The following post contains Doctor Who nerdery. I don’t think I have (m)any regular readers - not least because I don’t really manage to post much - but this is probably a niche post amongst niche posts…

Anyway - you’ll recall I’m working my way through Doctor Who from the beginning…

And then… all of a sudden I’ve made it to the end of the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton years… (basically all the black and white Doctor Who) Tom Baker is fondly remembered as the actor who played Who the longest… but as the series went on the number of episodes per series dropped quite considerably.

The 1960s series were marathons not sprints, with 40+ episodes per series. I don’t think I’d realised this before (because these episodes weren’t really repeated when I was a kid) - and it means those early actors did as many episodes as some of the later ones did.

It’s also why working your way through every episode is quite the challenge. Luckily for me, someone at the BBC decided the best way to help me out was to delete lots of the original episodes…

There’s a lot of Who missing - even episodes that feel like they’d be a dead cert for preservation - the first regeneration from Willam Hartnell to Patrick Troughton… gone.

Audio recordings do remain for most of the missing episodes, and as a result - lots are being recreated as animated episodes. And all credit to BritBox - they have the bulk of these available, as well as a small number of ‘orphaned’ episodes, where only one or two survive. If you’re playing along at home - you’ll find these under “Extra Episodes” - and they’re not quite in the right order…

I’ve been making decent use of this episode guide to fill in the gaps and try to work out what the hell is going on…

And it turns out more animated episodes are coming…

In fact I’ve ended up ordering that one and The Faceless Ones AND Fury from the Deep on DVD… generally because I’m really enjoying Patrick Troughton as the second Doctor. I’ve never seen any of his episodes before. I was able to watch a couple of Hartnell stories as a kid - and the BBC did show some Jon Pertwee episodes as repeats too… but in general black and white Who was a bit of a mystery…

…and is black and white Doctor Who any good?

Well - yes actually. The show is smart, inventive and fun. You can see why it was such a huge hit back in the 1960s. It’s also fun watching it knowing more about the Doctor than he or the writers do…

The pacing can be slow… there’s one episode in the first Dalek story where they spend the whole 23 minutes crossing one chasm. That was a sound stage. That didn’t look too frightening to me… but watching one episode a day helps with the slow pacing.

Oh - and then sometimes things happen at an artificially fast pace… so, they decide to write the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan out of the show… so in just three episodes she falls in love with a random freedom fighter and is left with him to fend for herself in a post-apocalyptic London that’s been destroyed by the Daleks…

It’s also fun that in the original two series, a lot was made of the “educational” nature of time travel, teaching kids about the Aztecs and the Romans. The show literally alternates between space story/history story throughout the first two seasons.

However, by the end of series three and into series four, the show clearly pivots and becomes almost entirely sci-fi focused - with real hints of shows like The Avengers in episodes like “The War Machine” at the end of series three… where bizarrely a evil computer refers to the Doctor as Doctor Who… when no-one else ever does.

It’s interesting that even back then, there were fights with producers and writers. There were entire companions written out because the producers didn’t want to use them anymore… and who just “went off into the countryside to recover and won’t appear on screen to say goodbye…”

This is even more jarring because with the gaps in the episodes that remain, companions can appear and disappear at an alarming speed, with some not actually surviving on tape at all.

There are definitely points where the writing quality wobbles, and the show seems a little lost… but the joy of Who is the almost constant reinvention. So this story isn’t great - but just wait for the next one…

The effects work is generally great considering the budgets available, and limitations of the time. Plus imagine watching on a small 4:3 black and white television set… (probably from behind the sofa)

I think the era of the first Doctor is something I’m watching as much for completeness and because it’s interesting televisual history… whereas the stories with the second Doctor are often much more engaging, interesting and fun. Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, to me, feels like the blueprint that other actors followed, and the production team around him create what feels like Doctor Who to me.

Having reached the end of black and white Who recently - the change from Patrick Trougton to Jon Pertwee introduced not just a new actor, but colour as well, and I’m a little sad that my black and white Who odyssey is over to be honest.

I wasn’t a massive fan of the Pertwee episodes as a child, but have seen a fair few. From this point on my Who project is on more familiar territory.

However, I’ve not quite spent ten years in the Doctor’s company - as I’ve only made it from 1963 - 1970. Blimey, time travel can really take it out of you… And I know that the 1970s was probably the show’s strongest decade, when it was a much loved household name, a show that was universally popular and watched by almost everyone.

So I’ve got a long way to go yet…

I’m sure I’ll have something to say about the Pertwee years when I’m done with them in the next few months…