Doctor Who is a British science-fiction
television programme produced by the BBC since 1963. Doctor Who
follows the adventures of a rogue Time Lord from the planet
Gallifrey, who goes by the name "the Doctor". The Doctor
fled Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS – "Time and Relative
Dimension in Space" – a time machine that travels by
materialising into and dematerialising out of the time vortex. The
TARDIS has a vast interior but appears smaller on the outside, and is
equipped with a "chameleon circuit" intended to make the
machine take on the appearance of local objects as a disguise; due to
a malfunction, the exterior of the TARDIS remains fixed as a blue
British police box, a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series
first aired. Accompanied by a number of companions, the Doctor
combats a variety of foes, while working to save civilisations and
help people in need.
The
Doctor often finds events that pique their curiosity and tries to
prevent evil forces from harming innocent people or changing history,
using only ingenuity and minimal resources, such as the versatile
sonic screwdriver. The Doctor rarely travels alone and often brings
one or more companions to share these adventures. These companions
are usually humans, owing to the Doctor's fascination with planet
Earth, which also leads to frequent collaborations with the
international military task force UNIT when the Earth is threatened.
The Doctor has gained numerous reoccurring enemies during their
travels, including the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Master, another
renegade Time Lord. As a Time Lord, the Doctor is centuries old and
has the ability to regenerate in case of mortal damage to the body,
taking on a new appearance and personality, and numerous actors have
headlined the series as the Doctor. Each actor's portrayal differs,
but all represent stages in the life of the same character and form a
single lifetime with a single narrative. The time-travelling feature
of the plot means that different incarnations of the Doctor
occasionally meet.
Producers introduced the concept of
regeneration to permit the recasting of the main character and was
prompted by the poor health of the original star, William Hartnell.
The term "regeneration" was not conceived until the
Doctor's third on-screen regeneration; Hartnell's Doctor merely
described undergoing a "renewal", and the Second Doctor
underwent a "change of appearance". The device has allowed
for the recasting of the actor various times in the show's history,
as well as the depiction of alternative Doctors either from the
Doctor's relative past or future.
The episodes The Deadly Assassin (1976)
and Mawdryn Undead (1983) established that a Time Lord can only
regenerate 12 times, for a total of 13 incarnations. This plot point
became stuck in the public consciousness despite not often being
repeated, and was recognised by producers of the show as an obstacle
for when the show finally had to regenerate the Doctor a thirteenth
time. The episode "The Time of the Doctor" (2013) depicted
the Doctor acquiring a new cycle of regenerations, starting from the
Twelfth Doctor, due to the Eleventh Doctor being the product of the
Doctor's twelfth regeneration from his original set. The show
introduced the Time Lords' ability to change sexes on regeneration in
earlier episodes, first in dialogue, then with Michelle Gomez's
version of The Master.
Original Doctor William
Hartnell above left. The War Doctor, John Hurt above right.
In addition to those actors who have
headlined the series, others have portrayed versions of the Doctor in
guest roles. Notably, in 2013, John Hurt guest-starred as a hitherto
unknown incarnation of the Doctor known as the War Doctor in the
run-up to the show's 50th anniversary special "The Day of the
Doctor". He is shown in mini-episode "The Night of the
Doctor" retroactively inserted into the show's fictional
chronology between McGann and Eccleston's Doctors, although his
introduction was written so as not to disturb the established
numerical naming of the Doctors. Another example is from the 1986
serial The Trial of a Time Lord, where Michael Jayston portrayed the
Valeyard, who is described as an amalgamation of the darker sides of
the Doctor's nature, somewhere between the twelfth and final
incarnation. On rare occasions, other actors have stood in for the
lead. In The Five Doctors, Richard Hurndall played the First Doctor
due to William Hartnell's death in 1975; 34 years later David Bradley
similarly replaced Hartnell in Twice Upon a Time. In Time and the
Rani, Sylvester McCoy briefly played the Sixth Doctor during the
regeneration sequence, carrying on as the Seventh. In other media,
the Doctor has been played by various other actors, including Peter
Cushing in two films. The casting of a new Doctor has often inspired
debate and speculation among fans. The youngest actor to be cast is
Matt Smith (below left) at 26, and the oldest are Peter Capaldi
(below right) and William Hartnell, both 55.
There have been instances of actors
returning at later dates to reprise the role of their specific
Doctor. In 1973's The Three Doctors, William Hartnell and Patrick
Troughton returned alongside Jon Pertwee (above). For 1983's The Five
Doctors, Troughton and Pertwee returned to star with Peter Davison,
and Tom Baker appeared in previously unseen footage from the
uncompleted Shada episode. For this episode, Richard Hurndall
replaced William Hartnell (below). Patrick Troughton again returned
in 1985's The Two Doctors with Colin Baker. In 2007, Peter Davison
returned in the Children in Need short "Time Crash"
alongside David Tennant, and in 2013's 50th anniversary special
episode, "The Day of the Doctor", David Tennant's Tenth
Doctor appeared alongside Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor and John
Hurt as the War Doctor, as well as brief footage from all of the
previous actors. In 2017, the First Doctor (this time portrayed by
David Bradley) returned alongside Peter Capaldi in "The Doctor
Falls" and "Twice Upon a Time" (both 2017). In
"The Name of the Doctor" (2013), the Eleventh Doctor meets
a previously unseen incarnation of himself, subsequently revealed to
be the War Doctor. Additionally, multiple incarnations of the Doctor
have met in various audio dramas and novels based on the television show.
Throughout the programme's long history,
there have been revelations about the Doctor that have raised
additional questions. In The Brain of Morbius (1976), it was hinted
that the First Doctor might not have been the first incarnation
(although the other faces depicted might have been incarnations of
the Time Lord Morbius). In subsequent stories the First Doctor was
depicted as the earliest incarnation of the Doctor. In Mawdryn Undead
(1983), the Fifth Doctor explicitly confirmed that he was then
currently in his fifth incarnation. Later that same year, during
1983's 20th Anniversary special The Five Doctors, the First Doctor
enquires as to the Fifth Doctor's regeneration; when the Fifth Doctor
confirms "Fourth", the First Doctor excitedly replies
"Goodness me. So there are five of me now." In 2010, the
Eleventh Doctor similarly calls himself "the Eleventh" in
"The Lodger". In the 2013 episode "The Time of the
Doctor," the Eleventh Doctor clarified he was the product of the
twelfth regeneration, due to a previous incarnation which he chose
not to count and one other aborted regeneration. The name Eleventh is
still used for this incarnation; the same episode depicts the
prophesied "Fall of the Eleventh" which had been trailed
throughout the series.
During the Seventh Doctor's era, it was
hinted that the Doctor was more than just an ordinary Time Lord. In
the 1996 television film, the Eighth Doctor describes himself as
being "half human". Doctor Who purists tend to disregard
this, instead focusing on his Gallifreyan heritage.
The
programme's first serial, An Unearthly Child, shows that the Doctor
has a granddaughter, Susan Foreman. In the 1967 serial, Tomb of the
Cybermen, when Victoria Waterfield doubts the Doctor can remember his
family because of, "being so ancient", the Doctor says that
he can when he really wants to - "The rest of the time they
sleep in my mind". The 2005 series reveals that the Ninth Doctor
thought he was the last surviving Time Lord, and that his home planet
had been destroyed; in "The Empty Child" (2005), Dr.
