WORDS: MATTHEW BADHAM

In 2005, Doctor Who returned to our screens after a prolonged absence. To celebrate this cult television programme’s continued success, Tripwire is taking a whistle-stop tour through the show’s history. So, come with us as we go on a trip down memory lane with the good Doctor and some of his most faithful companions and fiercest opponents. Matthew Badham looks at the history of the series…

The What and When of Who…
1963: The show debuts with pilot episode, An Unearthly Child. We get our first glimpse of the Tardis, the Doctor’s time /space machine, which, with Alice in Wonderland-type logic, is bigger on the inside than on the outside. The Doctor is portrayed by character actor William Hartnell as a mysterious and crotchety old man. As time goes on, this portrayal will soften and he becomes more like the heroic figure of the Doctor that we know and love from the series today.

Who-fact: Series creator Sydney Newman was resolute that Doctor Who would be more intellectually fibrous than other fantasy shows and that it would contain absolutely no BEMs (his acronym for bug-eyed monsters). All of this went out of the window with the debut of popular Who monster, the Daleks. With their pepper pot appearance, deadly ray guns and swivelling eyestalks, the Daleks were the absolute antithesis of Newman’s vision. But they were also a massive success and spawned Dalekmania in the ‘60s. This saw a proliferation of Dalek merchandise including Dalek comic strips, Dalek games and two Dalek films, which featured another version of the Doctor. This Doctor was a human inventor called Doctor Who and was played by Peter Cushing.

1966: The show faces something of a crisis when William Hartnell, dogged by ever-worsening health, decides to quit. The production team cleverly respond with an innovation that has ensured the programme’s survival to the present day. To everyone’s astonishment, and right before the viewers’ and his companions’ eyes, the Doctor literally becomes a new man in the form of Hartnell’s replacement, Patrick Troughton. It’s a testament to Troughton’s skill as an actor that he manages to succeed William Hartnell so fluidly and that the show’s audience almost immediately embraces him as the Doctor. The concept of regeneration, the process by which the Doctor’s people, the Time Lords, rejuvenate themselves after traumatic physical injury, changing both their appearance and their personality, is a wonderfully audacious and imaginative solution to the change in lead actor. It also ensures that whenever in the future the actor playing the part of the Doctor wants to move on, the show will survive.

Who-fact: The transition might not have been quite so smooth had the production team accepted Troughton’s suggestion that he black up and wear a turban, looped earrings and false beard to play the part, but, fortunately for all concerned, they didn’t.

1970: The Doctor regenerates into an avuncular action man as Jon Pertwee, a former stand-up and comic actor, replaces Troughton’s Doctor. The programme’s format shifts slightly as well, with the Doctor banished by his people, finally formally named as the Time Lords, as a punishment for his constant meddling in other races’ affairs. His knowledge of time travel is taken from him and he’s left stranded on Earth, although he later regains the ability to travel in time and space. Pertwee’s era also sees the introduction of one of the Doctor’s most significant foes, The Master, a Moriarty to the Doctor’s Holmes. Played with sinister charm by Roger Delgado, the Master’s popularity is such that, even after Delgado’s death in a car crash, the character is revived in various forms to face future Doctors.

Who-fact: There were echoes of television writer Nigel Kneale’s Professor Quatermass in this new incarnation of the Doctor, who, like Quatermass, was driven by a thirst for knowledge. Pertwee’s Doctor found himself employed in an advisory role by U.N.I.T (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), a military arm of the United Nations that had first appeared during Troughton’s era in the stories The Web of Fear and The Invasion respectively. But the Doctor had an uneasy relationship with his alien-busting colleagues in the military, mainly because of their tendency to reach for a gun or grenade at the first hint of extraterrestrial activity.

1974: Pertwee regenerates into Tom Baker. Baker is, arguably, still the most popular incarnation of all time. By this point, the Doctor has regained his ability to travel through space and time. Baker plays the Doctor as a bohemian, avant-garde maverick, whose disdain for authority figures and for convention is at its most pronounced.

