Digging Through Time - Doctor Who's oldest stars.

A few weeks ago The Thief of Baghdad (1940) was on with an appearance by Mary Morris.  I know her better as one of the Number 2s from The Prisoner, but she later appeared in Kinda, marking a huge 45 year gap between her first credited appearance in film (1937) and her eventual appearance in Doctor Who.

Part of a game we play is spotting people who have been in Doctor Who in other things to which we have taken to shouting 'take a shot'.  It's possible to cheat using the IMDB comparison page but it's more entertaining to see how many you can get out of a single programme.  Films like Flash Gordon are particularly lucrative and likely to leave you blind if you take the game too literally.

This huge amount of time between starting a screen career and eventually appearing in Doctor Who seemed enough to remark upon, and led to various questions.  What is the longest gap between someone starting their film career and later appearing in Doctor Who?  Likely to be closely linked, who was the earliest born person to appear in Doctor Who.  And what age was the oldest person to have appeared in Doctor Who?

Mary Morris is a contender on the first point, as it's actually quite difficult to immediately think of someone who was on screen before the '40s who was likely to be doing Doctor Who in the 1980s.  Taking a punt on Richard Todd who also appeared in Kinda has no such luck, only a few uncredited roles (1937) prior to 1949.  And it's these early credited roles that hold more weight as being verifiable in my opinion, so unless I say otherwise, I am basing all my claims on credited roles only.

A good a place to start as any other is with William Hartnell, born 1908 his first uncredited part was 1932 and his first credited role in 1933.  It's worth noting that Hartnell really wasn't that old when he started Dr Who aged 55.  There are many older actors born early 1900s that were to appear in Dr Who.  It's still a solid place to start as some digging was to find that 1933 is about the earliest point that many people in Doctor Who entered the film industry.  Despite Hartnell not being very old, there are not a wealth of people appearing in earlier roles doing Doctor Who.  Furthermore, these people tended to appear in early Doctor Who, so Mary Morris's 45 year record is no where near being under threat.

Around 1930 the silent era was dying and talkies became more popular.  It seems many actors simply didn't make the transition to vocal acting on film or met a language barrier being non-english.  I'm no expert, this would be my guess just looking at IMDB and early cinema, there are distinctly more foreign films in these earlier times and many actors' careers end and new ones begin.  1933 is already 30 years before Doctor Who first aired, and pushing back the years to find people appearing in earlier films who would later appear in Doctor Who is quite a challenge.  People in the middle of a career during the '30s would likely be coming to an end when Doctor Who was starting.

It's tricky just trying to think of people who are old enough, early Doctor Who doesn't actually have that many very old actors in it.  They look old, but aren't very old.  Hartnell was 55, and there are only a few older than him.  Picking obviously old people doesn't often pay off.  Michael Gough seems to have been old forever, but was born after Hartnell in 1916 and didn't appear in film until 1946.  That's not even close to our goal.  Unconvincing Dalek-made double for the Doctor in The Chase played by Edmund Warwick seemed a good stab but he was only a year older than Hartnell but didn't appear in TV/film until 1951.  To find people who were already credited in film by the early '30s requires us to dig very deep, it seems thirty years or more prior to Doctor Who even first airing really is in the distant past.

Along the way were plenty of personalities and actors worth mentioning even if they didn't make it as the oldest or earliest actors in Doctor Who.

George Coulouris was born 1903 and first in film 1933.  He appeared in the Keys of Marinus.  Notable for being in the only crossover Doctor Who has with Citizen Kane.  He worked alongside Orson Welles several times but ended up in the Keys of Marinus - groan!  All this does come back as Coulouris appears as a character in the BF audio Invaders from Mars set in 1938 which offers the in-joke of Orson Welles asking "George, what are you doing with those keys?"

Vivienne Bennett was born in 1905 and played Elizabeth I in The Chase (1965).  Her first credited acting role was in 1929 Le Secret du Cargo.  Trying to find earlier roles is becoming more and more obscure but now we're into the '20s where things get even trickier.

Esmond Knight born 1906 had his first credited role in The Blue Knight in 1928.  Now we're really pushing it back a few years.  He appeared in The Space Pirates in 1968 which a square 40 years between his first film and Doctor Who appearance, but still falls short of Mary Morris's record which now seems unlikely to be beaten.