Constantine states that, "Before the war even began, I was a
father and a grandfather. Now I am neither." The Doctor remarks
in response, "Yeah, I know the feeling." In "Smith and
Jones" (2007), when asked if he had a brother, he replied,
"No, not any more." In both "Fear Her" (2006) and
"The Doctor's Daughter" (2008), he states that he had, in
the past, been a father.
In "The Wedding of River Song"
(2011 left), it is implied that the Doctor's true name is a secret
that must never be revealed; this is explored further in "The
Name of the Doctor" (2013), when River Song speaking his name
allows the Great Intelligence to enter his tomb, and in "The
Time of the Doctor" (2013) where speaking his true name becomes
the signal by which the Time Lords would know they can safely return
to the universe.
The show is a significant part of British
popular culture, and elsewhere it has gained a cult following. It has
influenced generations of British television professionals, many of
whom grew up watching the series. The programme originally ran from
1963 to 1989. There was an unsuccessful attempt to revive regular
production in 1996 with a backdoor pilot, in the form of a television
film titled Doctor Who. The programme was relaunched in 2005, and
since then has been produced in-house by BBC Wales in Cardiff. Doctor
Who has also spawned numerous spin-offs, including comic books,
films, novels, audio dramas, and the television series Torchwood
(2006–2011 below top), The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–2011
below bottom left), K-9 (2009–2010), and Class (2016 below
botton right), and has been the subject of many parodies and
references in popular culture.
THE BEGINING OF TIME
In
March 1962, Eric Maschwitz, the Assistant and Adviser to the
Controller of Programmes at BBC Television, asked Donald Wilson, the
Head of the Script Department, to have his department's Survey Group
prepare a study on the feasibility of the BBC producing a new science
fiction television series. The report was prepared by staff members
Alice Frick and Donald Bull, and delivered the following month, much
to the commendation of Wilson, Maschwitz and the BBC's Assistant
Controller of Programmes Donald Baverstock. A follow-up report into
specific ideas for the format of such a programme was commissioned,
and delivered in July. Prepared by Frick with another Script
Department staff member, John Braybon, this report recommended a
series dealing with time travel as being an idea particularly worthy
of development.
In December, Canadian-born Sydney Newman
arrived at BBC Television as the new Head of Drama. Newman was a
science fiction fan who had overseen several such productions in his
previous positions at ABC Television and the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation. In March 1963, he was made aware by Baverstock –
now promoted to Controller of Programmes – of a gap in the
schedule on Saturday evenings between the sports showcase Grandstand
and the pop music programme Juke Box Jury. Ideally, any programme
scheduled here would appeal to children that had previously been
accustomed to the timeslot, the teenaged audience of Juke Box Jury,
and the adult sports fan audience of Grandstand. Newman decided that
a science fiction programme would be perfect to fill the gap, and
enthusiastically took up the existing Script Department research,
initiating several brainstorming sessions with Wilson, Braybon, Frick
and another BBC staff writer, C. E. 'Bunny' Webber.
Wilson and Webber contributed heavily to
the formatting of the programme and its initial cast of regular
characters, and co-wrote the programme's first format document with
Newman. Newman personally came up with the idea of a time machine
larger on the inside than the outside and the idea of the central
character, the mysterious "Doctor"; he also gave the series
the name Doctor Who. Later in the year production was initiated and
handed over to producer Verity Lambert and story editor David
Whitaker to oversee, after a brief period when the show had been
handled by a "caretaker" producer, Rex Tucker. Concerned
about Lambert's relative lack of experience, Wilson appointed the
experienced staff director Mervyn Pinfield as associate producer.
Australian staff writer Anthony Coburn also contributed, penning the
very first episode from a draft initially prepared by Webber.
Doctor Who was originally intended to be
an educational series, with the TARDIS taking the form of an object
from that particular episode's time period (a column in Ancient
Greece, a sarcophagus in Egypt, etc.). When the show's budget was
calculated, however, it was discovered that it was prohibitively
expensive to re-dress the TARDIS model for each episode; instead
Coburn came up with the idea that the TARDIS's "Chameleon
Circuit" was malfunctioning, giving the prop its characteristic
'police-box' appearance.
The series' theme music was written by
film and television composer Ron Grainer (who would later go on to
also compose the theme to The Prisoner, among others) in
collaboration with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. While Grainer wrote
the theme, it was Delia Derbyshire who was responsible for its
creation, using a series of tape recorders to laboriously cut and
join together the individual sounds she created with both concrete
sources and square and sine-wave oscillators. Grainer was amazed at
the results and asked "Did I write that?" when he heard it.
Derbyshire replied that he mostly had. The BBC (who wanted to keep
members of the Workshop anonymous) prevented Grainer from getting her
a co-composer credit and half the royalties. The title sequence was
designed by graphics designer Bernard Lodge and realised by
electronic effects specialist Norman Taylor.
After a year of planning Doctor Who
premiered on BBC TV at 17:16:20 GMT on Saturday, 23rd November 1963;
this was eighty seconds later than the scheduled programme time, due
to the assassination of John F. Kennedy the previous day. It was to
be a regular weekly programme, each episode 25 minutes of
transmission length and was originally intended to appeal to a family
audience, as an educational programme using time travel as a means to
explore scientific ideas and famous moments in history.
On July 31st 1963 Whitaker commissioned
Terry Nation to write a story under the title The Mutants. As
originally written, the Daleks and Thals were the victims of an alien
neutron bomb attack but Nation later dropped the aliens and made the
Daleks the aggressors. When the script was presented to Newman and
Wilson it was immediately rejected as the programme was not permitted
to contain any "bug-eyed monsters". According to producer
Verity Lambert; "We didn't have a lot of choice - we only had
the Dalek serial to go... We had a bit of a crisis of confidence
because Donald [Wilson] was so adamant that we shouldn't make it. Had
we had anything else ready we would have made that." Nation's
script became the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks (a.k.a. The
Mutants). The episode introduced the eponymous aliens that would
become the series' most popular monsters, and was responsible for the
BBC's first merchandising boom.
The BBC drama department's serials
division produced the programme for 26 seasons, broadcast on BBC 1.
Falling viewing numbers, a decline in the public perception of the
show and a less-prominent transmission slot saw production suspended
in 1989 by Jonathan Powell, then controller of BBC 1. Although it was
effectively cancelled with the decision not to commission a planned
27th series of the show for transmission in 1990, the BBC repeatedly
affirmed that the series would return.
While in-house production had ceased, the
BBC hoped to find an independent production company to relaunch the
show. Philip Segal, a British expatriate who worked for Columbia
Pictures' television arm in the United States, had approached the BBC
about such a venture as early as July 1989, while the 26th series was
still in production. Segal's negotiations eventually led to a Doctor
Who television film, with Paul McGann as The Doctor (below),
broadcast on the Fox Network in 1996 as an international
co-production between Fox, Universal Pictures, the BBC and BBC
Worldwide Although the film was successful in the UK (with 9.1
million viewers), it was less so in the United States and did not
lead to a series.
Licensed media such as novels and audio
plays provided new stories, but as a television programme Doctor Who
remained dormant until 2003. In September of that year, BBC
Television announced the in-house production of a new series after
several years of attempts by BBC Worldwide to find backing for a
feature film version. The executive producers of the new incarnation
of the series were writer Russell T Davies and BBC Cymru Wales head
of drama Julie Gardner.
