Doctor Who: Ranking All 12 Doctors From Worst To Best
8. The First Doctor (William Hartnell)
1268913STORIES: 6
ALIENNESS: 5
HEROISM: 4
LIKABILITY: 3
LEGACY: 11
OVERALL SCORE: 29
The Daleks may have been the making of Doctor Who, but William Hartnell was keen to point out that they almost certainly would not have survived on their own. He argued that, “they need Doctor Who to outwit and confound their every move.” But, pitted against such a popular foe, the character of the Doctor had to be played to perfection in order to prevent talks of a standalone Dalek series from going beyond the planning stage.
Hartnell set the bar high for his successors with his work rate and commitment to the brand, and it paid off big time. Despite the irascibility of the First Doctor, Hartnell was flooded with fan mail almost from the get-go. The actor himself may have been well liked, but the First Doctor was a curmudgeonly, pig-headed character, and not in a cute, forgivable, or funny way.
He could be genuinely scary, especially in his earlier episodes, and so the First Doctor scores low on likability. His guardedness and secretiveness meant that the audience, like his companions, were never entirely sure whether he could be trusted. Consequently the likes of Ian, Barbara, and Steven became the heroes of the show.
Hartnell wanted to be remembered for having brought magic to the character beyond the grumpy, on the surface, façade, and he achieved that in spades. The magical legacy of Hartnell is no better expressed than in the 50th anniversary drama, An Adventure in Space and Time.