Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a long-running British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC about a mysterious time-travelling adventurer known only as "The Doctor", who explores time and space with his companions, fighting evil. It is also the title of a 1996 television movie featuring the same character. It is common to see the show's title abbreviated as Dr. Who, even sometimes by the BBC, although purists consider this form incorrect.

The programme is one of the longest-running science fiction television series in the world and also a significant part of British popular culture. It has been recognised for its imaginative stories, creative low-budget special effects during its original run and pioneering use of electronic music (originally produced by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop). Elements of the programme are well known and identifiable even to non-fans. In Britain and elsewhere, the show has become a cult television favourite on a par with Star Trek and has influenced generations of British television writers, many of whom grew up watching the series. It has received recognition from critics and the public as one of the finest British television programmes, including a BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series in 2006.

The programme originally ran from 1963 to 1989. A television movie was made in 1996, and the programme was successfully relaunched in 2005, produced in-house by BBC Wales. Some development money is contributed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which is credited as a co-producer in overseas markets, although they do not have creative input into the series. The United States broadcast of the 2005 series began on March 17 2006 on the Sci Fi Channel.

The second year of the new series, starring David Tennant as the Doctor and Billie Piper as his companion Rose Tyler has ended on BBC One. A Christmas special, The Runaway Bride will air in December 2006 and has already been shot, with a third series to follow in 2007, though filming for this started on August 10th 2006.

History

A multicoloured variant of the familiar Doctor Who "diamond" logo, which was used in the show's titles from end-1973 to 1980 and widely used on merchandise for years afterward.

Doctor Who first appeared on BBC television at 5:15 p.m. (GMT) on November 23 1963. The programme was born out of discussions and plans that had been going on for a year. The Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, was mainly responsible for developing it, with contributions by the Head of the Script Department (later Head of Serials), Donald Wilson, staff writer C. E. 'Bunny' Webber, writer Anthony Coburn, story editor David Whitaker and initial producer, Verity Lambert. The series' distinctive, haunting title theme was composed by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

The BBC drama department's Serials division produced the programme for twenty-six seasons, on BBC One. 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, Controller of BBC One. Although it was for all intents and purposes cancelled (series co-star Sophie Aldred said in the documentary Doctor Who: More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS that she was told it was cancelled), the BBC maintained the series was merely "on hiatus" and insisted the show would return.

While in-house production had ceased, the BBC was hopeful of finding an independent production company to re-launch the show. Philip Segal, a British expatriate who worked for Columbia Pictures' television arm in the United States, approached the BBC about such a venture. Segal's negotiations eventually led to a television movie. The movie was broadcast on the Fox Network in 1996 as a co-production between Fox, Universal Pictures, the BBC, and BBC Worldwide. However, although the film was successful in the UK (with 9.1 million viewers), it was less so in the United States (possibly due to poor scheduling) and did not lead to a series.

Although licensed media such as novels and audio plays provided new stories, the programme remained dormant until 2003. In September of that year, BBC Television announced the production of a new in-house series after several years of unsuccessful attempts by BBC Worldwide to find backing for a feature film version.

The new series debuted with the episode Rose on BBC One on March 26 2005 and the series has since been sold to many other countries (see Viewership). The programme debuted on the American Sci-Fi Channel on 17 March 2006, one year after the UK showings. The BBC subsequently commissioned two more series and Christmas specials. Series 2 has finished its run in the UK and will be followed by the 2006 Christmas special The Runaway Bride in December.

Format

During the original 1963â€"1989 run, each of the weekly episodes formed part of a story (or "serial") of several parts — usually four to six in earlier years and three to four in later years. Three notable exceptions were the epic The Daleks' Master Plan, which aired in 12 episodes (plus a one-episode teaser titled Mission to the Unknown, featuring none of the regular cast); the 10-episode serial The War Games; and The Trial of a Time Lord, which ran for 14 episodes (containing four stories often referred to by individual titles, and connected by framing sequences) during Season 23.

The programme was intended to be educational and for family viewing on the early Saturday evening schedule. The idea was to alternate stories set during important periods of human history (such as the French Revolution, the Roman Empire, or the Battle of Culloden Moor), which would educate younger audience members about those events, while stories set either in the future or in outer space would enlighten them about science. This was also reflected in the Doctor's original companions, one of whom was a science teacher and another a history teacher.

