Doctor who fact files

Get facts about Divergent here. Doctor Who is considered as one of the most popular TV series in Britain. It has been aired for years. Many TV professional in Britain grew up watching the series. Check facts about Disney Movies here. In , Doctor Who was released in a TV movie, but the attempt was not successful. Russell T Davies decided to rerun Doctor Who in He served as the head writer for the first five years of the show. The title role of Doctor Who was taken by Christopher Eccleston for the first series in 21st century.

A faulty mixing desk allowed the image of William Hartnell the first Doctor to be overexposed almost to white so that Patrick Troughton the second Doctor could be put in his place before the effect faded again. Multiple Doctors: The 50th anniversary episode will not be the first time more than one Doctor will have appeared in the same episode. For the show's 20th anniversary, a feature-length special called The Five Doctors was created, featuring the first five Doctors.

Doctor's real name: The Doctor's real name remains a complete mystery to all but a very small number of individuals including The Master, River Song and Clara Oswald. Sherlock-tor Who? The character of the Doctor was partly inspired by Sherlock Holmes. Comparisons have been made between the Doctor and the fictional detective.

In fact both the fourth and eleventh Doctors have dressed up as Sherlock Holmes in episodes of Doctor Who. The biggest fan: A six year-old-boy called Flynn was named as the UK's biggest Doctor Who fan after a nation-wide search by the Doctor Who Adventures magazine this year.

He won the title as a result of his monster themed tea-party idea, and a letter explaining how much he loves the show. Both he and his twin brother would like to be future Doctors.

The fifth Doctor wore a piece of celery on his lapel because he was allergic to a certain gas in the Praxis Range. Once the celery turned purple he would eat it and it would save him.

What's the time, Weeping Angels? The Whomobile: Not to be confused with the Batmobile the Whomobile was a special vehicle created by the third Doctor and first appeared in the episode called Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

It was capable of speeds of mph and even appeared on Blue Peter! Matt's outfit: The original costume ideas for eleventh Doctor Matt Smith's look were very different from his iconic tweed jacket and bow tie. Some of the costume ideas included a buccaneer pirate-style one, which Matt wasn't very keen on. Lost and found: The original pilot episode, which was thought to be lost forever, was rediscovered in in a mislabelled film can.

This sound was then modified by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and then became the well-known sound effect that they still use variations of today! Lady Doctor? When the original series was struggling with ratings in the s, the show's co-creator, Sydney Newman, wrote a letter to BBC One Controller Michael Grade, suggesting some radical new ideas for the show, including the introduction of a Time-Lady a female Doctor.

Most-watched episode: City Of Death featuring the fourth Doctor, scored the highest viewing figures of any Doctor Who episode in the UK, drawing in over sixteen million viewers. The second highest is Voyage of the Damned starring Kylie Minogue and David Tennant as the eleventh Doctor, which on its original airdate was watched by David Tennant's nan even knitted him a scarf like the fourth Doctor's, and Peter Capaldi regularly sent letters, and essays into the Doctor Who production office, and wanted to run the Doctor Who fan Club.

Spearhead From Space was the first serial to be shot in colour. Alien Doctor: Although Time Lords look human, they are aliens, and they have quite a few physical differences: the Doctor has two hearts, a "respiratory bypass system" that allows him to go without air for much longer than a human, an internal body temperature of C, and the ability to absorb, withstand, and expel large amounts of certain types of radiation!

Oldest friend: Jamie McCrimmon was the Doctor's longest-running companion appearing in episodes. The next major turning point in the series occurred in when the actor playing the First Doctor , William Hartnell , left the series. Rather than introduce a new leading character, replace Hartnell with no explanation or simply cancel the series, the producers, with input from Sydney Newman , chose to establish the Doctor's ability to regenerate into a new person when injured or near death.

This led to the dramatic — and successful — transition to Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor at the conclusion of The Tenth Planet , a serial that was in itself notable for introducing the franchise's second most popular recurring villains, the Cybermen. The intro for the serial The Macra Terror was iconic for incorporating the current Doctor's face to the sequence as a permanent instalment. This story also featured the Doctor's home planet for the first time.

