First Doctor Reviews Completed

As the current series passes its half way point, I am happy to announce that I have finally reached the end of William Hartnell's episodes. Writing reviews for the new series along with the classics has proved a little troublesome so I have fallen further behind, currently five weeks. Hopefully, with the next three classics being missing stories followed by one on DVD and another three missing after that, I should be able to claw my way back on track since there will be no extras or commentaries to watch. That said, there are another five new episodes to work around so it won't be plain sailing just yet...

Meanwhile, I thought I would post a list of Hartnell's stories and order it according to how they scored. You may be surprised at some of the positions, I know I was, but I've tried to stay consistent with my scoring and just because I like something on the surface doesn't mean it's actually good. Ordering by Production and Content scores produce interestingly different lists.

#	Title	Content	Production	Total
12	The Romans	71%	100%	85.5%
21	The Daleks' Master Plan	81%	86%	83.5%
17	The Time Meddler	74%	90%	82.0%
10	The Dalek Invasion of Earth	77%	82%	79.5%
11	The Rescue	73%	86%	79.3%
7	The Sensorites	69%	88%	78.5%
2	The Daleks	73%	78%	75.5%
3	The Edge of Destruction	73%	76%	74.5%
9	Planet of Giants	68%	80%	74.0%
16	The Chase	71%	74%	72.5%
27	The War Machines	68%	76%	72.0%
13	The Web Planet	65%	78%	71.5%
6	The Aztecs	59%	84%	71.5%
4	Marco Polo	47%	96%	71.5%
8	The Reign of Terror	48%	92%	70.0%
1	100,000 BC (An Unearthly Child)	61%	76%	68.5%
29	The Tenth Planet	60%	74%	67.0%
26	The Savages	68%	64%	66.0%
20	The Myth Makers	47%	82%	64.5%
24	The Celestial Toymaker	53%	74%	63.5%
5	The Keys of Marinus	53%	72%	62.5%
14	The Crusade	44%	80%	62.0%
25	The Gunfighters	43%	78%	60.5%
18	Galaxy 4	36%	80%	58.0%
23	The Ark	51%	50%	50.5%
22	The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve	38%	62%	50.0%
15	The Space Museum	42%	38%	40.0%
28	The Smugglers	27%	52%	39.5%
19	Mission to the Unknown	29%	46%	37.5%

Where episodes have equal scores, preference is given to content.

By way of comparison, when listed by Production scores the top five would be "The Romans", "Marco Polo", "The Reign of Terror", "The Time Meddler" and "The Sensorites" showing that historicals were by far the BBC's strong area. Conversely, when listed by Content scores the top five would be "The Daleks' Master Plan", "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", "The Time Meddler", "The Daleks", and "The Edge of Destruction" which clearly highlights the strength of the Daleks and the value of science fiction in a, well, science fiction series!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, at the bottom of the list in Production terms are "Galaxy 4", "Mission to the Unknown", and "The Smugglers", while Content puts "The Ark", "Mission to the Unknown" and "The Space Museum" at the bottom.

All this gives William Hartnell's stories a total score of 66.6% (Content 58%, Production 76%), though there is a strong bias towards the 70-75 mark and it's the bottom six that really drag him down so I'd be inclined, pragmatically, to score him 70% (+/- 5)