HPR4620: The Second Doctor, Part 1

HPR4620: The Second Doctor, Part 1

From Hacker Public Radio by Hacker Public Radio

April 17, 2026

About this episode

The episode discusses the impact of Patrick Troughton's portrayal of the Second Doctor in Doctor Who during the 1960s.

This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. This starts our look at the stories of the Second Doctor, portrayed by Patrick Troughton, during the 1960s. The Second Doctor, Part 1 Patrick Troughton is the reason we are still talking about Doctor Who all these years later. He took over the lead role in a popular and successful show and continued the success. It might have been a disaster, but it wasn’t. And Troughton did not attempt to be another Hartnell, he had his own distinct way of playing the part. He established the principle that the personality of the Doctor changes when he (or she) regenerates. This made it much easier on all the actors who followed him in the role, and each one has been very distinctive in how they embodied the Doctor. Sadly, many of his episodes, and some complete stories, are missing now due to the short-sighted policy of the BBC the discard older shows, in many cases wiping video tapes for reuse. Of course, you can’t blame them too much since I doubt anyone in the 1960s would have believed that the show would still be going over 60 years later. But there is always hope that some more episodes will be recovered. There are people who collect old TV…

Topics covered

  • Doctor Who
  • Second Doctor
  • television history
  • 1960s
  • character development

Keywords

  • Second Doctor
  • Patrick Troughton
  • Doctor Who
  • 1960s television
  • missing episodes

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: BBC

Books & works: Doctor Who

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