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Post by dasmaniac on Jun 13, 2024 4:31:51 GMT
I was wondering what my fellow Big Finish fans think of Richard Hurndall's performance in The Five Doctors. I've always been quite fascinated by that version of the First Doctor. Richard Hurndall seemed to lean more into the Edwardian gentleman aspect.
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Kestrel
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Post by Kestrel on Jun 13, 2024 5:32:04 GMT
I don't think we really saw enough of him to form much of opinion. For his role in the story, his performance was fine, I thought. But it's not like The Five Doctors really gave him all that much to do.
Personally, though, I tend to prefer the interpretations of the 1st Doctor that hew more to his impish and curmudgeonly sides.
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Post by bethhigdon on Jun 13, 2024 15:52:33 GMT
He's no better or worse in the role than David Bradley
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Post by timleschild on Jun 13, 2024 16:20:10 GMT
Perfectly fine.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 13, 2024 18:24:56 GMT
Considering he was only on air in a 90 minute story and was sharing scenes with Mr Troughton, Pertwee and Davison, I thought he was great fun. Didn't have much of an opportunity to make an impression, but he did have a fight with a Dalek!
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Post by number13 on Jun 13, 2024 22:23:13 GMT
Considering he was only on air in a 90 minute story and was sharing scenes with Mr Troughton, Pertwee and Davison, I thought he was great fun. Didn't have much of an opportunity to make an impression, but he did have a fight with a Dalek! And he won, easily. In fact it was as easy as pie. 
I've seen 'The Five Doctors' more times than any other 'Doctor Who' story (by some distance!) and I like his performance a lot. In the novelisation, Terrance Dicks makes it clear that the First Doctor we see here is getting very close to the end of his first incarnation and he knows it. And was taking time in semi-retirement, enjoying his quiet garden before he faced regeneration for the first time.
Then - time-scoop and suddenly he's back in thick of the action. So perhaps the Edwardian gentleman persona referred to upthread (which I agree with) is his way of showing the Doctor's 'age'. He actually tells Tegan not to be afraid and that at his time of life he's got very little left to fear. Of course for him, 'life' means 'incarnation' and he knows that he has 11 to go (and all the rest he couldn't guess about!) so it must mean he is aware of his current body being very old and beginning to 'wear a bit thin'.
But it's still him that solves Rassilon's riddle and gets Borusa trapped. There are no flies on The Original!  |
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Post by Ian McArdell on Jun 14, 2024 10:06:34 GMT
Given access to a VHS, I was much more familiar with Hurndall's take on the Doctor than Hartnell's for many years. When Hartnell's fianlly started appearing on official VHS releases, it was a bit of a revelation. That said, no one mangles a sandwich like Richard Hurndall!
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Kestrel
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Post by Kestrel on Jun 15, 2024 13:34:39 GMT
Considering he was only on air in a 90 minute story and was sharing scenes with Mr Troughton, Pertwee and Davison, I thought he was great fun. Didn't have much of an opportunity to make an impression, but he did have a fight with a Dalek! Seems like there was a missed opportunity to use him as a one-off Doctor back when Big Finish was experimenting with that kind of thing back in the (first) Unbound series. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2024 13:53:45 GMT
Considering he was only on air in a 90 minute story and was sharing scenes with Mr Troughton, Pertwee and Davison, I thought he was great fun. Didn't have much of an opportunity to make an impression, but he did have a fight with a Dalek! Seems like there was a missed opportunity to use him as a one-off Doctor back when Big Finish was experimenting with that kind of thing back in the (first) Unbound series. If you mean the actor, sadly Richard Hurndall died in 1984. |
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shutupbanks
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Post by shutupbanks on Jun 15, 2024 14:25:13 GMT
I only knew the First Doctor from the novelisations in 1983 so he was written in a way that felt true to the character from the books. Looking at the Hartnell performance years later I could see that there were some similarities but that they were two different performances. Hurndall does a great job, but you can tell that he possibly hadn’t seen much of the original performance to model from. He’s also a different body shape to Hartnell, but he was only cast for the hairstyle and performance he gave in the Blakes 7 episode Assassin. That said, I thought he was great for what we got: an acerbic first Doctor similar to what was seen in The Three Doctors.
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Kestrel
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Post by Kestrel on Jun 15, 2024 14:38:02 GMT
Seems like there was a missed opportunity to use him as a one-off Doctor back when Big Finish was experimenting with that kind of thing back in the (first) Unbound series. If you mean the actor, sadly Richard Hurndall died in 1984. Well and truly missed, in multiple senses of the word, then. |
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