Daily Inspiration Quote by Patrick Troughton

Patrick Troughton is doing something sly here: he’s refusing the safety valve of irony. Talking about a “series” (almost certainly Doctor Who, where he defined the Second Doctor as wry, mercurial, and quietly dangerous), he insists he “never thought of it as fantasy.” That’s not naïveté; it’s craft. In a genre that invites audiences to wink along, Troughton argues for straight-faced commitment as the engine of believability. The line works because it flips the usual hierarchy: “fantasy” isn’t the lofty imaginative realm, it’s the dismissive label people use to keep the material at arm’s length.

The phrase “possibilities implied” is doing a lot of work. He’s not praising budgets, monsters, or lore; he’s praising potential. That’s a performer talking about a format that could smuggle big ideas into a family timeslot: fear, ethics, authority, social change, the exhilaration of the unknown. In the late-1960s context, when British television was still negotiating its cultural legitimacy and sci-fi was often treated as juvenile, Troughton’s stance reads like a quiet rebuke to the snobbery around popular entertainment.

“Far from it” lands as a final shove. He’s telling you the real fantasy is thinking stories don’t shape how people rehearse reality. For an actor, especially in a show built on impossible premises, taking the world seriously isn’t optional; it’s the only way the audience can.