However, science fiction stories came to dominate the series and the "historicals", which were not popular with the production team, were dropped after the first years. While the series continued to use historical settings, they were generally used as a backdrop for science fiction tales. The series featured only one more purely historical story during its original run: the 1982 serial Black Orchid, set in 1920s Britain.

The programme rapidly became a national institution, the subject of countless jokes, newspaper mentions and other popular culture references. Many renowned actors asked for or were offered and accepted guest starring roles in various stories.

There was some controversy over the show's suitability for children. The moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse made a series of complaints to the BBC in the 1970s over its sometimes frightening or gory content. Ironically, her actions made the programme even more popular, especially with children. John Nathan-Turner, who produced the series during the 1980s, 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. During the 1970s, the Radio Times, the BBC's listings magazine, announced that a child's mother said the theme music terrified her son. The Radio Times was apologetic, but the theme music remained.

There were more complaints about the programme's content than its music. During Jon Pertwee's second season as the Doctor, in the serial Terror of the Autons, images of murderous plastic dolls, daffodils killing unsuspecting victims and blank-featured android policemen marked the apex of the show's ability to frighten children. Other notable moments in that decade included the Doctor apparently being drowned by Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin, and the supposedly negative portrayal of Chinese people in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

It has been said that watching Doctor Who from a position of safety "behind the sofa" (as the Doctor Who exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in London was titled) and peering cautiously out to see if the frightening part was over is one of the great shared experiences of British childhood. The phrase has become a common phrase in association with the programme and occasionally elsewhere.

Doctor Who originally ran for 26 seasons on the BBC, from November 23, 1963 until December 6, 1989. Writers over the years have included Terry Nation, Henry Lincoln, Douglas Adams, Robert Holmes, Terrance Dicks, Dennis Spooner, Eric Saward, Malcolm Hulke, Christopher H. Bidmead, Stephen Gallagher, Brian Hayles, Chris Boucher, Marc Platt and Ben Aaronovitch.

Over 700 Doctor Who instalments have been televised since 1963, ranging from 25-minute episodes (the most common format), to 50-minute episodes for a single season in 1985, to two feature-length productions (1983's The Five Doctors and the 1996 television movie).

The serial format changed for the 2005 revival. Series 1 consisted of thirteen 45-minute, self-contained episodes (60 minutes with commercials in Canada/USA), with three two-parters and a loose story arc whose elements were brought together in the season finale. The second series follows a similar pattern, preceded by a 60-minute Christmas special in 2005 with another planned for 2006. It is expected that Doctor Who will surpass the number of individual instalments of the Star Trek franchise (around 726 episodes) during the third season of the new series.

The first two seasons of the 2005 Doctor Who revival were filmed in 576i25 DigiBeta widescreen format and then filmised to give a 25p image in post-production using a Snell and Wilcox Alchemist Platinum. Sony had offered the use of a HD camera as part of a sponsorship dealBBC Passed on High Definition for Doctor Who?, part of an IGN Doctor Who Report, but the offer came too late to be considered for the new series. The BBC has reportedly been conducting HD tests, and the third season of the new Doctor Who and the first season of the Torchwood spinoff will reportedly be filmed in HDTorchwood:High Definition Television! at torchwood.tv.

The Doctor

The ten faces of the Doctor. Clockwise from top-left: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant.

The character of the Doctor was initially shrouded in mystery. All that was known about him in the programme's early days was that he was an eccentric alien traveller of great intelligence who battled injustice while exploring Time and Space in an unreliable old time machine called the TARDIS. The TARDIS is much larger on the inside than on the outside and, due to a chronic malfunction, is stuck in the shape of a 1950s-style British police box.

The initially irascible and slightly sinister Doctor quickly mellowed into a more compassionate figure and it was eventually revealed that he had been "on the run" from his own people, the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey. Also, like all Time Lords, the Doctor had the ability to "regenerate" his body when near death. This concept allows for the convenient re-casting of the lead actor. Ten actors have played the part for television.

The 1976 serial The Deadly Assassin revealed that a Time Lord can generally regenerate only twelve times. The Doctor has gone through this process (and its resulting after-effects) on nine occasions, with each of his incarnations having his own quirks and abilities:

#First Doctor, played by William Hartnell (1963–1966)#Second Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton (1966–1969)#Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee (1970–1974)#Fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker (1974–1981)#Fifth Doctor, played by Peter Davison (1981–1984) #Sixth Doctor, played by Colin Baker (1984–1986)#Seventh Doctor, played by Sylvester McCoy (1987–1989, 1996)#Eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann (1996) #Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston (2005)#Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant (2005–present)

Other actors have also played the Doctor, though rarely more than once (see the list of actors who have played the Doctor for details).

