Who is Doctor Who

Doctor Who first appeared on BBC television at 5:15 pm(GMT) on 23 November 1963, following discussions and plans that had been in progress for a year. The Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, was mainly responsible for developing it, with the first format document for the series being written by Newman along with the Head of the Script Department (later Head of Serials) Donald Wilson and staff writer C. E. Webber. Writer Anthony Coburn, story editor David Whitaker and initial producer Verity Lambert also heavily contributed to the development of the series. The series' title theme was composed by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The programme was originally intended to appeal to a family audience. The BBC drama department's Serials division produced the programme for 26 series, broadcast on BBC One. Viewing numbers that had fallen (though comparably increased at some points), a decline in the public perception of the show and a less prominent transmission slot saw production suspended in 1989 by Jonathan Powell, Controller of BBC One. Although it was for all intents and purposes cancelled (as series co-star Sophie Aldred reported in the documentary Doctor Who: More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS), the BBC said the series would return.

While in-house production had ceased, the BBC was hopeful of finding an independent production company to relaunch the show. Philip Segal, a British expatriate who worked for Columbia Pictures' television arm in the United States, approached the BBC about such a venture. Segal's negotiations eventually led to a television movie. The Doctor Who television movie was broadcast on the Fox Network in 1996 as a co-production between Fox, Universal Pictures, the BBC, and BBC Worldwide. Although the film was successful in the UK (with 9.1 million viewers), it was less so in the United States and did not lead to a series.

Licensed media such as novels and audio plays provided new stories, but as a television programme Doctor Who remained dormant until 2003. In September of that year, BBC Television announced the in-house production of a new series after several years of unsuccessful attempts by BBC Worldwide to find backing for a feature film version. The executive producers of the new incarnation of the series are writer Russell T Davies and BBC Wales Head of Drama/BBC Television Controller of Drama Commissioning Julie Gardner. It has been sold to many other countries worldwide.

The new series debuted with the episode "Rose" on BBC One on 26 March 2005. There have been two further series in 2006 and 2007, and Christmas Day specials in 2005, 2006 and 2007. The fourth series began on BBC One on 5 April 2008. There will be a rest year in 2009, with no new series, although David Tennant will star in 3 specials in that year. After the 2008 Christmas special and three special episodes in 2009, a fifth full-length series is planned for Spring 2010, with Steven Moffat replacing Davies as head writer and executive producer.

While the 2005-present version of Doctor Who is considered a direct continuation of the 1963-89 series, the 1996 telefilm is also considered part of the overall continuity. This differs from other series relaunches that have either been reimaginings or reboots (e.g., Battlestar Galactica and Bionic Woman) or series taking place in the same universe as the original but with a totally new cast of characters (e.g., Star Trek: The Next Generation and spin-offs).

The character of the Doctor was initially shrouded in mystery. All that was known about him in the programme's early days was that he was an eccentric alien traveller of great intelligence who battled injustice while exploring time and space in an unreliable old time machine called the TARDIS, an acronym for Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space. The TARDIS is much larger on the inside than on the outside, and, due to a malfunction of its Chameleon Circuit, is stuck in the shape of a 1950s-style British police box.

However, not only did the initially irascible and slightly sinister Doctor quickly mellow into a more compassionate figure, it was eventually revealed that he had been on the run from his own people, the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey.

As a Time Lord, the Doctor has the ability to regenerate his body when near death. Introduced into the storyline as a way of continuing the series when the writers were faced with the departure of lead actor William Hartnell in 1966, it has continued to be a major element of the series, allowing for the recasting of the lead actor when the need arises. The serial The Deadly Assassin established that a Time Lord can regenerate twelve times, for a total of thirteen incarnations (although at least one Time Lord, The Master, has managed to circumvent this). To date, the Doctor has gone through this process and its resulting after-effects on nine occasions, with each of his incarnations having his own quirks and abilities but otherwise sharing the memories and experience of the previous incarnations:

First Doctor, played by William Hartnell (1963-1966)
Second Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton (1966-1969)
Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee (1970-1974)
Fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker (1974-1981)
Fifth Doctor, played by Peter Davison (1981-1984)
Sixth Doctor, played by Colin Baker (1984-1986)
Seventh Doctor, played by Sylvester McCoy (1987-1989, 1996)
Eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann (1996)
Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston (2005)
Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant (2005-2010)
Eleventh Doctor played by Matt Smith (2010-)

Despite these shifts in personality, the Doctor remains an intensely curious and highly moral adventurer who would rather solve problems with his wits than by using violence.

Throughout the programme's long history there have been controversial revelations about the Doctor. For example, in The Brain of Morbius (1976), it was hinted that the First Doctor may not have been the Doctor's first incarnation (although the other faces depicted may have been incarnations of the Time Lord Morbius); during the Seventh Doctor's era it was hinted that the Doctor was more than just an ordinary Time Lord. In the Eighth Doctor movie, the Doctor described himself as being "half human". The revelation has become controversial amongst series fans, given that there have been no references to the concept during the original or revived television series. The very first episode, An Unearthly Child, revealed that the Doctor has a granddaughter, Susan Foreman, and in "Fear Her" (2006), he remarked that he had, in the past, been a father. The 2005 series revealed that the Ninth Doctor thought he had become the last surviving Time Lord, and that his home planet had been destroyed. In the 2008 series episode "The Doctor's Daughter", the Doctor's cells are used to produce a daughter (played by Georgia Moffett, the real-life daughter of Fifth Doctor actor Peter Davison) who is subsequently named Jenny by Donna as a result of the Doctor describing her as "a generated anomaly".