Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 May 2026NOTE: I goofed the selector positions, and mistakenly described them backwards: from the top, it is safe, full, 2-round-burst, and then semi at the bottom. In addition, there is supposed to be a segmented cleaning rod stored inside the handguard, which is missing on this example. Sorry!
The AK-12 went through an extensive development program that attempted to substantially change the AK design, but failed. In 2015 the early design plans were scrapped, and the project reverted to simply making some changes to the AK-100 series. This resulted in the AK-12 being adopted as the new Russian standard infantry rifle in December 2017. Within a short time a number of shortcomings were found in the rifles, and an improved model was accepted in 2019, with deliveries beginning in 2020.
The rifle in today’s video is that improved 2019 pattern. It has a redesigned stock, a new style of rear sight, and new pistol grip. Many thanks to the IRCGN (Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nationale) for allowing me access to film this very rare rifle for you!
Balanced-recoil AK-107:
• Balanced Recoil AK-107 / Kalashnikov SR-1:…
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September 29, 2026
AK-12: The Improved 2019 Model
QotD: Origins of modern Wicca
… the idea of witches cursing the moon has an ancient pedigree, dating all the way back to Greco-Roman antiquity and the literary trope of Thessalian witches who could pull the moon out of the heavens and down to earth. These ancient texts were part of the inspiration for Gerald Gardner’s mid-20th century creation of the “drawing down the moon” ritual, but where sources from the classical world implied that a witch could actually pluck the moon from the sky, in Gardner’s version a coven summons the divine personification of the moon to possess a priestess. Moreover, his creation of Wicca also drew extensively from freemasonry, the western ceremonial magic tradition, Crowleyian magic, Gardner’s own ethnographic observations in Southeast Asia — and, most important of all, the theories of James Frazer and Margaret Murray.
One thing that we can be confident that Wicca does not draw upon, however, is a goddess religion that survived the introduction of first the Indo-European *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr in the Bronze Age, and then the Semitic Jesus Christ in late antiquity, before being mostly suppressed in the “burning times” of the early modern era.1 Neo-pagans are not the (great-great-great …) granddaughters of the witches you didn’t burn in the 16th and 17th centuries; rather, they are the granddaughters of upper class romantics whose religious innovations in the early to mid-20th century are best characterized as “creative synthesis”.
Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon tells the story of the precursors, invention, and development of Wicca. Much of that history can be encapsulated in the mythic genealogy of “Black Annis”, an occasional pagan deity. There was a real medieval anchoress named Agnes Scott who served the church near Leicester and is buried at Swithland Church. She was venerated locally as a Christian saint, but following the Protestant Reformation was reconceptualized as an ogress. Then the 20th century crank archaeologist T.C. Lethbridge interpreted Black Annis as pagan survivalism of the “crone” aspect of the great mother goddess and a corruption of the Celtic goddess Anu. Finally, some modern neo-pagan communities were inspired by Lethbridge’s work to adopt veneration of Black Annis into their liturgy. As Hutton notes, “The gentle and pious Agnes seems therefore to have been turned first into a local saint, then into a local demon, next into a Celtic goddess, and finally into a witch goddess; and all the while her bones have rested in apparent peace at Swithland”.
The changing reputation of Agnes/Annis/Anu reflects a few processes that are common throughout much of the intellectual roots of neo-paganism. You start with the idiosyncratic cruftiness of medieval Catholicism, then Protestants derogate the cult of the saints, feast days, etc. as idolatrous — indeed, practically pagan. Fast forward to 1900, give or take a few decades, and an intellectual with dubious expertise projects pagan survivalism onto historical or ethnographic data. And then finally neo-pagans use the folklorist’s imagined version of the past as inspiration for a “revived” myth and liturgy.
Gabriel Rossman, “GUEST REVIEW: The Triumph of the Moon, by Ronald Hutton”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2025-12-01.
