Planet (An Unearthly Child)
This page should potentially be merged into the Doctor's home or be renamed to the Doctor's home planet, with details surrounding the planet refereneced in "The Pilot Episode" and the scattered references to it from Unnatural History and Escape Velocity remaining on this page. Further details can be found at the talk page.
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The original home planet of the Doctor and Susan (TV: "An Unearthly Child" [+]Part of An Unearthly Child, Loading...{"namedep":"An Unearthly Child (1)","1":"An Unearthly Child (TV story)"}) was unclear due to the Doctor's shifting timelines and alterations to their biodata, thus giving the planet many potential identities. (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"])
The Doctor's home planet was as distant as a night star, (TV: "Rider from Shang-Tu" [+]Part of Marco Polo, Loading...{"namedep":"Rider from Shang-Tu (5)","1":"Marco Polo (TV story)"}) although generally similar to Earth. (TV: "A Desperate Venture" [+]Part of The Sensorites, Loading...{"namedep":"A Desperate Venture (6)","1":"The Sensorites (TV story)"}) However, some accounts actually identified the Doctor's home planet as Earth, (PROSE: The Dream Masters [+]Loading...["The Dream Masters (short story)"], The Lair of Zarbi Supremo [+]Loading...["The Lair of Zarbi Supremo (short story)"]) while many later accounts identified it as Gallifrey. (TV: The Time Warrior [+]Loading...["The Time Warrior (TV story)"], Gridlock [+]Loading...["Gridlock (TV story)"], etc.)
Susan, upon travelling with Marco Polo, felt that she had had many homes. (TV: "The Roof of the World" [+]Part of Marco Polo, Loading...{"namedep":"The Roof of the World (1)","1":"Marco Polo (TV story)"})
References[[edit] | [edit source]]
When Barbara Wright asked if the TARDIS was Susan's home, Susan replied: "yes… well, at least, it's the only home I have now." (PROSE: Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child [+]Loading...["Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child (novelisation)"]) Later in the same conversation, Susan told Ian and Barbara of her and the Doctor's origins, saying "[she] was born in another time, another world". (TV: An Unearthly Child [+]Loading...["An Unearthly Child (TV story)"], PROSE: Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child [+]Loading...["Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child (novelisation)"]) The First Doctor and Susan were exiles from their own world, (PROSE: An Unearthly Child [+]Loading...["An Unearthly Child (short story)"]) cut off without friends or protection. (TV: An Unearthly Child [+]Loading...["An Unearthly Child (TV story)"])
According to one account, the Doctor told Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright that he and Susan were wanderers who were cut off from their planet and separated from it by millions upon millions of years. Later, Ian wondered if the planet that the Doctor and Susan came from practised customs such as marriage, after contemplating what would happen if Susan would stop travelling in the Tardis in favour of marriage. (PROSE: Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks [+]Loading...["Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (novelisation)"])
On Skaro, the Doctor told Alydon that he was once a pioneer among his own people. (TV: "The Rescue" [+]Part of The Daleks, Loading...{"namedep":"The Rescue (7)","1":"The Daleks (TV story)"})
Susan told Ping-Cho that her home was as "far away as a night star", relative to Cathay. (TV: "Rider from Shang-Tu" [+]Part of Marco Polo, Loading...{"namedep":"Rider from Shang-Tu (5)","1":"Marco Polo (TV story)"}, PROSE: Marco Polo [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"Rider from Shang-Tu","chaptnum":"11","1":"Marco Polo (novelisation)"})
Susan later mentioned that her and the Doctor's home planet was similar to Earth, but at night the sky was a burnt orange and the trees had silver leaves; (TV: "A Desperate Venture" [+]Part of The Sensorites, Loading...{"namedep":"A Desperate Venture (6)","1":"The Sensorites (TV story)"}) Susan even wished to return to her home eventually, speaking of her home with melancholic nostalgia, having left a "very long time ago". This account, however, also contained a difference regarding the Doctor's species, as the Doctor did not refer to himself as human.[nb 1] (PROSE: The Sensorites [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"The Unwilling Warriors, The Secret of the Caves","chaptnum":"4, 11","1":"The Sensorites (novelisation)"}) Later accounts, however, identified this planet as Gallifrey. (TV: Gridlock [+]Loading...["Gridlock (TV story)"], The Sound of Drums [+]Loading...["The Sound of Drums (TV story)"], etc.)
Steven Taylor once asked the Doctor if he and the Monk came from the same planet, which the Doctor confirmed, however regretfully. He added that he had left fifty years before the Monk. (TV: "Checkmate" [+]Part of The Time Meddler, Loading...{"namedep":"Checkmate (4)","1":"The Time Meddler (TV story)"}, PROSE: The Time Meddler [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"The Monk's Master Plan","chaptnum":"9","1":"The Time Meddler (novelisation)"}) Steven himself thought the Doctor and the Monk behaved "exactly like a couple of old codgers discussing vintage cars." (PROSE: The Time Meddler [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"The Monk's Master Plan","chaptnum":"9","1":"The Time Meddler (novelisation)"})
When Steven stormed out of the TARDIS after learning that the Doctor did not take an opportunity to spare Anne Chaplet from the St Bartholomew's Day massacre, the Doctor suggested to himself that, having lost so many of his travelling companions, that he should return to his home planet, but acknowledged that he could not. (TV: "Bell of Doom" [+]Part of The Massacre, Loading...{"namedep":"Bell of Doom (4)","1":"The Massacre (TV story)"})
Whilst a prisoner of the Daleks on Skaro during Operation Human Factor, the Second Doctor briefly mused that he could take Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria and Edward Waterfield, and Theodore Maxtible with him to his home planet. At this point, the Daleks believed that the Doctor had become "more than human" as a result of having "travelled too much through time". (TV: The Evil of the Daleks [+]Loading...["The Evil of the Daleks (TV story)"])
After the Eighth Doctor made a deal with a boy of Faction Paradox, a memory for a memory, so that the Doctor could locate Griffin, he realised that the boy had not only taken a memory, but altered his biodata. The boy, alongside various versions of himself from the relative future, mocked the Doctor for his shifting past. (PROSE: Unnatural History [+]Loading...["Unnatural History (novel)"])
Maybe you didn't use to have a father. Maybe you're living in the middle of a time war. Maybe there's an Enemy out there who's rewriting you when you're not looking! Maybe you weren't always half human. But now you've become always half human. Maybe you weren't always a Time Lord. But now you’ve always been a Time Lord. Maybe you originally came from some planet in the forty-ninth century. Fleeing from the Enemy who'd overrun your home and you've just been written and rewritten and overwritten, ever since.
