An Adventure In Space And Time (2013) Review

An Adventure In Space And Time is a heartwarming/breaking, entertaining, educational, brilliant, but sadly predictable look back at the Hartnell era.

PLOT

In 1963, William Hartnell was in a bit of a ditch. Despite his great talent and ambition as a character actor, he was forced to play one-note military leaders. But God was giving and he became the star of the children's series, Doctor Who. And just when Hartnell's dream of popularity and being appreciated was realized, his old body began to wear a bit thin... and he didn't want to go.

To give much deserved credit to Mark Gatiss, he makes the docudrama as mainstream as possible and doesn't give too many details about the origins of the show beyond how it came to be in the first place. The direction is brilliant and captures Hartnell's pain perfectly, even when he's not there. I loved the effect of TARDIS travel and the look of the old console room and how it was invented.

However, we pretty much knew the whole story at the start when Hartnell's looking at the police box and everything goes pretty much as we expected. Times move on, people leave, guy doesn't want things to change... it's all pretty cliche. But it's the execution that matters and this thing passes with flying colors.

CHARACTERS

David Bradley makes for an endearing William Hartnell. He nails the rudeness and stubbornness of the old man, not to mention his despair and loneliness although I felt much of the commanding presence and edge was missing. To the people working on the show in the 60s, Hartnell was a loose card, ready to explode at any moment which didn't come across at all. I also think he should've altered his performance for when Hartnell was playing the First Doctor, to show the difference between what happens behind the scenes and what happens in front of the camera.

Reece Shearsmith only appears during one scene, but he was brilliant as Patrick Troughton. There was a "new era" feel about him, which was absolutely necessary. I liked the obvious respect between the two, despite seeming like polar opposites.

Brian Cox was a bit over-the-top as Sydney Newman, but I liked him. He was professional, but had a good sense of humor and knew what was best for the show.

Verity Lambert and Waris Hussein were much more important to the show's birth than I realized. I thank them for what we have here today.

NOTES

*I had no idea they tried experimenting with Hartnell's face in the intro!

*The introduction of the Daleks was brilliant, though at the time, "Exterminate!" was not a catchphrase and was certainly not part of the script read out loud by Sydney Newman.

*It was a very cool idea to tie in "Exterminate!" to JF Kennedy's assassination.

*Most of the costumes look great, but the Cybermen are really iffy. They were far more stretched out than what they looked like in their actual story.

*It's rather funny, but all of the female actresses look like their original counterparts, yet none of the males look remotely like the originals.

*I hated the way William Russell and Jacqueline Hill were underused. They were an important aspect of the show's central premise. After all, it was supposed to be educational(which is barely brought up here) and they're teachers.

*I caught Carole Ann Ford's cameo, but have no idea where William Russell is. Or Mark Eden(Marco Polo).

*Hartnell(as played by Bradley) barely spends any time in his First Doctor costume. He's usually dressed in his outdoors outfit from the beginning and end of his era or just the vest.

BEST LINE

"Well then, who's who?"

CONCLUSION

A wonderful look back at the show's start. However, if you know the story, there's little here to find.