Episode: 4443
Title: HPR4443: The First Doctor, Part 3
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4443/hpr4443.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:45:15

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4443 for Wednesday the 13th of August 2025.
Today's show is entitled The First Doctor, Part 3.
It is hosted by Ahukah and is about 12 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is a continuing look at the first doctor who.
Hello, this is Ahukah, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode.
In our ongoing series on science fiction and fantasy and we're back with the good old
doctor, Dr. Who.
And continuing our look at the first doctor, he's the one who got all of this stuff going
for us.
And we're picking up where we left off in the previous episode.
We had just done a historical story called The Crusade.
Now you know that at this point in the development of Dr. Who, they were tended to alternate,
not strictly, but after a historical story, there would be a science fiction story.
Eventually they started to kind of let the historicals go away and just focus more on
the science fiction.
But this was still a children's educational program back then.
So we're back in space and this is a very clever story that plays with the idea of time travel,
you know, which oddly enough doesn't happen all that often in Dr. Who.
But this one is the clever idea.
The tardis has somehow jumped time tracks and the crew arrives before they arrive.
Now, if you find that an interesting concept, yeah, they do.
When they enter the museum, they see themselves as exhibits and figure out what must have
happened.
So they decide they have to stay there until time catches up with itself.
The museum was created by an invading race, the Morrox, to glorify their conquering empire,
though the empire is declining at this time.
The indigenous habitants of the planet, the Xerons, want to overthrow the Morrox and take
back their planet.
A lovely scene is when Vicki reprograms to computer guarding the armory to allow the
Xerons to grab the weapons they need.
Now this story did suffer from budget problems because other stories had turned out to be more
expensive.
So director Mervin Pinfield tried to economize by using just a few sets.
But William Hartnell and Morin O'Brien delivered good performances that helped to rescue
the story.
And that brings us to the chase.
Now, while the Tartus crew was leaving Xeros after the revolution, someone was watching.
The dolecs have now been able to build their own time in space machine and are out to
get the doctor.
This Terry Nation story has some very funny moments and each episode has a different setting.
Just the Tartus lands on a desert planet called Aridius and the dolecs land shortly afterwards.
They threaten the local inhabitants to get the doctor surrendered to them.
But the doctor and the companions manage to escape.
They know they need to find the right place to confront the dolecs who are closing in.
They show up first on top of the Empire State Building where Peter Purvis does a comic
bit reminiscent of Gomer Pyle.
It is on the deck of the Mary Celeste, which is of course a famous ship that was found
devoid of people down a haunted house featuring Frankenstein and Dracula.
And finally the planet Meccanus where they are captured by the Meccanoids.
They're placed in a cell and in the cell they meet a spaceship pilot who was also played
by Peter Purvis and the pilot's name is Stephen Taylor.
The dolecs land, they in the Meccanoids fight and the Meccanoids manage to wipe out the
dolecs.
The Tartus crew escape and get back to the Tartus, saddened by the fact that Stephen Taylor
didn't make it.
At the Tartus, Ian and Barbara tell the doctor they want to go home and leave the Tartus.
So the doctor programs the dolec ship and sends them back.
So now none of the original three companions are left, just the doctor.
This story was written by Terination who owned the rights to the dolecs and he had cashed
in big when Dolec Mania hit Britain.
All of the Dolec toys and merchandise paid him a royalty.
And he and the BBC were both hoping lightning would strike twice with the Meccanoids,
the Meccanoids never caught on and disappeared after this one story.
The dolecs though, they'd be here to stay, no doubt about it.
This story was very expensive to make, what with all the sets and props, and explains
why the preceding story the Space Museum had to be made cheaply.
And that brings us to the Time Nudler.
This is a historical story but with an interesting twist.
To begin with, it turns out that Stephen Taylor did make it and was in the Tartus when
they left Meccanos.
So now the doctor has two companions, Stephen and Vicki.
And they land in Northumbria in 1066.
Now if you've read your history, you know that Harold, the Saxon king of England,
had to march his army north to rebel a Viking invasion of Northumbria in which he was successful
before turning around a marching south where he was defeated by William the Conqueror.
So what is up here?