Despite these shifts in personality, the Doctor has always remained an intensely curious and highly moral adventurer, who would rather solve problems with his wits than through violence.

Throughout the programme's long history certain controversial revelations about the Doctor have been made. For example, in The Brain of Morbius, it was hinted that the First Doctor may not have been the Doctor's first incarnation; throughout the Seventh Doctor's era it was hinted that the Doctor was more than just an ordinary Time Lord, and in the 1996 television movie it was revealed that the Doctor is actually half-human on his mother's side. By the time of the 2005 series the Doctor, in his ninth incarnation, had become the last known surviving Time Lord.

Companions

Freema Agyeman as the Tenth Doctor's newest companion Martha Jones.

The Doctor almost always shares his adventures with up to three companions (the only exception being The Deadly Assassin, in which he travels alone). The idea of the companion is to provide a surrogate with whom the audience can identify and to further the story by asking questions and getting into trouble. 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 even died during the course of the series.

There are some disputes as to the definition of a companion, but fans mostly agree that at least thirty (including K-9 Marks I and II) meet the criteria for "companion" status in the television series, with others being established in the various spin-offs. For further details, see the notes in List of Doctor Who supporting characters.

"Companion" is more generally used as a technical term in fandom; the press normally refers to them either as companions or assistants. The series does not apply the term consistently to those travelling with the Doctor, with him just as often introducing them simply as his friends. One exception to this is in the new 2005 series, the Ninth Doctor states he "employed Rose as his companion" and then was promptly asked if it was sexual.

Despite the fact that the majority of the Doctor's companions are young, attractive females, the production team for the 1963â€"1989 series maintained a longstanding taboo against any overt romantic involvement in the TARDIS, for example, the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, was not allowed to put his arm around either Nyssa or Tegan. However, that has not prevented fans from speculating about possible romantic involvements, most notably between the Fourth Doctor and the Time Lady Romana (whose actors, Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, shared a romance and brief marriage). The taboo was controversially broken in the 1996 television movie when the Eighth Doctor was shown kissing companion Grace Holloway. The 2005 series played with this idea by having various characters think that the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler were a couple, which they vehemently denied (see also "The Doctor and romance").

Previous companions have reappeared in the series, usually for anniversary specials. One former companion, Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen), together with the robotic dog K-9, appeared in an episode of the 2006 series more than twenty years after their last appearances in the 20th Anniversary story The Five Doctors (1983).

Freema Agyeman will play Martha Jones, the Doctor's next companion after Rose. Apart from her name and the information that she will be a medical student, no details are currently available about her character. She will not appear in the 2006 Christmas special.

Adversaries

See also: List of Doctor Who monsters and aliens, List of Doctor Who villains

The Daleks are perhaps the best-known adversaries faced by the Doctor.

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 a staple of Doctor Who almost from the beginning and were popular with audiences.

Notable adversaries of the Doctor include the Autons, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Sea Devils, the Ice Warriors, the Yeti, the Silurians, the Slitheen and the Master, a rival Time Lord with a thirst for universal conquest. Of all the monsters and villains, the ones that most secured the series' place in the public's imagination were the Daleks. The Daleks are lethal mutants in tank-like mechanical armour from the planet Skaro. Their chief role in the great scheme of things, as they frequently remark in their instantly recognisable metallic voices, is to "Exterminate!" Davros, the Daleks' fictional creator, also became a recurring villain after he was introduced.

The Daleks were created by writer Terry Nation (who intended them as an allegory of the Nazis) and BBC designer Raymond Cusick. Nation also wrote for 1960s telefantasy like The Avengers. He later created the 1970s science fiction programmes Survivors and Blake's 7 and was a writer for the popular American series MacGyver. The Daleks' debut in the programme's second serial, The Daleks, caused a tremendous reaction in the viewing figures and the public, putting Doctor Who on the cultural map. A Dalek even appeared on a postage stamp celebrating British popular culture in 1999, photographed by Lord Snowdon.

Music

The original 1963 arrangement of the Doctor Who theme, as composed by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, is widely regarded as a significant and innovative piece of electronic music, working from tape loops of an individually struck piano string and individual test oscillators and filters. The Derbyshire arrangement served, with minor edits, as the theme tune up to the end of Season 17.