Doctor Who finally returned with the
episode "Rose" on BBC One on March 26th 2005. Christopher
Eccleston becoming the first actor to play the role since 1996. He
departed the role after a single series. The 2005 version of Doctor
Who is a direct plot continuation of the original 1963–1989
series and the 1996 telefilm. This is similar to the 1988
continuation of Mission Impossible, but differs from most other
series relaunches which have either been reboots (Battlestar
Galactica and Bionic Woman) or set in the same universe as the
original but in a different time period and with different characters
(Star Trek: The Next Generation). David Tennant replaced Ecclecton as
the Doctor from 2005–10, Matt Smith was the Eleventh Doctor from
2010–13 followed by Peter Capaldi from 2014–17 (below
right). On July 16th 2017, the BBC announced that Jodie Whittaker
(below left) would become the thirteenth and first female incarnation
of The Doctor.
THE FIRST DOCTOR
William Hartnell
First Episode:
November 23rd 1963
An Unearthly Child - Episode 1
Last Episode:
October 29th 1966
The Tenth Planet - Episode 4
THE SECOND DOCTOR
Patrick Troughton
First Episode:
October 29th 1966
The Tenth Planet - Episode 4
Last Episode:
June 21st 1969
The War Games - Episode 10
THE THIRD DOCTOR
Jon Pertwee
First Episode:
January 3rd 1970
Spearhead from Space - Episode 1
Last Episode:
June 8th 1974
Planet of the Spiders - Part Six
THE FOURTH DOCTOR
Tom Baker
First Episode:
June 8th 1974
Planet of the Spiders - Part Six
Last Episode:
March 21st 1981
Logopolis - Part Four
THE FIFTH DOCTOR
Peter Davison
First Episode:
March 21st 1981
Logopolis - Part Four
Last Episode:
March 16th 1984
The Caves of Androzani - Part Four
THE SIXTH DOCTOR
Colin Baker
First Episode:
March 16th 1984
The Caves of Androzani - Part Four
Last Episode:
December 6th 1986
The Ultimate Foe - Part Two
THE SEVENTH DOCTOR
Sylvester McCoy
First Episode:
September 7th 1987
Time and the Rani - Part One
Last Episode:
May 27th 1996
Doctor Who (TV Movie)
THE EIGHTH DOCTOR
Paul McGann
Only Appearance:
May 27th 1996
Doctor Who (TV Movie)
THE NINTH DOCTOR
Christopher Eccleston
First Episode:
March 26th 2005
Rose
Last Episode:
June 18th 2005
The Parting of the Ways
THE TENTH DOCTOR
David Tennant
First Episode:
June 18th 2005
The Parting of the Ways
Last Episode:
January 1st 2010
The End of Time - Part Two
THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR
Matt Smith
First Episode:
January 1st 2010
The End of Time - Part Two
Last Episode:
December 25th 2013
The Time of the Doctor
THE TWELFTH DOCTOR
Peter Capaldi
First Episode:
December 25th 2013
The Time of the Doctor
Last Episode:
December 25th 2017
Twice Upon a Time
THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR
Jodie Whittaker
First Episode:
December 25th 2017
Twice Upon a Time
Last Episode:
TBA
Untitled
After
it's debut, Doctor Who soon became a national institution in the
United Kingdom, with a large following among the general viewing
audience. Many renowned actors asked for or were offered guest-starring
roles in various stories. With popularity came controversy over the
show's suitability for children. Morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse
repeatedly complained to the BBC in the 1970s over what she saw as
the show's frightening and gory content. John Nathan-Turner produced
the series during the 1980s and was heard to say that he looked
forward to Whitehouse's comments, as the show's ratings would
increase soon after she had made them. The phrase "Hiding behind
(or 'watching from behind') the sofa" entered British pop
culture, signifying in humour the stereotypical early-series
behaviour of children who wanted to avoid seeing frightening parts of
a television programme while remaining in the room to watch the
remainder of it. The phrase retains this association with Doctor Who,
to the point that in 1991 the Museum of the Moving Image in London
named their exhibition celebrating the programme "Behind the
Sofa". The electronic theme music too was perceived as eerie,
novel, and frightening, at the time. A 2012 article placed this
childhood juxtaposition of fear and thrill "at the center of
many people's relationship with the show", and a 2011 online
vote at Digital Spy deemed the series the "scariest TV show of
all time".
A BBC audience research survey conducted
in 1972 found that, by their own definition of violence ("any
act[s] which may cause physical and/or psychological injury, hurt or
death to persons, animals or property, whether intentional or
accidental") Doctor Who was the most violent of the drama
programmes the corporation produced at the time. The same report
found that 3% of the surveyed audience regarded the show as "very
unsuitable" for family viewing. Responding to the findings of
the survey in The Times newspaper, journalist Philip Howard
maintained that, "to compare the violence of Dr Who, sired by a
horse-laugh out of a nightmare, with the more realistic violence of
other television series, where actors who look like human beings
bleed paint that looks like blood, is like comparing Monopoly with
the property market in London: both are fantasies, but one is meant
to be taken seriously."
The
programme's broad appeal attracts audiences of children and families
as well as science fiction fans and the 21st century revival of the
programme has become the centrepiece of BBC One's Saturday schedule,
and has "defined the channel". Since its return, Doctor Who
has consistently received high ratings, both in number of viewers and
as measured by the Appreciation Index. In 2007, Caitlin Moran,
television reviewer for The Times, wrote that Doctor Who is,
"quintessential to being British". Director Steven
Spielberg has commented that, "the world would be a poorer place
without Doctor Who".
Doctor Who originally ran for 26 seasons
on BBC One, from November 23rd 1963 until December 6th 1989. During
the original run, each weekly 25 minute episode formed part of a
story (or "serial") - usually of four to six parts in
earlier years and three to four in later years. Some notable
exceptions were: The Daleks' Master Plan, which aired twelve episodes
(plus an earlier one-episode teaser, "Mission to the
Unknown", featuring none of the regular cast); almost an entire
season of seven-episode serials (season 7); the ten-episode serial
The War Games; and The Trial of a Time Lord, which ran for fourteen
episodes (albeit divided into three production codes and four
narrative segments) during season 23. Occasionally serials were
loosely connected by a story-line, such as season 8 focusing on the
Doctor battling a rogue Time Lord called the Master, season 16's
quest for the Key to Time, season 18's journey through E-Space and
the theme of entropy, and season 20's Black Guardian trilogy.
As the programme was intended to be
educational and for family viewing on the early Saturday evening
schedule, it initially alternated stories set in the past, which
taught younger audience members about history, and with those in the
future or outer space, focusing on science. This was also reflected
in the Doctor's original companions, one of whom was a science
teacher and another a history teacher. The science fiction stories
came to dominate the programme over the history-orientated episodes,
which were not popular with the production team. While the show
continued to use historical settings, they were generally used as a
backdrop for science fiction tales.
The
early stories were serialised in nature, with the narrative of one
story flowing into the next, and each episode having its own title,
although produced as distinct stories with their own production
codes. Following The Gunfighters (1966), however, each serial was
given its own title, and the individual parts were simply assigned
episode numbers.
Of the programme's many writers, Robert
Holmes was the most prolific, while Douglas Adams became the most
well-known outside Doctor Who itself, due to the popularity of his
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy works.
