The Doctor

The Doctor is the title character in the Doctor Who series. He is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, who wanders through time and space in his ship, the TARDIS. For the most part, and usually because the vessel's navigation system is old and unreliable, he explores the universe at random and uses his extensive knowledge of science and advanced technology to heroically avert the crises that he encounters. The Doctor has, at various times, been accompanied by companions who have chosen to travel with him for a variety of reasons.

The Doctor is considered a renegade by his fellow Time Lords, for his penchant of getting "involved" with the affairs of other worlds, in direct violation of official Time Lord policy. However, most of the time his actions are tolerated, especially when he has saved not just Gallifrey, but the universe, several times over. His standing in Time Lord society has waxed and waned over the years, from being a hunted man to even being appointed Lord President of the High Council (an office he did not assume for very long and eventually was removed from in his absence). In the end, though, he has always seemed quite content to remain a renegade and an exile.

The character was first portrayed by William Hartnell in 1963. When Hartnell left the series in 1966 , the role was taken over by Patrick Troughton. To date, eight actors have played the Doctor on television, with perhaps the most enduring incarnation being the fourth, played by Tom Baker. Christopher Eccleston will play the Ninth Doctor in a new series to debut in March of 2005.

Changing faces

Eight actors (with a ninth to follow) have officially played the Doctor on television. The changing of actors playing the part of the Doctor is explained within the series by the Time Lords' ability to regenerate after suffering mortal injury, illness, or old age. The process repairs and rejuvenates all damage, but as a side-effect it changes the Time Lord's physical appearance and personality semi-randomly. This ability was not introduced until producers had to find a way to replace the elderly William Hartnell with Patrick Troughton and was not explicitly called "regeneration" until Jon Pertwee's transformation to Tom Baker at the conclusion of Planet of the Spiders. On screen, the transformation from Hartnell to Troughton was called a "renewal" and from Troughton to Pertwee a "change of appearance."

Despite the fact that the Doctor is supposed to be the same person throughout his regenerations, each actor to play the Doctor has purposely imbued their incarnation with distinct quirks and characteristics. At his core, however, the Doctor continues to be a heroic figure, fighting the evils of the universe wherever he finds them, even if his values and motives are sometimes alien.

The Nine Doctors

• First Doctor - William Hartnell: (1963 - 1966)

Hartnell played the Doctor as an irascible, grandfatherly type, a brilliant but often short-tempered scientist.

• Second Doctor - Patrick Troughton: (1966 - 1969)

In contrast to Hartnell, Troughton's Doctor was a sort of "cosmic hobo," often frightened of the alien menaces he faced, whose solutions were sometimes of a hit-or-miss nature.

• Third Doctor - Jon Pertwee: (1970 - 1974)

Pertwee's Doctor cut more of a dashing figure than his predecessors, a dandy with a penchant for gadgets and martial arts, particularly "Venusian akido."

• Fourth Doctor - Tom Baker: (1974 - 1981)

Perhaps the most eccentric incarnation, the Fourth Doctor was something of a cross between Willy Wonka and the Mad Hatter, rarely without his signature scarf of incredible length.

• Fifth Doctor - Peter Davison: (1981 - 1984)

The youngest of the Doctors, Davison's incarnation had a fondness for cricket. He was somewhat more nervous and less sure of himself than the two previous Doctors, though no less heroic.

• 'Sixth Doctor - Colin Baker: (1984 - 1986)

Sporting a multi-hued wardrobe that looked as if designed by Christian Lacroix, the Sixth Doctor had a manic personality and an ascerbic wit.

• Seventh Doctor - Sylvester McCoy: (1987 - 1989)

His voice touched by a Scottish burr, the Seventh Doctor combined the vagabound nature of the Second and Fourth Doctors with the scientific brilliance of the First and Third incarnations.

• Eighth Doctor - Paul McGann: (1996) - in the Doctor Who television movie

McGann's Doctor showed a romantic and sensitive side not evident in the previous Doctors, a point of some controversy among fans.

• Ninth Doctor - Christopher Eccleston: - the Ninth Doctor as announced by BBC on 19 March, 2004 for the series revival set to premiere on 26 March, 2005.