HMS Hood

More curiosities, Esmond Knight appeared in Sink the Bismark! as the Captain of HMS Prince of Wales.  This is notable as, in reality, Esmond Knight served on HMS Pince of Wales as a Lieutenant when the Bismark was fought during WW2.  He received injuries that left him partially blind for the rest of his life.  The same engagement saw the HMS Hood sunk with all but three survivors.  Coincidentally, Jon Pertwee was among a handful reassigned from the Hood at very short notice only a couple of days prior to the battle.  After the war, the two apparently became friends.

I feel Roy Brent is worthy of mention as, while his entire career is largely uncredited bit-parts, he is the only person in Doctor Who to have appeared in the 1933 King Kong.

I find it quite astonishing that someone who appeared in the original King Kong film, was later in Monster of Peladon and even appeared in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em.  As it happens, no one appearing onscreen in either the 1976 or 2005 remakes of King Kong have been in Doctor Who either new or old.  I'm suspicious that it's not the same person, but various websites do seem to support it.  No one from Metropolis (wouldn't that be great?) or Casablanca has ever been in Doctor Who, though four people from The Third Man have been.  So it's hard to guess what films will give a result.  And for the sake of pure trivia, Tutte Lemkow is the only person in Doctor Who to have appeared as the titular character of an multiple Academy Award winning film.  Who, what?  Why, he was the Fiddler on the Roof!

So after much searching I put forward the following names to answer the questions we started out trying to answer.  I may be mistaken and there could be exceptions in the New Series with which I am less familiar.

Drum roll for... Jack Bligh appeared as Gaptooth in The Smugglers.  He stands out as the earliest born person to have appeared in Doctor Who, being born in 1890 making him already 73 by the time Doctor Who first aired and 76 by the time of his appearance.  He doesn't appear in TV/film credited roles prior to the '60s but had been acting and employed by film companies in various roles.  He travelled quite widely and also fought in France during WW1.

So who was the person to have the longest gap between their first credited role and appearance in Doctor Who?

Sticking strictly to credited roles, Leslie French is the person we found to have the biggest gap between their first appearance in film and role in Doctor Who.  Born in 1904 his first credited role was in 1935 but it wasn't until 1988 at the age of 84, that he appeared in Silver Nemesis as Lady Peinforte's 'Mathematician'.  This also puts a 53 year gap between his first credit and Doctor Who appearance smashing the record of Mary Morris!

And finally, the earliest credited appearance of an actor in film that was later in Doctor Who?  Frederick Schrecker as Julius Silverstein in Web of Fear.  Born 1892, almost a challenger for the oldest person to have been in Doctor Who, his first credited part in 1926 in Der Feldherrnhugel, a silent Austrian film.

We have the earliest born person to appear in Doctor Who, the longest credited career prior to Doctor Who, and the earliest appearance in film of anyone in Doctor Who.  I guess that's it.

Or is it?

When starting this I decided I would only focus on the credited roles to define an actor's career, as that's when an actor starts having speaking roles and appear in the credits.  I had not really considered the possibility of people having very early credited careers that would go on to have have uncredited roles in Doctor Who.  Not that I intended any assumption that Doctor Who was somehow the pinnacle of their career worked towards meaning they obviously had to have a credited role.

Nonetheless, a huge achievement is shown by Vera Lennox.  She isn't the oldest person to have appeared in Doctor Who by some way, being born in 1904, but her first credited appearance is an astonishing 1921 in silent comedy Tilly of Bloomsbury.  She wouldn't appear in Dr Who until State of Decay, a staggering 59 years later.  Her role in State of Decay is an uncredited role as a 'peasant', but it is no less amazing a span of time and it seems churlish to discount it on this basis.  If you were to take Vera Lennox into account, then she is both the earliest person with a credited film role to have been in Doctor Who and the person with the longest span between that role and appearing in Doctor Who.

Battle of Covent Garden on Location

The part of Web of Fear I was most looking forward to was the battle scene in Covent Garden, as it sounded fairly grand from descriptions but the soundtrack and photos only gave a hint.  While parts of Web of Fear do seem repetitive now we can appreciate almost the whole story, a risk of having any long lost classic returned to the archive (see Tomb of the Cybermen), the battle, as the only location filming in the story, stands up as a, exciting and ambitious piece of filming at a standard which would be seen again in The Invasion.

The story is surprisingly accurate in its use of locations.  Lethbridge-Stewart describes them as approaching the station from Sheldon Street and Neal Street, and these are the exact streets used in the programme. Not commonly seen in programmes generally other than when using famous landmarks.  This makes it very easy to find the locations, and being central London they are unlikely to be greatly altered...

Yeti approach from the North via Neal street...

