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Doctor Who (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Doctor Who was a BBC science fiction/drama series that premiered in late 1963.
The series oriented around the adventures of the eponymous time traveller, commonly referred to as "the Doctor".
History
Development
After becoming too well recognised in Earth history, the Doctor presumably had retconned themselves into popular culture; (PROSE: Afterword) subsequently, on the 26th of March, 1963, Winston Churchill sent a letter a Mr Newman, to pitch the concept of a show about Churchill's old friend, the Doctor. (PROSE: Stop, Thief!)
A young woman, Verity, went to the BBC, and became the producer of the show, despite the protests of the "Men Who Knew What To Do". By standing her ground against their blatant sexism, she helped the Doctor Who series flourish with her creative ideas. (PROSE: Verity)
In the 20th century
A BBC science fiction series beginning Doc- was first broadcast on television at 5:15 pm on Saturday 30th of November, 1963. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
One serial would receive a novelisation, called Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, which contradicted another novelisation. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)
Early on in the series, there were Cavemen, Daleks, Aztecs and Marco Polo. (PROSE: Verity)
Sometime in the 1970s, Terrance Dicks listened in to a conversation a Doctor Who fan from the future, who was asking UNIT for help regarding COVID-19. He would join in on the conversation a few minutes later, where he came up with a name for a Doctor Who story, "who's for a brew". He wrote it down, intending to share it with Barry, before disconnecting from the call. (WC: U.N.I.T. On Call)
In 1974, an episode of the series aired, portraying the regeneration of Third Doctor into his next incarnation, the Fourth Doctor. (PROSE: Fanboys)
In 1978, Iris Wildthyme was sent by the Ministry to investigate Geoff Love as the Ministry suspected him of secreting in subliminal messages into his reworkings of TV sci-fi themes. Iris helped Geoff develop the Doctor Who theme while proving that the Ministry was indeed correct with their suspicions. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)
Prior to 1981, serials known as The Seeds of Doom, State of Decay, Planet of the Spiders, and and unnamed serial aired, the latter of which depicted the Fourth Doctor's regeneration into the Fifth Doctor, who was set to return in the following season. By this time, the Wirrn, Zarbi, Sontarans, Krynoids, Zygons, Mechanoids, Yeti, and the Brain of Morbius all had been featured in the show, serving the role of the villains.
By early 1981, David and Chris were major fans of the series. They obsessed over the series, and when they went to Darlington on a semi-regular basis, they would be treated by their parents, who took them into WHSmith's to buy Target novelisations of Doctor Who stories. On one such occasion, they bought copies of State of Decay and Planet of the Spiders. (PROSE: Fanboys)
In the late 1990s, an unspecified incarnation of the character was portrayed by Paul McGann in the Doctor Who TV movie. (PROSE: Hospitality)
In the 21st century
Around the early 2000s, Paul Magrs wrote in a short piece of prose about his books and inspritations. In this piece, he stated that the second and fourth incarnations of the Doctor resembled Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker, respectively, and that his collection of all 150 Target novels written by Terrance Dicks had been stolen. (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion)
By the 21st century, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, Sontarans and Slitheen had appeared. David Karpagnon, an orphan with dissociative personality disorder, watched the show around this time. The Doctor helped him with his problems from inside his head. (PROSE: The Terror of the Umpty Ums)
In November 2014, (PROSE: "Assessing the Risk") when the Earth became overgrown with trees, a double decker bus had an advertisement on its side, depicting the TARDIS and individuals closely resembling the Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald. An unknown source rated the show four stars out of five commenting "A-MAZE-ING ENTERTAINMENT!". (TV: In the Forest of the Night)
