10 Doctor Who Moments You Didn't See Coming

2. The First Regeneration

Doctor Who The Tenth Planet First Doctor regeneration
BBC Studios

There are many moments in the classic era that were probably quite surprising for fans at the time, from the true identity of The Watcher in Logopolis, to the Valeyard being alive at the end of The Ultimate Foe (we're still waiting for that one to be revisited, by the way).

But without question, the grandaddy of classic twists has to be the regeneration of First Doctor William Hartnell into Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, which, for many avid viewers of the show, was something of a shock cliffhanger.

Back in those days, regenerations were nowhere near as highly-publicised as they are today. In fact, as pointed out by The Guardian, some 1966 newspapers relegated the Troughton takeover news to a tiny paragraph at the bottom of a page.

Unlike today, the concept of recasting wasn't commonplace back then either, so we can only imagine how stunned the nation was when its favourite TV hero died, got a glowy face, and then changed into another dude.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!