A more modern and dynamic arrangement was composed by Peter Howell for Season 18 (1980), which was in turn replaced by Dominic Glynn's arrangement for Season 23's The Trial of a Time Lord (1986). Keff McCulloch provided the new arrangement for the Seventh Doctor's era which lasted from Season 24 (1987) until the series' suspension in 1989. For the new series in 2005, Murray Gold provided a new arrangement which featured samples from the 1963 original with further elements added.

In the early 1970s, Jon Pertwee, who had played the Third Doctor, recorded a version of the Doctor Who Theme with spoken lyrics, titled, "Who Is The Doctor". In 1988 the band The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (later known as The KLF) released the single "Doctorin' the Tardis" under the name The Timelords, which reached No. 1 in the UK. Others who have covered or reinterpreted the theme include Orbital, the Australian string ensemble Fourplay, The Pogues, Pink Floyd and the comedians Bill Bailey and Mitch Benn. The theme tune has also appeared on many compilation CDs and has made its way into mobile phone ring tones. Fans have also produced and distributed their own remixes of the theme.

A soundtrack CD of Gold's music for the new series is currently in production. A release date has not been set..

The 2006 series has been purchased by the CBC but has not yet aired. The 2005 series episodes aired in Canada a couple of weeks after their UK broadcast, a situation made possible by the cancellation of the 2004-2005 National Hockey League season which left vast gaps in CBC's schedule. For the Canadian broadcasts, Christopher Eccleston recorded special video introductions for each episode (including a trivia question as part of a viewer contest) and excerpts from the Doctor Who Confidential documentary were played over the closing credits; for the broadcast of The Christmas Invasion on December 26 2005, Billie Piper recorded a special video introduction. CBC Television is scheduled to begin airing the 2006 series on October 9 2006 at 8:00 p.m. local (8:30 NT), immediately after that day's CFL Thanksgiving doubleheader in much of the country. The first series is currently being rebroadcast late Tuesday nights/early Wednesday mornings at midnight.

In the United States, The Christmas Invasion will debut on the Sci Fi Channel on 29 September 2006, and will be followed by Series 2.

Doctor Who has amassed a large number of fans from all over the world. The series is a more mainstream part of popular culture in its native UK, where it is regarded as a family show and is shown on the main public service broadcasting channel, BBC One.

The term Whovian, (similar to Trekkie for Star Trek) is used by the press to refer to Doctor Who fans, although the term is not often used by fans.

Celebrity fans include comedians Jon Culshaw, David Walliams, Mitch Benn, Peter Kay, Mark Gatiss and Matt Lucas, cricketers Mike Gatting and Graham Gooch, singer and actress Toyah Willcox, Cedric Bixler-Zavala of the Mars Volta, Simpsons creator Matt Groening and science-fiction writer and critic Harlan Ellison.

List of episodes and serials

Missing episodes

The First Doctor (William Hartnell) collapses prior to his regeneration. (From the surviving clip of The Tenth Planet, episode 4.)

Between about 1967 and 1978, large amounts of older material stored in the BBC's video tape and film libraries were destroyed or wiped. This included many old episodes of Doctor Who, mostly stories featuring the first two Doctors — William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. Archives are complete from the programme's move to colour television (starting from Jon Pertwee's time as the Doctor), although a few Pertwee episodes have required substantial restoration and a handful have only been recovered in black and white. In all, 108 of 253 episodes produced during the first six years of the programme are not held in the BBC's archives.

Some episodes have been returned to the BBC from the archives of other countries who bought copies for broadcast, or by private individuals who got them by various means. Early colour videotape recordings made off-air by fans have also been retrieved, as well as excerpts recovered on 8 mm cine film from clips shown on other programmes. Audio versions of all of the lost episodes exist from home viewers making tape recordings of the show.

In addition to these, there are photographs made by photographer John Cura, who was hired by the BBC to document the filming of many of their most popular 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 distributed as low quality VHS copies.

Screenshot of the animated reconstruction of The Invasion

One of the most sought-after lost episodes is Part Four of the last William Hartnell serial, The Tenth Planet, 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, thanks to it being 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.Starting in the early 1990s, the BBC began to release audio recordings of missing serials on cassette and compact disc, with linking narration provided by former series actors. "Official" reconstructions have also been released by the BBC on VHS, on MP3 CD-ROM and as a special feature on a DVD. The BBC, in conjunction with animation studio Cosgrove Hall is reconstructing the missing Episodes 1 and 4 of The Invasion (1968) in animated form using remastered audio tracks for the serial's DVD release in November 2006.