Around October of 2015, the ninth series of the show was broadcast on BBC One, starring another unspecified incarnation, who travelled with a companion called Clara; the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor bore a great similarity to this fictional depiction, and the same could be said about Clara Oswald. (WC: The Zygon Isolation)
By 2020, the show had 12 series and 167 episodes that were available on BBC iPlayer. The ninth series appeared to include episodes such as The Magician's Apprentice, The Witch's Familiar, Under the Lake, Before the Flood, The Girl Who Died, The Woman Who Lived, The Zygon Invasion, The Zygon Inversion, Sleep No More, Face the Raven, and Heaven Sent. There also existed at some point an episode titled The Day of the Doctor, and a periodical called Doctor Who Magazine. (WC: The Zygon Isolation) Also by this time, the Doctor was portrayed by a female actress. (PROSE: The Terror of the Umpty Ums, WC: The Zygon Isolation)
On 10 May, 2020, the two Osgoods conversed over Zoom. Afterwards, one of the duo went onto BBC iPlayer after ending the chat, scrolling past several episodes of Doctor Who from series nine, until she decided to watch The Zygon Invasion. (WC: The Zygon Isolation)
In late 2020, after a fan finished watching an episode, she rang UNIT in the 1970s, asking for help from the real Third Doctor, Jo, and the Brigadier, and they told her to remain positive despite the hardships. They disconnected, and Terrance Dicks then applauded the trio, and told the fan a tea break was deserved. He then came up with an idea for the name of a story, and then too disconnected. The fan then drank a cup of tea while watching an older episode of Doctor Who. (WC: U.N.I.T. On Call)
Characters
Protagonists
The Doctor
While appearing to simply be a fictional character to the general populace of Britain, (PROSE: Afterword, Fanboys, Hospitality, The Terror of the Umpty Ums) there were individuals who knew that the Doctor was real, (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion, WC: The Zygon Isolation, et al) although this feat wasn't exactly difficult. (COMIC: Action in Exile, TV: Rose, Love & Monsters, et al)
The Doctor was also referred to as "Doctor Who", (PROSE: Hospitality) and had at least seven known incarnations. (PROSE: Fanboys, Hospitality, WC: The Zygon Isolation)
Clara
- Main article: Clara Oswald#Legacy
The only named companion was Clara, a young, brunette woman. She appeared in the ninth series of the show, (WC: The Zygon Isolation) and bore a remarkable similarity to Clara Oswald. (TV: The Bells of Saint John, et al)
Osgood
- Main article: Petronella Osgood#Legacy
A character known as Osgood appeared in two episodes of the ninth series, The Zygon Invasion and The Zygon Isolation.
Other characters
Several other characters resembling Ashildr, Missy, and Kate Stewart were seen in several episodes of series nine, and characters resembling Graham O'Brien, Yasmin Khan, the Thirteenth Doctor, and Ryan Sinclair were shown on the Doctor Who section of BBC iPlayer. (WC: The Zygon Isolation)
Antagonists
By 1981, Wirrn, Zarbi, Sontarans, Krynoids, Zygons, Mechanoids, Yeti, and the Brain of Morbius appeared, (PROSE: Fanboys) then in 2015 the Zygons had reappeared, (WC: The Zygon Isolation) and by 2020 the Cybermen, Weeping Angels, Sontarans and Slitheen had also appeared. (PROSE: The Terror of the Umpty Ums)
Alternate accounts
While many accounts support the Doctor having a near identical fictional counterpart, other sources, while similar in nature, show distinguishable accounts.
- Main article: The Time Surgeon
A couple of accounts show that there was an comic book series, Time Surgeon, about the titular Time Surgeon and his companion Kara, who travel in a flat pack wardrobe; (COMIC: The Fourth Wall, Invasion of the Mindmorphs) curiously, while the Doctor is shown to be aware of the series based around his own adventures in time and space, (PROSE: Bafflement and Devotion, TV: In the Forest of the Night) the Twelfth Doctor is baffled by the existence of Time Surgeon. (COMIC: The Fourth Wall, Invasion of the Mindmorphs)
- Main article: Doctor X
Without interaction from the Doctor, a series known as Doctor X was first aired in around the same time as Doctor Who. The series centred around the titular character. (PROSE: In Search of Doctor X)
- Main article: Professor X
Established by around a dozen of accounts, another series with an extremely similar title to Doctor X, Professor X was aired on BBC One at the exact same time and date as Doctor Who, creating two very irreconcilable accounts of the series about the Doctor. (AUDIO: An Unearthly Woman, PROSE: No Future, et al.)