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First Doctor's Younger Years?

FalTorPan

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How much is known -- either through the television stories or through other sources -- about the adventures of the first Doctor, prior to the Hand of Omega / Unearthly Child incident?
 
On TV? Basically nothing. In fact, the only information we have about the 1st Doctor pre-TV series is from Remembrance of the Daleks, and that's just a snippet.

From other sources? Only very slightly more than that.
 
well we know about when he looked into the Time Vortex, and he ran, never stopped running, I assume that year he did well at Galfirey High Sports Day in the running events
 
I've thought since the show returned that one of the easiest ways to do a Multi Doctor story and feature one of the earlier doctors would be for 10 to meet a much younger version of 1. If Hartnell could be replaced (in The Five Doctors) by an actor of Hartnell's age, he could be replaced even more seamlessly by a much younger actor, a la Ewan McGregor standing in for Alec Guinness.
 
The seventh Doctor novel Lungbarrow (available online here) contains, among other things, a lot of information about the Doctor's life on Gallifrey and his departure with Susan. There's another, not necessarily complementary, vision of the Doctor's life on Gallifrey in the fifth/seventh Doctor novel Cold Fusion. There are also a few short stories and novellas showing his travels with Susan prior to "An Unearthly Child."
 
I think the mystery is quite fun. You know nothing about him in the first episode, and we still don't know much more 45 years later.
 
I think the mystery is quite fun. You know nothing about him in the first episode, and we still don't know much more 45 years later.
that is pretty much the reason for the SJA, as im sure alot of you know, the first idea was a young Doctor series, featuring the young 1st Doctor on Galifery, but the idea was vetoed saying it would take the mystery out of the show, so they came up with the SJA instead.
 
Brendan mentioned a couple of novels. There's also Gary Russell's Divided Loyalties, which features a sequence involving the Doctor at the Academy.
 
I think the mystery is quite fun. You know nothing about him in the first episode, and we still don't know much more 45 years later.
that is pretty much the reason for the SJA, as im sure alot of you know, the first idea was a young Doctor series, featuring the young 1st Doctor on Galifery, but the idea was vetoed saying it would take the mystery out of the show, so they came up with the SJA instead.

I didn't know that actually. Very interesting to hear!
 
I think the mystery is quite fun. You know nothing about him in the first episode, and we still don't know much more 45 years later.

Exactly. The less mystery there is to the Doctor the less he appeals to me.
 
I think the mystery is quite fun. You know nothing about him in the first episode, and we still don't know much more 45 years later.
that is pretty much the reason for the SJA, as im sure alot of you know, the first idea was a young Doctor series, featuring the young 1st Doctor on Galifery, but the idea was vetoed saying it would take the mystery out of the show, so they came up with the SJA instead.

I didn't know that actually. Very interesting to hear!
ok, its a story you see around from time to time, think its on wikipedia (for what that means)

In 2006, Children's BBC expressed an interest in producing a Doctor Who spin-off. Their initial idea was "a drama based on the idea of a young Doctor Who", but Russell T. Davies vetoed this. "Somehow, the idea of a fourteen-year-old Doctor, on Gallifrey inventing sonic screwdrivers, takes away from the mystery and intrigue of who he is and where he came from," said Davies. He suggested instead a series based on the Doctor's former companion Sarah Jane Smith.[7]
 
I agree with RTD's on this, and I really like the show we got instead.

whats next, Supergirl's life on Krypton? (if you assume she left Kyprton as a teenager)
 
On a perhaps semi-related note, was the Doctor's first visit to Earth (when the TARDIS first appeared as a phone box) ever seen on TV, or was that adventure only referred to in dialogue? Do we know what happened during that occasion?
 
Well, since the Doctor expresses surprise that it's still a phone box after he departs Earth in "An Unearthly Child" (well, the surprise was actually in the next episode), one can presume it was that trip when the circuit got stuck.

Who knows whether it regularly took that form before then, though.
 
The police box shape is Doctor Who's first plot hole, of course: the TARDIS lands, with a working chameleon circuit, in a junkyard and disguises itself as... something that doesn't belong in a junkyard.
 
And don't forget there is some information that Susan tells us in the first episode. She names some of the other forms the TARDIS has taken before the police box, so it was on that visit that it broke down.

Also, in The Edge of Destruction, she mentions one or more of the worlds that they had visited before visiting the junkyard.
 
You know, when I think about ideas for a Doctor Who movie, I often feel like the only 2 ideas that are really large enough for the big screen are a Time War movie or the origins of the 1st Doctor-- meeting Susan's grandmother, having kids & grandkids, and then eventually the traumatic event that turned him from a beloved family man into a cranky space nomad. It would be a tough story to do well. But if done well, I imagine it would be the greatest Doctor Who story ever told.
 
The police box shape is Doctor Who's first plot hole, of course: the TARDIS lands, with a working chameleon circuit, in a junkyard and disguises itself as... something that doesn't belong in a junkyard.

Really? I was under the impression that 1963 was around the time that they were starting to phase out the police boxes and replace them with portable radios. Thus, wouldn't a police box belong in a 1963 junkyard? (Keep in mind this is coming from someone who has never been to England and wasn't around in the 1960s. Excuse any incidental ignorance.)
 
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