The experiment of regenerating the Doctor occurred again in with the introduction of one-time comic actor Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor , a move that also coincided with the series changing to colour production. Once again, this was successful and Doctor Who continued to establish itself as a British TV institution, although it remained virtually unknown in American markets. The name of the Doctor's planet, Gallifrey came in the story The Time Warrior , the term "regeneration", however, wasn't coined until the ending of Pertwee's era, Planet of the Spiders in In , Target Books reissued a trilogy of novelisations from the mids, and in began to issue its own adaptations of televised episodes.

In a time before home video recorders and commercial release of TV series on tape and DVD and when rebroadcasts were rare and many old episodes were thought lost, the Target line became a popular and valued aspect of the growing Doctor Who franchise; the books would be published into the mids. A unique feature of the Target line in fact dating back to the first novelisations published by Frederick Muller is that many of the books were written by either the original scriptwriters or by individuals with strong behind-the-scenes connections to the series, such as Barry Letts , Terrance Dicks , David Whitaker , etc.

In the late 70s, about a dozen of the Target novels were reprinted in American editions by Pinnacle Books , with introductions by noted science fiction author Harlan Ellison , who added to the franchise's prestige by placing it higher in his estimation than Star Trek.

The series continued through the s, with Tom Baker taking on the role of the Fourth Doctor in Baker became the most iconic, and arguably most popular actor of the classic series. This was due in part to the frequent rebroadcasts of his episodes in the United Kingdom , which began during his tenure. He was the first "young" Doctor and played the role for more seasons seven than any actor to date. Other actors have been considered the "current" Doctor for longer, but without regular television appearances.

The US broadcasts of Doctor Who were initially poorly done, with some broadcasters airing a version with narration explaining the plot.

By the late s, however, the series was firmly entrenched in the Public Broadcasting Service PBS , which would air the show repeatedly over the next three decades and air the revived series after In , season 13 episode 5 The Brain of Morbius aired, which saw a mindbending contest take place between the Doctor and evil Time Lord Morbius in which no less than 8 faces appeared meant to be faces of the Doctor prior to William Hartnell 's First Doctor.

While Philip Hinchcliffe would go on to state that he intended to imply that Hartnell wasn't the first, many fans of the show blatantly dismissed this, concluding that it either wasn't valid, that they were the faces of Morbius amongst others.

Indeed multiple other stories would back these statements by firmly continuing to put Hartnell's version as being the original Doctor. This tradition has been constant with every issue of the magazine, except two. Only twenty-nine when he was cast, Davison was, until the appointment of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor in , the youngest actor ever to play the Doctor officially. Two short-term companions had died earlier in one serial, The Daleks' Master Plan , but they had not been on the show more than a few weeks; Adric was on the series for about a year.

Davison's era was marked by experimentation by the BBC in terms of broadcast scheduling. The series moved to airing twice a week on weeknights, away from its traditional Saturday slot.

Initially, this appeared to be a successful gamble. The ratings for Davison's early stories were on par with - if not higher than - Tom Baker's later stories.

It was during Davison's era that the series marked its 20th anniversary with the feature-length episode The Five Doctors.

This featured all the actors who had played the Doctor to that time although Hartnell and Tom Baker were shown in stock footage. Colin Baker followed Davison as the Sixth Doctor in The BBC further experimented with the format, moving from twenty-minute to forty-five-minute episodes.

Nathan-Turner also experimented with the characterisation of the Doctor, intentionally making the Sixth Doctor initially unlikeable in order to create a new dynamic. Neither experiment was successful.

Colin Baker's tenure was marked by a serious threat to the show's survival when the BBC, citing low ratings, announced it was ending the series after the season, its 22nd. Following immediate outcry, this decision was modified to become an eighteen-month hiatus.

During the hiatus, fan efforts were launched to get the show back sooner. These included the recording of a charity record called " Doctor in Distress " by cast members. The series returned in with a season-long story arc, The Trial of a Time Lord , but with greatly reduced screen time.