Who-fact: Baker’s Doctor was famous for his wild, staring eyes, unkempt mop of hair, hobo-chic stylings and for sporting a ridiculously long and impractical scarf. Allegedly the latter only came about because Begonia Pope, who knitted the scarf, was given too much wool by accident and used it all.

1982: Popular actor Peter Davison is given the unenviable task of following Baker and therefore supplanting the most popular Doctor so far. He pulls it off with aplomb. Despite this, the show as a whole would fare less well in the ‘80s than it did in the ‘70s. Under producer John Nathan-Turner, it begins increasingly to reference its own history. The Doctor Who production team had never been too concerned with continuity, although certain popular monsters such as the Daleks had reappeared from time to time. Davison’s era sees the return of Pertwee monsters the Silurians and the Sea Devils for no other reason, it seems, than the frisson of recognition that they produce in hardcore fans. Davison also faces a new incarnation of the Master, played with some style and charm by Anthony Ainley. However, it’s arguable that it would have been better to create a brand new nemesis for Davison’s Doctor.

Who-fact: Peter Davison was apparently advised by former Doctor Patrick Troughton to only stay with the show for three seasons, to avoid becoming typecast.

1984: The rot sets in. Colin Baker is cast as the Doctor, but saddled with silly scripts and an even sillier costume. Despite the fact that Baker is a creditable actor, his Doctor never really finds favour with the general public. The show is put on hiatus for 18 months in 1985.

Who-fact: Baker was asked to come back for one last story in 1987 so that he could regenerate on-screen, but could not reach an accord with the production team and so did not return.

1987: The series returns with a new Doctor. Depending on your perspective, the final nail in the coffin of the original series or a noteworthy effort by incoming Doctor Sylvester McCoy that is, unfortunately, too little, too late to save the show. In 1989, Doctor Who’s production is put on indefinite hold. The BBC say it is a hiatus and not a cancellation. Of course, we don’t believe them…

Who-fact: Had the programme not been taken off-air, then McCoy would have regenerated during the next season. Possible replacements mooted included Pie in the Sky and History Boys star Richard Griffiths. McCoy’s popular companion Ace was to have been replaced by an aristocratic former cat burglar.

1996: The Doctor returns as Paul McGann in a telemovie and pilot for a new series. Despite respectable ratings in this country, it fares less well in America. As a British-American co-production, this seals the potential series’ fate.
A shame, really, as McGann’s Byronic offering is the best Doctor in years.

Who-fact: Early drafts of the script for this new iteration included the Doctor searching for his lost father and appearances by the Cybermen.

2003: Who is really back. The new series goes into pre-production under Russell T Davies of Queer as Folk and The Second Coming fame. Christopher Eccleston from The Second Coming is cast as the Doctor. Ex-pop star Billie Piper also features as Rose. The new show debuts in 2005 and it soon becomes clear that new Who is a ratings juggernaut. Whatever programme rival television channel ITV put up against it is trampled underfoot. This time it looks like Who is here to stay. Then, after one season, Eccleston abruptly quits…

Who-fact: For a time, it looked as though the Terry Nation Estate were going to refuse permission for the Doctor’s deadliest foes, the Daleks, to make an appearance in the new series. Fortunately, they relented and Dalek, the episode that featured the return of those deadly pepper pots, proved to be one of the new show’s high points.

Christmas 2005: New Doctor David Tennant debuts in The Christmas Invasion and pulls off the same trick that Patrick Troughton managed almost 40 years previously, making the role his own.

2008: Russell T Davies announces his departure from the show. He’ll pen the 2008 Christmas special and three standalone episodes due for broadcast in 2009 and then he’s gone. Steven Moffat, who has written some of the best-received episodes of the new series, including Blink and The Girl in the Fireplace, is Davies’ replacement.

Who-fact: There is much speculation about who will replace Tennant when he departs. Names mooted include Robert Carlyle and James Nesbitt.

A new era beckons…

Special thanks to Gareth Kavanagh and Leon Hewitt

UPDATE: Four months after we went to print it was announced that Matt Smith will take the role as the eleventh Doctor.

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