⭐8.6
Description: The Doctor, a Time Lord/Lady from the race whose home planet is Gallifrey, travels through time and space in their ship the T.A.R.D.I.S. (an acronym for Time and Relative Dimension In Space) with numerous companions. From time to time The Doctor regenerates into a new form (which is how the series has been running since the departure of the original actor, William Hartnell, in 1966).
Creator: Sydney Newman
Stars: Jodie Whittaker, Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie
Taglines: The Trip Of A Lifetime!
Trivia
- Julie Gardner has said that when David Tennant was approached to play the Tenth Doctor, he was immediately enthusiastic. His first response was to ask, “Can I have a long swishy coat?”
- Matt Smith actually owned the tweed jacket his Eleventh Doctor usually wore.
- When the first season was being made, television pirates were desperate to acquire the preview tapes. One of the people in the office had the idea of labelling the tapes with the anagram “Torchwood”, rather than “Doctor Who”, as a security measure to disguise the tapes when they were delivered from Cardiff to London. Writer Russell T. Davies liked this idea so much that it later inspired him to use it as a title when creating the spin-off series Torchwood (2006).
- Writer and executive producer Russell T. Davies had Christopher Eccleston’s name on a shortlist for the role of the Doctor, but didn’t really think that he would accept the role because of his reputation as a very serious actor with a background in hard-hitting dramas. However, Eccleston was such a big fan of Davies as a writer that he got in contact to ask if he could audition for the part. Eccleston had not been a fan of the original series, so he watched Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang: Part One (1977), one of the most popular serials from the original run and a particular favorite of Davies’s for the quality of its dialogue, as part of his preparation.
- Fifth Doctor Peter Davison has said he considers this series an improvement on the original, not only because of its budget and digital effects, but also because the series is produced by a writer, unlike the original series, which was always produced by a BBC staff producer who was assisted by a script editor. Davison has said that Rose, played by Billie Piper, was the first properly developed companion in the history of the series, and he expressed admiration for the sexual “frisson” and “tension” which was previously disallowed between the Doctor and his companions. He said he was “rather envious” of the French kissing the new Doctors got to do because his producer, John Nathan-Turner, had considered it inappropriate for the Fifth Doctor to even put his arms around his female companions in case viewers thought there was something sexual going on. Davison has also said he prefers the orchestral musical compositions by Murray Gold to the electronic incidental music produced by the Radiophonic Workshop during his time on the series.
- Peter Capaldi had appeared on the show in a different role before being cast as the Twelfth Doctor, but Colin Baker did too in the original, so this is not the first time an actor playing the Doctor had previously appeared as a different character on the show. Coincidentally, Capaldi appeared in the episode in which Karen Gillan had a different role before being cast as a full-fledged companion, Doctor Who: The Fires of Pompeii (2008).