Quotes

[on William Hartnell] I thought Bill was definitive, to be honest. I don't think he was always the greatest actor but I think he was the definitive Doctor.

I think Jon (Jon Pertwee) was a very strong Doctor. I never liked him as the Doctor and I knew Jon very well and liked him very much as a person, we were actually good friends off screen.

I didn't enjoy Doctor Who (1963) when it got bogged down in England and UNIT and all that. I got really bored with all that.

Funnily enough, I've always said I think Sylvester McCoy was the nearest to Bill (William Hartnell) in the performance he gave as the Doctor. Everyone else tried to move away from him, so when Bill left eventually you got Patrick Troughton in there. Patrick tried very hard not to be Bill and everyone else was their own individual. When Sylvester came along I always felt that that was the nearest in character to being Bill.

[on Doctor Who (1963)'s reputation for wobbly sets] I never saw a set wobble.

It was an extraordinary place, the BBC, in the Sixties and Seventies, it really was. It was the place to work and the standards were very, very high. I think it was the golden age of television to a large extent. We can do things technically now that are so much better and so on and so on and so on, I don't think television has actually improved. I think it was wonderful then.

[in 2025] When Doctor Who (1963) started it was a children's programme, we had a weekly cliffhanger and it was simple. I liked it when it was straightforward entertainment. But it's a very different show now. I don't watch it any more, to be honest.