Day 113: The Dancing Floor

The Doctor is barely in this one, reduced to a hand moving game pieces across a puzzle. The story behind why this is happening is actually quite interesting. William Hartnell is not a well man, and he is also not getting along with his producer John Wiles, who is reducing Hartnell's role in the series because it is becoming more and more apparent that he is unable to cope with the making the show. And so, when this story came about, it was suggested that the Doctor would reappear with a new face, allowing Hartnell to be quietly written out of the programme. This was vetoed by the head of serials at the BBC, and thus John Wiles left the series in protest. On the one hand, you can see why they kicked him out, because he was being unfair to this older actor, who was actually capable, it was just that his health was failing him. But that doesn't mean that he was wrong, because the problem was still there of a show that had a protagonist who was not in his best of health. This is still an issue, and it needs to be addressed quite soon.

Meanwhile, because I feel that I never properly said so, I would like to say farewell to John Wiles. He's overseen some very good stories in his tenure, although to be honest he was given the unworkable brief of a 12 part Dalek serial, and his tenure was unfortunately short due to the aforementioned Hartnell problem. Yet, he still managed to pull things off and produce some fine television. It's a shame that his era remains mostly missing from the BBC archives, as an awful lot of it is absolutely brilliant, leading the programme into a slightly darker time.