Transmat:Doctor Who

The War Games

File:The Doctor Summons the Time Lords - The War Games - Doctor Who - BBC

The War Games was a 1969 serial which significantly changed Doctor Who. It was the first story which named the Doctor's people as "Time Lords", and the first to ever depict his home planet. It was also the first to show that the Doctor was genuinely a renegade, liable to the criminal courts on his home world. But it was also full of "lasts". It was the final serial in black and white, and the swan song for the Second Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot. In fact, it was the only story prior to David Tennant's finalé which involved the departure of the entire cast of regulars. It was the last serial for several years in which the TARDIS was fully functional and under the Doctor's control, as one of the consequences of the story was that the Doctor be exiled on Earth thereafter. However, because the serial did not end with a clear regeneration, or actually seeing the Doctor be forced to go to Earth, a narrative gap was created between it and the next televised story. There are therefore many Second Doctor stories which take place after the Doctor's sentencing in this story, but before its execution. One of the biggest contributions to Doctor Who lore caused by The War Games is thus the so-called "Season 6b".

The women who gave Doctor Who back to us

Click for video

Think Doctor Who is just for boys? Don't you believe it. Not only was the show's very first producer a woman, but it would never have come back without the fierce advocacy of Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner. Considering her importance to Doctor Who it's somewhat ironic that Tranter's only on-screen credits are for Torchwood: Miracle Day. But Gardner, her "partner in crime", is tied only with Russell T Davies as the most prolific producer in Doctor Who history.

Industrial action

Click for a video of a 21st century geek as he takes delivery of one of the two Paintboxes used by the BBC in the 1980s

The Quantel Paintbox was a graphics workstation that allowed Doctor Who to have a primitive form of colour grading in the 1980s. To find out more about the "business of show", go to category:production information, where you can read about colour separation overlay, low loaders, telerecordings, vidFIRE, rostrum cameras, 2" quad tape, Ealing Studios and tons more.

Surprising guest star

Click to see Coulouris as Thatcher in the scene that explains the Citizen Kane mystery of "Rosebud"

George Coulouris was undoubtedly the most prominent actor to appear in the first season of Doctor Who, yet he only appeared in a single episode, "The Sea of Death". Coulouris was a part of Orson Welles' regular troupe of actors, and took part in both The War of the Worlds' American radio broadcast in 1938 as well as Citizen Kane. Though his career was mostly an American one, he returned to Britain in the 1950s, putting him in position to work on Doctor Who in 1964. Find out more about the thousands of actors who have been on Doctor Who by exploring Doctor Who guest actors.

Ex-Doctors never die, they just make audios

The careers of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors are significantly longer in audio than on television. Check out their latest works at category:2024 audio stories.

The relevance of comics

Officially, only The Lodger has been explicitly adapted from a comic strip — also called The Lodger.

However, several stories have clearly taken material from comic strips — often those in Doctor Who Magazine. The Shakespeare Code contains a good amount of material from A Groatsworth of Wit, and the notion of the Doctor absorbing the time vortex in order to spare a companion was explored in both The Parting of the Ways and The Flood.

The first of the "money men"

Donald Baverstock was the BBC executive who set the the wheels in motion that eventually led to the creation of Doctor Who. Essentially the original commissioner of the programme, he hired Sydney Newman and later imposed a sense of financial responsibility upon producer Verity Lambert.

But Baverstock wasn't the only BBC executive to have a profound impact on the development of Doctor Who. Make sure you read about Lorraine Heggessey, Mark Thompson, Danny Cohen, George Entwistle, Tony Hall, Shaun Sutton, Sydney Newman and others.

Things released on 28 November

• 1964 - "The Daleks" was broadcast on BBC1.
• 1970 - Part five of the TV Comic story Trial of Fire was published.
• 1991 - DWM 181 was published by Marvel Comics.
• 2002
  • DWMSE 3 was published by Panini Comics.
  • The audio story The Church and the Crown was released by Big Finish Productions.
• 2007 - The Doctor Who: Battles in Time comic story Inhuman Sacrifice was published.
• 2012 - DWDVDF 102 was published by GE Fabbri Ltd.
• 2014 - Toby Hadoke's Who's Round 78 was released online.
• 2015 - Heaven Sent was broadcast on BBC One.
• 2018 - TCH 39 was published by Hachette Partworks.
• 2019 - DWFC 164 was published by Eaglemoss Collections.
• 2021 - Survivors of the Flux was broadcast on BBC One.
• 2022 - Doctor Who Am I was released on DVD and Blu-ray.
• 2023 - Broken Hearts was released by Big Finish.

Did you know…

• .. that the song "Chances" by Athlete was featured, but not credited, on the soundtrack of TV: Vincent and the Doctor?

• ... that Frank Sinatra was one of the Brigadier's favourite musical acts? (PROSE: Smash Hit)

• ... that Golosian is a language so complex that it cannot be processed by the the TARDIS translation circuit? (AUDIO: Bang-Bang-a-Boom!)

• ... that both Jackie Tyler and Clyde Langer could make shepherd's pie? (TV: World War Three, TV: The Gift)

• ... that the Thalatth were a species with several radically different developmental stages, and that, when fully mature, they were known as Solarix Prizmatterflies, capable of flying through space? (COMIC: Hook, Line and Sinker)

28 November births and deaths

• 1922 - Continuity supervisor Pamela Davies was born.
• 1939 - Actor Jonathan Burn was born.
• 1944 - Actor James Smillie was born.
• 1959 - Actor Jonathan Pearce was born.
• 1961 - Actor Martin Clunes was born.
• 1964 - Presenter Sian Williams was born.
• 1965 - Actor Anastasia Hille was born.
• 1967 - Writer Tommy Donbavand was born.
• 1974 - Actor Nancy Carroll was born.
• 1978 - Actor André Morell died.
• 1985
  • Actor Ryan Sampson was born.
  • Actor Lawry Lewin was born.
• 1987 - Actor Karen Gillan was born.
• 1995 - Actor Frederick Hall died.
• 2007 - Actor Tony Holland died.
• 2015 - Film cameraman Fred Hamilton died.
• 2020 - Actor Dave Prowse died.

Production history for 28 November

• 1972 - Studio filming for The Three Doctors took place at BBC Television Centre studio 1. (REF: Doctor Who The Handbook: The Third Doctor)
• 2005 - A final edit of The Christmas Invasion was available for viewing. (DWMSE 14).
• 2016 - Big Finish's audio anthology The Comic Strip Adaptations: Volume One was recorded at Audio Sorcery.
• 2017 - Big Finish's audio anthology Ravenous 1 was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2018 - The Big Finish audio story An Alien Werewolf in London was recorded at the Moat Studios.
• 2020 - Doctor Who: Lockdown! hosted a tweetalong of Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways.
• 2022 - Big Finish's The Paternoster Gang audio anthology Rogues Gallery was recorded.