Doctor Who Photo-File

Doctor Who Photo-File was one of the original features of Doctor Who Magazine from its inception in 1979.

Each instalment of the series was one page in length and served to provide factual profiles on a particular member of the Doctor Who regular cast. Readers were encouraged to cut out the page from the magazine and collect the entire series. A large photograph of each cast member was featured with information about them printed below. This included dates of birth (and dates of death if relevant), their roles in Doctor Who and tenure on the show, any other major television, film and stage appearances, as well as a short biography which highlighted any other points of interest.

DWM 26 marked the first issue of the magazine to not feature Doctor Who Photo-File, the same issue which heralded the publication's first major design change. One further instalment was published in the following issue before the series was axed for good.

Instalments

The first issue of Doctor Who Photo-File focused on William Hartnell, to whom the first issue of Doctor Who Magazine was dedicated.

The profiles on Jackie Lane in DWM 19 and Deborah Watling in DWM 24 both contained errors. Lane was said to have been born in New York instead of Manchester while Watling was referred to with the surname of her character, Victoria Waterfield. This was explained in the Gallifrey Guardian article Into the Fifth Dimension in issue 29 as having been caused by dimensional interference after a fifth dimension was discovered in the Doctor Who Weekly office. Ironically, while correcting the mistakes in the Photo-Files the Gallifrey Guardian misspelled Lane's first name Jacki.

Curiously, the contents page of DWM 27 claimed that the Photo-File for that issue focused on Richard Franklin who played Mike Yates. However, it was instead about Anneke Wills and no feature on Franklin ever materialised. Additionally, the Photo-File itself was misnumbered as the twenty-fifth instalment of the series when in fact it was the twenty-sixth.

#	Subject	Role	Issue
1	William Hartnell	First Doctor	DWM 1
2	Patrick Troughton	Second Doctor	DWM 2
3	Jon Pertwee	Third Doctor	DWM 3
4	Tom Baker	Fourth Doctor	DWM 4
5	Mary Tamm	The first incarnation of Romana	DWM 5
6	Lalla Ward	The second incarnation of Romana	DWM 6
7	Roger Delgado	The first incarnation of the Master	DWM 7
8	Nicholas Courtney	Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart	DWM 8
9	Louise Jameson	Leela	DWM 9
10	Ian Marter	Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan	DWM 10
11	Elisabeth Sladen	Sarah Jane Smith	DWM 11
12	Carole Ann Ford	Susan Foreman	DWM 12
13	Maureen O'Brien	Vicki	DWM 13
14	William Russell	Ian Chesterton	DWM 14
15	Jacqueline Hill	Barbara Wright	DWM 15
16	Wendy Padbury	Zoe Herriet [sic]	DWM 16
17	Peter Purves	Steven Taylor	DWM 17
18	Jackie Lane	Dodo Chaplet	DWM 18
19	Katy Manning	Jo Grant	DWM 19
20	Frazer Hines	Jamie McCrimmon	DWM 20
21	John Levene	Corporal/Sergeant/RSM Benton	DWM 21
22	Caroline John	Dr Liz Shaw	DWM 22
23	Deborah Waterfield [sic]	Victoria Waterfield	DWM 23
24	Michael Craze	Ben Jackson	DWM 24
25	Jean Marsh	Sara Kingdom	DWM 25
26	Anneke Wills	Polly	DWM 27