Fourteen episodes were allotted for the season, up from thirteen the previous season, but with episode lengths returned to twenty-five minutes. This was roughly half the storytelling time of recent seasons. Along with that a third video game was released, now also created for computer , called Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror. Although the show's return garnered sufficient ratings for the BBC to grant a stay of execution and renew it for a twenty-fourth season , Colin Baker's contract as the Doctor was not renewed and he ceded the role to Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor in The series survived the hiatus, but never regained ratings needed for ongoing survival, constantly being beaten in the ratings by Coronation Street.

Towards the end, it garnered ratings barely in the three million range, compared to eleven million at the peak of the Tom Baker era. Attempts were made to refresh the ageing series by darkening the character of the Doctor through what was later called the Cartmel Masterplan named for then-script editor Andrew Cartmel , and by introducing Ace , a companion with an edginess never before seen in an assistant. The same year that McCoy took over, a fan-produced independent film, Wartime , was released.

Taking advantage of a loophole in licensing that allows characters other than the Doctor to be licensed direct from their creators, this film featuring John Benton was the first of what would be a series of fan-made productions that would help keep the Doctor Who universe alive after During McCoy's era, the series celebrated its 25th anniversary on TV.

One of the year's serials, Remembrance of the Daleks , returned the Doctor to 76 Totter's Lane , where it all began in Following production of the twenty-sixth season , Nathan-Turner learned that the show would not be renewed immediately for a twenty-seventh. After having McCoy record a series-ending monologue, the final episode — part 3 of the ironically titled Survival — aired on 6 December , bringing Doctor Who 's marathon year run to a close.

The Doctor Who Production Office closed down the following summer. It has never been made clear whether the BBC ever actually "cancelled" Doctor Who in , or simply put the series on hold. Survival also marked the last time the Doctor's face was incorporated into the intro sequence, at least until The end of active production was made official in The Doctor Who Production Office was closed. The BBC never officially cancelled the series.

It simply didn't commission any new episodes. This led to the launch of a cottage industry of spin-off work. These included the first long-term range of original fiction the Virgin New Adventures series.

Target Books exhausted all available remaining serials to novelise and the brand was retired in There were numerous independent video productions with characters and creatures from the series but never the Doctor himself, including the P.

Many of their new actors, writers and directors would become involved in the main Doctor Who series, including Nicholas Briggs and Mark Gatiss. In , the BBC made a half-hearted attempt at marking the thirtieth anniversary, first commissioning, then cancelling, a multi-Doctor special called The Dark Dimension. Instead they greenlit a brief, poorly received pastiche, Dimensions in Time , which aired as part of a Children in Need fundraiser and as a dubious crossover with the soap opera EastEnders.

For original fiction, Virgin's New Adventures picked up where Survival had left off. Over the next five years it greatly expanded the world of the Seventh Doctor , and Doctor Who , by featuring stories with more adult storylines than was possible on TV. The books also introduced the character of Bernice Summerfield , who was initially a companion of the Seventh Doctor. Over time she developed her own mini-franchise, which continues to this day. Virgin also launched a similar series of books called the Virgin Missing Adventures , featuring past Doctors.

Another future producer of the series, Steven Moffat , contributed short stories to Virgin's third line of Doctor Who fiction, the Virgin Decalogs. The franchise's so-called "first interregnum" on television ended in with an attempt at launching an American-UK co-produced Doctor Who series.

Neither a reboot or re-imagining, the film was a continuation of the original series. While moderately successful on the BBC, it failed to garner sufficient ratings in the US to warrant a new series. McCoy, in a later interview with Doctor Who Confidential , postulated that the film failed in the US in part because viewers unfamiliar with the history of Doctor Who were confused by the first part of the film, which dealt with regeneration.

