Patrick Troughton is the bee's knees

Could David Tennant play a despotic Mexican who smokes a large cigar? Come to that, did Billie Piper look half as good in a skirt as Frazer Hines?

No, to both. Oh Salamander, where art thou now?

He could've absorbed the whole of the time vortex and become immortal?

Lucy McGough wrote:He could've absorbed the whole of the time vortex and become immortal?

"Eh! Eh! You-a know oo I am? Uh? Ahm God! You don' wanna mess with me!"

It's funnier when you say it out loud.

(I've always suspected that God smokes a large cigar.)

I watched The Web of Fear and the first three episodes of The War Games last night. I am rediscovering my love of Troughton!

He had a sort of craggy handsomeness, didn't he? And he was dead good at being avuncular.

He was probably the best actual actor of the entire classic series. I still prefer Tom as the Doctor (I can't help it) but, like Michael Caine, Tom is someone who mostly plays himself. Patrick Troughton was a genuine character actor.

It's debatable whether Tom actually knew that he was taking part in a dramatic production.

Lucy McGough wrote:It's debatable whether Tom actually knew that he was taking part in a dramatic production.

In some stories, it's debatable whether he was taking part in a dramatic production (most of season 17, for instance).

I remember reading somewhere that the show's producer really worked hard at getting Troughton to take the role. The reasons were that no one know if viewers would accept a change of lead actors, so the production team wanted someone of Troughton's stature and popularity, and it was hoped that having him in the role of the Doctor would make it easier to get other top level actors to appear on the program.

Yes. A lot of people nowadays seem to forget, or don't realise, that Troughton was actually a fairly well known and respected actor, back then. He was known before Doctor Who eclipsed everything else he'd ever done.

Given the standard of his acting in Doctor Who, that doesn't surprise me.

My mum still fancies him.