- The one aspect of this myth that might be true is a pre-Indo-European goddess religion. The idea that Stone Age female figurines like the Venus of Willendorf represent a goddess religion is plausible but unprovable, given that the figures predate writing by about 26,000 years and so we have no literary evidence to contextualize the archaeology. But even saying that the Neolithic goddess cult was possible but not settled fact, as archaeologist Peter Ucko did in the 1960s, was enough to upset Murray, who “sent Ucko a furious letter, informing him that he had no right to speak about the goddess, because he was, first, far too young, and, second, a man”. While there might have been widespread neolithic European goddess worship, all other aspects of the “Murray thesis” — the idea that witches executed circa the Protestant Reformation were practicing a pre-Christian goddess religion — are demonstrably false. Hutton notes the falsity of the Murray thesis incidentally in Triumph of the Moon and argues against it at length in his later book, The Witch.
September 28, 2026
The Blairite world of “policy based evidence making”
Just when you think the world is safe from Tony Blair’s machinations, he pops up yet again with more ideas for cultural enshittification:
Tony Blair photographed for the New Statesman by Tom Jamieson.
Photo via Fainting in Coils
Tony Blair has a gift for sentences that sound like policy and dissolve on contact. His Institute’s new paper contains one worth framing. “The right answer should always come first and the politics should follow.” It is the creed of a man who has never knocked on a door in Mansfield, and it explains everything else in the document. It is also called “policy based evidence making“.
The proposal is that Andy Burnham should use his November ten-year plan to put EU membership back on the agenda, with a target of rejoining a “significantly reformed” Union within a decade. Three years ago Blair told a group of European news agencies that whether and how Britain rejoins would be for a future generation. The future generation has arrived early, and it looks remarkably like Tony.
Nowhere does the paper define “significantly reformed“. It cannot. Name the reforms and you hand twenty-seven capitals a list of British demands, which is Cameron’s 2016 renegotiation with the humiliation pre-installed. Leave them unnamed and the target is air. It is equally coy on the currency, insisting it is not making an argument about the eurozone. Brussels will be happy to make that argument on its behalf.
What the friends of Europe concede
The most damaging witnesses against Blair are his own side. The Institute for Government, no nest of Eurosceptics, notes that new members are required to join the euro and Schengen, and that any fresh opt-outs or rebate would almost certainly need the approval of every member state and a majority in the European Parliament. An analysis on the LSE’s Brexit blog went further. It argued that the EU would expect Britain back as a more normal member state, with the rebate, the euro and Schengen opt-outs and the special justice and home affairs arrangements all off the table. The same piece warned that Brussels would look for significant, stable and long-lasting majority public opinion in favour of rejoining before it took an application seriously. A ten-year target announced by one party, and opposed by the party leading the polls, is the opposite of that.
A Queen’s University Belfast academic, writing before the referendum, saw the trap clearly. He judged it extremely unlikely that the EU would readmit Britain on its old terms, because a vote to leave would itself have been a democratic rejection of those terms. And unanimity means every capital holds a veto, including Madrid, which would have Gibraltar in view when any British arrangement came before it.
What the Leavers add
Anyone who imagines accession is a negotiation should read Hannes Gissurarson on Iceland, which voted last month against even resuming talks. He points out that accession talks are no bargain between equals but a process of adopting the Union’s legal framework wholesale, with room only for temporary exemptions to ease adjustment. Iceland’s Yes camp campaigned on a slogan meaning roughly “vote yes to find out what the EU would offer”, which Gissurarson reads as a confession that the deal was poor. Blair’s ten-year target is the same slogan with a longer run-up.
Gissurarson also recounts an unnamed EU official musing to Politico that rich Iceland could join alongside Montenegro and pay for its membership. Britain, rejoining behind a queue of Balkan and eastern candidates, would be cast as the wealthy uncle who picks up everyone’s bar tab.
Update, 29 September: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
The Punic Wars – An Overview
Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 15 Apr 2026Today we return to a familiar theme — the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. This video is meant as an overview of all three wars, rather than just the Second Punic War which is the most famous and involved Hannibal and Scipio and the like. We think about the context of the wars and also how they played out. A particular focus is the significance of big battles, whether on land or on sea. Clearly these mattered, but how much did the matter and how common were they?
September 27, 2026
The 88 – Foe of Tanks and Planes Alike – Nazi Rearmament 07
World War Two
Published 26 Sep 2026The German 8.8-centimeter Flak began as a heavy anti-aircraft gun, but war repeatedly dragged it into new roles. It shot at bombers, destroyed tanks, smashed bunkers, supported infantry, and eventually defended the collapsing Reich from Allied armies advancing into Germany.