The serial format changed for the 2005
revival, with a series usually consisting of thirteen 45-minute,
self-contained episodes (60 minutes with advertising), and an
extended 60-minute episode broadcast on Christmas Day. This system
was shortened to twelve episodes and one Christmas special following
the revival's eighth series. Each series includes both standalone and
multiple episodic stories, linked with a loose story arc that is
resolved in the series finale. As in the early "classic"
era, each episode, whether standalone or part of a larger story, has
its own title. Occasionally, regular-series episodes will exceed the
45-minute run time; notably, the episodes "Journey's End"
from 2008 and "The Eleventh Hour" from 2010 exceeded an
hour in length.
Between about 1967 and 1978, large amounts
of older material stored in the BBC's various video tape and film
libraries were either destroyed, wiped, or suffered from poor storage
which led to severe deterioration from broadcast quality. This
included many old episodes of Doctor Who, mostly stories featuring
the first two Doctors: William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. In
all, 97 of 253 episodes produced during the first six years of the
programme are not held in the BBC's archives (most notably seasons 3,
4, & 5, from which 79 episodes are missing). In 1972, almost all
episodes then made were known to exist at the BBC, while by 1978 the
practice of wiping tapes and destroying "spare" film copies
had been brought to a stop.
No
1960s episodes exist on their original videotapes (all surviving
prints being film transfers), though some were transferred to film
for editing before transmission, and exist in their broadcast form.
Some episodes have been returned to the
BBC from the archives of other countries who bought prints for
broadcast, or by private individuals who acquired them by various
means. Early colour videotape recordings made off-air by fans have
also been retrieved, as well as excerpts filmed from the television
screen onto 8 mm cine film and clips that were shown on other
programmes. Audio versions of all of the lost episodes exist from
home viewers who made tape recordings of the show. Short clips from
every story with the exception of Marco Polo (1964), "Mission to
the Unknown" (1965) and The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve
(1966) also exist.
In addition to these, there are off-screen
photographs made by photographer John Cura, who was hired by various
production personnel to document many of their programmes during the
1950s and 1960s, including Doctor Who. These have been used in fan
reconstructions of the serials. These amateur reconstructions have
been tolerated by the BBC, provided they are not sold for profit and
are distributed as low-quality VHS copies.
One of the most sought-after lost episodes
is part four of the last William Hartnell serial, The Tenth Planet
(1966), which ends with the First Doctor transforming into the
Second. The only portion of this in existence, barring a few
poor-quality silent 8 mm clips, is the few seconds of the
regeneration scene, as it was shown on the children's magazine show
Blue Peter. With the approval of the BBC, efforts are now under way
to restore as many of the episodes as possible from the extant material.
"Official"
reconstructions have also been released by the BBC on VHS, on MP3
CD-ROM, and as special features on DVD. The BBC, in conjunction with
animation studio Cosgrove Hall, reconstructed the missing episodes 1
and 4 of The Invasion (1968), using remastered audio tracks and the
comprehensive stage notes for the original filming, for the serial's
DVD release in November 2006. The missing episodes of The Reign of
Terror were animated by animation company Theta-Sigma, in
collaboration with Big Finish, and became available for purchase in
May 2013 through Amazon.com. Subsequent animations made in 2013
include The Tenth Planet, The Ice Warriors (1967) and The Moonbase (1967).
In December 2011, it was announced that
part 3 of Galaxy 4 (1965) and part 2 of The Underwater Menace (1967)
had been returned to the BBC by a fan who had purchased them in the
mid-1980s without realising that the BBC did not hold copies of them.
On October 10th 2013, the BBC announced that films of eleven
episodes, including nine missing episodes, had been found in a
Nigerian television relay station in Jos. Six of the eleven films
discovered were the six-part serial The Enemy of the World (1968),
from which all but the third episode had been missing. The remaining
films were from another six-part serial, The Web of Fear (1968), and
included the previously missing episodes 2, 4, 5, and 6. Episode 3 of
The Web of Fear is still missing.
ALONG FOR THE RIDE
The
companion figure - generally a human - has been a constant feature
in Doctor Who since the programme's inception in 1963. One of the
roles of the companion is to be a reminder for the Doctor's
"moral duty". The Doctor's first companions seen on screen
were his granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford) and her
teachers Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterton (William
Russell). These characters were intended to act as audience
surrogates, through which the audience would discover information
about the Doctor who was to act as a mysterious father figure. The
only story from the original series in which the Doctor travels alone
is The Deadly Assassin (1976). Notable companions from the earlier
series included Romana (Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward), a Time Lady; Sarah
Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen); and Jo Grant (Katy Manning).
Dramatically, these characters provide a figure with whom the
audience can identify, and serve to further the story by requesting
exposition from the Doctor and manufacturing peril for the Doctor to
resolve. The Doctor regularly gains new companions and loses old
ones; sometimes they return home or find new causes - or loves - on
worlds they have visited. Some have died during the course of the
series. Companions are usually human, or humanoid aliens.
Since the 2005 revival, the Doctor
generally travels with a primary female companion, who occupies a
larger narrative role. Steven Moffat described the companion as the
main character of the show, as the story begins anew with each
companion and she undergoes more change than the Doctor. The primary
companions of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors were Rose Tyler (Billie
Piper), Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), and Donna Noble (Catherine
Tate) with Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke) and Captain Jack Harkness (John
Barrowman) recurring as secondary companion figures. The Eleventh
Doctor became the first to travel with a married couple, Amy Pond
(Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill), whilst out-of-sync
meetings with River Song (Alex Kingston) and Clara Oswald (Jenna
Coleman) provided ongoing story arcs. The tenth series introduced
Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts, the Doctor's newest traveling companion.
Bill Potts is the Doctor's first openly gay companion. Pearl Mackie
said that the increased representation for LGBTQ people is important
on a mainstream show. Previously John Barrowman had played Jack
Harkness, the series first openly bi-sexual character.
Some companions have gone on to re-appear,
either in the main series or in spin-offs. Sarah Jane Smith became
the central character in The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–11)
following a return to Doctor Who in 2006. Guest stars in the series
included former companions Jo Grant, K9, and Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney). The character of Jack
Harkness also served to launch a spin-off, Torchwood, (2006–2011)
in which Martha Jones also appeared.
When Sydney Newman commissioned the
series, he specifically did not want to perpetuate the cliché
of the "bug-eyed monster" of science fiction. However,
monsters were popular with audiences and so became a staple of Doctor
Who almost from the beginning.
With the show's 2005 revival, executive
producer Russell T Davies stated his intention to reintroduce classic
icons of Doctor Who. The Autons with the Nestene Consciousness and
Daleks returned in series 1, Cybermen in series 2, the Macra and the
Master in series 3, the Sontarans and Davros in series 4, and the
Time Lords including Rassilon in the 2009–10 Specials. Davies'
successor, Steven Moffat, has continued the trend by reviving the
Silurians in series 5, Cybermats in series 6, the Great Intelligence
and the Ice Warriors in Series 7, and Zygons in the 50th Anniversary
Special. Since its 2005 return, the series has also introduced new
recurring aliens: Slitheen (Raxacoricofallapatorian), Ood, Judoon,
Weeping Angels and the Silence.
Besides infrequent appearances by the Ice
Warriors, Ogrons, the Rani, and Black Guardian, three adversaries
have become particularly iconic: the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Master.
