Timeless Adventures (40 page)

Filmed between 2 April and 5 May, the episode entitled
The Day
of the Doctor
was written by Moffat, shot in 3D and featured the return of the Zygons (who appeared only once before in 1975’s
Terror
of the Zygons
), alongside the obligatory appearances by Daleks and Cybermen. Returning from
The Power of Three
was Kate Stewart, played by Jemma Redgrave, with Joanna Page appearing as Queen Elizabeth I.

The celebratory epic episode was not the only way that
Doctor
Who
’s 50th anniversary was marked. Alongside a documentary on the show and many other news reports and special programmes, a drama entitled
An Adventure in Space and Time
recounted the early days of the programme. Written by Mark Gatiss, it starred David Bradley as William Hartnell and dramatised the key moments and personnel who were instrumental in the creation of the iconic series. Fittingly, it was one of the final programmes to record at Television Centre, where much of
Doctor Who
was made in the 1970s and 1980s, before the BBC vacated the distinctive building.

The introduction of the twelfth actor to play the Doctor became a sensational media event in itself. Topping the 2009 instalment of
Doctor Who Confidential
that had introduced Matt Smith, the 2013 special live broadcast
Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor
was a global phenomenon, transmitting simultaneously in the UK, America, Canada and Australia (at 4am!). In the days before the 4 August transmission, speculation as to who had won the part was rife in news papers. Among the suggested candidates were comic actor Chris O’Dowd, stand-up Chris Addison and BAFTA-winner Daniel Rigby, all actors in the now expected 30–40 age range.

To the surprise of many, though not all as his name had featured prominently in the previous week, the role went to the 55-year-old star of
The Thick of It
, Peter Capaldi. Fittingly for the 50th anniversary, Capaldi was the same age as William Hartnell when he first took on the role in 1963. Like David Tennant before him, Capaldi was also a life-long fan of the show having been involved in the Official Fan Club when a teenager in the 1970s. He’d had a letter about the show published in the
Radio Times
in 1973. Capaldi had also previously appeared in the
Doctor Who
episode
The Fires of Pompeii
(2008) alongside Tennant, as well as in a major role in the Torchwood miniseries
Children of Earth
(2009). Almost seven million viewers watched the live reveal on BBC1, with a further 1.5 million watching in the US, Canada, and Australia.

Capaldi said of winning the role: “It’s so wonderful not to keep this secret any longer, but it’s been so fantastic… Being asked to play the Doctor is an amazing privilege. Like the Doctor himself I find myself in a state of utter terror and delight. I can’t wait to get started.” For Moffat, the choice had been reasonably simple. “One of the most talented actors of his generation is about to play the best part on television. We made a home video of [Capaldi] being the Doctor and I showed it around and everyone said ‘Yes, that’s the Doctor’. There was a shortlist of one: Peter Capaldi.”

Capaldi would be the first Oscar-winner to take the role (he won in 1994 as the director of the Best Live Action Short for
Franz Kafka’s
It’s A Wonderful Life
), as well as the first established writer-director. He was the third Scottish actor to play the part, following Sylvester McCoy and David Tennant. Of his take on the Doctor, Capaldi said: “Even though I’m a lifelong
Doctor Who
fan I haven’t really played
Doctor Who
since I was nine… So as an adult actor I’ve never worked on it, so what I did was I downloaded some old scripts from the Internet and practised those in front of the mirror. I’m surprised now to see
Doctor Who
looking back. You look in the mirror and suddenly, strangely, he’s looking back and he’s not me yet – but he’s reaching out, and hopefully we’ll get it together…”

Beyond the 50th anniversary
Doctor Who’s
future looked secure. A Christmas special was scheduled for the end of 2013 and production was due to resume on an eighth series with Jemma Louise-Coleman set to return alongside Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor. With ratings fairly steady across the first seven series of the revived show, continually increasing iPlayer viewing figures, a higher profile in the US – where the series now aired on BBC America the same day as in the UK – and a host of peripheral spin-off sales, from DVDs to action figures, there seemed little reason why
Doctor Who
in its newest, refreshed form with a new leading actor would not celebrate its own 10th anniversary in 2015.

Across its 50 years on television,
Doctor Who
has become a part of the folklore of British culture. Every so often it might disappear for a while, but it will always return, refreshed and renewed (regenerated, you might say), as it has the most flexible format of any show, anywhere: a mad man in a magical box that can travel anywhere in space and time. No wonder it endures.

Steven Moffat – lucky enough to be the showrunner during
Doctor
Who’s
pivotal 50th year – had his own views on why the series succeeded: ‘Imagine the sheer nonsense of devising a show, one of whose mission statements was to terrorise eight-year-olds! I’m not sure we could pitch it now.
Doctor Who
isn’t just Hammer Horror or sci-fi. It’s also a little bit
The Generation Game
, a little bit showbiz. It’s a weird show. It’s half scary Gothic castle, half shiny floorshow. Any show can be one or the other, but
Doctor Who
manages to be both. It’s great – the most entertaining thing that British television has ever done.’

