Doctor Who theme by Steve G
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| Doctor Who | |
|---|---|
 Logo (2023) | |
| Genre | |
| Created by | |
| Showrunners |
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| Written by | Various |
| Starring |
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| Theme music composer | Ron Grainer |
| Opening theme | Doctor Who theme music |
| Composers |
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| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 26 (1963–1989) |
| No. of series | 14 (2005–present) |
| No. of episodes |
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| Production | |
| Executive producers |
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| Camera setup |
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| Running time | |
| Production companies | BBC Studios Productions Bad Wolf
|
| Original release | |
| Network | BBC1[c] |
| Release | 23 November 1963 – 6 December 1989 |
| Network | Fox / BBC1[d] |
| Release | 14 May 1996 / 27 May 1996 |
| Network | BBC One[e] |
| Release | 26 March 2005 – present |
| Network | Disney+[f] |
| Release | 25 November 2023 – present |
| Related | |
| Whoniverse | |
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson, depicts the adventures of an extraterrestrial being called the Doctor, part of a humanoid species called Time Lords. The Doctor travels in the universe and in time using a time travelling spaceship called the TARDIS, which externally appears as a British police box. While travelling, the Doctor works to save lives and liberate oppressed peoples by combating foes. The Doctor often travels with companions.
Beginning with William Hartnell, fourteen actors have headlined the series as the Doctor; as of 2024[update], Ncuti Gatwa leads the series as the Fifteenth Doctor. The transition from one actor to another is written into the plot of the series with the concept of regeneration into a new incarnation, a plot device in which, when a Time Lord is fatally injured, their cells regenerate and they are reincarnated. Each actor's portrayal is distinct, but all represent stages in the life of the same character and, together, they form a single lifetime with a single narrative. The time-travelling nature of the plot means that different incarnations of the Doctor occasionally meet. In 2017, Jodie Whittaker, as the Thirteenth Doctor, became the first woman to be cast in the lead role.
The series is a significant part of popular culture in Britain[2] and elsewhere; it has gained a cult following. It has influenced generations of British television professionals, many of whom grew up watching the series.[3] Fans of the series are sometimes referred to as Whovians. The series has been listed in Guinness World Records as the longest-running science-fiction television series in the world,[4] as well as the "most successful" science-fiction series of all time, based on its overall broadcast ratings, DVD and book sales.[5]
The series 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 series was relaunched in 2005 and was produced in-house by BBC Wales in Cardiff. Since 2023, the show has been co-produced by Bad Wolf and BBC Studios Productions in Cardiff. Doctor Who has also spawned numerous spin-offs, including comic books, films, novels and audio dramas, and the television series Torchwood (2006–2011), The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–2011), K9 (2009–2010) and Class (2016). It has been the subject of many parodies and references in popular culture.
Premise[edit]
Doctor Who follows the adventures of the title character, a rogue Time Lord with somewhat unknown origins who goes by the name "the Doctor". The Doctor fled Gallifrey, the planet of the Time Lords, in a stolen TARDIS ("Time and Relative Dimension(s) 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. Because of a malfunction, the Doctor's TARDIS remains fixed as a blue British police box.[6]
Across time and space, the Doctor's many incarnations often find events that pique their curiosity, and try 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 is often joined by one or more companions on 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 Earth is threatened.[7] The Doctor is centuries old and, as a Time Lord, has the ability to regenerate when there is mortal damage to their body.[8] The Doctor's various incarnations have gained numerous recurring enemies during their travels, including the Daleks, their creator Davros, the Cybermen, and the renegade Time Lord the Master.[9]
History[edit]
Doctor Who was originally intended to appeal to a family audience[10] as an educational programme using time travel as a means to explore scientific ideas and famous moments in history. The programme first appeared on the BBC Television Service at 17:16:20 GMT on 23 November 1963; this was eighty seconds later than the scheduled programme time, because of announcements concerning the previous day's assassination of John F. Kennedy.[11][12] It was to be a regular weekly programme, each episode 25 minutes of transmission length. Discussions and plans for the programme had been in progress for a year. The head of drama Sydney Newman was mainly responsible for developing the programme, with the first format document for the series being written by Newman along with the head of the script department (later head of serials) Donald Wilson and staff writer C. E. Webber; in a 1971 interview Wilson claimed to have named the series, and when this claim was put to Newman he did not dispute it.[13] Writer Anthony Coburn, story editor David Whitaker and initial producer Verity Lambert also heavily contributed to the development of the series.[14][g]
On 31 July 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 Wilson, it was immediately rejected as the programme was not permitted to contain any "bug-eyed monsters". According to 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 (also known as The Mutants). The serial introduced the eponymous aliens that would become the series' most popular monsters, dubbed "Dalekmania", and was responsible for the BBC's first merchandising boom.[16]
We had to rely on the story because there was little we could do with the effects. Star Wars in a way was the turning point. Once Star Wars had happened, Doctor Who effectively was out of date from that moment on really, judged by that level of technological expertise.
