Born November 23, 1963
Still going strong!
This page is intended to be a quick guide to the world of Doctor Who. Just read this and you will know the basics of the program well enough to speak its language -- perhaps even well enough to pass yourself off as a native for short periods of time. :-) Okay, maybe not that well, but you get the idea.
Come learn about the longest-running science fiction television program in the world...
How it all began
In 1963, Sydney Newman was head of drama at the British Broadcasting Corporation. He wanted a new program which would bridge the gap on a Saturday afternoon between the football results and Juke Box Jury, which attracted a large teenage following.
He created a science fiction series aimed at children and teenagers. He wanted a character who could travel in both space and time, because he envisioned a show which educated as well as entertained. Whenever the character went back in time, he wanted the audience to learn something about history. Whenever the story took the audience to outer space, they would learn something about astronomy.
Sydney decided that the main character would be grandfatherly in nature, a very eccentric scientist who commanded respect. To give him a bit of mystery, this character would not reveal his name, choosing only to be known as "the Doctor." Nor would he reveal the name of his home planet, to which he was unable to return for reasons unknown. To reflect all this mystery surrounding the Doctor, the new show was titled Doctor Who.
It drew surprise and criticism from the very beginning at the BBC, because it was a children's show being produced by the drama department. The BBC is a very departmental corporation, and some people felt that wasn't appropriate. But it was never changed, and Doctor Who was produced by the drama department for its entire existence.
Sydney hired a woman, Verity Lambert, to be the producer, which in 1963 was much more rare than it is today, and she was relatively inexperienced at the time. But she set to the task of producing Doctor Who with enthusiasm, and she cast William Hartnell as the lead character.
William Hartnell was famous in England for playing tough, bullying roles -- army sergeants and criminals -- so the public was suprised when he was cast in the lead for a children's program. But Mr. Hartnell brought over 50 years of stage and film experience to the role.
The show started with three more cast members in addition to the Doctor:
| The first was Susan, the Doctor's
plucky, rebellious teenage granddaughter, played by
Carole Ann Ford. She was the character designed to be the
one all the children could identify with. The third and fourth characters were two ordinary, middle-aged humans from Earth, schoolteachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton. Barbara was a history teacher, Ian was a science teacher. Thus, at any given time either one of them could exchange dialogue with the Doctor, imparting information to the audience on those two subjects. Ian and Barabara were played by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill. I believe that with this cast -- the Doctor, his granddaughter, a science teacher and a history teacher -- Doctor Who had arguably the best team ever. Four characters was just the right number, and they each had a role to play throughout their time together. Their faults were realistic, but each one of them could be very strong and courageous when the need arose. |
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| In the pilot episode, the Doctor is lying low on 1963 Earth, in London, trying to avoid attention. His only companion, his granddaughter, attends the nearby Coal Hill School, presumably because she doesn't want to be cooped up in their space ship all day, every day. | Barbara, the 1st Doctor, Susan and Ian, from the 1964 story "Marco Polo" |
Ian and Barbara, confounded by a teenage girl who is so brilliant at some things and unbelievably ignorant of others, decide to follow her home because the facts about her existence just don't add up. Her home is the junkyard where the Doctor has hidden his space ship. When Ian and Barbara confront the Doctor and demand an explanation, he tells them he cannot let them go free, because if he does, they will tell everyone about him. In an angry fit, he sets his time/space ship in motion, taking Ian and Barbara with him.
They go back in time thousands of years and are captured by cave men, who want to know the secret of fire. Ian and Barbara must join forces with the Doctor and Susan in order to get out of their predicament. They manage to escape and get back to the Doctor's ship. But when Ian and Barbara demand to be taken home, the Doctor says he cannot do so because he doesn't know how to pilot his own ship back to 1963 London. They're stuck with each other. And so the adventures begin...
The pilot episode, "An Unearthly Child," was first broadcast on November 23, 1963. However, the first 15 minutes were pre-empted by news coverage of John F. Kennedy's assassination, which had occurred the day before. The pilot episode was shown in its entirety one week later in the half-hour before the next episode aired, but November 23 is universally recognized as Doctor Who's anniversary.