The movie made a one-off experiment of featuring a "cold opening", a scene before the intro sequence. The "second interregnum" that followed saw more novels now published by the BBC under its BBC Books logo, featuring the Eighth Doctor , more independent productions, a separate series of Bernice Summerfield novels , a PC game called Destiny of the Doctors that saw Fourth-through-Seventh Doctor actors, Courtney and Ainley reprise their roles, and, in , the start of a prolific series of officially licenced audio stories by Big Finish Productions.

Same year, BBC Books and Big Finish would work together on a series of short books called Short Trips , and would continue that for years going forward. Unlike the independent made-for-video productions, Big Finish could use Doctors and companions from the series.

With the exception of Tom Baker , who wouldn't join Big Finish until , and earlier Doctors now deceased, the audios featured the original actors. In particular, Big Finish produced a long-running series of programs continuing the adventures of McGann's Eighth Doctor. Big Finish also produced a prolific series of audio dramas featuring Bernice Summerfield and began publishing novels featuring her once Virgin ended its series of books as well as other spin-off series featuring other parts of the Doctor Who universe, such as Dalek Empire , I, Davros , Sarah Jane Smith and Gallifrey.

Many of the writers, directors, and voice actors involved in this project also went on to work on the TV series proper. The BBC also created new Doctor Who -related media projects during this time, creating several original webcast productions in conjunction with Big Finish, and making several Virgin-era Doctor Who novels available as e-books on its website.

Intended to be an "official" continuation of the television series, this version of the character was quickly relegated to invalid status with the series revival. Davies, since his days writing Doctor Who fiction for Virgin, had gone on to create the critically acclaimed series, Queer as Folk. In the following months, details of the new series emerged. Fans still questioned if the new series would be a continuation of the original series a twenty-seventh season , or a re-imagining as had recently occurred to great effect with Battlestar Galactica.

There was initial controversy when pop singer Billie Piper was cast as the new companion. The new series logo riled some fans; BBC News reported that some on the production team had received death threats over it. The BBC's decision to restart the numbering of the series with series 1 in fuelled the debate over whether the new show would be a continuation. The BBC indicated it was strictly a commercial decision, and part of an overall strategy not to alienate new viewers by suggesting they needed to know twenty-six years of backstory.

Doctor Who returned to television in the spring of After initial uncertainty, it was soon established the new series was a continuation of the old. The new episodes returned Doctor Who to levels of popularity not seen since the s, and garnered awards the original series never saw.

Davies era. Audiences embraced the new series, with Billie Piper's Rose Tyler , in particular. The second episode The End of the World began a new tradition of featuring a scene before the intro sequence, a " cold opening ". The show stumbled slightly with the announcement days after its premiere on 30 March that Eccleston was leaving after a single season.

The BBC later apologised for the timing of this announcement. The tenure of his replacement, David Tennant 's Tenth Doctor , was dominated by the relationship between the Doctor and Rose Tyler, a closer bond than even the "Mentor" type relationship shared between the Seventh Doctor and Ace.

Tennant's era also saw the return of Sarah Jane Smith in School Reunion , the episode most cited as the one that established once and for all that "nuWho" was a direct continuation of the - 89 series.

Tennant's era also saw the reintroduction of the Cybermen , albeit a parallel version. Related to this, the series began delving into the multiverse concept with Rise of the Cybermen , a topic that would dominate the final episodes of the fourth series in Since the show's return to TV, Doctor Who has become a major franchise.

It spawned two successful spin-off series in quick succession: Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures ; both centred around the adventures of former companions. There was a third, non-BBC spin-off, K9. The last series also produced the first animated-for-television Doctor Who serial, The Infinite Quest , which aired in and featured Tennant.

A second animated serial, Dreamland , aired in The year had the pleasure of welcoming 17 new online games, many of them featuring some of the newly introduced aliens, amongst them Daleks v Cybermen , Ood Escape and The Wire. The Tennant era also saw the start of a new tradition in late the Doctor Who Christmas Special , holiday-themed episodes aired separately from the regular seasons.

