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Doctor Who almost ended in 1966. This man's goodbye saved it.

In 1966, the first Doctor Who walked away from the role he loved.

He didn't want to.

William Hartnell was 58.

He had played the Doctor since 1963, in a quirky children's show almost nobody expected to last.

It became a global phenomenon.

But behind the scenes, his health was changing. Remembering long scripts had become harder.

Read that again. The man who gave the Doctor his first face was quietly struggling.

Before the Doctor, he had spent years playing tough sergeants and hard men on screen.

Doctor Who gave him something different. Warmth. Mystery. A grandfatherly twinkle.

And children adored him.

He was proud of that.

In October 1966, the Doctor changed his face for the first time, and Patrick Troughton took over.

An idea that let the show live on for decades was born out of his exit.

But for Hartnell, it was a goodbye.

In 1972, he returned one last time for The Three Doctors, the show's 10th anniversary story. His scenes were brief, filmed separately from the others.

On April 23, 1975, William Hartnell passed away at age 67.

He never saw the show become what it is today.

Today, the Doctor is a global icon, loved by millions.

Every Doctor since stands on his shoulders.

The first face is never forgotten.

Not inside Patrick Stewart's home.

His father, Alfred, came home when Patrick was six.

Alfred had been a soldier. A newspaper cutting from 1940 said he came back from France with shell shock.

Nobody treated it.

Before that, Patrick has said, life with his mother Gladys was warm. Spoiled. Loved.

Then his father returned. And everything changed.

The shouting. The violence toward his mother.

Police at the door. Ambulance men in a two-room house, late on Saturday nights.

Read that again.

Patrick and his brother Trevor learned to read the signs. And they learned when to step between their parents.

Children should never have to learn that.

He grew up. He left Mirfield. He became an actor.

Shakespeare on the stage. Captain Picard. Professor X.

Millions knew the voice. Almost nobody knew the house.

Then he began to speak.

A video for Amnesty International in 2006. A column in The Guardian in 2009. He became a patron of Refuge, the charity for women escaping abuse. He lent his name to a scholarship at the University of Huddersfield for research into domestic violence.

He has said he does this work in his mother's name. Because he could not help her then.

Gladys died in 1977.

She never saw him become Picard. She never saw him stand up and say it out loud.

Later, he learned more about his father's war. He said it changed how he saw the man. It did not change how he saw the violence.

The public remembers the ovations. The knighthood. The captain's chair.

The private moment was braver.

A grown man. Telling a child's secret.

He broke the silence.