The TARDIS
| And what about this time/space ship of
the Doctor's, this marvelous craft which knows no
boundaries? It's called the TARDIS -- an acronym for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. A TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside. The outside is a plasma shell, capable of changing shape to blend in with its surroundings so it won't attract attention. Inside, however, is a pocket universe, a huge space station with countless rooms and corridors containing all sorts of stuff. The TARDIS gets from one place to another by dematerializing, traveling through a time/space vortex, and rematerializing. It can go anywhere in the entire universe at any point in time, within a matter of minutes! No other science fiction show in history has even come close to having that kind of freedom, to giving its writers such an incredibly big playground to play in. The original plan was to have the Doctor's TARDIS changing shape whenever it materialized in a new location. But the show's budget wouldn't allow this! It was too late to change the concept, so Verity and her staff changed the premise slightly. In the pilot episode, it was established that the Doctor's ship has the ability to change shape -- but it had malfunctioned. As a result, the Doctor's TARDIS was frozen into the shape it took while in 1963 London: a British police telephone box. The TARDIS' malfunctioning chameleon circuit was never fixed. As an eccentric scientist who is always putting off trivial things for another day, the Doctor has never gotten around to repairing it. Today, the British police box is universally recognized to be a symbol of Doctor Who. If the Doctor were to repair the chameleon circuit and lose the police box shape, it would be considered a sacrilege by many Doctor Who fans. |
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Format
Doctor Who came to the audience in half-hour episodes (with some exceptions in the mid-1980's), and like any other BBC program, it did not have commercial breaks.
Doctor Who's format is very much like a comic book in many ways. Stories lasted a varying number of episodes. A typical Doctor Who story would last three, four or six episodes. Until the story ended, each individual episode ended with a cliffhanger which was reprised at the beginning of the next episode. Although each story can stand alone reasonably well, they were meant to be viewed in order. Since the cast changed so regularly, any television station which showed stories in a random order would confuse its audience.
Doctor Who was usually shown in America on PBS stations, which would air the show either in its original half-hour format or combine all the episodes of a single story into one movie-length program. The last I heard, several years ago, only seven PBS stations across America still carry Doctor Who.
Doctor Who video tapes are sold as individual stories, no matter how many episodes it took to tell the story. (Beware of those six-episode stories, though. The BBC likes to sell those stories as two-tape boxed sets, even though they are perfectly capable of putting six episodes onto one tape. Can anyone gue$$ the rea$on they would do $uch a thing?)
The first six seasons of Doctor Who were filmed in black and white.
The special effects are not very good, especially to the eyes of modern American audiences. Always remember that Doctor Who was made on a BBC budget.
Doctor Who's longevity
Doctor Who was expected to be a reasonably popular show, lasting perhaps three years. But it became a very long-running show for two reasons: Daleks and regeneration.
| David Whitaker, Doctor Who's
first script editor, commissioned Terry Nation to write a
six-episode adventure story for the first season. Terry
created a race of monsters called the Daleks (pronounced
DAH-leks) -- mutant blobs which live in mobile armored
fighting machines. Each Dalek has a dome-shaped top, an eyestalk, a gun, and one arm with a plunger attached to it. It rolls along on wheels. The Daleks hate anything which isn't a Dalek, and they have no compassion or pity. All they want to do is conquer everything. By today's standards, the Daleks are about as silly a monster as any which was ever created. But you have to remember, this was 1963. Science fiction was different back then, and to the people of England, the Daleks were a hit. They were a big hit. Dalek-mania swept England. Dalek merchandise sprang up in every corner hobby shop. Suddenly, Doctor Who was the hottest show on the BBC's hands, and it quickly became a national institution. It is a given that Doctor Who's longevity is primarily due to the appeal of the Daleks in its early days. |
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Daleks were such a big hit that two movies were commissioned. These movies starred Peter Cushing as the Doctor, and had nothing at all to do with the continuity of the television program. But the movies were in color while the TV show was still in black and white, and everyone wanted to see Daleks on the big screen.
Because of the way labor laws work in England, Terry Nation retained all rights to the Daleks because he was the author. The man who actually designed and built the machine, Raymond Cusick, got nothing beyond his usual paycheck because he was an employee of the BBC. Terry Nation never shared with Mr. Cusick the wealth which the Daleks brought him, although many people (myself included) feel he should have.
To this day, Terry Nation's estate still holds the rights to the Daleks. Any author who writes an officially sanctioned Doctor Who story which contains Daleks must hand over part of their paycheck to Terry Nation's estate. No other Doctor Who character or monster comes with this condition.
Sydney Newman was furious about the Daleks. He had specifically told Verity Lambert that he didn't want any Bug-Eyed Monsters on Doctor Who! But to write science fiction adventure stories for children without bug-eyed monsters is almost impossible, and it wasn't long before the educational aspect of Doctor Who was left by the wayside and it became simply a regular adventure program.
Throughout the show's history, the Daleks were brought back again and again as the Doctor's arch-enemies. As time went on, they became sillier and sillier, but because Doctor Who owed them so much, and because they were such a big part of its history, they just couldn't be left behind.
