seem enough of that initial success, if you like, before people started leaving, etc, etc.
-Reece Shearsmith's Troughton was a bit... irritating. The lines he had seem, to me, to be trying to comfort Hartnell, to be nice, even to give him that bit of respect - but the performance just kind of made it seem like he was cracking jokes to try and get a laugh. It just didn't quite work.

But these are really minor things, the main thrust & emotion of the story was extraordinary, and David Bradley's performance very very difficult to forget.

[Wayne]

Good to see such a great response to this. The missus and I will be watching it tonight.

[Wayne]

Just watched it. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. Really good stuff. I'm joining team 'BAFTA for Bradley'.
The only misfire (apart from the really clumsy, out of nowhere Matt Smith shoe-horn) was Reece Shearsmith as Troughton. I laughed, I couldn't help it. He just looked like some daft cosplayer at a convention.
The music was overly sentimental too, but that's par for course these days, I suppose.
Otherwise, great stuff.

[Darren]

Just beautiful.

[Dirk Gently]

The only misfire...was Reece Shearsmith as Troughton. I laughed, I couldn't help it. He just looked like some daft cosplayer at a convention. .

That was my only problem too. Surely for the little amount of 'acting' required they could have got someone who was a bit better?

[Perry Vale]

Far from perfect (safe hands Gatiss), but very, very good. It did the job. Superb casting in Jessica Raine, and of course, Bradley. Nice in-jokes, that fell the right side of subtlety.

[chalkie]

bradley #BestCastingEver

[Zbigniev Hamson]

I've been looking forward to this since it was announce, it's strange to think it's now finally been and gone. I really enjoyed it, once of the best things I've seen in ages. Putting my Craig Revel Horwood hat on though...

The two bits I didn't like on the night - Reece Shearsmith as Troughton. His casting has been known for ages of course, and I initially thought it sounded a bit weird, but as I thought about it I thought he might actually be quite good. But he was a bit awful really, and that wig was terrible. It was hard to suspend disbelief there.

The second thing I didn't like was to do with the Matt Smith cameo. It did seem a little bit out of place, and took you out of the moment slightly, but I didn't actually have a problem with it and I can see it's a nice moment for some. What I DID have a problem with however was how, in the second shot of him, he was really badly superimposed IN FRONT OF the console that he was supposed to be standing behind (as he was in the first shot). Looked awful.


On second viewing it also seems that they overplayed Hartnell's fraillty and memory problems right from the start. Apart from the Susan speech (which was okay, but not exceptional) every other footage of him playing the role was of him messing his lines up or dropping his scarf or having a full on psychotic break and wandering straight off the set in a daze. In the last couple of press photocalls he also looked totally bewildered and like he didn't know where he was, kind of how you might imagine him in his Three Doctors days, but not in those days. I imagine if I was a casual viewer and didn't know anything about any of this, I might have walked away with the impression that the show was a success in spite of Hartnell, rather than because of him. Of course we know he was frail and having memory problems, but we also know that despite this he regularly turned in great performances with lots of character right up to the very end. From this docudrama it almost looks like a "senile grandad struck it lucky against all odds" kind of story, which I think is a shame.

But its heart was in the right place and maybe I'm being overly critical.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Also, do you think Sydney Newman really said "pop pop pop" all the time?

[Wayne]

Interesting. According to Lawrence Miles, It seems that dramatic license gave way to misrepresentation, and got in the way a few facts. (Not that I would really know)

http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...t-i-actually-d

[Andrew Curnow]

I don't know whether Sydney did, but I think we'll all be saying "Pop pop pop" from now on. Or is that just me? (I like to at least picture Moffat doing it regularly now at tone meetings and the like.)

I agree with you though, ZH, that it wasn't quite clear enough that Hartnell was actually bloody good for most of his time, and that his real struggle with lines & becoming hard to work with were in later years rather than from the off. I'd hate to think people were coming away from this thinking Hartnell was lucky to get Who, rather than Who was lucky to get Hartnell.

