William Russell

“Billy [Hartnell] was a super actor, adept at playing tough parts and famous for his marvellous performance in [Carol Reed’s film] The Way Ahead.”

“I bought a copy of the Evening Standard one day and inside there was a cartoon picturing General de Gaulle as a Dalek.”

“I have to confess that [the Daleks] took time to grow on us, and we weren’t especially taken with them when they were first unveiled.  But they were very effective on screen.  My daughter was absolutely terrified by them.”

“I think that what we started in Doctor Who is not so very surprising as a phenomenon when you consider the talent of someone like Verity Lambert, or the impact that Billy [Hartnell] made with audiences everywhere.”

“The historical stories were always fun because it gave us the opportunity to dress up and really enter the period.”

“We actually did the first episode twice, because [Head of Drama] Sydney Newman, who was behind the whole concept, looked at our first efforts and simply said, ‘Do it again.’”

“You needed a lot of ingenuity to work with the Daleks and it helped if you got on with the men who pushed them around from inside.”