It remains to be seen what personality traits the Ninth Doctor will exhibit

Other Doctors

Past Doctors

• In "The Brain of Morbius", it is implied through visual images displayed during a mental battle between the Doctor and Morbius that the Doctor had at least eight incarnations prior to the First Doctor. However, multiple dialogue references throughout the series (particularly in The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors) contradict this, as well as the fact that the Doctor has regenerated three times since Peter Davison's tenure. Explanations by fans have included theories that the images were of Morbius's previous incarnations or that they were false images induced by the Doctor. Yet another possibility, suggested by the Virgin New Adventure novel, "Lungbarrow," is that these were the Doctor's incarnations during his previous existence on Gallifrey as "the Other."

• Richard Hurndall portrayed the First Doctor in the twentieth anniversary special story, "The Five Doctors." The original First Doctor, the late William Hartnell, was featured in a clip from "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" at the story's opening. An early idea which was dropped from the final script was for Hurndall's Doctor to be revealed as an impostor.

• The Other was a mysterious third collaborator with Rassilon and Omega in the experiments which led to the founding of Time Lord civilization on Gallifrey. Hinted at during the last two seasons of the original series, the identity of the Other was firmly established as being the Doctor in a previous existence in the novel "Lungbarrow."

Future Doctors

• In Logopolis, a mysterious white-cloaked figure known as the Watcher assists in the transition between the Fourth and Fifth Doctors. Nyssa comments that the Watcher "was the Doctor all the time," but there is no real evidence to back up this assertion and the actual nature of the character has never been made clear.

• The BBC Missing Adventures novel "The Inifinity Doctors" features what appears to be a future Doctor who has given up his renegade status and returned to Gallifrey for good. The Telos novellas "The Cabinet of Light" and "The Dalek Factor" also feature possible future Doctors. The Virgin Doctor Who novel, "Iceberg" features a Doctor who may be either the Seventh Doctor or a future Doctor, whose TARDIS has abandoned the familiar police box shape for that of a jade pagoda.

Alternative Doctors

• During his trial at the conclusion of "The War Games," the Second Doctor is shown a series of portraits from which he may choose the form of his next regeneration before the Time Lords exile him to Earth. None is to his liking, nor does one of them look like Jon Pertwee, who had not yet been cast in the role of the Doctor. Stories featuring the adventures of these "could-have-been" Doctors may appear at some point, if they have not already.

• In the Third Doctor adventure, "Inferno," the Doctor sees a poster of the leader of the "Inferno Earth"'s version of Britain, a fascist military dictator. Though this figure is never named in the actual television story, the Virgin Missing Adventure and BBC Past Doctor novels reveal this to actually be that reality's version of the Doctor. This alternate universe also features a more benevolent version of the Master.

• In the Sixth Doctor serial The Trial of a Time Lord, a Time Lord with the title of the Valeyard (played by Michael Jayston) was revealed to be a potential future Doctor, existing somewhere between his twelfth and final incarnations and embodying all the evil and malevolence of the Doctor's dark side. The Valeyard was defeated in his attempt to actualize himself by stealing the Sixth Doctor's remaining regenerations, however, and so may never actually come to exist.

• The Virgin New Adventure novel, "Head Games" features an evil duplicate of the Doctor, "Dr. Who," from the Land of Fiction, as well as a Land of Fiction version of the Sixth Doctor, who blames the Seventh Doctor for the premature end of his life in "Time and the Rani."

• The Doctor Who Unbound series of audio stories from Big Finish Productions feature the adventures of Doctors from various alternate realities:

• In "Auld Mortality," Geoffrey Bayldon, who played Organon in the Fourth Doctor story, "The Creature from the Pit" and was even considered at one time for the role of the Doctor on the original television series, portrays a Doctor who never left Gallifrey. In "A Storm of Angels," he plays a Doctor who changed Earth history, with disastrous results.

• In "Sympathy for the Devil," David Warner portrays a Doctor who befriended the Brigadier but never joined UNIT as its scientific advisor.

• David Collings plays an alternate reality Doctor in "Full Fathom Five." While not really evil, this Doctor is also far from heroic.

