William Russell, who has died aged 99, was one of the original cast of Doctor Who, playing the science teacher Ian Chesterton, companion to William Hartnell’s Time Lord, in the first two seasons (1963-65); he had made his name in the 1950s ITV series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot and later, in the 1990s, was Rita Fairclough’s smooth-talking husband Ted in Coronation Street, while on film he had small roles in The Man Who Never Was (1956), The Great Escape (1963) and Superman (1978).
Blue-eyed, blond and 6ft tall, Russell was cast essentially as the action hero of the show. Ian was one of four main parts, alongside Jacqueline Hill, who played history teacher Barbara Wright, Carole Ann Ford as the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan Foreman, and Hartnell’s Doctor. At that stage in the show’s evolution the Doctor was a mysterious elderly anti-hero, rather than the all-purpose lead he would become when Jon Pertwee and then Tom Baker took on the role.
Ian was intended to be someone the audience could identify with, serving to explain the Doctor’s inscrutable pronouncements as well as doing any sword-fighting or other derring-do required. He was the first character in Doctor Who to escape by hiding inside a Dalek casing, after dispensing with its original occupant.
Russell and the others soon discovered a shared sense of humour. While at Ealing Studios making the first story, “An Unearthly Child”, after a hearty lunch they had to film a scene in which they fled some cavemen and ran back to the Tardis. “We kept teasing the old BBC cameraman, who was trying to line us up,” Russell told the Radio Times. “We were a bit naughty, I suppose.”
Filming continued at Lime Grove, where Russell remembered that the Tardis took a while to get used to, with its “wobbly doors” and “that extraordinary thing in the middle like a cinema organ going up and down; that was temperamental”.
Three of Russell’s storylines involved Daleks, an enemy who at first seemed laughable: “Mind you, we were introduced to them without their tops on. Just an actor sitting in this sort of bathtub base.” But it soon became apparent how scary the Daleks really were: Russell’s three young children “used to queue up behind the sofa”.
The history episodes were his favourite, especially the seven-part “Marco Polo” serial with its beautiful costumes. In “The Crusade”, a second-season serial, the Doctor and his travelling companions (Maureen O’Brien having replaced Carole Ann Ford) arrived in 12th-century Palestine, where Ian was knighted by Richard the Lionheart, played by Julian Glover.
Anxious not to be typecast, however, Russell left Doctor Who after almost two years. But there was no shaking off the Tardis.
He narrated several audiobooks, recorded material to cover lost episodes of The Crusade, and had several cameo roles including the BBC commissionaire Harry in the 50th anniversary programme An Adventure in Space and Time (2013). His final appearance was in The Power of the Doctor (2022), setting a record for the longest gap – 57 years – between television appearances as the same character.
Half a century after Doctor Who first appeared, Russell was still receiving fan mail and following with pleasure the show’s progress. “I’m astonished to see it today,” he said in 2010. “It’s absolutely brilliant, like a great big film. They’ve really got money to spend.”
He was born William Russell Enoch in Sunderland on November 19 1924, the son of Eva, née Pile, and Alfred Enoch, whose work took the family around the country. He was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School and Fettes in Edinburgh. During National Service for the RAF he was involved in entertainments, though on-screen he appeared in all the services at various times.
He started reading PPE at Trinity College, Oxford, but switched to English. On coming down he was seen in rep and in 1951 appeared with Alec Guinness in Hamlet (billed as Russell Enoch) at the New Theatre, London. His earliest films included the X-rated Intimate Relations (1953), based on Jean Cocteau’s play, and the Second World War drama They Who Dare (1954) with Dirk Bogarde.
The subject of his name arose while making One Good Turn (1955) with Norman Wisdom, who feared confusion with the comedy trio Enoch, Ramsbottom and Me. Although Russell did not regard himself as a comedy player, he agreed to be known as William Russell. He changed back to Enoch in 1978, but later reverted again to Russell.
Coming to prominence in 1956 as the star of The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (“good quality, swashbuckling stuff”), made for ITV and also shown on NBC in the US, he was dashing on a white charger in his chainmail, but the series came to an early end the next spring, because the move to filming in colour for the American market proved too costly. After that he was in a BBC television adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby (1957), broadcast live over 18 weeks, followed by Tales from Dickens (1959). In the 1970s he was a stalwart of ITV’s daytime drama Harriet’s Back in Town.
On stage he was seen with the Old Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Actors Touring Company, with work taking him to Russia, Poland and South America. In Borneo, he appeared in As You Like It for an audience of Dyaks, who are descended from head-hunters, “but they liked our performance”.
There were small television roles in Father Brown, Crown Court and The Black Adder (which, after series one, became Blackadder). Then came 47 episodes of Coronation Street, in which his salesman Ted had a brain tumour and knew that tragedy could strike at any moment. As he explained: “You are booked for a certain number of episodes, told all about your character’s past, but not much about their future.”
Russell’s first marriage, to the French actress Balbina Gutierrez, was dissolved, and in 1984 he married Etheline Lewis, a doctor, who survives him with their son, and two daughters and a son from his first marriage.
William Russell, born November 19 1924, died June 3 2024
