Peter Cushing IS Doctor Who!
Sadly, most of today's audience doesn't even know he played Doctor Who...twice!
Note: I didn't say "The Doctor", since Cushing's version was not a Time Lord from Gallifrey, but an eccentric human scientist!
To be fair, the exact concept of who (or what) the character was didn't get defined until the final episode of the first Doctor's run, which was done after the first Cushing film!
In the Hartnell stories the Doctor is said to be from "another time, another world", but that can be just taken as his being from a future Earth (which certainly would fill both criteria).
Even when other characters from his home (like the Meddling Monk, who also had a TARDIS) were introduced, no clear definition of where (or when) they were from was presented!
(The terms "Time Lord" and "Gallifrey" were first used during the second Doctor's {Patrick Troughton] run.)
Though Cushing's two films were adaptations of BBC-TV serials ("Dead Planet" and "Dalek Invasion of Earth"), they are not considered part of the official canon of the TV series.
Here's the cover-featured story from Doctor Who Monthly #84 (1984), which was only available in America through Forbidden Planet's New York store!
(The series was made available to the US market through Diamond Distribution a couple of years later, but this particular issue wasn't.)
You can see Peter's Doctor Who in comic book form...
Doctor Who and the Daleks Part 1
Doctor Who and the Daleks Part 2
Plus Peter Cushing in other Hammer Film roles...
Baron Victor Von Frankenstein
in Curse of Frankenstein
Lawrence Van Helsing
in Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires
There's more cool Cushing stuff to come!
Bookmark us and visit often!
And check out other posts from the Peter Cushing Centennial Blogathon by clicking on the art below!
