Transmat:Doctor Who

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The Name of the Doctor was the beginning of Doctor Who's fiftieth anniversary storyline, and the conclusion of the seventh series produced by BBC Wales. It resolved the central mystery of the series by conclusively explaining how Clara Oswald had appeared and died at several points in the Doctor's life.

The episode contained the most Doctors ever seen in a single episode — though this was mostly achieved through the integration of old footage into new background plates. Nevertheless, the appearances were incidental; former Doctors were merely seen, not heard. A notable exception was the First Doctor, whose initial departure from Gallifrey was shown for the very first time on-screen — albeit in a way that essentially validated the depiction of the event seen in the 30th anniversary comic story, Time & Time Again.

While the main focus of the story was to explain Clara's splintered existence, it also had other reveals: the apparent conclusion of the Doctor's relationship with River Song, the definitive end of the Great Intelligence story arc and the shocking reveal of a previously unseen incarnation.
That reveal covemprised the episode's cliffhanger, which was not continued until the 50th anniversary episode itself.

The women who gave Doctor Who back to us
JaneTranter.jpg
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

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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
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Click to watch Cleese respond to Twitter
John Cleese appeared in Doctor Who's highest-rated televised story, City of Death, around the time of series 2 of Fawlty Towers. He was joined by the then-famous Eleanor Bron — the woman Paul McCartney once said was partial inspiration for the song "Eleanor Rigby". 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 8 November


Did you know…


8 November births and deaths


Production history for 8 November
  1. Doctor Who Guide
  2. Ken Dodd: The Biography
  3. Aveleyman
  4. BFI
  5. Aveleyman
  6. Richard Curtis. Contactmusic.com. Retrieved on 10 March 2017.
  7. Roberts, Jem. The True History of the Blackadder. London: Arrow Books, 2013. Print.
  8. Aveleyman
  9. People Pill
  10. People Pill
  11. IMDb
  12. The Guardian
  13. DWM 572