1963

Events

Doctor Who Universe

March

• 28 - Lizzie Lewis is murdered by Ed Morgan. (TW: Ghost Machine)
• Late March - The TARDIS materializes in the junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane, owned by I.M. Foreman, in the Shoreditch area of London, disguised, incongruously as a police box. While the Doctor attempts repairs and works out a plan for safely disposing of the Hand on Earth, Susan, against his wishes, registers at the nearby Coal Hill School. Britain, meanwhile, is in the grip of an unusual cold wave. (TN: Time and Relative)
• Whilst out at a bar Susan witnesses an human mutate into an alien, she and the Doctor follow a trail that leads to Raldonn an alien attempting to mutate humans in order to use as pilots for his spacecraft. (DWM: Operation Proteus)

April

• 1 - The Doctor fights off an invasion by the Cold. (TN: Time and Relative)

October

• The TARDIS lands on the Queen Mary, a ship the Doctor finds full of ghosts. (TN: Ghost Ship)
• Late October - The Doctor has made arrangements with a local funeral parlor to bury the Hand of Omega in a nearby churchyard. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks)

November

• Sometime before the 22nd - The Spacefleet fighter Tisiphone, which had fallen into a temporal rift in 2547 during a battle with Daleks, exits the temporal rift near Earth space. Its crew manages to escape to England. (NA: Return of the Living Dad)
• 22 - The Kennedy assassination takes place, witnessed by the Ninth Doctor. (DW: Rose) The Master attempts to prevent the assassination in order to change history, but is prevented from doing so by James Stevens, who himself carries out the murder. (MA: Who Killed Kennedy)

• At roughly the same time in the Shoreditch area of London, Coal Hill School teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, following Susan Foreman home from the school, discover the Doctor's TARDIS in 76 Totter's Lane. Fearing the consequences, the Doctor abducts them. (DW: An Unearthly Child)

The abduction of Ian and Barbara likely occurred on an earlier date, possibly the 21st, due to the fact Susan indicates that she will return a borrowed book to the school "tomorrow"; as 22nd November 1963 was a Friday, this makes it unlikely that these events occurred just before the weekend break.

• By this time the Imperial Dalek faction has a presence in London in this time zone. (DWM: Time & Time Again)

• After 22nd November - The disappearance of two teachers was noticed, but all thought Ian and Barbara had eloped. (PDA: The Face of the Enemy)
• 29-30 - The Doctor returns to finish incomplete business and collect the Hand of Omega and aid the ICMG, the British Army's predecessor to UNIT. ICMG sets up the evacuation of civilians out of three miles radius of a fight between Renegade and Imperial Dalek factions as they fight over the Hand, an event which sees activity in 76 Totter's Lane and Coal Hill School. Humans in the know will later call this event the Shoreditch Incident. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks, MA: Who Killed Kennedy)

Journalist David Bishop established the dates of Ian and Barbara's abduction and the Shoreditch Incident. (MA: Who Killed Kennedy)

December

• 6 - Burial of British Army sergeant Mike Smith. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks)

Dates unknown

• Nemesis approaches Earth before the Kennedy assassination and, the Doctor, implied, influenced it to happen. (DW: Silver Nemesis)

Alternate timelines

• The TARDIS materializes on a picturesque Pacific island and the Doctor settles in for a lazy spell of resting and fishing, or so he thinks. In reality, the TARDIS has landed in a parallel Earth in which World War II never ended, and the Doctor gets drawn into the conflict. (DWM: Lunar Lagoon) With a native of this, timeline, Angus Goodman, he departs. (DWM: 4-Dimensional Vistas)

• The Daleks destroy London, and likely the rest of Earth(DW: "City of the Daleks)

See also

• Stories set in 1963

Real World

January

• 11 - Jason Connery is born; his father is Sean Connery.

March

• 29 - C.E. Webber submits to Donald Wilson an outline for a proposed family-oriented science fiction series to be called The Troubleshooters. Some of the earliest concepts of what is to become Doctor Who appear in the document, which exists in the BBC Archives with notations from Sydney Newman.[1]
  • At some point after this, Webber and Newman submit a revised outline which is now for a series to be entitled Dr. Who (sic).[2]

April

• 11 - Terry Weaver is born.
• 17 - Russell T Davies, Head writer and executive producer of Doctor Who from 2005-2009 and author of NA: Damaged Goods is born in Swansea, Wales.

May

• 2 - Esther Freud is born.