Daleks
The
Dalek race, which first appeared in the show's second serial in
1963, are Doctor Who's oldest villains. The Daleks are Kaleds from
the planet Skaro, mutated by the scientist Davros and housed in
mechanical armour shells for mobility. The actual creatures resemble
octopuses with large, pronounced brains. Their armour shells have a
single eye-stalk, a sink-plunger-like device that serves the purpose
of a hand, and a directed-energy weapon. Their main weakness is their
eyestalk; attacks upon them using various weapons can blind a Dalek,
making it go mad. Their chief role in the series plot, as they
frequently remark in their instantly recognisable metallic voices, is
to "exterminate" all non-Dalek beings. They even attack the
Time Lords in the Time War, as shown during the 50th Anniversary of
the show. They continue to be a recurring 'monster' within the Doctor
Who franchise. Davros has also been a recurring figure since his
debut in Genesis of the Daleks, although played by several different
actors. The Daleks were created by writer Terry Nation (who intended
them to be an allegory of the Nazis) and BBC designer Raymond Cusick.
A Dalek appeared on a postage stamp celebrating British popular
culture in 1999, photographed by Lord Snowdon. In "Victory of
the Daleks" a new set of Daleks were introduced that come in a
range of colours; the colour denoting its role within the species.
Cybermen
The
Cybermen are a race of cyborgs who are among the most persistent
enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television
programme, Doctor Who. Within the context of the series, the Cybermen
are a species of emotionless space-faring cyborgs who look to co-opt
human beings or other similar species to join and populate their
ranks. First appearing in 1966, the Cybermen were created by Dr. Kit
Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the show) and story
editor Gerry Davis.
The Cybermen have seen many redesigns and
costume changes over Doctor Who's long run. Over the years, the show
and its many spin-offs in other media have also presented a number of
varying origin stories for the species. In their first appearance,
The Tenth Planet (1966), they are explained as being the product of
humans from Earth's nearly identical "twin planet" of
Mondas who upgraded themselves into cyborgs in a bid for self-preservation.
Forty years later, "The Age of Steel" (2006) depicted the
Cybermen's separate emergence on a parallel universe version of
Earth. Doctor Who audio dramas, novels, and comic books have also
elaborated on the origins for the Cybermen, or presented alternative
origin stories.
In the show's 2017 episode "The
Doctor Falls", it is stated that the Cybermen are the universe's
great example of parallel evolution, due to the inevitability of
humans and human-like species attempting to upgrade themselves
through technology, thereby resolving continuity tensions in the
history of the Cybermen.
A mainstay of Doctor Who since the 1960s,
the Cybermen have also made appearances in related programs and
spin-off media, including novels, audiobooks, comic books, and video
games. Cybermen stories continued to be produced in officially
licensed Doctor Who productions between 1989 and 2005, when the TV
show was off the air, with many writers choosing to fill in gaps in
the history of the Cybermen or depict new encounters between them and
the Doctor. The species also appeared in the Doctor Who TV spin-off
Torchwood, appearing in the fourth episode, "Cyberwoman" (2006).
Doctor
Who and Star Trek fans (including those here at the Hall of Fame)
have liked to endlessly debate if the creation of the Borg were
influanced by the Cybermen. Some reference the classic Borg
catchphrase "resistance is futile", and it's similarity to
the Cybermen's, "resistance is useless" as proof. Other
fans point out that the Cybermen are pure machine with brains of
humans transplanted from human bodies physically leaving a corpse
behind and The Borg are half machine and half organic and have a hive
mind collective consciousness controlled by the Queen. The Cybermen
are more robot than human and the Borg are human and partly
mechanical space zombies. With few exceptions, there are no new ideas
in fiction (or anywhere else for that matter) so I doubt we will be
able to end this debate any time soon.
The Cybermen did meet the Borg in an
eight-issue limited series comic book, Star Trek: The Next
Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation2, written by Scott and David
Tipton, assisted by Tony Lee on issues 1 to 4, with art by J.K.
Woodward. The series was published by IDW Publishing with the first
issue released in May 2012. The story sees the Doctor and his
companions, Amy Pond and Rory Williams, encounter the crew of the USS
Enterprise-D, joining together to stop an alliance between the Borg
and the Cybermen.
The Master
The
Master is the Doctor's archenemy, a renegade Time Lord who desires
to rule the universe. Conceived as "Professor Moriarty to the
Doctor's Sherlock Holmes", the character first appeared in 1971.
As with the Doctor, the role has been portrayed by several actors,
since the Master is a Time Lord as well and able to regenerate; the
first of these actors was Roger Delgado, who continued in the role
until his death in 1973. The Master was briefly played by Peter Pratt
and Geoffrey Beevers until Anthony Ainley took over and continued to
play the character until Doctor Who's hiatus in 1989. The Master
returned in the 1996 television movie of Doctor Who, and was played
by American actor Eric Roberts.
Following the series revival in 2005,
Derek Jacobi provided the character's re-introduction in the 2007
episode "Utopia". During that story, the role was then
assumed by John Simm who returned to the role multiple times through
the Tenth Doctor's tenure. As of the 2014 episode "Dark
Water," it was revealed that the Master had become a female
incarnation or "Time Lady," going by the name of
"Missy" (short for Mistress, the feminine equivalent of
"Master"). This incarnation is played by Michelle Gomez.
John Simm would return to the role as the Master in the tenth series.
There are two Doctor Who feature films:
Dr. Who and the Daleks, released in 1965 and Daleks' Invasion Earth
2150 A.D. in 1966. Both are retellings of existing television stories
(specifically, the first two Dalek serials, The Daleks and The Dalek
Invasion of Earth respectively) with a larger budget and alterations
to the series concept.
In
these films, Peter Cushing (right) plays a human scientist named
"Dr. Who", who travels with his granddaughter and niece and
other companions in a time machine he has invented. The Cushing
version of the character reappears in both comic strips and a short
story, the latter attempting to reconcile the film continuity with
that of the series.
In addition, several planned films were
proposed, including a sequel, The Chase, loosely based on the
original series story, for the Cushing Doctor (but never produced
because of the previous film's under-performance at the box office),
plus many attempted television movies and big screen productions to
revive the original Doctor Who, after the original series was cancelled.
Paul McGann starred in the only television
film as the eighth incarnation of the Doctor. After the film, he
continued the role in audio books and was confirmed as the eighth
incarnation through flashback footage and a mini episode in the 2005
revival, effectively linking the two series and the television movie.
In 2011, David Yates, who rose to
mainstream prominence by directing the final four films in the Harry
Potter series, announced that he had started work with the BBC on a
Doctor Who film, a project that would take three or more years to
complete. Yates indicated that the film would take a different
approach to Doctor Who, although the current Doctor Who showrunner
Steven Moffat stated later that any such film would not be a reboot
of the series and a film should be made by the BBC team and star the
current TV Doctor. Because of production delays the project stalled
and Yates began to explore other projects.
Doctor
Who has appeared on stage numerous times. In the early 1970s, Trevor
Martin played the role in Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys
to Doomsday. In the late 1980s, Jon Pertwee and Colin Baker both
played the Doctor at different times during the run of a play titled
Doctor Who – The Ultimate Adventure. For two performances, while
Pertwee was ill, David Banks (better known for playing Cybermen)
played the Doctor. Other original plays have been staged as amateur
productions, with other actors playing the Doctor, while Terry Nation
wrote The Curse of the Daleks, a stage play mounted in the late
1960s, but without the Doctor.
