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Re-Casting Previous Doctors
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Why are fans and Production staff suddenly so precious about re-casting previous Doctors?
After Hartnell died, they recast Richard Hurndall to appear as the first Doctor, in 'The Five Doctors' special.
If they're that concerned with previous Doctors dying or looking old & fat - with all due respect... Who cares? Re-cast!
It's been done before... Do it again!
After Hartnell died, they recast Richard Hurndall to appear as the first Doctor, in 'The Five Doctors' special.
If they're that concerned with previous Doctors dying or looking old & fat - with all due respect... Who cares? Re-cast!
It's been done before... Do it again!
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that was a one off and hurndall looked a bit like hartnell.it wouldn't work now with pertwee and troughton.nobody looks like them enough.better to leave it without them.it just wouldn't work.
The part of your post I've highlighted is the very reason I would not want to see any living Doctor recast. For me, seeing someone else play the 5th Doctor for example, while Davison is still alive and kicking, is just totally disrespectful to him as he made that Doctor his own.
And recasting those Doctor's who have died isn't right, either.
Yes, Richard Hurndall did a passable First Doctor in 1983 and in that scenario, with only one Doctor dead at the time, it was worth doing it but despite this, Hurndall didn't really capture the essence of what Hartnell's Doctor was. The mmm's and 'dear child's' were mainly missing as was the First Doctor's general absent mindedness and those haughty chuckles. Everything that the First Doctor really was.
In short, you can't really recast any Doctor and expect them to match the original as every Doctor has his own mannerism's, expressions and traits that make their particular Doctor unique. I couldn't imagine anyone else playing the 5th Doctor and bringing that same recklessness and running and up and down corridors as he did. And can anyone ever play the Fourth Doctor the way Tom Baker did?
Simple answer for me, no!
And I've seen roles in the wider world played by someone else when it's been made famous by a certain actor. Take Liam Neeson in The A-Team Movie. Didn't do a bad job as Hannibal Smith but he really didn't capture the essence of George Peppard's interpretation in the role.
So really I don't think any Doctor should be recast. What Moffat did in the last episode was good enough for me, using old clips etc, I'd rather that than a recast.
Someone suggested "their sons?" - presumably meaning Sean Pertwee and David Troughton. Do they look remotely like their fathers in the 70's? NO!
I agree with what Daveyboy said above. I'll be happy with flashbacks to the past ....I don't want to see my treasured Doctors of old suddenly re-cast! I've watched it since 1965!
It'll spoil my illusion of it all. Next thing is they'll tell me Father Christmas doesn't exist! Now that will kill me!!
As well as the originals most of the Doctors were played by different actors in that episode never mind the next episode.
I agree, and it would border on insulting to try to use other actors. Before becoming the Doctor, Jon Pertwee had years in light entertainment, working in radio, television and film, and on stage, and also had significant experience in WWII. Bringing in someone with a grey bouffant wig doing a bit of lisping would be highly inappropriate. As for Tom, and his stentorian tones, again it would just be impersonation - and in his case of a man still living and working. Another insult.
As you say, Richard Hurndall did a passable job, but a flawed one, with an easier, less idiosyncratic personality. I suppose the reason for that is that William Hartnell was often just seen grey haired and tetchy - traits commonly shared by a lot of people over forty, myself included.
They used doubles for some body shots, it's hardly the same thing now is it?
Also the clip of Patrick Troughton's Doctor running was someone else (because few appropriate clips of his Doctor are in existence) and that wasn't really great so imagine how much worse if someone actually tried to take on the role, it would be awful, in my opinion. How they have managed to make it work for the Bond films I'll never know but they have and its very much the exception not the rule.
Well with the Bond films I suppose it's more that you can look past the fact it's a different person, or explain it away for something like Bond is a codename and as the old one retires a new one is brought in.
However with Bond films, or my experience of watching them (which is not many, I'll admit), it's more about the plot of the film and being a spy and the action/chase scenes and the Bond girls and all that. Compare it with Doctor Who, we see a large part of the Doctor's life and his travels, we grow to know the character, see him develop. The series is definitely more character focused than say, Bond generally is. The most recent films have obviously tried to add a bit of depth as seen in Quantum of Solace when he's still mourning the loss of his love interest from the previous film, but it isn't long before that's done away with and he's on another mission and has another girl in his bed.
And I suppose in Bond, we don't see the transition as we do in Doctor Who either. A new film comes out, suddenly there's a new Bond, ohok. But in Doctor Who, we know for definite that it is the same man, as he regenerates and we see it. So all the actors who have played him are a part of this one man's history, whereas Bond could literally be different men in the same role.
