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Doctor Who: The First Doctor

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Maybe it was because I still had much of the same setup leftover from the Second and Eleventh Doctor shoot that I pulled down the original because the simple setup I felt would work well in this case and also because I got a pretty good response with my portrait of Patrick Troughton.

William Hartnell is the one that started it all...before Matt Smith, before David Tennant...before Sylvester McCoy and Tom Baker, it was Hartnell's stuffy portrayal that created an entire legacy. He only stayed in the part for three years, 1963-1966, and only left because of failing health. He returned for one last engagement, in The Three Doctors, opposite Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton, before succumbing to his illness in 1975. Richard Hurndall did a decent turn as the First Doctor in 1983's The Five Doctors, the twentieth anniversary special where Hartnell was paid tribute to by having his ending lines from The Dalek Invasion of Earth open the special.

What else can I say about Hartnell's Doctor? Besides the obvious appreciation for where the show came from, his stories are a little harder to get into for those not just used to the new series Doctors but also who have fond memories of Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor. The First Doctor was almost downright untrustworthy in his first few serials and was hostile towards his first few companions. Also, because of the original direction of the series, Hartnell's era had an edge of a history lesson about it, with episodes such as Marco Polo and The Gunfighters going backwards in time and the viewers would learn. But, it was also during Hartnell's run that Doctor Who experienced its first wave of popularity, and it is in this time period that recurring foes the Daleks first made their appearances. In Hartnell's final serial The Tenth Planet, he would battle the Cybermen for the first time, who would go on to bedevil his successor Patrick Troughton.

There's a higher number of Hartnell episodes surviving than Troughton's, thanks in large part to the exporting of episodes to different countries. Although there's still gaps, some of them aren't as bad as they could be.

Much like the Troughton photograph, I chose a black and white route again because all of Hartnell's appearances on the show were in black and white. I thought about adding a nice sepia tone but as I went back and watched clips from his episodes, the crisp adventureness of black and white stood out more. I think I probably should have upped the blue filter a little more but I'll leave that for critique. I also added a slight film grain to give the photo that old television look. It also helped too because the figure used here had an odd red-ridge around the eyes, as though Hartnell has been crying, which is hidden by the tone of the picture.
Image size
3072x4608px 11.39 MB
Make
NIKON CORPORATION
Model
NIKON D3100
Shutter Speed
1 second
Aperture
F/4.0
Focal Length
90 mm
ISO Speed
200
Date Taken
Apr 22, 2012, 9:22:26 PM
© 2012 - 2024 Batced
Comments1
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zippymax's avatar
William Hartnell, the man the myth, the legend!