A pilot episode ("A Girl's Best
Friend") for a potential spinoff series, K-9 and Company, was
aired in 1981 with Elisabeth Sladen reprising her role as companion
Sarah Jane Smith and John Leeson as the voice of K9, but was not
picked up as a regular series.
Concept art for an animated Doctor Who
series was produced by animation company Nelvana in the 1980s, but
the series was not produced.
Following the success of the 2005 series
produced by Russell T Davies, the BBC commissioned Davies to produce
a 13-part spin-off series titled Torchwood (an anagram of "Doctor
Who"), set in modern-day Cardiff and investigating alien
activities and crime. The series debuted on BBC Three on October 22nd
2006 with John Barrowman reprising his role of Jack Harkness. Two
other actresses who appeared in Doctor Who also starred in the
series; Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper, who also played the similarly named
servant girl Gwyneth in the 2005 Doctor Who episode "The Unquiet
Dead", and Naoko Mori who reprised her role as Toshiko Sato
first seen in "Aliens of London". A second series of
Torchwood aired in 2008; for three episodes, the cast was joined by
Freema Agyeman reprising her Doctor Who role of Martha Jones. A third
series was broadcast in July 2009, and consisted of a single
five-part story called Children of Earth which was set largely in
London. A fourth series, Torchwood: Miracle Day jointly produced by
BBC Wales, BBC Worldwide and the American entertainment company Starz
debuted in 2011. That series was predominantly set in the United
States, though Wales remained part of the show's setting.
The Sarah Jane Adventures, starring
Elisabeth Sladen who reprised her role as investigative journalist
Sarah Jane Smith, was developed by CBBC (Children's BBC). A special
aired on New Year's Day 2007 and a full series began on September
24th 2007. A second series followed in 2008, featuring the return of
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. A third in 2009 featured a crossover
appearance from the main show by David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor.
In 2010, the Sarah Jane Adventures featured Matt Smith as the
Eleventh Doctor alongside former companion actress Katy Manning
reprising her role as Jo Grant. A final, three-story fifth series was
broadcast in the fall of 2011 and was uncompleted due to the death of
Elisabeth Sladen in early 2011.
An
animated serial, The Infinite Quest, aired alongside the 2007 series
of Doctor Who as part of the children's television series Totally
Doctor Who. The serial featured the voices of series regulars David
Tennant and Freema Agyeman but is not considered part of the 2007
series. A second animated serial, Dreamland, aired in six parts on
the BBC Red Button service, and the official Doctor Who website in 2009.
Class, featuring students of Coal Hill
School, was first aired on-line on BBC Three from October 22nd 2016,
as a series of eight 45 minute episodes, written by Patrick Ness.
Peter Capaldi (left) as the Twelfth Doctor appears in the show's
first episode. The series was picked up by BBC America on January 8th
2016 and by BBC One a day later. On September 7th 2017, BBC Three
controller Damian Kavanagh confirmed that the series had officially
been cancelled.
Numerous other spin-off series have been
created not by the BBC but by the respective owners of the characters
and concepts. Such spin-offs include the novel and audio drama series
Faction Paradox, Iris Wildthyme and Bernice Summerfield; as well as
the made-for-video series P.R.O.B.E.; the Australian-produced
television series K-9, which aired a 26-episode first season on
Disney XD; and the audio spin-off Counter-Measures.
Doctor
Who has been satirised and spoofed on many occasions by comedians
including Spike Milligan and Lenny Henry. Jon Culshaw frequently
impersonates the Fourth Doctor in the BBC Dead Ringers series and
references to the show have been made on the soap opera EastEnders.
Doctor Who has also been lampooned on programs such as Saturday Night
Live, The Chaser's War on Everything, Mystery Science Theater 3000,
Family Guy, American Dad!, Robot Chicken, Futurama, South Park,
Community as Inspector Spacetime, The Simpsons and The Big Bang
Theory. As part of the 50th anniversary programmes, former Fifth
Doctor Peter Davison directed, wrote and co-starred in the parody The
Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, which also starred two other former
Doctors, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, and cameo appearances from
cast and crew involved in the programme, including showrunner Steven
Moffat and Doctors Paul McGann, David Tennant and Matt Smith.
There have also been many references to
Doctor Who in popular culture and other science fiction, including
Star Trek: The Next Generation ("The Neutral Zone"), Queer
as Folk (created by Doctor Who executive producer Russell T. Davies),
and Coupling (created and written by show runner Steven Moffat).
Doctor Who has been a reference in several political cartoons,
fantasy novels Brisingr and video games.
In 1983, coinciding with the series' 20th
anniversary, The Five Doctors was shown as part of the annual BBC
Children in Need Appeal. This was the programme's very first
co-production with Australian broadcaster ABC.The 90-minute film
featured three of the first five Doctors, a new actor to replace the
deceased William Hartnell, and unused footage to represent Tom Baker.
In 1993, for the franchise's 30th
anniversary, another charity special, titled Dimensions in Time was
produced for Children in Need, featuring all of the surviving actors
who played the Doctor and a number of previous companions. It also
featured a crossover with the soap opera EastEnders, the action
taking place in the latter's Albert Square location and around
Greenwich. The special was one of several special 3D programmes the
BBC produced at the time, using a 3D system that made use of the
Pulfrich effect requiring glasses with one darkened lens; the picture
would look normal to those viewers who watched without the glasses.
1999 saw another special, Doctor Who and
the Curse of Fatal Death, that was made for Comic Relief and later
released on VHS. An affectionate parody of the television series, it
was split into four segments, mimicking the traditional serial
format, complete with cliffhangers, and running down the same
corridor several times when being chased. The version released on
video was split into only two episodes. In the story, the Doctor,
played by Rowan Atkinson, encounters both the Master (Jonathan Pryce)
and the Daleks. During the special the Doctor is forced to regenerate
several times, with his subsequent incarnations played by, in order,
Richard E. Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Joanna Lumley. The
script was written by Steven Moffat, later to be head writer and
executive producer to the revived series.
Since the return of Doctor Who in 2005,
the franchise has produced two original "mini-episodes" to
support Children in Need. The first, aired in November 2005, was an
untitled seven-minute scene which introduced David Tennant as the
Tenth Doctor. It was followed in November 2007 by "Time
Crash", a 7-minute scene which featured the Tenth Doctor meeting
the Fifth Doctor (played once again by Peter Davison). A set of two
mini-episodes, titled "Space" and "Time"
respectively, were produced to support Comic Relief. They were aired
during the Comic Relief event in 2011. During Children in Need in
2011, an exclusively-filmed segment showed the Doctor addressing the
viewer, attempting to persuade them to purchase items of his
clothing, which were going up for auction for Children in Need. The
2012 edition of CiN featured the mini-episode The Great Detective.
Since its beginnings, Doctor Who has
generated hundreds of products related to the show, from toys, board
games, card games, gamebooks, computer games, roleplaying games and
action figures.
Doctor
Who books have been published from the mid-sixties through to the
present day. From 1965 to 1991 the books published were primarily
novelised adaptations of broadcast episodes, but beginning in 1991 an
extensive line of original fiction was launched. Since the relaunch
of the programme in 2005, a new range of novels have been published
by BBC Books. Numerous non-fiction books about the series, including
guidebooks and critical studies, have also been published, and a
dedicated Doctor Who Magazine with newsstand circulation has been
published regularly since 1979.
