DOCTOR WHO

   UK tv series (1963-). BBC TV. Created by Sydney Newman, Donald Wilson. 1st-season prod Verity Lambert, story editor David Whitaker; the Doctor played by William Hartnell Nov 1963-Oct 1966. 26 seasons to date, 695 episodes to Dec 1989, mostly 25 mins per episode. Seasons 1-6 b/w; subsequent seasons colour.

   In this longest-running UK sf tv series for children, the Doctor, generally known as Dr Who because of the show's enigmatic title (it is not actually his name), eventually revealed as a Time Lord, travels back and forth in time and space; he is accompanied by various people (sometimes children, sometimes men, usually young women), in his TIME MACHINE, the TARDIS, an acronym for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. Stories have varied in length from 1 to 14 episodes, the most common length through 1974 being 6 episodes, and subsequently 4.The first episode (Nov 1963) concerned a young girl who puzzles two of her schoolteachers with her unusual knowledge of history. They follow her into what appears to be a police telephone box but is in fact a time machine (whose interior is many times larger than its exterior) owned by her irritable and eccentric grandfather, the Doctor. As the machine cannot be properly controlled they are all whisked off to the Stone Age, where they remain for the following 3 episodes.The series had a modest following at first; it was not until the second story, The Dead Planet, written by Terry NATION, that it achieved mass popularity, mainly because of the introduction of the DALEKS. Until 1990 the series returned to UK tv every year; it was not introduced to US tv until the Tom Baker episodes that were played there in 1982, when it quickly developed a cult following.(A previous attempt in the 1970s to export the programme to the USA - a package of the Jon Pertwee episodes - had flopped.)Because the Doctor has the ability periodically to regenerate his entire body, the series has been able to outlast its original star, the crusty William Hartnell, and to introduce a succession of new leading men: Patrick Troughton (Nov 1966-June 1969), Jon Pertwee (Jan 1970-June 1974), Tom Baker (Dec 1974-Mar 1981), Peter Davison (Jan 1982-Mar 1984), Colin Baker (Mar 1984-Dec 1986) and Sylvester McCoy (Sep 1987 onwards). Peter Cushing took the role in two films, DR WHO AND THE DALEKS (1965) and DALEKS: INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. (1966); Richard Hurndall took the place of the late Hartnell in The Five Doctors (1983); and Michael Jayston played the Doctor's evil incarnation from the future in the 14-episode The Trial of a Time Lord (1986).While the b/w episodes featuring Hartnell and Troughton are spikier and stranger, the show probably hit its peak between the Pertwee and Davison versions, with Tom Baker's long-lived, Harpo-Marxish Time Lord the most popular of all and the writers of the 1970s gradually revealing more of the secrets of the Time Lords that had been hinted at since the first. In the late 1980s the show lost direction (some say thanks to the tiredness of John Nathan-Turner's regime as producer, begun Aug 1980) and the BBC experimented with it - lengthening it, moving it from its long-established Saturday teatime slot to a weekday, and, finally, putting it on an indefinite suspension where, neither cancelled nor renewed, it remains as of 1994.A 30th anniversary tv programme planned for 1993 was shelved at the last minute, though there was a Doctor Who radio drama in 1993. While early seasons were 10 months long, in the 1970s most seasons were 6-7 months, and from 1982 they were 3 months.Although the programme has long since settled into a pattern, with stories usually featuring at least one monster, there has been plenty of room for experiment. The authors have unblushingly pirated hundreds of ideas from PULP-MAGAZINE sf, but often make intelligent and sometimes quite complex use of them. It seems probable that, certainly in the 1970s, the programme attracted as many adult viewers as children. With the increasing sophistication of the scripts and the expertise of the special effects and make-up - from which many other programmes could learn a great deal about what can be done on a low budget - DW became a notably self-confident series, juggling expertly with many of the great tropes and images of the genre. It is the most successful SPACE OPERA in the history of tv, not excluding STAR TREK. Storylines often feature political SATIRE. At its worst merely silly, at its best it has been spellbinding.Other notable cast members over the years have included Carole Ann Ford (the Doctor's granddaughter), Frazer Hines (Jamie), Anneke Wills (Polly), Michael Craze (Ben), Deborah Watling (Victoria), Wendy Padbury (Zoe), Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier), Katy Manning (Jo), Roger Delgado (the Doctor's great enemy, the Master), Elizabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane), Louise Jameson (Leela), John Leeson (the voice of K-9, the Doctor's robot dog, one of the most successful of the media's cute ROBOTS), Mary Tamm (Romana), Lalla Ward (the regenerated Romana), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Anthony Ainley (the Master again), Bonnie Langford (Mel) and Sophie Aldred (Ace). Producers of the series after Verity Lambert (who lasted into the 3rd season) have included Innes Lloyd, Peter Bryant, Barry Letts, Philip Hinchcliffe, Graham Williams and John Nathan-Turner. Story editors, all of whom have written episodes, have included Dennis Spooner, Gerry DAVIS, Derrick Sherwin, Terrance Dicks (1968-74), Robert Holmes, Anthony Read, Douglas ADAMS, Christopher H. Bidmead, Eric Saward (1982-6) and Andrew Cartmell. Other writers have included Terry Nation, David Whitaker, John Lucarotti, Brian Hayles, Kit PEDLER, Malcolm Hulke, Don Houghton, Robert Sloman, Bob Baker and Dave Martin, Robert Banks Stewart, David Fisher, Stephen GALLAGHER, Johnny Byrne, Terence Dudley, Peter Grimwade, Pip and Jane Baker, and Ben Aaronovitch.There are now very many spin-off books from the series, ranging from episode guides through annuals, encyclopedias, scholarly studies and published scripts to a TARDIS cookbook. There is a magazine, Dr Who Monthly, with more than 160 issues. All but four stories have now been novelized, with 151 titles published from the 1970s through late 1990. (The un-novelized scripts are "The Pirate Planet"by Douglas Adams, "City of Death" by Douglas Adams and Graham Williams writing as David Agnew, "Resurrection of the Daleks" by Eric Saward and "Revelation of the Daleks"by Eric Saward. In 1991, most existing scripts having been novelized, a post-tv sequence of releases, The New Doctor Who Adventures, was instituted, the first sequence being the Timewyrm series: Timewyrm: Genesys * (1991) by John Peel, Exodus * (1991) by Terrance Dicks, Apocalypse * (1991) by Nigel Robinson and Revelation * (1991) by Paul Cornell. A comprehensive Doctor Who bibliography would itself be book-size.

   JB/PN/KN

   See also: SHARED WORLDS; STEAMPUNK.