In April 2006, the long running BBC children's television magazine Blue Peter launched a challenge to find these missing episodes with the promise of a full scale Dalek model.

Adaptations and other appearances

Spin-offs

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 which also featured former companion actress Wendy Padbury (Pertwee's Doctor made a cameo appearance via film). In the early 1990s, Jon Pertwee and Colin Baker both played the Doctor at different times during the run of a musical play entitled Doctor Who - The Ultimate Adventure. For two performances while Pertwee was ill, David Banks (best known for playing various 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.

The Doctor has also appeared in two cinema films: Dr. Who and the Daleks in 1965 and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD in 1966. Both were essentially retellings of existing stories on the big screen, with a larger budget and numerous alterations to the series concept. In these films, Peter Cushing played a human scientist named Dr. Who, who travelled with his two granddaughters and other companions in a time machine he invented. Due to this and numerous other changes (not to mention the storylines that duplicated televised episodes), the movies are not regarded as part of the ongoing continuity of the series, although the Cushing version of the character would reappear in both comic strip and literary form, the latter attempting to reconcile the film continuity with that of the series.

A pilot episode for a potential spin-off 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 K-9, but was not picked up as a regular series.

Doctor Who books have been published from the mid-sixties through to the present day. The Doctor has also appeared in many audio plays and in webcasts.

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 Britain and investigating alien activities and crime. The series will star John Barrowman, playing his Doctor Who character of Jack Harkness, and will begin shooting in Summer 2006.Doctor Who has been satirised and spoofed on many occasions by comedians including Spike Milligan and Lenny Henry. Doctor Who fandom has also been lampooned on programmes such as Saturday Night Live and Mystery Science Theater 3000.

The Fourth Doctor on The Simpsons

The Doctor in his fourth incarnation (the one most Americans associate the Doctor with) has been represented on several episodes of The Simpsons, starting with the episode "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" where (along with Krusty the Clown and Steve Urkel) he was part of a delegation to the Pentagon of "the esteemed representatives of television". The episode was broadcast the week of Doctor Who's 33rd anniversary. He also appeared in the episode "Treehouse of Horror X", in which he had been kidnapped by the Comic Book Guy.

Jon Culshaw frequently impersonates the Fourth Doctor in the BBC Dead Ringers series. Culshaw's "Doctor" has telephoned four of the "real" Doctors â€" Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy â€" in character as the Fourth Doctor. This prompted the bemused McCoy to ask the classic question: "Have you been in the pub?". When Culshaw phoned Tom Baker himself and stated that he "was the Doctor", Baker replied, "But there must be some mistake...I'm the Doctor..." Baker had previously worked with Culshaw and was aware of his impression but not when the call would come, if at all, so his reaction was genuine. On the other hand, McCoy has said that his reaction was faked, as he had been warned immediately before the call took place. In the 2005 Dead Ringers Christmas special, broadcast shortly before The Christmas Invasion, Culshaw impersonated both the Fourth and Tenth Doctors, while the Second, Seventh and Ninth Doctors were impersonated by Mark Perry, Kevin Connelly and Phil Cornwell, respectively.

Less a spoof and more of a pastiche is the character of Professor Gamble, a renegade from the Time Variance Authority, appeared in Marvel Comics' Power Man and Iron Fist #79 and Avengers Annual #22. His enemies include the rogue robots known as the Incinerators. Professor Gamble was created by Jo Duffy, Kerry Gammill, and Ricardo Villamonte.Since its beginnings, Doctor Who has generated many hundreds of products related to the show, from toys and games to collectible picture cards and postage stamps. These include board games, card games, gamebooks, computer games and action figures.

Many games have been released that feature the Daleks. See Dalek computer games.

Awards

Although Doctor Who was fondly regarded during its original 1963â€"1989 run, it received little critical recognition at the time. 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" season, celebrating sixty 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 twentieth 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". Also, in the 100 Greatest Kids' Shows (a Channel 4 countdown in 2001), the 1963â€"1989 run was placed at number eight.

The 2005 series has received particular recognition from critics and the public. At the National Television Awards (voted on by members of the British public), Doctor Who won "Most Popular Drama", Christopher Eccleston won "Most Popular Actor" and Billie Piper won "Most Popular Actress". A scene from The Doctor Dances won "Golden Moment" in the BBC's "2005 TV Moments" awards
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