The Doctor Who Production Diary: The Hartnell Years

by David Brunt, Stephen James Walker (Editor)

In the first of a new series of books, noted Doctor Who historian David Brunt presents the most detailed and comprehensive day-by-day record ever published of the show’s production during the years 1963-1966 when William Hartnell played the Doctor.

Drawing on many years of research and an exhaustive study of BBC archive documentation – including files not previously accessed by any other Doctor Who author – the book includes a wealth of newly-discovered information and explodes some long-standing myths.

Genres: Doctor Who

671 pages, Paperback

Published July 9, 2026

Reviews

[Kieran McAndrew]

A thoroughly comprehensive trawl through the production diaries of 'Doctor Who' leads to an excellent tapestry of the details that go into making a successful television programme.

Brunt has compiled the information with care to provide as clear a look behind the scenes as anyone could wish for.

[James]

There's a poem that goes around Twitter sometimes by Joseph Fasano, where a professor writes about his student using AI to write a paper. The poem ends on the line: "Love is for the ones who do the work."

I try and review everything I read on here, and that tends to usually be Agatha Christie, or Doctor Who. I do wonder sometimes how that looks when it appears on people's feeds, amongst their literary bestsellers that it seems like everyone feels they have to read. I wonder what impression it creates of me. Is he happy? *Can* he be happy, just reading what must seem like the same thing over and over, in the same way all those literary bestsellers seem to me?

But it's comforting, when reading a book like this, because you get a real sense of community from it. This is written by someone else who cares about the same things as me. It's validating, I suppose. And this book is, surely, the epitome of the idea that 'love is for the ones who do the work'. To compile and craft this book is an act of dedication that it's hard to comprehend. It's done out of so much love, and there is so much care and attention in this.

It is the day-to-day diary of what happened when making Doctor Who, from the conception of the idea in 1963, to the day before Patrick Troughton's first episode in 1966. It catalogues seemingly everything there is to catalogue. There are some real highlights in here: stories that never got made, their full outlines presented; producers responding to endless fan letters, and catching up kids who missed Episode Three of a story cos they were on holiday, sending photos of Daleks.

It's refreshing in a sense to other books on this era because it's not anecdotal. It has brief allusions to things that are general knowledge of fans interesting in this period, but only if the paperwork alludes to them. I sometimes wondered if that meant we were missing out, but it means that this incredibly comprehensive book is still only part of the story... and that's incredible.

There are names of the production teams in here that I'd never heard of, and you get to know their routines and their frustrations. There are letters of complaint between departments, there are prop lists (which, though I'm impressed by how thorough they were, I will confess to being the one thing in this book I glazed over). It paints a real image of the people, their work, and their sheer effort they put into this show.

As the book goes on, some features (like the viewer letters) drop out. Is that because the producers replied to them less, or because we have less documentation about them? I don't know. Other information becomes more prominent, and the book has themes and arcs, as we follow the production of a radio series, where a pilot got made but never broadcast. Fan myths - and cast and crew stories - are changed and challenged by the information that's presented here.

I think it's possibly the longest book I've ever read, and no one is more surprised than me that I stuck with it, and finished it. It's become an incredibly reliable, comforting, and trustworthy book to read, and I can't wait for the next one. It's a monumental piece that is probably only really of interest to those who love this era, of TV or of Doctor Who, but it's for the people that love it, and you can tell, on every page, how much love has been poured into this. Love is for the ones who do the work - in both the writing and the reading of this. I can't recommend it enough.

[Toby Sutton-Long]

This is SO DAMN GOOD! Obviously Doctor Who is a show with an awful lot of information about its life behind the scenes. So why read this above the many other similar, brilliant non-fiction texts? Because this is the only one that goes through what was going on in that office, day by day. From fan letters to expenses, this does what the other texts does not. It makes you feel as if you were there in 1963.

[Joe Stevens]

For dedicated fans. This is an incredible work of research and is well organized. It does tend to dwell on minutia at points, but well that is rather the point. It is the exhaustive behind the scenes story of the birth of Doctor Who.

[Duncan Steele]

Payment is made to Anthony Coburn.