Fotheringown
Doctor Fotheringown was a British rocket scientist, a member of the British Interplanetary Society and the British Rocketry Commission. He ended up accidentally setting off into space with a young journalist inside a flying television studio.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Doctor Fotheringown helped develop a rocket with which the British would, at long last, take their first steps in the space race. The conceit was to have the rocket orbit the Earth for a while and gain enough momentum to then reach the Moon, around which it would again go into orbit.
However, as he was being interviewed about the rocket whilst in a BBC TV studio alongside a working model half the size of the finished rocket, the absent-minded scientist accidentally set it off. As it was powerful enough to take the entire studio with it up into space, Fotheringown and the journalist who had been interviewing him soon found themselves orbiting the Earth in a flying television studio.
As they discovered, from this vantage point, that contrary to popular belief the Earth was in fact cube-shaped, Fotheringown admitted that he had no idea if they would ever be able to get back down to Earth, though his companion did not appear too distressed. (TV: The Doctor's New Invention)
Personality[[edit] | [edit source]]
A distinguished rocket scientist, the Doctor seemed to be rather eccentric and, while a brilliant inventor, was a bumbling lecturer and a clumsy technician. He struggled to explain the workings of his own creations, not finding anything more to say about a huge-six-stage rocket he'd built than "…well, it's huge, and… and it has six stages…". When under stress, Fotheringown had a habit of offering people peppermints.
Though quite forthcoming about his name, he would blurt it out in a fast and mumbled fashion that left the asker just as confused as they were beforehand, and notably left his aforementioned interviewer asking "Doctor who?". When presented with his question, Fotheringown appeared offended and proclaimed that he was mostly definitely not Doctor Who. (TV: The Doctor's New Invention)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
This Doctor, played by Clive Dunn, features in the sketch The Doctor's New Invention which appeared on It's a Square World, he wore a variation of William Hartnell's First Doctor outfit and was a parody of the latter.
Interestingly, Fotheringown's tendency to offer people peppermints at incongruous times would later be mirrored by the Fourth Doctor's habit of offering jelly babies to his interlocutors. This is, however, most likely a coincidence.
Doctor Fotheringown is insistent that his name isn't Dr Who. It is unclear if this is an early joke at the expense of the confusion caused by the TV programme being titled Doctor Who while the character is called the Doctor, or if it implies that the First Doctor exists (whether as a fiction or as a real person) in Fotheringown's universe and he does not want to be confused with him.
In a slight reversal of the parody, Twice Upon A Time has the Twelfth Doctor refer to the First Doctor as Corporal Jones, Clive Dunn's character from Dad's Army.
