An Adventure in Space and Time (TV story)

Docudramas are fiction. They aren't valid sources for any other articles.

An Adventure in Space and Time, released in 2013 in time for the programme's 50th anniversary, was a docudrama largely about William Hartnell's era as the First Doctor. Though marketed as the story of how Doctor Who was made, it was in fact much more of a limited biopic, giving much of its screentime to an investigation of Hartnell's portrayal of the Doctor. Because the script dealt with the entirety of Hartnell's reign on the programme, and ended with the regeneration in The Tenth Planet, Verity Lambert's struggles to produce the programme, though strongly featured, were a subplot.

The show was a labour of love by writer and executive producer Mark Gatiss, who had been trying to make it since before the 40th anniversary in 2003.

Synopsis
A young producer frustrated by British television's  glass ceiling, a new executive at the British Broadcasting Corporation, a young director of Indian descent,  and an older actor struggling for artistic legitimacy come together in 1963 to start a brand new television programme called Doctor Who. After initial difficulties, the show becomes a hit, leaving the actor alone to carry on the show's traditions — and to face his increasingly ailing health.

Plot
to be added

Cast

 * William Hartnell - David Bradley
 * Sydney Newman - Brian Cox
 * Verity Lambert - Jessica Raine
 * Waris Hussein - Sacha Dhawan
 * Heather Hartnell - Lesley Manville
 * William Russell - Jamie Glover
 * Jacqueline Hill - Jemma Powell
 * Carole Ann Ford - Claudia Grant
 * Mervyn Pinfield - Jeff Rawle
 * Rex Tucker - Andrew Woodall
 * Douglas Camfield - Sam Hoare
 * Judith Carney - Cara Jenkins
 * Richard Martin - Ian Hallard
 * Delia Derbyshire - Sarah Winter
 * Peter Brachacki - David Annen
 * Donald Baverstock - Mark Eden
 * Maureen O'Brien - Anna-Lisa Drew
 * Jackie Lane - Sophie Holt
 * Peter Hawkins - Nicholas Briggs
 * Patrick Troughton - Reece Shearsmith
 * Harry - William Russell
 * Joyce - Carole Ann Ford
 * Cyril - Toby Hadoke
 * Arthur - Charlie Kemp
 * Len - Roger May
 * Alan - Reece Pockney
 * Reg - Ross Gurney-Randall

Uncredited cast

 * Himself - Matt Smith
 * Party guest - Jean Marsh
 * Party guest - Anneke Wills
 * Peter Purves - Unknown
 * Jackie Lane - Unknown
 * Anneke Wills - Unknown
 * Michael Craze - Unknown

Story notes

 * David Bradley and Jessica Raine both guest-starred in Doctor Who episodes that were broadcast around the time they were filming An Adventure in Space and Time: TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and Hide, respectively.
 * In addition to the cameos by William Russell, Carole Ann Ford, Anneke Wills, Jean Marsh and Matt Smith, another Who veteran appearing in the film is Mark Eden, who played the title role in TV: Marco Polo.
 * Nicholas Briggs, here playing a voiceover actor hired to provide the voice of the Daleks, has performed the same duties for the TV series since 2005. He is also producer of the long-running Big Finish Productions Doctor Who audio dramas range and, with Gatiss, was involved in numerous independent spin-off projects during the 1989-2005 interregnum and was also the longtime host of the Myth Makers interview series.

Ratings
to be added

Filming locations

 * Westminster Bridge, London

Differences with documented history of Doctor Who

 * The film artfully suggests that Sydney Newman was coming to grips with the scripts for The Daleks while Lee Harvey Oswald was shooting John F. Kennedy. However, on 22 November 1963, serial B was fully commissioned and well into production.  In fact, the day Kennedy was shot, "The Survivors", was recorded.
 * Hartnell holds up an annual on the set of The Reign of Terror. However, the the first Doctor Who annual wasn't released until September 1965, well over a year after Reign was filmed.
 * Though Daleks speak of extermination and people who need to be exterminated, they did not actually use their future catchphrase "Exterminate!" in The Daleks. In this production, the catchphrase is wrongly shown to have become popular just after the broadcast of Serial B. Indeed, Hartnell is shown to shout "Exterminate!" to kids in a park, which is unlikely because it wasn't in the script for The Daleks.
 * The speech with which Hartnell has trouble near the end of the story is from "The Bell of Doom". However, The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve was directed by Paddy Russell, and the apparent director speaking to Hartnell from the booth was male in this production.
 * The first episode of An Unearthly Child is shown to end with a scene in which Susan checks the radiation counter; this in fact was the closing scene of episode 4, "The Firemaker".
 * During production of what would come to be called The Pilot Episode, a male actor walks off the set after refusing to have his teeth blackened for the role of a caveman. In the actual production, it was a female actor who did this, but during production of episode 2, and no caveman actor or actress was present on set during production of episode 1, as the sequence with the caveman viewing the TARDIS was filmed separately several days earlier.
 * The film also indicates that production of the first version of episode 1 was shut down due to the fire sprinklers going off and also due to the allotted time in the studio running out. Neither happened in real life.
 * Hartnell's apparent inability to remember the name "Chesterton" is used to illustrate his fading health, but in reality most of those errors were scripted as a running joke by the character.
 * While Matt Smith's cameo never really happened in real-life but was mainly added in to show that - after 50 years - the show is still going, Hartnell himself once said to Carole Ann Ford that he believed the show would go on "for ever and ever more."

DVD releases
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Blu-ray releases
to be added