Doctor Who? running joke

A number of references to the Doctor's lack of name have appeared in the Doctor Who Universe.

See separate article for a discussion of the Doctor's true name from an in-universe perspective.

List of references

Television

Doctor Who

First Doctor

• The first occurs in the first Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child when Ian Chesterton says, "Be reasonable Doctor Foreman". The Doctor then replies "Eh, Doctor Who — what's he talking about?" According to the DVD production subtitles, the response was actually added by William Hartnell himself.
• In The Gunfighters, the Doctor mumbingly introduces himself to Bat Masterson by the alias of Doctor Caligari. A rightfully confused Masterson asked "Doctor Who?" and The Doctor answered "yes, er, quite right."
• In The War Machines, WOTAN orders Dodo Chaplet to send the Doctor with the command, "DDDOCTORR WHOO ISS RREQUIREDD". This is the only time in the series that the Doctor is directly called Doctor Who. This reportedly caused angry mail to get sent to the production team.

Third Doctor

• In The Curse of Peladon, the Earth representative is outraged that the guards wouldn't let her in the palace, because she was the rightful representative of Earth, The Docotr claims to be the representative of Earth. The Earth representative then asks "Doctor? What Doctor? Doctor who?"

K-9 & Company

When Brendan Richards asks, "Doctor who?", K-9 Mark III responds, "Affirmative."

Audio

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Prose

Novels

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Short stories

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Comic strips

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Popular Culture

Several shows have had characters named Dr. Who (usually spelt Hoo as the Dr. is an Asian) as a special pop-culture reference to the show.