RIP William Russell

British actor William Russell, one of the original castmembers of Doctor Who, has passed away at the age of 99.

 

William Russell as Ian Chesterton in Doctor Who's An Unearthly Child (23 November 1963, top) and The Power of the Doctor (23 October 2022). The 59-year-gap between his first and last appearances on television playing the same character, and the 57-year gap between appearances, are both believed to be world records.

Born in Sunderland, County Durham, in 1924, William Russell Enoch attended Oxford University and did his national service in the Royal Air Force at the tail end of the war. He went into repertory theatre and began making screen appearances in the early 1950s. He made his film debut in Gift Horse (1952) and his TV debut in the short film Lonesome Like (1954). He made his breakthrough in 1956, playing the role of Sir Lancelot on the British adventure TV series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, which ran for 30 episodes and was a surprise hit on American television (in publicity for which he rode a horse down Fifth Avenue in New York City). He starred in a TV adaptation of Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby the following year, and was the lead in the 1960 serial St. Ives and the 1961 drama Triton. These roles, supported by a steady stream of guest roles and supporting film appearances, made him a familiar face on British television and film.

In 1963 he was cast in the BBC's new science fiction drama series, Doctor Who. The main role of the mysterious Doctor had been cast with William Hartnell, who was in his mid-50s but somewhat frail. The producers decided they wanted a younger leading male who could handle fight scenes and more physically demanding work. Russell was cast in the role of Ian Chesterton, the science teacher at Coal Hill School in Shoreditch, London. Along with history teacher Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), he becomes suspicious over the odd behaviour of pupil Susan (Carole Ann Ford), who is brilliant but has strange gaps in her knowledge. Ian and Barbara follow Susan home to a junkyard, to see her enter a police box. Following her inside, they find a huge, futuristic control room, impossibly larger inside than out. Susan's grandfather, the Doctor (Hartnell), explains they are aliens from another time and space, and their ship, the TARDIS, can travel anywhere and anywhen in the universe. The teachers are sceptical, until the TARDIS takes off and lands on prehistoric Earth, where the four crewmembers are inadvertently responsible for a primitive tribe of cavemen in discovering fire. The Doctor is initially suspicious and hostile towards his new guests but takes responsibility for dragging them away for their lives and tries to return them to Earth at the moment of departure, but this is complicated by malfunctions in the TARDIS guidance system.

Ian and Barbara remained the Doctor's companions for most of the first two seasons of the show, chalking up some 78 episode appearances. Remarkably, this run made them the joint-fourth longest-running companions of all time (behind Jamie McCrimmon, Sarah Jane Smith and K9), which they hold to this day. They left the show in 1965, at the conclusion of the serial The Chase (the penultimate serial of Season 2), when they used a captured Dalek time ship to return home to Earth.

The producers of Doctor Who tried on several times to get Russell to reprise his role on the show, but availability was a key issue: Russell continued to have a prolific career on British TV and in film, including a memorable stint on soap opera Coronation Street (blamed for causing Doctor Who's original demise in 1989 during a ratings showdown) in 1992 and a brief, supporting role in Superman (1978), among many others. He finally reprised his role as Ian for the Big Finish audio drama range, appearing in nineteen stories from 2009 to 2020.

He finally returned to Doctor Who in 2022's The Power of the Doctor, reprising his role as Ian briefly in a "self-help group" for former companions of the Doctor. This appearance, coming fifty-seven years after his last on-screen appearance, broke the Guinness World Record for the longest gap between appearances of an actor playing the same role on television.

Russell passed away on 3 June 2024. He is survived by his second wife and four children, including Alfred Enoch (best-known for playing Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter movies). He will very much be missed.