Its origins, however, predated the Nazis. Developed through clandestine cooperation between Krupp and the Swedish firm Bofors, the Flak 18 emerged from Weimar Germany’s efforts to evade the military restrictions imposed after the First World War. The Nazis inherited that expertise, expanded production enormously, and turned the “Eighty-Eight” into one of the most famous weapons of the Second World War.
From Spain and France to North Africa, the Eastern Front, and the air defense of German cities, the 88 earned a formidable reputation. But how much of that reputation was deserved? Was it really an unparalleled anti-tank weapon, or has later mythology exaggerated its contribution?
In this German rearmament special, we examine the development, production, deployment, capabilities, limitations, and strategic effect of the Flak 18, Flak 36, Flak 37, and the substantially redesigned Flak 41. This is the history behind the legend: an impressive piece of engineering employed in support of Nazi Germany’s war of conquest and genocide.
Gynogerontocracy in the Anglosphere
As the working world in the Anglosphere becomes ever more feminized and gynocentric, as companies disproportionally hire women over men, the working dynamics of most jobs has also shifted dramatically:
There’s many things to be exhausted about as a millennial or zoomer man, and I find that one of them really is gynogerontocracy. Everywhere you go, a profoundly alienating woman, often an older woman, is in charge, where she probably either shouldn’t be, or would be better executing tasks and responsibilities for a male executive.
In the private sphere, the corporate jobs go to girlbosses, whose neuroticism is channeled into unrealistic and dysfunctional adherence to rules, policies and procedures. There is no trust or discretion to do your own job, at the same time as management they don’t want you to ask them about anything. Every minor policy breach turns into an email, turns a passive aggressive “documented conversation” and “coaching”, as they talk down to you as a mother scolds their children.
When I think about my professional life, the only times I was ever promoted for my hard work and efforts, was under White or Asian male leadership, and that’s because they by and large are the only people who value demonstrable merit and ability. Women don’t. They value policies and procedures, they value inclusivity, and they become petty little tyrants when they’re in charge. The only female manager I’ve ever had who wasn’t like that was a 24 year old zoomer who played with a Needough in her office and posted weird alien cat gifs in the corporate chat app. She was fine, and understood my lack of enthusiasm. The rest of them act like they’re running the navy when the consensus is now that this is functionally adult female daycare.
As a generational experience and trait, I find that men and boys are collectively exhausted and resent women being in charge for what has been their entire living experience. I find myself asking how much longer this can go on.
Harsher than Versailles: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 1918
The Great War
Published 24 Apr 2026On March 3, 1918 the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) and Bolshevik Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending the First World War on the Eastern Front. The terms were harsher than those the Germans offered in December, and much harsher than the later Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was only in force until November 1918, when the Central Powers’ defeat nullified it. But it had a major impact inside and outside Russia.
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September 26, 2026
Jacob Rees-Mogg says the quiet part out loud
Despite British news popping up here fairly regularly, I don’t closely follow individual politicians, so I didn’t have strong opinions about Jacob Rees-Mogg. I guess I had mild positive feelings about him based on what he’d said on various issues several years ago. I’d rather assumed he’d be out of politics by now with the collapse of the “Conservatives” after the Boriswave, but no, he still thinks of himself as a voice worth listening to … unfortunately.
Thoughts from the Shire suggests that we not blame Rees-Mogg too much, as he merely said out loud what they all think:
Don’t be too hard on old Jacob Rees-Mogg.
His recent call for the return of duty and the stiff upper lip, along with his warning that some of us may once again have to fight and die for our country, has predictably, and rightly so been met with howls of derision.
But here’s the thing, Mogg isn’t entirely wrong.
Duty does matter, courage matters, and sacrifice matters. A people incapable of defending themselves will eventually find themselves at the mercy of people who can, this is the story of world history. The problem is not the principle, the problem is the state of the nation, and perhaps more importantly, the relationship between those asking for the sacrifice and those expected to make it. People have rightly been pointing out that Millionaire Mogg, and his progeny are not likely to be the ones enlisted for the frontline, and that too often in our history the likes of Jacob have led many millions of good men to war. It is great that many have seen through Moggs BS rhetoric, and are telling him where he can stick his future war.
