User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-31010985-20180428165444/@comment-6032121-20200319190227

Yet again more evidence (from the stories themselves) that David Whitaker likely didn't think of his cinematic scripts as being firmly separated from the story of the TV series: the opening scene of Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (which isn't adapted from anything in the corresponding Hartnell serial at all!) features the Doctor running away from the 20th century at the first time of trouble, even being willing to take along an unconscious Tom Campbell if it means a quicker getaway.

This is a stark departure from the status quo of Dr. Who in the previous film, where he appears to be a law-abiding citizen with his own house, who would have no reason to run away from police involvement. It seems, instead, to be drawn entirely from the televised First Doctor's attitude in the likes of An Unearthly Child, where the Doctor was very concerned with present-day authorities learning of his presence, and willing to kidnap Ian and Barbara if it meant saving himself from exposure.

The character still calls himself "Dr. Who", but then, there's Fourth Doctor material from the late 1970's which still does that, as well. Aside from that, all the peculiarities of the Cushing Doctor are scaled back for the second film: there is no longer anything to indicate he is a 20th-century inventor, nor indeed a human at all, and he appears wary of attracting the notice of the authorities, just like the Gallifreyan runaway we've come to know.

And no wonder: one film's from early 1965 (so likely written in 1964) and the other from the summer of 1966. It is no wonder at all, if the films were perceived by their writer and cowriters as just more material for the extended Doctor Who universe, that they would "get in with the program" in this way as the "canonical" facts of the world and premise began to crystallize over on TV and in the comics.

Whereas one struggles to imagine why the script of the second film would revert the Doctor to his TV persona and status quo, rather than his more jovial and earthbound 1965 self, if the adventures of the Cushing Doctor had always been meant to be a total reboot taking place in a different continuity altogether.