"Who is he? Doctor who?" William Russell 1924-2024

June 4, 2024 5:09 PM

Actor William Russell, best known these days for his role as Ian Chesterton, one of the original companions of Doctor Who from 1963-1965, has passed away aged 99.

You can watch Russell in action as Ian Chesterton in lots of places, including the Internet Archive.

Russell holds a Guinness World Record for the longest gap between television appearances in the same role, after he made a cameo appearance as Ian in the 2022 special "The Power of the Doctor".

Before Doctor Who, Russell was well known for his lead role in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (first episode on Youtube).

posted by jjderooy (25 comments total)

I've recently been rewatching 1960's Doctor Who and had been admiring Russell's work, knowing he was soon to fall out of the world (again).

As a younger Who fan, Ian didn't rate highly for me. El Sandifer's explanation of the character (as part of an examination of Ian's and Barbara's final serial) and his role in 1960s Who changed that, and I'll quote it here:

And then there is Ian. I’ve been down on Ian in the past, to the point where Simon Guerrier, who wrote The Time Travellers, has called me absurdly wrong on the point. I still think there are some major problems with Ian – most notably that he’s the exact sort of manly action hero that the show usually sends up a bit. Which is why you have him with ridiculous scenes dancing to the Beatles and pretending to be a Dalek – because he is faintly absurd, and the show knows it.

He’s also hampered by the fact that his character isn’t one we recognize in Doctor Who anymore. He’s the companion who least gets to react to the strangeness of the world around him, which leads to the sort of one-note acting I’ve previously complained about. He’s stoic in a way that Doctor Who avoids later. But there is one later companion that Ian is a clear inspiration for, in a weird way, and that character is the one that, I think, can give a clear lens on how to read Ian as a great character. And that’s Wilf.

It’s clear from a couple of points throughout his time on the TARDIS that Ian served in the military. If he’s the same age as William Russell, that would put him in World War II, and about the same age as Bernard Cribbins and thus Wilfred Mott. They are, in other words, characters with very similar origins. But where Wilf has stayed on Earth and been passed by, becoming a quiet, respectful patriot who looks at the stars, Ian got to go there. They are, essentially, the same character, and had Ian never traveled on the TARDIS, he’d have grown old to be Wilf. And if you can project that backwards and look at Ian that way, you can see the noble bearing and quiet dignity that was bottled up torturously in Wilf allowed out. When, years down the line, Wilf chokes back tears while begging the Doctor to take Donna with him, because “she was better with you” (in an episode whose structure owes more than it would like to admit to the reading of The Chase above), the subtext is that Wilf, too, would have been better with the Doctor. And in Ian, we can see exactly what he means. Ian is a better person for traveling on the TARDIS. He was always a good man, but the Doctor gave him the opportunity to be a great one, and one senses he will never go back.
posted by jjderooy at 5:15 PM on June 4 [12 favorites]

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posted by Saxon Kane at 5:44 PM on June 4

I wasn't a big fan of Chris Chibnall's era of Doctor Who, and his grand finale was an incoherent mess... but that scene with the old companions was lovely, and William Russell's line was great. I'm glad he got to come back for that moment.
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