And clearly recognisable though now heavily paved with bollards.  The camera pans left, to Sheldon Street where more Yeti approach from the west.

The photo is set slightly back from the TV shot, but the large entrance on the right side of the street is visible.  And just up to the left are the distinctive windows behind the soldiers as they head towards the Brewers Yards for safety.

Wooden gates to the Yard have been replaced with gates that are often open, but a barrier is further inside preventing entry.  While avoiding going into the yard, the building opposite the gates can be identified.

Although entry to the Brewers Yard is unlikely, some identifiable features can still be seen.  The first shot inside the yard has a doorway that has since been bricked up.  The door remains barely visible in the shot below where is is positioned on the left between the barrier and the car, and has a couple of vents where the door once stood.

Further shots are difficult to draw meaningful comparisons, other than this one of the Yeti first appearing from the back of the Yard.  The large warehouse entrance and smaller door on the right both identifiable in the zoomed in shot below.

And the battle is on!  Fierce fighting follows with scenes that surpass expectations.  A hugely enjoyable moment in the Web of Fear that makes me very happy it was not in the only remaining missing episode!

Run! It's the Yeti!

As Web of Fear creeps gradually closer on DVD, I'm keen to look a bit more at the Yeti themselves.  I've recently bought some old Harlequin Miniatures Yeti hoping they could be used in some sort of Web of Fear game (I've even found 28mm scale tube station scenery online).  The miniatures themselves are fairly generic looking, lacking the pear shaped body of the Abominable Snowmen version (below) and the facial features of the Web version.

The costume was changed for their second appearance after a gap of only two stories since Abominable Snowmen, at least in part because the originals were too cuddly.  They lost a lot of weight around the waist and gained a large mouth and glowing eyes, also bigger claws to hold the web-guns.  Web of Fear as a story seems like the creation of a D&D random events table; "I roll a die, the story takes place in the London Underground...(roll a die)... and it's the Yeti, armed with... (roll a die)... err, web-guns"

The change in costume is clearly shown in episode 1 as the museum yeti is reactivated.  The Discontinuity Guide lists this as a 'goof' commenting "not intentional surely".  It's clearly intentional, as the Abominable Snowmen costume was obviously brought to the studio and a transition scene filmed so that it morphs into the Web of Fear version.  In fact this is one of a very few times that a monster costume changing is actually acknowledged/explained on screen.  It could be to do with these stories originally airing only weeks apart, but compare to Silurians and Warriors of the Deep, or the reworked versions of several New Series monsters which are not commented upon.

Some of the best photos of the Yeti costume come from set photos on location rather than the story themselves.  All were taken around Covent Garden on Sunday, 17th December 1967.  Probably a quiet morning, judging by the fact the only person around is one guy walking a dog.

From this photo though you get a good impression of size, and they are pretty big.  John Levene is probably under one of those.  Long after filming I saw an original Yeti prop in 1993 at the previously mentioned Museum of the Moving Image.  And t'was a sad sight, little over 25 years later it was terribly moth-eaten looking and balding.  It's clearly a Web of Fear yeti, looking at the eyes and overall shape.  It has an energy sphere lodged in its chest, these can't be seen in any photos from Web of Fear I've seen so if the suits all had them hidden among their fur it shows how much hair loss this yeti has suffered.  There are photos from filming of Abominable Snowmen that clearly show them having an energy sphere in the chest when the costume is only partially being worn.

Recently, I thought that by now, this costume is about 45 years old and surely will have nearly completely disintegrated.  Some online searches found recent photos of a yeti at the Doctor Who Experience looking almost in the same condition as my photo, but I'm not sure if it's the same one.  In fact, the Experience one might have more fur on the head.  But either way, there's still at least one survivor, and 60s monster costumes are quite rare.

Family photo; husband and wife?

As great as the Yeti look, I'm not sure they would work on modern TV, they're just a bit too cuddly looking (particularly when one puts his arm around another above) and would seem more like a huge teddy bear than actually menacing.  They don't look like much in Downtime, but that doesn't have the budget to give them a fair crack.  I think the black and white does them a lot of favours, perhaps the atmospheric approach taken to older stories works too especially the claustrophobic gloom of the tube.  They certainly look more imposing in the dark than out in the streets.  Still a classic monster which I'll be coming back to shortly when my miniatures are delivered.