However we should not think that the masses of working class men that fought in past conflicts all did so out of patriotism, or because they listened to their betters, or were too stupid to see through the propaganda. Most knew their leaders were full of shit, most despised the upper crust types like Mogg.
It’s rather amusing that both the British and Canadian powers-that-be have spent a long time doing things to diminish the patriotism of their people — not least by mass immigration against the will of the voters — and denigrating the patriotic feelings they haven’t managed to fully suppress. Both ostentatiously treat immigrants, especially illegal immigrants better than they treat their own citizens, both with public support and judicial slight-of-hand to minimize or eliminate punishments when they do find themselves in court.
Now, British elites want the downtrodden young white males to ready themselves to go die for Ukraine, while Canadian elites want their downtrodden young white males to become, as John Carter put it, the Hoser Taliban and fight against the Yankee hordes of the Bad Orange Man. As if everyone will just magically forget that they spent the last decade and more actively trying to erase our history and blacken the reputations of the men who built our nation.
Sorry for the interruption, I’ll get off my hobby horse and let’s get back to Thoughts From the Shire:
Canadian troops going “over the top”
In the Past, the Upper Crust also Paid a Great Price in War
Nor, incidentally, did the upper classes always remain safely at home like old Mogg, and his ilk today. In the Great War, aristocratic families lost sons in extraordinary numbers. In 1919 the House of Lords recorded 160 sons of peers dead, “in many cases the hopes and heirs of their line”. Prime Minister Asquith lost his son Raymond. Bonar Law lost two sons. Public-school boys died in the same mud as miners and millworkers, and actually in a higher proportion. Go further back and the connection between leadership, and physical danger becomes even clearer. Kings fought, Chieftains fought, aristocrats fought. Martial ability was not the only qualification for leadership, but for much of history its obvious absence could certainly be a disqualification. It would have been unthinkable for a Celtic chief not to have been a great warrior, in fact the greatest warrior was often made chief precisely because he was the best warrior. Put the above into the context of today, the weak effeminate excuses for leaders we have in the West, not one of them would have the backbone to stand and fight for anything, let alone for you or me.
Contrary to common belief, in the past the man saying “Lets go to war” was frequently going with you, and on WWI the junior officer was actually going in front of you.
That matters.
Because the great change in our own age is not that ordinary men have suddenly become cowards (although it’s no doubt many are) and the upper classes armchair generals. It is that the bond between sacrifice, and belonging has weakened. My ancestors lived in mill-owned houses. They knew perfectly well where they stood in the social order, right at the bottom. Yet they fought in both world wars, remember there was no conscription in Ireland so they volunteered.
The thing is they were not fighting for an amorphous administrative machine called “the state”. They were fighting, in however complicated a fashion, for home, hearth, wives, weans, neighbours, streets, churches, towns, regiments, and the men beside them. They knew what was behind them, and beside them, they knew what they were trying to preserve, and that is where Mogg has the problem a bit backwards.
You cannot spend decades hollowing out common identity, weakening attachment to place, treating inherited loyalties as embarrassing, and reducing citizenship increasingly to an administrative relationship, then suddenly reach into the cupboard when war threatens and pull out words such as duty, honour, country, and sacrifice. You cannot look down your nose at the oiks and their gammon like ways, and then suddenly point out that they may have to die with honour and dignity.
Virtues like duty, honour, and sacrifice require roots, common beliefs and identities, a people!!!
So perhaps Mogg is right, we do need to toughen up. Perhaps we have become too comfortable, too passive, and too frightened of hardship. But the courage required of us may not be the courage to march obediently towards the next foreign battlefield for the virtue signalling elite, and their banker friends. It may be the courage to ask our own rulers some very uncomfortable questions first.
On Substack Notes, John Carter links to a Morgoth post on the topic, saying:
Jacob Rees-Mogg has been lecturing Brits about their “duty” to the nation, in particular their duty to die in Ukraine, while at the very same time he denies that the English people even exist as a nation at all. A “nation of mongrels”, he calls them.