It's also why the question of recasting a Bond actor just wouldn't come up - we've already seen 6 different actors playing Bond and it's not like Doctor Who where we're completely sure it's the same man and we pretty much know his timeline of incarnations and all. You wouldn't recast Roger Moore for a film there as there isn't really a strict timeline or a need for his Bond to be revisited. You'd just make a new Bond film with a new actor. Whereas in Doctor Who, all these faces are still a part of the timeline and history of the show, this one man's eleven (soon to be twelve, and thirteen I guess with Hurt) faces so obviously there should be references and clips or images every now and then that remind us of that history, and with time travel, we can imagine different incarnations meeting each other as they already have in a few stories. But as the eleven faces of this man are such a part of the show's and character's history, it would be a disservice to the actors and the history of the show to recast them.
I hope that somewhat made sense, and I'm sorry if any of my Bond comments were wrong - as I say my knowledge of it is limited, so don't hate me if I got anything wrong.
David
http://sands-of-vulcan.deviantart.com/art/David-Troughton-as-2-181173517
He could definitely pull that off.
Sean ( I've always thought he looks very much like his dad anyway)
http://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=218&start=2820
(post 7 on that page) e's actually only standing beside a dalek. I could find one of him in a grey, curly, wig, but put your finger over the top of his head and you'll see he looks just like Jon.
And it does raise the question why bother with the regeneration angle when you could simply recast the role?
John culshaw For doc #4 then. He sounds more like Tom baker than Tom baker does!
Actually if it was just for a scene or 2 then David and Sean would work I think.
Haha apart from the codename thing, James Bond is his name, the whole point is 007 is his codename I would agree there. Really I was just getting at the fact that it seems to work for Bond but on the whole it doesn't.
Again, with Jon Pertwee, you have all the mannerisms like the lisping, the thoughtful neck rubbing, and the love of sports which was reflected in his Doctor. As Barry Letts said once, no-one playing The Doctor should be acting all the time.
By that he was saying they have to put a lot of their own character into the role. Recasting just means copying and putting a new interpretation into it, and that's very much what Richard Hurndall did in The Five Doctors, as he himself admitted in interviews later on. He split the role between Hartnell's and his own interpretation.
I agree, Bond is very much an exception. You get no 'getting to know you' periods like most of the Doctors have on their debuts. No post change illnesses; It's straight in and onto the action with only George Lazenby given an 'introduction' of sorts when he took over from Connery. You just accept there's a new actor now and that's a big draw for a Bond film when it happens.
Agree also about Troughton. As with Davison, his running style was quite unique to his Doctor!
I agree but his is very much a Comedy based impersonation. (Though very close to the Williams Era Doctor at times!) but doubt if he could do the serious side to it though!
Now back to the question of recasting...
While I believe that it would be possible to find actors who could portray the older doctors decently well, I'm afraid I agree with NovemberRain that the fans would spot all the differences and rip the poor souls to shreds, no matter what.
It's a game the writers/actors/make-up artists just can't win.
Also, I cannot help but find the call for older doctors' appearances in the special a little, well, schizophrenic. The same people who complain that the writers are forgetting the Classic series and catering to the casual viewers/NuWho fans too much actually demand that one of the cornerstones of the show, the concept of regeneration, is undermined or overlooked, just so that they can see the old doctors again?
As far as I'm aware, the 50th anniversary story has already been filmed, so I assume that any involvement (or otherwise) of older Doctors has already been completed too.
BIB No, no, no, no! Not the hideous code name theory, please. (Not saving a go, honestly. But no self-respecting Bond fan has any truck with it).
Bond is the same man, no matter who plays him. Same with Holmes. Miss Marple. Hamlet. Lear.... Audiences happy accept recasts eventually. What Who did - brilliantly - was to come up with a novel twist on recasting.
Why can't we have the same thing with old Doctors as necessary?
Haha, fair enough. As I said, I've only watched a few Bond films so I'm in no way an expert or die-hard fan.
But yeah, with Doctor Who recasting the Doctor counts as regenerating, so you know for a fact it's still the same character, but all his faces are part of the same person, unlike with Bond where it's supposed to be the same man only the change is not referred to. So recasting a recast would be what you'd be doing with the Doctor really.
My favourite Hamlet was Hamlet 3: Prince in Manhattan. It's a bit of a genre piece, admittedly, but some of those couplets really pop.
An early draft of the script for On Her Majesty's Secret Service apparently had a sequence where Bond had undergone plastic surgery (to wrongfoot the opposition) to explain why Sean Connery now looked like George Lazenby. Thankfully, that idea was quickly dropped.