User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-31010985-20180428165444/@comment-25472716-20200918194304

Just another point that has become apparent to me in the past week that further blurs the line between the Cushing films and the TV show.

Cushing never actually refers to himself as Dr. Who. in the first film - somehow Castle's Ian Chesterton pulls that out of nowhere twice throughout the film. In the second film, Cushing does once note himself as Dr. Who... but then, Tom Campbell refers to him as only Doctor or Doc.

I'm not going to speculate on what that means in an in-universe perspective, but it certainly raises some additional notes. I suspect based on conversations now had with Richard Bignell that the reason for this may have come from early drafts of the Daleks or An Unearthly Child. He detailed to me with some examples that up until draft 4 of AUC, the script lists Ian as Chesterton and he names the Doctor in outright dialogue as Dr. Who. For point of note, the AUC camera script that is publicly available on the DVD doesn't contain any instances of naming as Dr. Who... but it interestingly has a lot of notation of Ian as Chesterton in dialogue assignment with only a few instances of Ian - whereas having changed names after draft 4, Barbara is listed as Barbara.

Further to this, Hartnell's own copy of AUC that auctioned off some years ago... looking at the pictures released for the auction - the script directions vary between Doctor Who and The Doctor. (and also refers Chesterton for dialogue assignment)

I know the majority of the above has no bearing on how we treat this in-universe but I'm listing the above for reference of further context for Wiki users and anyone else who happens to read through this thread in future. (Also, just incase any of the budding researcher fans out there who do frequently read the Wiki fancy picking up that thread of thought and further examining it)

Getting to the in-universe treatment - a number of the 1966 Annual stories variate between referring Dr. Who and the Doctor, too of course (And The Lost Ones even seems a bit at odds with itself on his planet of origin.) so it would be worth chalking the matter of the name up in the same way that we do with them... but now that I've looked at the films closely, and it comes to be that Cushing only calls himself Dr. Who once & Ian says it twice - we have the strong point to consider that: The Twelfth Doctor has once referred to himself as Doctor Who in World Enough and Time (and a potential in The Underwater Menace with the "Dr. W" note) The Doctor's been called Doctor Who at least twice - Missy in World Enough and Time & the contentious in fandom but as I understand, accepted here example of WOTAN in War Machines.

I know further points might not have been required, but I thought it worth adding the realisation that the TV show has just as much 'outlying' dialogue usage of Dr. Who/Doctor Who both in self-identification and in others identifying the Doctor... as the two Dalek films do. As it casts both more doubt over the idea that there was any concerted authorial intent to be distinctly separate, and lends more credence to the films in relation to other media that is already considered valid.