Travelling in time

The Beeb have just released onto the web a series of documents from their archives that cover the genesis of Doctor Who; these documents range from an initial report from a couple of staff members regarding science fiction on television in general that was written in 1962 through to a Radio Times article on the pilot story and the audience research report taken in December of 1963. The general report and follow-up are interesting reading in themselves but the one that really grabbed my attention was a treatment for the show by Sydney Newman and C.E. Webber, which is interesting for various reasons - when describing Dr. Who's machine and approaches to avoid:

"If we scotch this by positing something humdrum, say, passing through some common object in street such as a night-watchman's shelter to arrive inside a marvellous contrivance of quivering electronics, then we simply have a version of the dear old Magic Door."

i quite like the "dear old" bit, it's rather charming... but what did we get in the form of the TARDIS? Almost precisely that! The synopsis however goes on to talk about not actually seeing the outside of the machine at all, offering the option of a coating of light-resistant paint (research into which had apparently been carried out at that time although, since we don't have "invisible" objects in everyday life, presumably it didn't pan out) and has notes about characters going through the motions of partially concealing themselves as they move their arm in and out of an "invisible" object (there's a hand-written note as to how to actually achieve this onscreen). There are further notes that "wherever they go some contemporary disguise has to be found for it", which is rather like the way the TARDIS is supposed to blend into her surroundings but fails to due to a knackered chameleon circuit.

The characterisation for the Doctor (referred to throughout as Dr. Who) is also at odds with the final rendition and the document lists two "secrets" of the character, one of which is hugely at odds with the Doctor that fans know and indeed love; at one point they say that he "malignantly tries to stop progress (the future) wherever he finds it, while searching for his ideal (the past)" and whilst this idea did appear the show during the Jon Pertwee story "Invasion Of The Dinosaurs", the Doctor was very much on the other side of the argument and thwarted the plan to roll time back to a "golden age". Some of the Doctor's darkness and mystery did remain for the final drafts of the pilot however and at least some of the second secret, the idea that the Time Lords (not named in this synopsis) would be after the Doctor because he was "monkeying in time", remained but wasn't fully realised until the end of Pat Troughton's tenure.

The final paragraph was particularly amusing, featuring some fairly random suggestions for plot lines to consider and, of the four below, the two highlighted in bold appeared as "End Of The World" with Christopher Eccleston and insinuated as part of the Doctor's future (which has yet to be seen) during the Sylvester McCoy story "Battlefield":

"By the third story we could first reveal that [the TARDIS] is a time-machine; they witness a great calamity, even possibly the destruction of the earth, and only afterwards realise that they were far ahead in time. Or to think about Christmas: which seasonable story shall we take our characters into? Bethlehem? Was it by means of Dr. Who's machine that Aladin's palace sailed through the air? Was Merlin Dr.Who?"