The earliest Doctor Who-related audio
release was a 21-minute narrated abridgement of the First Doctor
television story The Chase released in 1966. Ten years later, the
first original Doctor Who audio was released; Doctor Who and the
Pescatons featuring the Fourth Doctor. The first commercially
available audiobook was an abridged reading of the Fourth Doctor
story State of Decay in 1981.
In 1988, during a hiatus in the television
show, Slipback, the first radio drama, was transmitted. Since 1999,
Big Finish Productions has released several different series of
Doctor Who audios on CD. The earliest of these featured the Fifth,
Sixth and Seventh Doctors, with Paul McGann's Eight Doctor joining
the line in 2001. Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor began appearing for Big
Finish in 2012. Along with the main range, adventures of the First,
Second and Third Doctors have been produced in both limited cast and
full cast formats, as well as audiobooks. The 2013 series Destiny of
the Doctor, produced as part of the series' 50th Anniversary
celebrations, marked the first time Big Finish created stories (in
this case audiobooks) featuring the Doctors from the revived show.
Along with this, in May 2016 the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant,
appeared alongside Cathrine Tate in a collection of three audio
adventures. In addition to these main lines, both the BBC and Big
Finish have produced original audio dramas and audiobooks based on
spin-off material, such as Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures series.
Doctor Who has received recognition as one
of Britain's finest television programmes, winning the 2006 British
Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series and five consecutive
(2005–2010) awards at the National Television Awards during
Russell T Davies' tenure as executive producer. In 2011, Matt Smith
became the first Doctor to be nominated for a BAFTA Television Award
for Best Actor and in 2016, Michelle Gomez became the first female to
receive a BAFTA nomination for the series, getting a Best Supporting
Actress nomination for her work as Missy.
During its original run, it was recognised
for its imaginative stories, creative low-budget special effects, and
pioneering use of electronic music (originally produced by the BBC
Radiophonic Workshop). In 1975, Season 11 of the series won a
Writers' Guild of Great Britain award for Best Writing in a
Children's Serial. In 1996, BBC television held the "Auntie
Awards" as the culmination of their "TV60" series,
celebrating 60 years of BBC television broadcasting, where Doctor Who
was voted as the "Best Popular Drama" the corporation had
ever produced, ahead of such ratings heavyweights as EastEnders and Casualty.
In 2000, Doctor Who was ranked third in a
list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th
century, produced by the British Film Institute and voted on by
industry professionals. In 2005, the series came first in a survey by
SFX magazine of "The Greatest UK Science Fiction and Fantasy
Television Series Ever".
In 2013, the Peabody Awards honoured
Doctor Who with an Institutional Peabody "for evolving with
technology and the times like nothing else in the known television
universe." The programme is listed in Guinness World Records as
the longest-running science fiction television show.
The revived series has received
recognition from critics and the public, across various awards
ceremonies. It won five BAFTA TV Awards, including Best Drama Series.
It has won numerous BAFTA Cymru Awards (or BAFTA in Wales - it is the
Welsh branch of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts),
including Best Drama Series, Best Screenplay/Screenwriter and Best
Actor. Doctor Who has it's share of Saturn Awards, winning the Best
International Series.
Doctor Who won a number of Hugo Awards for
Best Dramatic Presentation. Doctor Who star Matt Smith won Best Actor
in the 2012 National Television awards alongside Karen Gillan who won
Best Actress. Over the years Doctor Who has been nominated for over
200 awards and has won over a hundred of them.
The
Doctor often finds events that pique their curiosity and tries to
prevent evil forces from harming innocent people or changing history,
using only ingenuity and minimal resources, such as the versatile
sonic screwdriver. The Doctor rarely travels alone and often brings
one or more companions to share these adventures. These companions
are usually humans, owing to the Doctor's fascination with planet
Earth, which also leads to frequent collaborations with the
international military task force UNIT when the Earth is threatened.
The Doctor has gained numerous reoccurring enemies during their
travels, including the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Master, another
renegade Time Lord. As a Time Lord, the Doctor is centuries old and
has the ability to regenerate in case of mortal damage to the body,
taking on a new appearance and personality, and numerous actors have
headlined the series as the Doctor. Each actor's portrayal differs,
but all represent stages in the life of the same character and form a
single lifetime with a single narrative. The time-travelling feature
of the plot means that different incarnations of the Doctor
occasionally meet.
The
programme's first serial, An Unearthly Child, shows that the Doctor
has a granddaughter, Susan Foreman. In the 1967 serial, Tomb of the
Cybermen, when Victoria Waterfield doubts the Doctor can remember his
family because of, "being so ancient", the Doctor says that
he can when he really wants to - "The rest of the time they
sleep in my mind". The 2005 series reveals that the Ninth Doctor
thought he was the last surviving Time Lord, and that his home planet
had been destroyed; in "The Empty Child" (2005), Dr.
Constantine states that, "Before the war even began, I was a
father and a grandfather. Now I am neither." The Doctor remarks
in response, "Yeah, I know the feeling." In "Smith and
Jones" (2007), when asked if he had a brother, he replied,
"No, not any more." In both "Fear Her" (2006) and
"The Doctor's Daughter" (2008), he states that he had, in
the past, been a father.
In
March 1962, Eric Maschwitz, the Assistant and Adviser to the
Controller of Programmes at BBC Television, asked Donald Wilson, the
Head of the Script Department, to have his department's Survey Group
prepare a study on the feasibility of the BBC producing a new science
fiction television series. The report was prepared by staff members
Alice Frick and Donald Bull, and delivered the following month, much
to the commendation of Wilson, Maschwitz and the BBC's Assistant
Controller of Programmes Donald Baverstock. A follow-up report into
specific ideas for the format of such a programme was commissioned,
and delivered in July. Prepared by Frick with another Script
Department staff member, John Braybon, this report recommended a
series dealing with time travel as being an idea particularly worthy
of development.
After
it's debut, Doctor Who soon became a national institution in the
United Kingdom, with a large following among the general viewing
audience. Many renowned actors asked for or were offered guest-starring
roles in various stories. With popularity came controversy over the
show's suitability for children. Morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse
repeatedly complained to the BBC in the 1970s over what she saw as
the show's frightening and gory content. John Nathan-Turner produced
the series during the 1980s and was heard to say that he looked
forward to Whitehouse's comments, as the show's ratings would
increase soon after she had made them. The phrase "Hiding behind
(or 'watching from behind') the sofa" entered British pop
culture, signifying in humour the stereotypical early-series
behaviour of children who wanted to avoid seeing frightening parts of
a television programme while remaining in the room to watch the
remainder of it. The phrase retains this association with Doctor Who,
to the point that in 1991 the Museum of the Moving Image in London
named their exhibition celebrating the programme "Behind the
Sofa". The electronic theme music too was perceived as eerie,
novel, and frightening, at the time. A 2012 article placed this
childhood juxtaposition of fear and thrill "at the center of
many people's relationship with the show", and a 2011 online
vote at Digital Spy deemed the series the "scariest TV show of
all time".