Omni-rumour of the World

If this time last year you'd told me we would find both Enemy of the World and Web of Fear complete before the end of 2013 I wouldn't have given it much credibility, it wouldn't have even got my hopes up. Previously I've written about the rumours around Power of the Daleks, but it's just that, a collection of rumours and supposed conversations. These two stories appeared rather unexpected up until the days prior to the announcement.

Where this leaves what is now being described as the 'omnirumour' I'm not sure, but there are very strong rumours that Marco Polo is among further finds, at least one person claiming they've recovered multiple copies.  It's the way, you wait decades for a missing story and three copies appear at once (supposedly).  I also mentioned the fuel added to rumours by the disbelief in BBC statements because they're clearly designed to mislead.  This is especially the case after the reveal of EotW and WoF as denials were put out in the days prior to the announcement and even the company led by Phil Morris (the man scouring these archives abroad) flatly denied ever holding any material.  The result is that no rumour can be quashed, people just don't believe denials by once trusted people in the know and pick apart their wording for any ambiguity. That someone put in a Freedom of Information request to force out emails about missing material from the BFI shows the desperation some fans are showing to get solid answers, which if we're honest they have no actual right to have; the result was nothing useful learned and probably a number of very annoyed people involved in the recovery process.  That said, the BBC seems to be a very leaky ship spilling out quite a lot of rumours that turn out to be true, even on the production of the New Series episodes.

If the Omnirumour is to be believed in full, as Ian Levine first claimed many months ago, they've found almost everything - 90 episodes.  That defies credibility.  In recent months I've seen almost every missing story being suggested as having been found, other than the Ice Warriors which is not long out on DVD with animated episodes.  Rumours seem to be getting increasingly bizarre, apparently Phil Morris isn't responsible for all the finds, bits of Dalek Masterplan have been found on very early off-air recordings.  But episodes 11 and 12 are stuck together and separating them will be very difficult.  

My feeling is that there are more episodes to come, there could be quite a few if the claims that Phil Morris has recovered thousands of film cans from Africa.  But with a stock that large it will take time to open the cans and check the contents, and then find out if the contents can actually lead to something recoverable.  It wouldn't be the first time that what is in a can doesn't match the label on the can, and it is possible that the contents have spoiled leaving them unwatchable.  Though there's not just Doctor Who to enjoy, I've heard that Adam Adamant episodes have been found, and I'd like to see those too.  So hopefully, fans of many shows will have some surprises.

Both Enemy of the World and Web of Fear were available right off the bat for £10 on iTunes, that's quite magnificent when you think of it.  Never has a missing episode been announced and then made immediately available and restored.  Compare to the second episode of Underwater Menace announced a couple of years ago which is yet to receive a release.  I didn't bother buying them on iTunes because I'd rather have them on DVD.  Clearly it suits all those involved for people to buy the download and then get the proper DVD release, but I'm happy to wait as my first viewing on DVD on a big TV will undoubtedly be better than any download on a computer.  Excited as I am for these stories, I can wait.  Knowing they're safe at the BBC and restored is enough.

Enemy of the World was a story I knew nothing about, beyond it having a duplicate of the Doctor called Salamander.  I think I'm going to have to watch it again to take it all in actually.  The whole production was of a high standard, clearly some money had gone into it, and it shows what a loss some of these episodes are.  Some of the set materials in the underground base were of such a complex standard and seen for such a short period, I feel sure they must have been taken from another production.  The first episode was quite wild with a helicopters and a hovercraft on the beach and introducing Salamander speaking from the UN, Troughton putting on a dubious accent.  Episode three is probably the weakest, which is why this story has been overlooked in the past, with a small budget someone is held prisoner in a corridor saving the cost of a cell.  It's six episode story, it has padding.  Milton Johns is wonderfully slimy and over the top camp.  But the twist reveal of the underground base with people tricked into living out an apocalypse is great and unexpected, also it pre-dates the likes of Invasion of the Dinosaurs by quite a few years.  Note that Enemy of the World is written by David Whitaker, Invasion of the Dinosaurs seems to heavily borrow from that with the lead villain being called 'Whitaker'...  Overall a great story, a great find and I just can't get the image of Troughton puffing away on that cigar.

We have to wait a lot longer for Web of Fear (end of February 2014).  It's not clear exactly why, when Enemy of the World was rushed to DVD three months earlier (late November 2013) the same could not be done for Web; both were released simultaneously on iTunes.  It makes sense that Enemy is released first as it's episode 6 cliffhanger feeds into Web of Fear, but the gap has led to speculation that they have also recovered episode 3 and have been trying, and possibly failing depending on the rumour, to restore it for the DVD, or maybe they are preparing a higher quality reconstruction than that provided on iTunes.  Still that's the one I'm really excited to see, but I'm happy to wait for the DVD.