He adopts the mannerisms of a grand old lord of times gone by, one of the landed gentry who bled and died en masse when they threw themselves into the trenches of the Great War, answering the very same call of duty to God, king, and country that Rees-Mogg cynically invokes. Will Rees-Mogg die in a slit trench in the Donbass? Will any of his four sons? Peter is 19 — old enough to fight. Will he? To ask the question is to answer it.
Rees-Mogg speaks of duty to fight for a country he will not fight for. He speaks of duty as he smiles upon the invasion of that country by the hordes of third world primitives he and his class continue to invite in. He speaks of duty, as the regime he supports bends itself to persecuting the men and women doing their duty to their country by attempting to fight back against the invasion.
SIG Manurhin 543 Semiauto: I Really Like This Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 May 2026SIG introduced the 540 series of rifles in 1973, which included the full-length 540 in 5.56mm, the 541 in a number of experimental calibers for the Swiss military, the 542 in 7.62mm NATO, and the 543 carbine with an 11.8″ (300mm) barrel in 5.56mm. In 1978 they licensed production of the 540, 542, and 543 to Manurhin in France, to sidestep Swiss export laws. The rifles were sold to a wide variety of small nations in Africa, South America, Asia, and the Middle East — including Lebanon, where this example came from. A batch of 542 and 543 kits came into the US from Lebanon recently, and Troy Ess at TTE Precision Metalwerks developed semiauto receivers for them.
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September 25, 2026
Shock! Horror! Civil servant says SAS troopers are “feral” and “nasty”
If you’ve ever met a regular soldier, you’ll have noticed that some of them are not comfortable in ordinary civilian settings for quite some time after they get back from active service … they have to re-adapt and that takes time and effort. Out in the field, the niceties of civil society are contra-survival in many cases. Special forces soldiers, who are much more likely to see the colour of blood (their own, their mates’, or much more likely, the enemy’s) find it even harder to be “nice” around dainty civilians like Monica Grenfell:
EXCLUSIVE: Special forces soldiers believe they are “untouchable” and not all of them are the heroes they think they are, according to a former female civil servant who worked alongside them.
Monica Grenfell, who was employed at the Special Air Service (SAS) headquarters in Credenhill, near Hereford, for three years, said some of the elite troops were “feral” and it was “the nasty characters who really ruled the roost”.
She has given evidence under oath to the Afghan Inquiry and has now been interviewed by @thetimes
During a security briefing, Grenfell claimed that an officer joked about the deaths of three SAS reservists in the Brecon Beacons, saying that “dying on selection is nature’s way of saying you have failed”, to which others laughed
Grenfell described how she was told that soldiers dropped detainees in Afghanistan from forklift trucks “for fun”. She said she asked someone what they did in their spare time in the country and they said they got forklift trucks and “drove really fast then slammed on the brakes so they fell from a height”.
The comments certainly trend a certain way:
Hector Drummond @hector_drummond
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She should never have been allowed to be around them.
Integral Views @Integral_Views
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Swearing and ‘being feral’ is actually just normal male behavior in groups, including friendships. All workplaces used to be like this.Women find this atmosphere to be threatening and have gone about changing every working environment to suit their preferences without a single thought that men might find those new female coded, HR dominated safe space environments uncomfortable.
We do, by the way. We hate them.
Men retreated into gaming and now that’s also been infiltrated by woke game developers. Masculinity is simply no longer acceptable.
I’m sick of what women prefer being the unchallenged yardstick for what’s apparently morally virtuous.
Shine Like Marble @MoscowIn2008
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The “female civil servant” rather sums up modern Britain. A feminised state obsessed with risk, HR and safeguarding, passing judgement on institutions like the SAS.
Cedric CiphercloΔk @Cycario
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Which one didn’t text her back the night after the squadron function?
Bea Johanssen @bea_johanssen
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Grenfell worked as a kitchen assistant and storekeeper between 2015-2018 — why would she be attending security briefings?
The Officers’ Mess @officersmess
.
Cool. Let Monica pass selection & do the grimy shit that affords her the freedom to have opinions.
Opinion she would be denied if not for the folks at the pointy end of the spear who have been protecting it.