The
programme's broad appeal attracts audiences of children and families
as well as science fiction fans and the 21st century revival of the
programme has become the centrepiece of BBC One's Saturday schedule,
and has "defined the channel". Since its return, Doctor Who
has consistently received high ratings, both in number of viewers and
as measured by the Appreciation Index. In 2007, Caitlin Moran,
television reviewer for The Times, wrote that Doctor Who is,
"quintessential to being British". Director Steven
Spielberg has commented that, "the world would be a poorer place
without Doctor Who".
The
early stories were serialised in nature, with the narrative of one
story flowing into the next, and each episode having its own title,
although produced as distinct stories with their own production
codes. Following The Gunfighters (1966), however, each serial was
given its own title, and the individual parts were simply assigned
episode numbers.
No
1960s episodes exist on their original videotapes (all surviving
prints being film transfers), though some were transferred to film
for editing before transmission, and exist in their broadcast form.
"Official"
reconstructions have also been released by the BBC on VHS, on MP3
CD-ROM, and as special features on DVD. The BBC, in conjunction with
animation studio Cosgrove Hall, reconstructed the missing episodes 1
and 4 of The Invasion (1968), using remastered audio tracks and the
comprehensive stage notes for the original filming, for the serial's
DVD release in November 2006. The missing episodes of The Reign of
Terror were animated by animation company Theta-Sigma, in
collaboration with Big Finish, and became available for purchase in
May 2013 through Amazon.com. Subsequent animations made in 2013
include The Tenth Planet, The Ice Warriors (1967) and The Moonbase (1967).
The
companion figure - generally a human - has been a constant feature
in Doctor Who since the programme's inception in 1963. One of the
roles of the companion is to be a reminder for the Doctor's
"moral duty". The Doctor's first companions seen on screen
were his granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford) and her
teachers Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterton (William
Russell). These characters were intended to act as audience
surrogates, through which the audience would discover information
about the Doctor who was to act as a mysterious father figure. The
only story from the original series in which the Doctor travels alone
is The Deadly Assassin (1976). Notable companions from the earlier
series included Romana (Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward), a Time Lady; Sarah
Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen); and Jo Grant (Katy Manning).
Dramatically, these characters provide a figure with whom the
audience can identify, and serve to further the story by requesting
exposition from the Doctor and manufacturing peril for the Doctor to
resolve. The Doctor regularly gains new companions and loses old
ones; sometimes they return home or find new causes - or loves - on
worlds they have visited. Some have died during the course of the
series. Companions are usually human, or humanoid aliens.
The
Dalek race, which first appeared in the show's second serial in
1963, are Doctor Who's oldest villains. The Daleks are Kaleds from
the planet Skaro, mutated by the scientist Davros and housed in
mechanical armour shells for mobility. The actual creatures resemble
octopuses with large, pronounced brains. Their armour shells have a
single eye-stalk, a sink-plunger-like device that serves the purpose
of a hand, and a directed-energy weapon. Their main weakness is their
eyestalk; attacks upon them using various weapons can blind a Dalek,
making it go mad. Their chief role in the series plot, as they
frequently remark in their instantly recognisable metallic voices, is
to "exterminate" all non-Dalek beings. They even attack the
Time Lords in the Time War, as shown during the 50th Anniversary of
the show. They continue to be a recurring 'monster' within the Doctor
Who franchise. Davros has also been a recurring figure since his
debut in Genesis of the Daleks, although played by several different
actors. The Daleks were created by writer Terry Nation (who intended
them to be an allegory of the Nazis) and BBC designer Raymond Cusick.
A Dalek appeared on a postage stamp celebrating British popular
culture in 1999, photographed by Lord Snowdon. In "Victory of
the Daleks" a new set of Daleks were introduced that come in a
range of colours; the colour denoting its role within the species.
The
Cybermen are a race of cyborgs who are among the most persistent
enemies of the Doctor in the British science fiction television
programme, Doctor Who. Within the context of the series, the Cybermen
are a species of emotionless space-faring cyborgs who look to co-opt
human beings or other similar species to join and populate their
ranks. First appearing in 1966, the Cybermen were created by Dr. Kit
Pedler (the unofficial scientific advisor to the show) and story
editor Gerry Davis.
Doctor
Who and Star Trek fans (including those here at the Hall of Fame)
have liked to endlessly debate if the creation of the Borg were
influanced by the Cybermen. Some reference the classic Borg
catchphrase "resistance is futile", and it's similarity to
the Cybermen's, "resistance is useless" as proof. Other
fans point out that the Cybermen are pure machine with brains of
humans transplanted from human bodies physically leaving a corpse
behind and The Borg are half machine and half organic and have a hive
mind collective consciousness controlled by the Queen. The Cybermen
are more robot than human and the Borg are human and partly
mechanical space zombies. With few exceptions, there are no new ideas
in fiction (or anywhere else for that matter) so I doubt we will be
able to end this debate any time soon.
The
Master is the Doctor's archenemy, a renegade Time Lord who desires
to rule the universe. Conceived as "Professor Moriarty to the
Doctor's Sherlock Holmes", the character first appeared in 1971.
As with the Doctor, the role has been portrayed by several actors,
since the Master is a Time Lord as well and able to regenerate; the
first of these actors was Roger Delgado, who continued in the role
until his death in 1973. The Master was briefly played by Peter Pratt
and Geoffrey Beevers until Anthony Ainley took over and continued to
play the character until Doctor Who's hiatus in 1989. The Master
returned in the 1996 television movie of Doctor Who, and was played
by American actor Eric Roberts.
In
these films, Peter Cushing (right) plays a human scientist named
"Dr. Who", who travels with his granddaughter and niece and
other companions in a time machine he has invented. The Cushing
version of the character reappears in both comic strips and a short
story, the latter attempting to reconcile the film continuity with
that of the series.
Doctor
Who has appeared on stage numerous times. In the early 1970s, Trevor
Martin played the role in Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys
to Doomsday. In the late 1980s, Jon Pertwee and Colin Baker both
played the Doctor at different times during the run of a play titled
Doctor Who – The Ultimate Adventure. For two performances, while
Pertwee was ill, David Banks (better known for playing Cybermen)
played the Doctor. Other original plays have been staged as amateur
productions, with other actors playing the Doctor, while Terry Nation
wrote The Curse of the Daleks, a stage play mounted in the late
1960s, but without the Doctor.
An
animated serial, The Infinite Quest, aired alongside the 2007 series
of Doctor Who as part of the children's television series Totally
Doctor Who. The serial featured the voices of series regulars David
Tennant and Freema Agyeman but is not considered part of the 2007
series. A second animated serial, Dreamland, aired in six parts on
the BBC Red Button service, and the official Doctor Who website in 2009.
Doctor
Who has been satirised and spoofed on many occasions by comedians
including Spike Milligan and Lenny Henry. Jon Culshaw frequently
impersonates the Fourth Doctor in the BBC Dead Ringers series and
references to the show have been made on the soap opera EastEnders.
Doctor Who has also been lampooned on programs such as Saturday Night
Live, The Chaser's War on Everything, Mystery Science Theater 3000,
Family Guy, American Dad!, Robot Chicken, Futurama, South Park,
Community as Inspector Spacetime, The Simpsons and The Big Bang
Theory. As part of the 50th anniversary programmes, former Fifth
Doctor Peter Davison directed, wrote and co-starred in the parody The
Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, which also starred two other former
Doctors, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, and cameo appearances from
cast and crew involved in the programme, including showrunner Steven
Moffat and Doctors Paul McGann, David Tennant and Matt Smith.
