Patrick Troughton's son reflects on 'magic' actor who saved Doctor Who with its first regeneration

As Michael Troughton continues to reprise his father Patrick's role as the Second Doctor in Doctor Who audio adventures, the actor has reflected on his father's legacy, and the "magic" he brought to the role.

While speaking exclusively with Radio Times, Troughton acknowledged that his father "saved" Doctor Who by being part of its first regeneration, and said the reason this worked was "good casting".

"He was a really talented character actor," Troughton said of his father. "He started when television was really very young, and he learnt how to be on television. A lot of actors that had come from theatre didn't really understand what to do with television, how much smaller it was.

"I think film actors transferred very well, but you look at his credits, and it’s a history of BBC and ITV television. It's extraordinary, and the number of parts he played, extraordinary. When I was writing his biography, I hadn't realised the number of of jobs he did.

"It's really irritating because he'd phone my brother up and myself, and say, 'Oh my goodness, I've been out of work for a week,' and we'd say 'A week? That's absolutely nothing. 'We've been out of work for six months. He hated being out of work. I think he was addicted to it, really, he absolutely loved it."

Troughton said that he believes his father was considered for the role because he was a naval officer in the Second World War, as were a number of people at the BBC and in production.

"That connection was very, very strong, and I'm sure it was word of mouth. 'Do you want to come in and play this? Do you want to do that?' And [producer] Innes Lloyd very cleverly saw that Dad had that strength of character, that way of creating characters so well, because he'd done so much before, to succeed [First Doctor star William Hartnell]."

Troughton added that his father was "terrified of being typecast", but "immediately when he finished Doctor Who, he went straight into another role without any problems".

He also reflected on the characterisation of the Second Doctor, saying: "'Cosmic hobo'. I don't know where that came from. He was a ragamuffin. He was a wonderful, cheeky ragamuffin that put on this persona of being a bit of a clown. But actually, underneath, he was so in control. People didn't realise until the end, of course, when everything was resolved."

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"Dad was a very private man, and it wasn't because he wanted to be private, keep all his affairs under wraps," Troughton continued. "It was more to do with the fact that he thought that acting was magical.

"He had this thing about if you saw the person that was really underneath, then it would ruin the illusion, it would stop the reality, you couldn't suspend your disbelief with what that performance was. He was a great believer in that. He hated appearing as himself. Even at the conventions in America, he wouldn't appear as himself.

"He'd dress up and play the doctor. So I don't think really anybody got to know him as I did, and as the family knew him. But I'm pretty sure that's the same with lots and lots of other actors and comedians and famous people.

"He was a magician, a magician of his craft - I think that's a good description of him because I don't know where he got some of the performances he got. They were genius, absolutely genius."

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Troughton most recently played the Second Doctor in the Big Finish audio adventure The Haunted Windmill, in which the Doctor, Jamie, Zoe and Raven visit a strangely changed Earth in 1963, to escape the Time Lords. If he tries to save the planet, the Time Lords will find him, but he soon finds out that monsters are coming...

Doctor Who – The Second Doctor Adventures: The Haunted Windmill is available to buy on Big Finish. Doctor Who is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

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