As of December [update] , thirteen such specials have been aired. The 3-part conclusion of the third revived season in saw the inclusion of the Master in not one, but two different incarnations, not seen since the TV movie in The season-conclusion, which linked all four series together and featured the return of Rose and other companions, saw Doctor Who garner its highest ratings in nearly thirty years.

It further saw the first return of Dalek creator Davros since Remembrance of the Daleks. It was followed by the Christmas special, The Next Doctor , which included a scene — the first of its kind — in which all ten Doctors, including the debated Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, were shown, firmly establishing the Eighth Doctor's place in his personal history. The year was a transition year for Doctor Who in terms of both production and releases.

These specials and an animated serial, Dreamland , marked David Tennant 's final appearances as the Tenth Doctor. The decision for the series to take a break following series 4 was, according to Davies' book The Writer's Tale , planned as far back as Tennant's first year. Davies devised the break to smooth the transition between his term as show-runner and that of Steven Moffat , whom he invited to take over his post as executive producer and lead writer when the series returned as a weekly programme in Tennant took advantage of this break to appear in a high-profile stage production of Hamlet co-starring Star Trek icon Patrick Stewart, which some media erroneously indicated was the reason for the break.

The announcement of the gap year was followed by the announcement that Davies and Julie Gardner would be stepping aside as executive producers of Doctor Who following the specials. Moffat, who won the Hugo Award three years running for his Doctor Who scripts, was appointed new head writer and executive producer. Also appointed executive producers were Piers Wenger and Beth Willis.

The question of whether Tennant would stay on was a hot topic in the UK media for much of On 19 October , Tennant, while accepting his National Television Award for Favourite Actor, announced he would leave the role after the specials. After months of speculation, it was announced on 3 January that twenty-six-year-old Matt Smith would join the series in as the Eleventh Doctor , smashing Peter Davison 's record as the youngest Doctor ever.

The end of Series 4 and the start of the specials marked a "changing of the guard" for international broadcasts of the series in the US and Canada. In Canada , the CBC 's controversial handling of the series which had seen a marked decrease in network interest and destructive editing of the Series 4 finale for commercials came to an abrupt end when the cable network Space adopted the series.

Both began airing the series with The Next Doctor in the spring of and announced they would air the weekly series in The first gap-year special, Planet of the Dead aired during Easter Planet of the Dead was the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed in high definition and, subsequently, the first to be issued to Blu-ray. Meanwhile, Torchwood aired its third series in July , now on BBC One , but in a different format: a single, critically acclaimed, five-episode story entitled Children of Earth.

Work on a non-BBC spin-off series, K9 , also progressed through the year. The same year saw the release of six new online video games, one of which, The Waters of Mars , based on the TV story of the same name. Part 1 aired on 25 December and the concluding Part 2, with David Tennant handing over the role to Matt Smith , aired on 1 January The finale further saw the return of the Master and the brief return of the Time Lord High Council and Gallifrey from inside a time lock.

Big Finish Productions took full control and resurrected the series as short audio stories going forward. Production of the first Matt Smith episodes commenced in July Noted fantasy writer Neil Gaiman was rumoured to be involved in the new season. These rumours proved to be incorrect, but he did end up penning The Doctor's Wife the following series. Michael Moorcock , another noted fantasy novelist, also announced he was writing a Doctor Who novel for publication in The UK, which had seen a preview of the first episode on Halloween , saw the series debut on Disney XD on 3 April , a few hours before the start of the fifth series.

In a show of international support for the series, broadcasts in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were scheduled within a few weeks, the first time the programme's biggest international markets had coincided their broadcasts in this way.

The fifth series ran for thirteen weeks, concluding with The Big Bang on 26 June , which saw the biggest amount ever of villains gathered in one story, even including spin-off villains.

Before the first episode of series 5 was broadcast, the BBC announced that a Christmas special had been commissioned for , and a sixth series of the revived series was scheduled to enter production that summer for broadcast in Torchwood aired its fourth and final series, Miracle Day in Episode One aired on 14 July and the series wrapped on 9 September Series 6 aired in two parts; the first half aired in the spring and the remaining episodes aired in the autumn.