It is clear that Susan is an important figure, again as the Doctor explains: ‘Findooclare would rule! Findooclare would be Queen in a world greater than any your minds could dream of. But her people are enslaved by the Paladin hordes.’
Ian Chesterton thinks that they (the Doctor and Suzanne) are both mad – and says as much – whereupon the Doctor states, ‘You would insult a Lord of the House of Doclare’, meaning him. Then Doctor Who’s greatest secret is explained away in one sentence from Suzanne: ‘[Findooclare] It’s a name he has for me. I was a baby when the Paladins attacked our world and he saved me. We got away in this machine… It was the first our people made.’
If one were to put this into context of the present Doctor Who mythology, it would suggest that ‘the ship’ was indeed a Tardis, which would make both the Doctor and Susan [Suzanne] Time Lords, maybe at the time of the Time Wars. What it concludes, answering one of the great unexplained questions of the show, is that the Doctor and Suzanne are not related and that she is simply just another companion, albeit an important one, and indeed one that feels so incredibly thankful and affectionate towards him, because he managed to save her while the rest of her race – the Doctor’s own race – perished. So the Doctor’s first ever companion is a fellow Time Lord? Yes, and an important one. If we follow the first draft of the script, Suzanne is the one who is hiding and, following ‘Human Nature/The Family of Blood’ idea, it is Susan who has taken human form to hide from the enemy, the enemy that need a Time Lord and the Tardis. So what important Time Lord was Suzanne and why did the Doctor eventually let her slip away into obscurity (in a later story ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’)?
The simple answer is that she may well have been the Queen – not the President – of Gallifrey, and eventually the Doctor allowed her to stay human and find love (see again ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’) and protect her evermore, or leave her safe until it was her time to reclaim her throne.
Newman needed the whole section about the home planet and death threats cut out. He didn’t want to set the Doctor up as a bad guy and didn’t want his past – and that of Suzanne’s – explained away, he wanted it left unknown, and it has remained that way for 50 years.
Someone Newman sent a six-page story/character breakdown to, along with a copy of the first draft script of ‘An Unearthly Child’, was Tony Williamson. Tony had written for The Avengers among other things, but decided not to take part in the series because of other work commitments. He preserved the script until his death, ten years after which his widow sold it to a private collector, whereupon it was used in research for this book.
Once the script was rewritten (with the character names changed), the six-page brief of the show, with final character names and descriptions, was sent out with the final draft of the script ‘An Unearthly Child’. And there the great mystery began: the aliens’ history had been taken out; we learn that they are exiles from their own planet but nothing else. Who is he, Doctor Who? And what relationship does Susan really have with the Doctor?
And there was the liquid gold that captured children’s imaginations. The intrigue and legend began. Of course, Newman was absolutely right to make changes and create a mystery that complemented the title of the show; however, it is fitting that only now, around the 50th anniversary of the show, we truly find out what the relationship between the Doctor and Susan really was.
The Daleks are a major part of the continued success of Doctor Who. After the introductory pilot, the first story’s viewing figures were poor – between two and three million people – which was a disaster by BBC standards. And, although 4.4 million people allegedly sat down to watch the first ever episode, the caveman story ‘The Tribe of Gum’ lost some of those viewers as the story went on. Verity Lambert confessed that the drop was the result of a poor choice of opening story. In interview, she stated that she would never have commissioned a caveman story, but the decision was not hers at the time.
However, after the first story was over, the second brought in the Doctor’s most fearsome enemies and suddenly viewing figures soared to between eight and ten million viewers. Children in playgrounds the length and breadth of Britain were shouting the word ‘Exterminate’ and Dalekmania gripped the nation for the first time.
Newman was outraged. The show had very quickly fallen into the ‘bug-eyed monster’ category that he was so keen to avoid. Lambert denied the accusation, saying that the Daleks were humans who lived inside protected casings in the future. Newman wasn’t happy, but, as the show progressed, he admitted that the Daleks were what made such an enormous success of the programme.
The Daleks were the brain child of ex-comedy scriptwriter Terry Nation, an influential Welshman (not unlike Russell T Davies, who is primarily associated with the blockbuster return of the show in the new millennium), who was lucky to write for the show in the first place. When Whitaker approached Nation through his agent, the writer was in Nottingham writing a stage show for comedian Tony Hancock. Hancock apparently joked, ‘How dare the BBC approach a writer of your calibre to write for children’s television!’
That should have been the end of it, but that night Nation and Hancock had a huge row and the writer found himself on a train back to London the following day with no job. Remembering the offer made through his agent, he called her and asked if she had turned the job down yet. She said that she hadn’t had a chance to do so. So he changed his mind. He wrote a treatment for Whitaker, who loved it, and history was made.
Although Nation came up with the idea of the Daleks and wrote clear instructions as to what they would broadly look like, it was Raymond Cusack who would design the first Dalek. His idea however, was too expensive to make, so he sat down with two other designers, Jack Kine and Bernard Wilkie, and together they designed the armoured pepper-pot much loved by Doctor Who audiences for the next 50 years.
Surely though, William Hartnell had something to do with the success of Doctor Who in the early days? He was, after all, the first actor to play the part, and his interpretation must have been most important, providing the blueprint that his successors would follow?
The Doctor was born way back in those original reports, where Sydney Newman ensured that the character would prove to be different from anything else ever created. The Doctor would be a ‘crotchety old man’ and the audience would only know that he and Susan were exiles from their own planet.
Along with Verity Lambert, Newman had another major success on his hands. In fact, when David Tennant made his final farewell as the Doctor on 1 January 2010, the Doctor is seen attending a book signing of a female descendant of a lady the Doctor nearly married when he was made human (like Susan?). When one glances at the book jacket of the lady’s book, it is clear her name is ‘Verity Newman’.
Doctor Who was a joint effort from many different talented people, not just the programme makers, and one cannot underestimate the influence of the great William Hartnell.
Hartnell was the first ever star of the show, the man who would convince the viewing public to suspend disbelief for a while and travel through the universe with him in his time machine. That gentle mocking smile, that knowing twinkle in the eye were all Hartnell’s, and many of the first fans of the show will maintain, to this day, that Hartnell was the very best Doctor Who. Indeed, he was the most mysterious. But how did Doctor Who change Hartnell’s life, both personally and professionally?
An interesting question, and one that requires a detailed answer…
‘But what sort of man is he? You must judge for yourself.’
Time Enough for Love
Robert