Doctor Who was to be the last role for William Hartnell. Due to his failing health, he had to leave the show. But it was such a popular program, the BBC didn't want to stop it if they could at all help it. So they came up with a brilliant idea to keep the show going: they would regenerate the main character.
Since the Doctor is an alien, they decided to give him an extra power which no one had known about. It turns out that whenever the Doctor is mortally wounded, or his body wears out due to old age, he regenerates. His body takes on a new, younger appearance, with a new face and a slightly different personality.
So after three years, the Doctor regenerated. He was now played by veteran actor Patrick Troughton. It was a stunning and bold move on the part of the BBC to keep the show alive, and the concept was just one more that made Doctor Who unique in the arena of science fiction television.
To date, eight different actors have played the Doctor on the television screen: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann. This ability to regenerate kept the show alive for a whopping 26 seasons, and brought it back for a 1996 TV movie. Because of this, Doctor Who holds the record for the longest-running science fiction television show in history, and that record isn't going to be broken any time within the next three decades. It may never be broken.
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Why the BBC canceled it in 1989 is just one of those great television mysteries.
The cast of Doctor Who was always changing. Within 2 years, the characters of Ian, Barbara and Susan had all left the TARDIS. New companions were always created and written into the show to replace outgoing ones. Throughout the show's history, the Doctor had 28 companions -- usually teenagers or young adults, people with whom the children in the audience could identify.
When Doctor Who's 10th anniversary rolled around, the Doctor was played by Jon Pertwee. A special story was written wherein the 1st and 2nd Doctors, William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, time-traveled forward to meet their third self and share an adventure together. This four-episode story was called "The Three Doctors." It's actually not very good, but thoroughly enjoyable simply because the interplay between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee is delightful.
For Doctor Who's 20th anniversary, they showed a 1-episode, 90-minute special called "The Five Doctors." Sadly, William Hartnell had passed away in 1975, so Richard Hurndall took his place as the 1st Doctor. Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor, was written out of the special because he didn't want to take part in it. The story is weak, but wonderful nevertheless, and thoroughly delightful.
(There is another Doctor Who story called "The Two Doctors." It is a 6th-Doctor story which guest stars Patrick Troughton as the 2nd Doctor, but it wasn't created to celebrate any anniversary. They just did it for fun.)
The Novels
Almost all of the TV stories were novelized by Target Books in the 1970's and 1980's. Some Target Doctor Who stories are rare.
Doctor Who ended its regular TV run in 1989. In 1991, Virgin Publishing obtained the rights from the BBC to produce a series of original novels, picking up where the show left off. These novels were called the "New Adventures," or NA's for short. They had a more adult theme, introducing swear words and sexual situations into what had always been a children's show, producing enough controversy to keep people happily discussing it on the news group.
By this time, Doctor Who was firmly in the hands of fans who had grown up with the program. The novels were written by people who knew the show inside and out, and they were making Doctor Who their own.
A few years later, with the success of the NA's, Virgin began publishing the "Missing Adventures," (MA's). These were original novels designed to slide in between the television episodes.
Virgin's licensing agreement with the BBC expired in 1997. The BBC, realizing that Doctor Who was still a money-maker (even though they won't bring back the damned show!), decided to continue publishing Doctor Who novels themselves rather than merely licensing an outside agency to do it for them. To distinguish the BBC novels from the Virgin novels, the BBC books are called EDA's (Eighth Doctor Adventures) and PDA's (Past Doctor Adventures) by a lot of people, even though the BBC doesn't call them that at all.
The Virgin novels are out of print, and many of them are rare. Some of them sell for almost $100 on Ebay.
The BBC books basically follow the same format. (Although the swear words and sexual situations have been toned down, they're still there.) They publish six EDA's and six PDA's a year, using the exact same range of established authors which Virgin did.
My opinions of the best and the worst of the novels can be found here.
The Audio Dramas
An independent company called Big Finish Productions has obtained a license from the BBC to produce original Doctor Who audio adventures, using cast members from the show. Most of their work could be considered "Missing Adventures," as they create original stories designed to slide neatly into the television program. But they scored a major casting coup in 2000 when they hired the current Doctor, Paul McGann, to star in an audio adventure.
I don't know much about the audio adventures because I don't have the time or money to collect them, but I hear they are doing very well. I know that Big Finish Productions is run by long-time Doctor Who fans, so they know what they're doing.
Doctor Who on line
There are many on-line forums for discussing Doctor Who. The biggest is the rec.arts.drwho newsgroup, aka RADW. The Doctor Who links I provide on my links page should lead you to some of the more prominent Doctor Who sites, and from there you can go anywhere.
