William Hartnell

William Hartnell plays the First Doctor on Doctor Who, the 1960s BBC serial that launched a Time Lord, a police box bigger on the inside, and regeneration as infinite franchise life. Early black-and-white serials built the mythology. Hartnell-to-Troughton proved the lead could change without ending the show. Hartnell is the original weather — snap, mystery, a grandfatherly irritation that treats time as a classroom with teeth.

On BBC, Doctor Who since 1963 still treats a 1960s living room like an appointment. A mysterious Time Lord and a blue police box bigger on the inside launched from BBC One on November 23, 1963, and never really parked. William Hartnell answers as The First Doctor. 1960s sci-fi craft: the original irritation in a box that still travels — that is the filing, and he is the pulse.

An Unearthly Child, Part One — November 1963, the police box as bigger-on-the-inside contract and Hartnell's first step into myth. That is s01e01, still behaving like a contract. s05e01 proves it survived opening night: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Part One — Troughton-era landmark, regeneration already the franchise life-support. s01e05 is the later hour — The Dead Planet opens The Daleks: the creature brand that proved the show could outlive a single Time Lord. William Hartnell as The First Doctor is why those numbers still have a face.

The box is the merch; he is the first law. On TV Flash Hartnell is 1960s sci-fi infrastructure: not a logo in a title sequence, a lead who made the myth feel like a person. Watch the serials. The First Doctor is why the franchise still has a beginning.