August

• 20 - Production of Doctor Who begins with a filming session at Ealing Studios for the first episode of DW: An Unearthly Child; the session involves the creation of the opening credits. This version of the first episode is beset by technical problems, and the BBC subsequently rejects it for broadcast, authorizing a rare "do-over" for later in the year. This version, dubbed The Pilot Episode later, would be finally broadcast in the 1990s. This is the earliest known production session related to Doctor Who. (Source: The Television Companion by Howe and Walker)
• 31 - A filming session is held at the BBC for DW: An Unearthly Child (aka The Pilot Episode).

September

• 18 - Gary Russell, author of several Doctor Who fiction and non-fiction works, former editor of Doctor Who Magazine, former Producer of the Big Finish Productions audios and current a member of the Doctor Who script editing team is born in Berkshire, England.
• 19 - A one day filming session at Ealing Studios is held for episode one of DW: An Unearthly Child (aka The Pilot Episode).
• 27 - The formal studio recording session for the never-broadcast version of the first episode of DW: An Unearthly Child, aka The Pilot Episode, is conducted at Lime Grove Studios.
• 30 - After viewing the pilot episode, Sydney Newman officially rejects The Pilot Episode during a lunch meeting with Verity Lambert and Waris Hussein and authorizes a remounting of the episode (according to Howe and Walker, this was a contingency that had been planned for). Over the next couple of weeks numerous revisions to the script and changes to costuming and characterization are undertaken.

October

• 09 - Filming resumes at Ealing Studios for DW: An Unearthly Child, as Episode 1 is re-mounted following September's false start.
• 11 - Filming ends at Ealing for DW: An Unearthly Child
• 18 - One day studio recording at Lime Grove Studio D for the remounted first episode of DW: An Unearthly Child (also entitled "An Unearthly Child").
• 25 - One day studio recording at Lime Grove Studio D for DW: An Unearthly Child episode 2, "The Cave of Skulls". Margot Maxine, an extra hired as a member of the tribe, walks out at 3:00 after refusing to have her teeth blackened.
• 28 - Initial filming begins at Ealing Studios for elements to be used in the upcoming DW: The Daleks.

November

• 01 - One day studio recording at Lime Grove Studio D for DW: An Unearthly Child episode 3, "The Forest of Fear".
• 08 - One day studio recording at Lime Grove Studio D for DW: An Unearthly Child episode 4, "The Firemaker", concluding the first Doctor Who serial.
• 11 - One day studio recording at Lime Grove Studio D for DW: The Daleks episode 1, "The Dead Planet". According to Howe and Walker's The Television Companion, this version is not transmitted and is remounted a month later.
• 22 - Recording of "The Survivors", episode 2 of DW: The Daleks, is interrupted by the news of the Kennedy assassination, but resumes later the same day.
• 23 - Doctor Who debuts on UK television with the first broadcast of episode 1 of DW: An Unearthly Child (which is also entitled "An Unearthly Child"). A few parts of the UK are unable to view the episode due to a power cut. Due to the events of the previous day, however, a franchise legend later emerges suggesting that news coverage of the assassination of Kennedy and/or subsequent killing of suspect Lee Harvey Oswald was the reason for the broadcast disruption; this is not the case. The first episode airs between a sports broadcast and a puppet series called The Telegoons. "The Medicine Men", an episode of The Avengers -- also created by Sydney Newman -- airs the same day.
  • Likely the earliest Radio Times reference to the series occurs in the issue dated 23rd November.
  • Joe Ahearne is born.
• 30 - "An Unearthly Child" (DW: An Unearthly Child Episode 1) is broadcast for the second time as many viewers missed the original screening as a result of a power cut; this is the first and for many years only rebroadcast of a Doctor Who episode. The rebroadcast is followed by the first broadcast of "The Cave of Skulls" (DW: An Unearthly Child Episode 2)

December

• 06 - Recording of Episode 1 of DW: The Daleks, "The Dead Planet", is remounted following a false start in November.
• 07 - "The Forest of Fear" (DW: An Unearthly Child Episode 3) is first broadcast.
• 14 - "The Firemaker" (DW: An Unearthly Child Episode 4) is first broadcast, concluding the series' first serial.
• 21 - "The Dead Planet" (DW: The Daleks Episode 1) is first broadcast. The episode ends with the series' first great cliffhanger, featuring the first-ever glimpse of a Dalek.
• 28 - "The Survivors" (DW: The Daleks Episode 2) is first broadcast.
• 30 - Audience Research Report on the first episode of Doctor Who is filed with the BBC.