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

4. The Little Details That Are Wrong On Purpose

There are no shortage of docudramas about on thing or another that sink themselves by refusing to get anything wrong. But for the sake of a dramatic production, sometimes you have to sacrifice 'real' for the sake of 'accurate'. Case in point - the scene where William Hartnell's wife comes in to beg Verity Lambert to ease off some of the stress from Bill because he has Arteriosclerosis and can't keep up with the workload. In reality of course they didn't know that at that point. All they knew was that he was getting increasingly irritable and having more trouble remembering his lines. Also he'd developed an unfortunate habit of pretending to be ill in order to get his way with directors (a habit that came back to haunt him in the worst possible way once he actually did start getting too ill for the workload later on.) The thing is, while reality says we didn't know that yet, the drama really needs us to do so. Throwing in a line after he was let go about how 'we found out later it was arteriosclerosis' would have been the worst scripting move possible, however accurate it might have been. For the drama of his remaining time to play out, we need to know at this point what exactly the pendulum swing over his head is. It allows us to understand his increasing frustration without needing it to be spelled out ham-handedly later on and it sets the stakes for what he's losing as he loses it. It's completely inaccurate and it's completely the right decision at that point in the script. Similarly, The Doctor's speech at the end of The Massacre. For the record, in real life he got it absolutely word perfect, Chesterton's name misremembered and all. In the drama he's misrepresented as having gotten things confused and all wrong, and while it may be an unforgivable character slight on Mr. Hartnell, it's a forgivable one as far as the drama goes because that's precisely the heightening of tension that was needed at that point in the script.