Doctor Who: 10 Reasons Why An Adventure In Space And Time Was The Best Drama Of 2013

10. David Bradley

In many ways, An Adventure In Space And Time is the story of William Hartnell (see the next point for the counter argument). To that end, David Bradley was absolutely brilliant in the role. Where we expected to see the story of the creation of a children's television show we instead got the story of a man who had long since given into bitterness; A man who was offered a second chance to connect with the world and to find love and happiness through his ability to connect to children, and who then had that chance slowly, cruelly ripped away as ill health and time took back everything that he had glimpsed as being possible. Growing up it was easy to accept the general consensus that William Hartnell was just difficult to work with, and while his ill health was sad it was ultimately a good thing for the show that he was let go and replaced by Patrick Troughton, because Patrick Troughton was awesome. While it's true that there's an argument to be made in support of that sentence, what we've all been ignoring for 47 years is that William Hartnell had a valid point of view too. By making William Hartnell so recognizably flawed, human, sympathetic and relatable David Bradley made it impossible for us to continue thinking of William Hartnell as nothing more than the unreasonable jerk who was the butt of Anneke Willes T-shirt anecdote. It is physically impossible to watch An Adventure In Space And Time and not, by the end, love William Hartnell. That is almost entirely down to David Bradley. Mention must also be made of the decision to not have Mr. Bradley attempt to directly mimic William Hartnell's voice. Doing so would have made it too easy to view him as a charicature rather than as a real person; keeping him at a distance when we needed to get as close as possible to him.