If its too much for the Monica’s of the world: Find a new line of work.
How True was Lord of War? Surplus from the Warsaw Pact (w/ Val Forgett)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 May 2026When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a gold rush for the surplus guns held by all the various newly independent republics, as well as the Warsaw Pact nations. Lord of War is not far off … and Val Forgett was there, bringing guns into the US for Navy Arms.
QotD: The whole point of imposing tariffs is to raise prices
Think on it. So, those dastardly foreigners are better, or cheaper, or subsidised, or just plain swarthy johnnies who are selling to us and thereby stealing the crust from the mouths of the more expensive (or less good etc) proper British producers. So, we now impose a tax at the border. This makes those products from swarthy johnnies more expensive. So, people will buy fewer swarthy and more good and honest British.
This also enables the good British to raise their prices and so make a profit.
So, what actually happens is that the British consumer gets screwed for the benefit of British capitalists. Not quite what I’d recommend as a policy but that’s the point and the intention. Tariffs raise the domestic price of the thing, that’s the reason why.
Tim Worstall, “But Increasing Prices Is The Very Point Of Tariffs”, It’s all obvious or trivial except …, 2026-06-18.
September 24, 2026
The benefits to US national security from the Greenland agreement
I’m sure some in the Canadian relic media will try to spin the US-Greenland-Denmark agreement as somehow threatening to Canadian sovereignty, but if it does in some way it’s clearly not the main focus from the US viewpoint:
US President Donald Trump diplays the Greenland security deal with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.
Photo via CDR Salamander
We’ve kept up reasonably steady reporting the last couple of years on Greenland. I was never quite sure where it would come out, but I was confident that it would be — non-inclusive — in between the two extremes we heard coming out of the overly excitable and narrowly sourced commentariat of the U.S. invading or the U.S. being kicked out … and it did.
I have to give a nod to our Australian friend Liz Buchanan who gave some great observations on the issue on the Midrats Podcast back in September of 2025 and January of this year.
The full text of the agreement can be found here if you want to read it in detail, but let’s stick to the big pixels, as it is really a good news story for everyone … especially NATO.
Rod Martin created a great executive summary … I’m just going to steal it.
Bravo Zulu to the team that kept working this issue. From a national security point of view, everyone got the most important things they wanted — that’s what matters.
As we like to do here, let’s go to the chartroom.
We should start with something I posted five days ago over on X.
Making 200-Year-Old Mayonnaise – How has it changed?
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 31 Mar 2026Thick, creamy mayonnaise made with tarragon vinegar and gelatin
City/Region: France
Time Period: 1828Mayonnaise (or magnonnaise, as Carême calls it in this recipe from 1828), didn’t really become popular until the early 19th century. First popular in France, by the 1850s, cookbooks in other countries were including recipes for it, sometimes with several variations. Earlier recipes commonly used gelatin, but by the end of the 19th century, the recipe looked very much like what we make today.
Homemade mayonnaise is vastly better than anything you can buy. There’s a nice zing from the vinegar in this one, and even if you don’t like store bought mayonnaise, I think you should give this a try; it’s really delicious. If you’re not worried about historical accuracy, you could make this without the gelatin.
White Magnonnaise Sauce
Place into a medium bowl two egg yolks (as pale as possible), a large pinch of white salt, the same of white pepper, and a quarter of a tablespoon of tarragon vinegar. You briskly stir this mixture with a wooden spoon; and as soon as it begins to thicken, you add half a tablespoon of oil from Aix. As soon as the sauce thickens, you add a few drops of vinegar, then oil, and so on, taking care to work it constantly … As it thickens, you add a little oil at a time, as well as vinegar and a small amount of aspic jelly … by adding the oil and vinegar little by little…you see it gradually come together, becoming firm and velvety like a well-set cream. Finally, after having incorporated two glass of oil, half a glass of aspic jelly, and the necessary vinegar to make it pleasantly tangy, you use it immediately.