Extra Stuff
To this day, Marvel still publishes Doctor Who Monthly, the official Doctor Who magazine. I love reading this magazine, and I think they do a wonderful job.
Throughout the years there have been a number of Doctor Who stage plays, televised skits for charity, audio and radio dramas, and spin-off Doctor Who projects. Like the Peter Cushing movies, some of these extra things don't follow the continuity of the TV show. But they don't have to, because it's all just for fun.
There are also television programs, like The Stranger, which star actors from Doctor Who in roles and situations which are very similar to Doctor Who. And there are some movies and TV shows, like The Airzone Solution, which are related to Doctor Who only because the cast is made up of almost entirely Doctor Who regulars. And then there are the 50 Reel Time biographical video tapes, profiling Doctor Who cast and crew, that have been produced thus far.
Add all this to the 150+ Doctor Who television stories, and the 170+ original novels, and you have a collection which is damned hard, and expensive, to keep current!
I'm not even going to get into the comic books, toys, video games, board games, models, and other merchandise...
The missing episodes
In the early 1970's, the BBC erased master copies of over 130 Doctor Who episodes (along with hundreds of other programs), all from the first seven seasons. Some of these have been recovered from private collections and overseas TV stations which bought copies of the show in the 1960's. The BBC has an unofficial Restoration Team which cleans up older episodes and soundtracks for modern-day commercial release.
There are 109 episodes of Doctor Who still missing from the BBC archives. Click here to read more about the missing episodes, including a list of their titles and authors.
Nicholas Courtney
The Doctor has had many memorable companions over the years, but most Doctor Who fans regard Nicholas Courtney to be the actor who played the greatest Doctor Who companion of all time: Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.
The reason he's the greatest is because the Brigadier is the only companion to have appeared with every single television Doctor, as well the only companion who was in each of the anniversary stories. (He appeared with the 6th Doctor in the 30th-Anniversary short charity program "Dimensions in Time," and he is acting alongside the 8th Doctor in audio dramas.)
Little things even casual Doctor Who fans know about
At the end of the sixth season, the audience finally learned that the Doctor is a Time Lord. The Time Lords are one of the most powerful races in the cosmos. Their technology is awesome, and almost nothing seems beyond their grasp. They can control time and space, they have the power to obliterate star systems, and they can live for millenia through regeneration. But they don't like to get involved in the affairs of others. All they want to do is observe the universe and learn from it -- even if that means silently watching as injustices and atrocities are committed. As long as it doesn't involve them, they really don't care, unless there is a problem on a really big scale.
The Doctor, stricken with a wanderlust and a desire to use his abilities to fight evil, decided that observing the universe in such a manner was not for him. He stole his TARDIS and fled his home planet to roam freely through the cosmos.
The Doctor's relationship with his own people is a little strained. They don't hate each other, but the Time Lords tolerate the Doctor's nomadic existence, although they are very snobby and look down their noses at him because he's not like them. On the rare occasion that the Time Lords do decide to interfere in the affairs of the universe -- in which case, it must be something really big -- they usually manipulate the Doctor into doing their dirty work for them. It's the unspoken price he pays for his freedom.
It wasn't until the 11th season that we found out the name of the Doctor's home planet: Gallifrey.
We've never found out what the Doctor's real name is. He is still simply known as "the Doctor" (little t, capital D). The fact that he is still anonymous provides him with a bit of mystery after all these years. I personally feel that if we ever learn the Doctor's name it will be a let-down. I like not knowing it. To me, he is, and always will be, the Doctor.
A Time Lord is limited to 12 regenerations. This gives each Time Lord 13 lives.
Another of the Doctor's arch-enemies (he has many) is an evil Time Lord known as the Master. The Master's TARDIS is in perfect working condition, including a fully functioning chameleon circuit. The Master has used up all of his regenerations. He is obsessed with ruling the universe and with extending his own life.
The Doctor never carries weapons, although he knows how to use them if he has to.
The Doctor's favorite tool is a sonic screwdriver, a silver cylinder about the size and shape of a tire pressure gauge. It was introduced in an episode in the mid-1960's, and just kind of stuck around. Its exact properties were never stated (the authors kept finding new uses for it all the time). Basically, it was a convenient technobabble plot device to help get the Doctor past locked doors, deactivate bombs, and interfere with the electrical systems of homicidal robots.
The sonic screwdriver was destroyed in an episode in the early 1980's. (A monster invading Earth destroyed it with a laser beam.)
Jelly babies were a candy treat which the 4th Doctor carried around with him everywhere. He would often offer strangers a jelly baby as a way of getting to know them.
In the novels, the 8th Doctor has also taken to carrying around jelly babies, and has somehow found himself another sonic screwdriver.