• Michael Jayston reprises his role as the Valeyard in "He Jests at Scars...," playing an alternate reality Valeyard who won his battle with the Sixth Doctor.

• "Deadline" features Sir Derek Jacobi as a Doctor who turns out to be the fantasy world alter ego of a mentally ill writer struggling to finish a script for a proposed television series about a character tentatively called, "Doctor Who."

• "Exile" stars Arabella Weir as a female Doctor who escaped her trial at the conclusion of "The War Games."

Pastiches, Parodies, and Adaptations

• The two Doctor Who films produced in the 1960s starred Peter Cushing as a human Doctor from twentieth-century Earth whose surname actually was "Who." The TARDIS was his own invention. Although not considered canon, the films have inspired a few stories and treatments concerning the further adventures of this Doctor.

• The 1970s stage play, "Doctor Who and the Seven Keys to Doomsday" featured Terrence Martin as the Doctor, with Wendy Padbury as his companion.

• A 1986 installment of The Lenny Henry Show included a sketch with Henry as the Doctor, battling the Cybermen and their leader Thatchos, a cyberized version of Margaret Thatcher, complete with bouvant hair and purse.

• "The Curse of Fatal Death," a multi-part sketch broadcast as part of the Comic Relief charity telethon in 1999, starred Rowan Atkinson as the Ninth Doctor, Richard E. Grant as the Tenth Doctor, Jim Broadbent as the Eleventh Doctor, Hugh Grant as the Twelfth Doctor, and Joanna Lumley as the final, Thirteenth, and female Doctor. Because this adventure was a spoof of the Doctor Who series, it is generally not considered canon by fans.

• In addition to his appearance in "The Curse of Fatal Death," Richard E. Grant also provided the voice of the Doctor in the animated adventure "Scream of the Shalka," featured on the BBC's Doctor Who website, beginning in November - December, 2003.

• The Wanderer, portrayed by Nicholas Briggs in the BBV audio adventure "Cyber-Hunt," is a character loosely based on the Doctor. The Stranger, a character portrayed by Colin Baker first in a series of video adventures and later in several BBV audio adventures, is also loosely based on the Doctor.

"Doctor who?"

When the series begins, nothing is known of the Doctor at all, not even his name. In the very first serial, An Unearthly Child, two teachers from the Coal Hill School in London, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, become intrigued by one of their students, Susan Foreman, who exhibits high intelligence and unusually advanced knowledge. Trailing her to a junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane, they encounter a strange old man and hear Susan's voice coming from inside what appears to be a police box. Pushing their way inside, the two find that the exterior is actually camouflage for the dimensionally transcendental interior of the TARDIS.

Susan calls the old man "Grandfather", but he simply calls himself the Doctor. When he fears Ian and Barbara may alert the local authorities to what they've seen, he subsequently whisks them all away to another locaton in time and space.

In the first episode, Barbara addresses the Doctor as "Doctor Foreman," as the junkyard in which they find him bears the sign "I.M. Foreman". When addressed by Ian with this name in the next episode, the Time Lord responds, "Eh? Doctor who? What's he talking about?" Later, when Ian realizes that "Foreman" is not his name, he asks Barbara, "Who is he? Doctor who?" Although listed in the on-screen credits for nearly twenty years as "Doctor Who", the Doctor is never really called by that name in the series, except in that same tongue-in-cheek manner. For example, in The Five Doctors when one character refers to him as "the Doctor", another character asks, "Who?" The only real exception has been the computer WOTAN, in the serial, The War Machines, which commanded that "Doctor Who is required."

In The Gunfighters, the First Doctor uses the alias Dr. Caligari. In The Highlanders the Second Doctor assumes the name of "Doctor von Wer" (a German approximation of "Doctor Who"), and signs himself as "Dr. W" in The Underwater Menace. In The Wheel in Space, his companion Jamie, reading the name off some medical equipment, tells the crew of the Wheel that the Doctor's name is "John Smith". The Doctor subsequently adopts this alias several times over the course of the series, often prefixing the title "doctor" to it.

