BW Media Spotlight

Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

In our last installment our new quartet came together though they have yet to full become a team. Meanwhile, the enemy is finally going to show us how powerful he is and how desperate the measures will be to stop him. I apologize for nothing. I needed an intro.

Since I’m not sure what else to say and I need a bit more padding to the intro, let’s talk William Hartnell. Officially on TV there have been two other actors to play the First Doctor, not counting body doubles. Hartnell passed away in 1975, his last appearance being in “The Three Doctors”, with his Doctor stuck in a “time eddy” due to his failing health not allowing him to do more than sit and recite lines. Richard Hurndall would take over for “The Five Doctors”. He was a bit taller and didn’t quite have the same presence as Hartnell, but he did a good enough job under the circumstances. David Bradley did a better job, as he had just previously played Hartnell himself in the biopic An Adventure In Time And Space, which chronicled the making of the show. It’s also where they got the First Doctor’s TARDIS set, having been built for the TV movie and the original set long gone. He also joins Colin Baker, David Tennant (though non-canonized thanks to the live-action series restarted, he was a random voice in “Scream Of The Shalka” an animated serial on the Doctor Who website), and Peter Capaldi (who he worked with in his first Doctor crossover) as having done roles on Doctor Who prior to becoming the Doctor. There’s also Stephen Noonan in the Big Finish dramas, who did better in actual clips from the story than in early promotional clips. I think Bradley has taken over but I’m not as informed on Big Finish as I want to be.

The fact that Chris Chibnall tried to take his spot as the first chronological Doctor in order to retcon his spot into Who lore is a travesty, and I don’t care how good friends they are, Davies not fixing this is just another in a long line of mistakes.

We’ll get to the Companions in later installments. It’s time to get back to the story.

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