Web of Fear

So the blog has been unused for a bit after a very busy period, after which I didn't get back to it. The second half of series 6 has come and gone, and I suppose my thoughts will go up about that. The christmas special didn't have much of anything about it but I'll think of something.

But for now, I'm stepping back to look at the Web of Fear. I have the audio, but today I saw the first episode for the first time and there's so much promise. The underground sets are of a very high quality as I have read elsewhere. It is often reported that London Transport denied them the right to film (or perhaps simply wanted too much money) and then complained after airing of the episode that they had made unauthorised use of the underground for filming. The sets are good, but Covent Garden doesn't have plain tiled walls, and did they really think the BBC managed to sneak a film crew down there and run around on the platform and tracks?

The Great Intelligence is back and using Yeti again. This made sense in the Himalayas so now I assume they are just copied from the single robot Yeti that Travers brought back. Well that was a wise thing to do. Who built these extra Yeti? Did the Intelligence possess a few people into doing its bidding like WOTAN did in the War Machines, and churn a few out? The Yeti have taken to the London Underground, their eyes now glow and they have guns that shoot out endless amounts of web that covers everything. Oh and there's a lethal fog that gets everyone else. This web fills up the Underground, disables explosives, kills people when sprayed at them and moves around at fairly high speeds of its own accord, going from Queensway to Chancery Lane in under half an hour. The fog hangs around and swallows people up without trace. Is it poison gas, produced by the Yeti's weapons or part of the Intelligence itself? The Yeti are a menace often in the background, sometimes characters venture out safely, sometimes there's one lurking around the next corner. It's the base-under-siege stuff that defines this era of Doctor Who.

Talking about oddities on the Underground, there are a few suspect moments where characters get around awfully fast between locations that are quite far apart, and the progression of the fog/web doesn't entirely make sense. It's also surprising the Victoria react with incredulity at the idea of underground trains, the Doctor says that it's 'a little before your time'. But wait, isn't she from London 1866 (Evil of the Daleks), the Underground first opened in 1863 and was having extensions made frequently. It's not as if they kept quiet about it prior to opening, so this doesn't make sense unless she's very sheltered. How long did the Daleks keep her locked up?

This is of course the first story with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, sorry, that's Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart. He obviously got a promotion after saving London and setting up UNIT, but he then never received another. UNIT were notorious for not promoting any of their staff, Benton went up twice, but no one else did. That, along with the minimal command structure and the high fatality rate of squaddies, it's a wonder that they got any recruits at all. Maybe the hazard pay was particularly generous. Anyway, heading off the point now but I'm inspired to write a whole piece about UNIT...

Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart is at his most credible in his first appearance. He takes the Doctor's story about a time and space machine in a Police Box almost at face value. Strangely his further encounters with alien life would seemingly make him more and more sceptical until unable to accept the bleeding obvious (The Three Doctors). In later years he would loosen up and become a bit more open minded.

The story builds gradually to a climax, I wish we had it all because it sounds wonderfully eerie on the soundtrack and the single remaining episode offers so much. The Great Intelligence has a plan to drain the Doctor's mind using a headset attached to some machine. But the Doctor has a plan to reverse this and drain the Intelligence by switching the wires around on the headset. Lets think about that for a moment. I really hope that there's a bit more to it than the Doctor suggests, because simply swapping the jacks around to put the 'output' into the 'input' and vice versa is a pretty silly way to beat a villain known as the 'Great Intelligence'. But unfortunately before this is put to the test, the Doctor's fellows trash the machine and the Intelligence's grip on London is broken. Defeated, but far from destroyed.

People complain about the ending of some New Series stories, but Web of Fear is held as a classic and yet has a very lazy way to defeat the villain, all in all. I suppose a lot of the difference is in the way the story is told and the characters that make up the piece. Troughton is amazing, and turns even rubbish into great entertainment, much as Matt Smith and co achieve at the moment on the show. Also the story would have been spread out over six weeks, and the somewhat dubious ending is the climax to 20 minutes of a single episode, rather that two hours as is the case from watching/listening in a single sitting. This isn't to say this *is* rubbish, it's got it all. A classic base-under-siege story, great monsters, wonderful creepy setting, a great cast with Prof Travers back (I've not mentioned him but Jack Watling puts in a great second appearance as the aged Travers) and introducing the Brigadier. It's a terrible shame that it is lost to us.