—Philip Hinchcliffe, producer of Doctor Who from 1974 to 1977, on why the "classic series" eventually fell behind other science fiction in production values and reputation, leading to its cancellation[17]
The BBC drama department produced the programme for 26 seasons, broadcast on BBC One. Due to his increasingly poor health, William Hartnell, first actor to play the Doctor, was succeeded by Patrick Troughton in 1966. In 1970, Jon Pertwee replaced Troughton and the series began production in colour. In 1974, Tom Baker was cast as the Doctor. His eccentric personality became hugely popular, with viewing figures for the series returning to a level not seen since the height of "Dalekmania" a decade earlier.[18] After seven years in the role, Baker was replaced by Peter Davison in 1981, and Colin Baker replaced Davison in 1984. In 1985, the channel's controller Michael Grade attempted to cancel the series, but it returned after an 18-month hiatus. He also had Colin Baker removed from the starring role in 1986.[19][20][21] The role was recast with Sylvester McCoy, but falling viewing numbers, a decline in the public perception of the series and a less-prominent transmission slot saw production ended in 1989 by Peter Cregeen, the BBC's new head of series.[22] Although it was effectively cancelled, the BBC repeatedly affirmed over several years that the series would return.[23]
While in-house production concluded, the BBC explored an independent production company to relaunch the series. Philip Segal, a British expatriate who worked for Columbia Pictures' television arm in the United States, had approached the BBC as early as July 1989, while the 26th season was still in production.[23] Segal's negotiations eventually led to a Doctor Who television film as a pilot for an American series, broadcast on the Fox Network in 1996, as an international co-production between Fox, Universal Pictures, the BBC and BBC Worldwide. Starring Paul McGann as the Doctor, the film was successful in the UK (with 9.1 million viewers), but was less so in the United States and did not lead to a series.[23]
Licensed media such as novels and audio plays provided new stories, but as a television programme, Doctor Who remained dormant. In September 2003,[24][25] 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 2005 revival of Doctor Who is a direct plot continuation of the original 1963–1989 series and the 1996 television film. The executive producers of the new incarnation of the series were Queer as Folk writer Russell T Davies and BBC Cymru Wales head of drama Julie Gardner. From 2005, the series switched from a multi-camera to a single-camera setup.[26]
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Starring Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor, Doctor Who returned with the episode "Rose" on BBC One on 26 March 2005, after a 16-year hiatus of in-house production.[27] Eccleston left after one series and was replaced by David Tennant.[28] Davies left the production team in 2009.[29] Steven Moffat, a writer under Davies, was announced as his successor, along with Matt Smith as the new Doctor.[30] Smith decided to leave the role of the Doctor in 2013, the 50th anniversary year.[31] He was replaced by Peter Capaldi.[32]
In January 2016, Moffat announced that he would step down after the 2017 finale, to be replaced by Chris Chibnall in 2018.[33] Jodie Whittaker, the first female Doctor, appeared in three series, the last of which was shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[34]
Both Whittaker and Chibnall announced that they would depart the series after a series of specials in 2022.[35] Davies returned as showrunner from the 60th anniversary specials, twelve years after he had left the series previously.[36] Bad Wolf co-produces the series in partnership with BBC Studios Productions.[37] Bad Wolf's involvement sees Gardner return to the series alongside Davies and Jane Tranter, who recommissioned the series in 2005.[36]
The programme has been sold to many other countries worldwide ().
Public consciousness[edit]
It has been claimed that the transmission of the first episode was delayed by ten minutes due to extended news coverage of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy the previous day; in fact, it went out after a delay of eighty seconds.[38] The BBC believed that coverage of the assassination, as well as a series of power blackouts across the country, had caused many viewers to miss this introduction to a new series, and it was broadcast again on 30 November 1963, just before episode two.[39][40]
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The programme soon became a national institution in the United Kingdom, with a large following among the general viewing audience.[42][43] The show received controversy over the suitability of the series for children. Morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse repeatedly complained to the BBC over what she saw as the programme's violent, frightening and gory content. According to Radio Times, the series "never had a more implacable foe than Mary Whitehouse".[44]
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.[45] The same report found that 3% of the surveyed audience believed the series was "very unsuitable" for family viewing.[46] 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."[45]
During Jon Pertwee's second season as the Doctor, in the serial Terror of the Autons (1971), images of murderous plastic dolls, daffodils killing unsuspecting victims, and blank-featured policemen marked the apex of the series' ability to frighten children.[47] Other notable moments in that decade include a disembodied brain falling to the floor in The Brain of Morbius[48] and the Doctor apparently being drowned by a villain in The Deadly Assassin (both 1976).[49] Mary Whitehouse's complaint about the latter incident prompted a change in BBC policy towards the series, with much tighter controls imposed on the production team,[50] and the series' next producer, Graham Williams, was under a directive to take out "anything graphic in the depiction of violence".[51] John Nathan-Turner produced the series during the 1980s and said in the documentary More Than Thirty Years in the TARDIS that he looked forward to Whitehouse's comments because the ratings of the series would increase soon after she had made them. Nathan-Turner also got into trouble with BBC executives over the violence he allowed to be depicted for season 22 of the series in 1985, which was publicly criticised by controller Michael Grade and given as one of his reasons for suspending the series for 18 months.[52]
The phrase "Hiding behind (or 'watching from behind') the sofa" entered British pop culture, signifying the stereotypical but apocryphal 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.[53] The phrase retains this association with Doctor Who, to the point that in 1991 the Museum of the Moving Image in London named its 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 series",[54] and a 2011 online vote at Digital Spy deemed the series the "scariest TV show of all time".[55]
The image of the TARDIS has become firmly linked to the series in the public's consciousness; BBC scriptwriter Anthony Coburn, who lived in the resort of Herne Bay, Kent, was one of the people who conceived the idea of a police box as a time machine.[56] In 1996, the BBC applied for a trademark to use the TARDIS' blue police box design in merchandising associated with Doctor Who.[57] In 1998, the Metropolitan Police Authority filed an objection to the trademark claim; but in 2002, the Patent Office ruled in favour of the BBC.[58][59][60]
The 21st-century revival of the programme became the centrepiece of BBC One's Saturday schedule and "defined the channel".[61] Many renowned actors have made guest-starring appearances in various stories including Kylie Minogue,[62] Sir Ian McKellen,