I quite liked the (to me) totally unexpected Matt Smith appearance - but in hindsight, I wonder whether it might not have been even better to somehow (by which I mean, by waving the CGI magic wand) to have 'morphed' him backwards through all the other Doctors until finally it was Troughton. I assume the point of that scene was to show that, although he went unwillingly, by leaving when he did Hartnell in effect gave the show the opportunity for longevity that it probably wouldn't have had if he'd clung to it for five or six years.

[Rob McCow]

Was this really from the same guy who wrote The Crimson Horror?

A delight from start to finish - and unlike some other drama/documentaries, there was no point where it sagged or got boring. A list of highlights from this would be very long indeed, but here's a few of my favourites (I'll call him Hartnell rather than Bradley):
William Hartnell playing Doctor Who with the kids in the park.
The shot of Hartnell from above in the TARDIS, looking incredibly tired, thin and pale.
The way Matt gripped the dials, exactly the way Hartnell used to.
Hartnell being extra cantankerous with the new producer. 'That's Mr Hartnell. I might let you call me Bill. If you last on MY show!'
The cameos! The set recreations! The costumes! I'm sure the set for The Daleks was just a little bit bigger than that? Or did my head fill it in.
Hartnell's delight at seeing the annual.

Hmm, these are all Hartnell ones. Although Verity, Sydney and Warris Hussein were brilliant, this was David Bradley's show. Absolutely heartbreaking.

[Antony Cox]

I’d been looking forward to this all year and the end result didn’t disappoint.

For the first ten minutes or so, I seemed to go through the whole spectrum of emotions – I was shivering with excitement, laughing and becoming teary-eyed, all in quick succession. Every aspect of the production was sublime, including the attention to detail which was simply stunning.

Having said that, I would agree with the general consensus that Hartnell’s line fluffing and illness was a bit overstated early on, and that Reece Shearsmith’s performance was a bit OTT.

What I loved more than anything was the fact that something like this actually got made at all. I have no doubt that if it wasn’t for the New Series, AAISAT would never have happened, but for me, ironically it’s this film which really cemented how important and well-loved Doctor Who is, not the New Series itself. It’s AAISAT which we can really shout about to all the naysayers in that DW IS a TV legend, culturally important, etc. I guess they are symbiotic; AAISAT would probably never have happened without the New Series, but the New Series would never have happened without the STORY of what happened in AAISAT.

I’m very pleased to report that the chap who sits next to me at work (not Tom Baker any more…) who though not a fan-boy like me, has followed the New Series since it started, really enjoyed AAISAT and has been chatting to me about it this morning.

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

I’m very pleased to report that the chap who sits next to me at work (not Tom Baker any more…) who though not a fan-boy like me, has followed the New Series since it started, really enjoyed AAISAT and has been chatting to me about it this morning.

Has Tom Baker at your work been replaced by a Peter Davison?

[Wayne]

Has Tom Baker at your work been replaced by a Peter Davison?

[Antony Cox]

Has Tom Baker at your work been replaced by a Peter Davison?

Sadly, no. But that chap who does sit next to me now went to school with Sean Pertwee and once went round to their house in Castleneau, so there is a very tenuous connection with DW...

[Antony Cox]

I watched this again yesterday, and AGAIN I was a bit teary at the end...

[dalekkiller]

Magic Bullet Productions have done a piece on how historically inaccurate An Adventure in Time and Space is

http://www.kaldorcity.com/features/a...ceandtime.html

[Dave Tudor]

What a mean-spirited article. Have they never heard of 'dramatic licence'?

[Stuart Wallis]

Mean-spirited and about six month late.

[dalekkiller]

Over at Kaldor City the only stories are the Daleks Master Plan (Cause it's full of hidden depths and shows complex political maneuverings) Anything by Chris Boucher Anything produced by John Wiles and that's about it. Also these folks are good mates of Mad Larry the same Mad Larry who accused Mark Gatiss of being a racist over the Unquiet Dead. They also subscribe to the theory that anything produced before 1979 was a work of genius and anything produced since is rubbish which is BULLSHIT.