There is an abandoned monastery nearby and a monk seems to have moved in but something
doesn't quite add up.
The doctor discovers that this monk in 1066 is using a record player to play sounds of
groups of monks chanting.
And Stephen and Vicki discover that he has a Tartus.
Now this character has come to be known as the Meddling Monk, although that was never
an official name anywhere, but that's what fans call him.
And he's a classic character, a renegade time lord we presume because he has a Tartus.
That many fans would love to see brought back.
Now his plan, why is he here in 1066 in Northumbria?
Well, he wants to change the outcome so that William the Conqueror does not succeed.
And the way he's going to do that is he's going to wipe out the Vikings before they even
land on shore.
And he's got a big gun and, you know, that just blow him out of the water and so Harold
won't even have to march north.
Now, a doctor who sometimes likes to emphasize that you shouldn't try to change history.
Of course, other times that gets ignored, see, for instance, the fires of Pompeii.
Now, this is an excellent story and it illustrates the importance of good writing.
Because of the expense of the chase, this was made on a tight budget, but you don't notice
it as you go along because the story is suspenseful and keeps you moving.
Now this is a good time to talk about the movies.
The Dalek Mania running rampant in Britain, it should come as no surprise that the film
industry wanted a piece of the action.
An option was purchased to produce three films, but while the first was modestly successful,
the second show to drop off and the third movie was never made.
The biggest change is that the doctor is no longer an alien, but rather an eccentric
scientist played by Peter Cushing, the king of the B-movies.
Now, in 1964, Dalek Mania hit England, so you know, you shouldn't be surprised.
They took the basic story from William Hartnell's The Daleks, but recast all the roles with
Peter Cushing as Dr. Who, Roy Castle as Ian, Jenny Lyndon as Barbara, and Roberta Tovey
as Susan.
In this version, however, Susan is a much younger girl, not a teenager.
And Barbara is yet another older granddaughter of the doctor, and Ian is her boyfriend.
The movie is oddly put together.
The plot is different in several ways from the original TV story, but many of the specific
scenes are retained.
At one hour twenty-three minutes, it is shorter than the TV story, but for some reason,
I didn't seem to think anything was missing.
That's probably a statement of how with weakly serialized approach, they're tended to be
more padding.
It's not a critically regarded movie.
It was commercially successful to a degree that the same studio made a movie out of the
second Hartnell Dalek story.
If you have a little over an hour and need to fill it, this might be worth looking at.
But if you pass it by, you haven't really missed anything vital.
But if you want the pleasure, you can get it from the Internet Archive, and I've put
a link in the show notes.
So the second movie, Dalek's Invasion Earth 2150 AD, came out in 1966.
The second movie recapitulates the main plot points from the Hartnell serial.
But as in the first movie, the casting is different.
Peter Cushing and Roberta Tovy return as the doctor in Susan.
But in place of Barbara, there is now a niece Louise, played by Jill Curzon.
And in place of Ian, we now have a police constable played by Bernard Cribbins, who returns
many years later during David Tennant's run as Wilff, the grandfather of Donna Noble,
though he previously appeared in a small role in Voyage of the Damned as a newspaper
seller.
As in the first movie, many of the scenes from the TV serial are retained, but details
are changed.
It's interesting that Cribbins, playing a police constable, enters the Tartus thinking
it is a police call box, which is exactly what happened with Dodo Chaplin, who will meet
a little bit later.
At 1 hour 24 minutes, this is scarcely longer than the first movie, and like the first cannot
be considered essential.
No further movies about the dollics were made after this, which may be a commentary on
its success, as with the first movie this can be found on the Internet Archive if you wish
to view it.
And by the way, please allow me a brief aside at this point to suggest that if you aren't
already supporting the Internet Archive, you should consider doing so.
They provide an essential service to the Internet.
I personally send them $5 a month.
And you may not know this, but all of the audio files that Hacker Public Radio serves
up to you are hosted on the Internet Archive.
So they are really one of the big players behind the success of HPR and deserve to be supported.
So with that, this is Huka for Hacker Public Radio, signing off and is always encouraging
you to support FreeSoftware.
Bye bye!
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