After the Eighth Doctor lost his memories of the Time Lords and Gallifrey, he theorised that he may have been an exile from the forty-ninth century. (PROSE: Escape Velocity [+]Loading...["Escape Velocity (novel)"])
Other realities[[edit] | [edit source]]
In a parallel universe, Martin Bannister was uncertain whether or not to make it explicit that Doctor Who and Susan Who came from Venus in the 49th century. (AUDIO: Deadline [+]Loading...["Deadline (audio story)"])
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
The unnamed planet in the 49th century, the home of the Doctor and Susan, was first mentioned in the so-called "The Pilot Episode", where it was explicitly mentioned as the origin of the characters; in the televised episode, this line is less specific.[1] The First and Second Doctors' eras contained several vague allusions to the Doctor's home, typically inferring that he and Susan were simply humans or humanoids from another planet, until the "Time Lord" backstory was fully established in the serial The War Games and developed significantly in the Third Doctor's era and beyond.
Since then, despite the Doctor having numerous origins being an accepted and oft-mentioned part of the character's backstory, this origin has been very rarely referenced, with the only two references to it outside of the First and Second Doctor's eras being the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novels Unnatural History and Escape Velocity (though the planet was referenced in the Doctor Who Unbound audio drama Deadline, which isn't set in the "main" Doctor Who universe), even then only entertaining it as a possibility as opposed to directly confirming it as a backstory. Other stories, such as the novelisation of The Daleks, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, usually play with the general idea, albeit a different take upon it.
One of Anthony Coburn's early scripts would have established that Susan had been a princess on her home planet, which would have been different than Doctor Who's world.[2] Thereafter, Susan was envisioned as a fugitive from the Doctor's home planet. Coburn later altered the character to be the Doctor's granddaughter, to avoid having a biologically unrelated female teenager travelling with an old man.[3]
In the 1964 Doctor Who television serial The Sensorites, Susan's description of her home planet was reminiscent of Venus, albeit with a science-fiction spin. Marco Polo, broadcast earlier in 1964, had Susan explicitly say that her home planet was "as far away as a night star"; taken literally, this would preclude identifying the planet as Venus, located much closer to the Earth than actual stars, although in pre-Enlightenment times, Venus was thought of as "the morning star". Although never formally linked with the 49th-century-planet notion, the idea of Venus being the original home of the Doctor and Susan was referenced in the 2003 Big Finish Unbound audio drama Deadline, although this story was set in a parallel universe where the Doctor was only fictional. Regardless, Susan's description of her home planet having orange skies at night with silver trees was later applied to Gallifrey, becoming part of the well known design as seen in the post-2005 of Doctor Who, although Gallifrey's skies were typically depicted as being orange, even during the day.
In the unaired 1960s audio drama Journey into Time starring Peter Cushing, that version of the Doctor mentions that his civilisation was actually Earth, but three thousand years in Mike's future (who came from the mid-twentieth century).
As part of the Reconstructions series, a series of reenactments of 1960s Doctor Who scenes by the cast of An Adventure in Space and Time, included a recreation of the first scene set in the TARDIS from "The Pilot Episode [+]Loading...{"noital":"1","1":"The Pilot Episode"}", including the dialogue where Susan tells Ian and Barbara of her and the Doctor's origins in the 49th century.
A behind the scenes note on the Second Doctor had this to say about his origin:
He is the eternal fugitive with a horrifying fear of the past horrors he has endured. (These horrors were experienced during the galactic war and account for his flight from his own planet.)
Years later, in the episode of The Official Doctor Who Podcast dedicated to Space Babies [+]Loading...["Space Babies (TV story)"] and The Devil's Chord [+]Loading...["The Devil's Chord (TV story)"], presenter Shabaz Ali highlighted how Gallifrey wasn't named originally, until around ten years later.
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- ↑ In The Sensorites [+]Loading...["The Sensorites (TV story)"], the Doctor indentifies himself as human when explaining that cats can see better than humans. This line of dialogue is slightly altered in the novelisation [+]Loading...{"noital":"1","1":"The Sensorites (novelisation)","2":"the novelisation"}, as the Doctor explains the eyesight of cats without speaking of his own species.
References[[edit] | [edit source]]
- ↑ A Brief History of Time Travel: An Unearthly Child on Tony's Musings
- ↑ Rob Leigh (14 March 2013). Mysteries of Doctor Who explained: "Unbelievably precious" Doctor Who scripts lost for 50 years discovered in Kent. The Mirror.
- ↑ The Tribe of Gum (script), "Doctor Who – The Beginning"
