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  • They really should have mentioned the fact that it was the arteriosclerosis, and not just left it sounding like he was a flaky actor...

  • Hey DW fans,

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  • Was W.R. extracing the urine in hat last clip..?

  • Poor guy. But gotta give credit to him for hanging in there for the three years he was on the show.

  • Part of the brilliance of Hartnell's performance as the 1st Doctor is when he could he would work flubbing his lines (when it happened) into the general eccentricity of his Doctor. Sometimes it's painfully obvious, yes, but other times it just seems like just another of his Doctor's tics. In any case, love him, always. My fourth favourite incarnation of the Doctor :~D

  • It's quite horrible seeing Bill forget his lines like that, because illness was creeping in, folks.

  • just got the dvd in the post today going to watch it later

  • he wasn;t a well man then

  • they didn't have the money to stop in thoses days to go again

  • William Hartnell was well known in repertory theatre as being excellent at fast line learning and retention. I believe that rather than forgetting them, he often had difficulty in saying them, which is a different thing. Arteriosclerosis affects the speech centres of the brain, after all.

    Don't forget also, this is recorded as live. So other Doctors benefitted from recording breaks and editing that Billy didn't have. Hartnell also had more lines than anyone else.

  • The fluffing of the lines is part of his character, whether intentional or not

  • Good old William <3. First Doctor ftw, I don't care if he fluffed his lines :P.

  • I didn't want to, eh..........Hey??

  • I think that actually made the 1st Doctor so loveable and hooked up quite some fans.

  • A bunch of these old episodes look like they never did any second takes. Very much like Ed Wood movies ("First take, perfect, next scene please"). XD

    Even when they damaged the props (tearing off parts of the "solid rock" wall in a cave with their bare fingers, revealing the white plaster or styrofoam beneath); when a corpse on the floor moved; or when a guy stabbed with an obviously rubber knife from behind waited to get the signal to scream from the director.

  • @blackwolf1200

    They almost never did second takes, unless something went drastically wrong.

  • I think it improved the character.

  • Everyone forgets his or her lines.

  • @camp4christ ... not everybody. Those who came from theatre where they have to learn new lines every week without autocues are far more practised at it.

  • @dangerouslytalented All the actors in Doctor Who at that time had very strong theater backgrounds and they rehearsed 4 days and recorded on the 5th day, with no autocues, no cue cards, nothing of that nature.

  • The lines were delivered very natural and it was good for his character.

  • no way this dvd is all William Hartnell's episodes *.* is it??

  • @byakuyabankai01 No. Planet of Giants hasn't been released on DVD, but I'm pretty sure that all the rest of his stories (that exist in their entirety) have been.

  • he wasnt the only one, there are loads of examples of line screw ups in that episode that went unnoticed

  • Weren't his line problems due to health complications?

  • @FishWRabies yes they were

  • @FishWRabies Yeah. Nobody knew at the time but he had an illness and one of the effects of it was him forgetting things.

  • @FishWRabies He was suffering from some kind of arteriosclerosis, and this made him look much older than he actually was, he was only 55 when he got the job as the Doctor.

  • @FishWRabies yeah, but everybody else messed up to.

  • @FishWRabies yes they were

  • *Hartnell (ruddy auto correct!)

  • You could always count on Bill Partner to deliver the,.... um,.... errrrr,... hmm, Chesterfield?

  • Good Old Hartnell :)

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