— Le cuisinier parisien by Marie-Antoine Carême, 1828
September 23, 2026
Doctor Who – the early Doctors
One of my earliest memories of television involve a BBC children’s TV show that began in 1963: Doctor Who. My mother claims I watched every episode from behind the settee, but I wouldn’t let her turn it off even though I was clearly terrified. I was young enough that I don’t remember particular stories — I don’t even remember being surprised when the actor portraying the lead character suddenly changed from William Hartnell to Patrick Troughton. After my family came to Canada, I only occasionally caught an episode on TV, and I don’t think I saw anything produced after the late 1980s, so all the modern casting choices (and the controversy) passed me by.
Millennial Woes provides a helpful guide to the show from the first episode through to the late 1980s, which may be of interest to some of you:
Several people have asked me to write a guide to Doctor Who, so here it is. I think most readers will be familiar with the show so I won’t waste time introducing it. Suffice it to say, we’re talking about a somewhat silly family sci-fi show, but one that frequently had soul, style, humour, and a lot of warmth. As with so much contemporaneous TV drama, Doctor Who had charm that seems to be simply impossible to achieve nowadays.
This guide is a difficult one to write because there are simply so many stories to survey, and because the show has multiple eras which are very distinct — almost different TV shows altogether. (Broadly, I would say the eras are 1963-69, 1970-81, 1982-87, and 1988-89.)
[…]
Something you will notice is that I talk about the incidental music almost as much as the stories themselves. I find Doctor Who‘s music, across the various eras, very stimulating and enjoyable in its own right. (This indicates how big a part it must play in the show itself.)
The First Doctor was played by William Hartnell. This was Doctor Who at its very beginnings, in 1963, so it is radically different not only from the modern 2005 show but even from the Pertwee era seven years later, by which time TV production had advanced in leaps and bounds.
I must confess to being barely acquainted with Hartnell’s era, having watched only four or five stories in total. It is too slow-moving for my tastes. However, I can certainly recommend one episode …
“An Unearthly Child”
This is the very first episode. Though it is technically the first of a four-part story, it is really a “standalone” episode to set up the programme. The introduction of now-iconic elements is beautifully done. Everything at this stage seems darker and more mysterious than it will later be. The Doctor is secretive, unfriendly and sinister. The TARDIS is scary and doesn’t seem reliable, its first “flight” being a genuinely unnerving experience.
The atmosphere is terrific throughout. The whole thing is in grainy black & white reminiscent of a 1930s horror film. It is excellent, in my opinion. Had the show continued in this vein it would probably have been much shorter-lived but less lightweight. I guess things are always better while they still have their mystery.
The Second Doctor was played by Patrick Troughton. He was perhaps the most talented — as an actor — of the men who played the role in the classic era. His turn on the character is much more playful and irreverent than Hartnell’s. I am again very unfamiliar with the era, so am somewhat at a loss for recommendations.
“The Three Doctors”
This is a cheat since this story is actually in the Third Doctor’s era, but I think the Second really dominates proceedings so it feels appropriate to cite this story as one of his. You get a strong sense of how different he is from the Third, whom Troughton effortlessly upstages. And it’s a good story.
The Third Doctor was played by Jon Pertwee, then known mostly for comedy work. During most of this era the Doctor is confined to Earth, working as “scientific advisor” to UNIT led by the Brigadier, and battling his Timelord nemesis the Master. A lot of the stories are 6 or 7-parters, formats that work very well; there is more world-building than in the 4-parters, which start to seem slightly lacking by comparison.
The third was perhaps the least “alien” incarnation of the Doctor. You can easily imagine him being a heroic leader in the Empire or a maverick figure in British government or business, up to about 1970 (after which such mavericks were tamed or filtered out by bureaucracy). Aristocratic but still practical and “a man of action”, he is constantly innovating and questioning, and being frustrated by the lack of imagination in the lesser men around him. But he is very much a man, not an alien. That choice was probably dictated by Pertwee’s own personality, and it would be reversed when his successor arrived.
Nevertheless, this era was a peak for Doctor Who. The storytelling is very competent, the production style has real charm and the acting (RP galore!) is consistent and endearing. All of this means the stories bear rewatching, remaining enjoyable time after time.
In terms of choice, you can hardly go wrong with this era. The only bad stories are “Carnival of Monsters” and “The Mutants“, with the rest being uniformly great fun.