In The Armageddon Factor, the Time Lord Drax addresses the Fourth Doctor as "Thete", short for "Theta Sigma", apparently a University nickname. In the 1988 serial Remembrance of the Daleks, the Seventh Doctor is asked to sign a document, which he does by using a question mark, and produces a calling card with a series of Greek letters (or Old High Gallifreyan script) and a question mark inscribed on it. The Eighth Doctor briefly used the alias "Dr. Bowman" in the 1996 television movie. He has also been mocked by his fellow Time Lords for adhering to such a "lowly" title as "Doctor".

In many spin-off comic strips, books, films and other media, the character is often called "Doctor Who" (or just "Dr. Who") as a matter of course, though this has declined in more recent years. From the first story through to Logopolis (the last story of Season 18 and also of the Tom Baker era), the lead character was listed as "Doctor Who". Starting from Peter Davison's first story, Castrovalva (also the first story of Season 19), the lead character is credited simply as "The Doctor".

Doctor Who writer Terrence Dicks often expressed the theory that Time Lord names were "jawbreakers," long and extremely difficult to pronounce, and this was why the Doctor never revealed his true name. Some fans have speculated, taking off from the fact that the full name of the Time Lady Romana is Romanadvoratrelundar, that the first syllable of the Doctor's true name is "Who". It should be noted that, although it is often asserted that "Doctor Who" is not the character's name, there is nothing in the series itself that actually confirms this. On at least one occasion the Doctor is about to give a name after the title "Doctor..." but is interrupted. Interestingly, the BBC novel, "The Infinity Doctors" mentions an ancient Gallifreyan god named "Ohm;" when this name is turned upside down, the result is "Who."

Discontinuities

A common contention among fans and producers of the series is that a large part of the Doctor's appeal comes from his mysterious and alien origins. While over the decades several revelations have been made about his background - that he is a Time Lord, that he is from Gallifrey, among others - the writers have often strived to retain some sense of mystery and to preserve the eternal question, "Doctor who?" This backstory was not rigidly planned from the beginning, but developed gradually (and somewhat haphazardly) over the years, the result of the work of many writers and producers.

Understandably, this has led to continuity problems. Characters such as the Meddling Monk were retroactively classified as Time Lords, early histories of races such as the Daleks were rewritten, and so on. The creation of a detailed backstory has also led to the criticism that too much being known about the Doctor limits both creative possibilities and the sense of mystery. Some of the stories during the Seventh Doctor's tenure, part of the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan", were intended to deal with this issue by suggesting that much of what was believed about the Doctor was wrong and that he is a far more powerful and mysterious figure than previously thought. In both an untelevised scene in Remembrance of the Daleks and the subsequent Silver Nemesis it is implied that the Doctor is more than "just" a Time Lord. The suspension of the series in 1989, however, meant that none of these hints were ever resolved, at least on television. The Virgin New Adventure novel, "Lungbarrow," did resolve these hints and explain the Doctor's origins. However, not all fans regard the spin-off novels as canon, and so do not accept the revelations made in that particular story.

The 1996 television movie created even more uncertainty about the character, revealing (among other things) that his mother was human. Fans, however, seemed to be more upset about the fact that the Eighth Doctor was shown kissing Dr. Grace Holloway, breaking the series' longstanding taboo against the Doctor having any romantic involvement with his companions.

The relevation in the 1996 television movie that the Doctor was half-human proved controversial among fans, and some have suggested that only the Eighth Doctor was half-human due to the particularly traumatic circumstances of his regeneration, rather than the Doctor having been half-human all along. (The evidence for or against this in the series is, typically, equivocal.) The Time Lord ability to change species during regeneration is referenced by the Eighth Doctor in relation to the Master in the television movie, and is supported by Romana's regeneration scene in the 1979 serial Destiny of the Daleks.

While some fans regard discontinuities as a problem, others regard it as a source of interest or humour (an attitude taken in the book The Discontinuity Guide). A common fan explanation is that a universe with time travellers is likely to have many historical inconsistencies. There has also been much fan speculation centred on exactly which aspects of the television series, books, radio dramatisations, and other sources will be considered canon in the new series to be broadcast in 2005.