The newest incumbent of the 50-year-old part of the Doctor agreed. Peter Capaldi said on
Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor
: ‘I think
Doctor
Who
is an extraordinary show and the thing that strikes me about it is that it’s still here after all this time. And the reason that I think that it’s still here is because of the work of all the writers and the directors and the producers who’ve worked on the show, and the actors – and I don’t just mean the fabulous actors who’ve played the Doctor, but all those actors who’ve sweated inside rubber monster costumes and those who wear futuristic lurex catsuits. But the real reason – the big reason – that
Doctor Who
is still with us is because of every single viewer who ever turned on to watch this show – at any age, at any time in its history and in their history – and who took it into their heart because
Doctor Who
belongs to all of us. Everyone made
Doctor Who
.’

Through to the 2013 Christmas Special,
Doctor Who
had racked up 800 individual episodes. That’s far too many to list here with associated credits (there are entire books that do little else), so this ‘resources’ section will direct readers to useful
Doctor Who
guides hosted on the Internet. Be aware: the Internet is dynamic and constantly changing, so the following URLs could be subject to change.

Classic Series (1963-89, 1996):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/

New Series (2005-onwards):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006q2x0/episodes/guide

A selection of titles consulted in the writing of this book and recommended for further reading on key topics and issues raised.

Bignell, Jonathan and Andrew O’ Day. 2004.
Terry Nation
. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Booy, Miles. 2012. Love and
Monsters: The Doctor Who
Experience, 1979 to the Present
. London: IB Taurus.

Britton, Piers D and Simon J Baker. 2003.
Reading Between Designs:
Visual Imagery and the Generation of Meaning in The Avengers
,
The Prisoner and Doctor Who
. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Britton, Piers D. 2011.
TARDISbound: Navigating the Universe of
Doctor Who
. London: IB Taurus.

Burk, Graham & Robert Smith. 2012.
Who is the Doctor: The
Unofficial Guide to Doctor Who, the New Series
. Toronto: ECW Press

Chapman, James. 2006
. Inside the TARDIS: A Cultural History of
Doctor Who.
London: IB Taurus.

Clapham, Mark, Eddie Robson and Jim Smith. 2005.
Who’s Next:
An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who.
London: Virgin.

Collins, Frank. 2010.
Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens –
Exploring the Worlds of the Eleventh Doctor
. London: Classic TV Press.

Cornell, Paul (ed). 1997.
License Denied: Rumblings from the
Doctor Who Underground
. London: Virgin Publishing.

Cornell, Paul, Martin Day and Keith Topping. 1995.
Doctor Who:
The Discontinuity Guide
. London: Virgin Publishing.

Gillatt, Gary. 1998.
Doctor Who from A to Z: A Celebration of
Thirty-Five Years of Adventures in Time and Space
. London: BBC Books.

Howe, David J, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker. 1992.
Doctor Who: The Sixties
. London: Virgin.

Howe, David J, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker. 1994.
Doctor Who: The Seventies
. London: Virgin.

Howe, David J, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker. 1997.
Doctor Who: The Eighties
. London: Virgin.

Miles, Lawrence and Tat Wood. 2004.
About Time 3
. New Orleans: Mad Norwegian Press.

Miles, Lawrence and Tat Wood. 2004.
About Time 4
. New Orleans: Mad Norwegian Press.

Miles, Lawrence and Tat Wood. 2005.
About Time 5
. New Orleans: Mad Norwegian Press.

Miles, Lawrence and Tat Wood. 2006.
About Time 1
. New Orleans: Mad Norwegian Press.

Miles, Lawrence and Tat Wood. 2006.
About Time 2
. New Orleans: Mad Norwegian Press.

Miles, Lawrence and Tat Wood. 2007.
About Time 6
. New Orleans: Mad Norwegian Press.

Newman, Kim. 2005.
BFI TV Classics:
Doctor Who
. London: BFI.

Segal, Philip, with Gary Russell. 2000.
Doctor Who: Regeneration.
London: Harper-Collins Entertainment.

Sleight, Graham. 2012.
The Doctor’s Monsters: Meanings of the
Monstrous in Doctor Who.
London: IB Taurus.

Tulloch, John and Henry Jenkins. 1995.
Science Fiction Audiences:
Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek.
London and New York: Routledge.

Walker, Stephen James. 2012.
Cracks in Time: The Unofficial and
Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who 2010.
London: Telos.

Wood, Tat. 2009.
About Time 3: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor
Who
[Expanded 2nd Edition]. New Orleans: Mad Norwegian Press.

As the list of available Doctor Who stories on DVD is constantly changing, the web is again the best place to obtain an up-to-date list of what’s available.

Stories Available on DVD List:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_DVD_releases

DVD Restoration Team:

http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/

Big Finish Productions (Audio Dramas):
http://www.bigfinish.com/

Doctor Who
Magazine (4-Weekly Magazine):
http://www.paninicomics.co.uk/Home.jsp

Character Options (Action Figures):
http://www.character-online.com/

The Genesis of Doctor Who

After years of previously only being accessible to researchers, the BBC have made a collection of documents (some referred to in chapter one) about the creation of
Doctor Who
, available for all via their online archive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/doctorwho/index.shtml

‘Up to the age of 40…’, Sydney Newman. Interviewed by Auger, David & Stephen James Walker.
Doctor Who Magazine
, issue 141. October 1988. London: Marvel.

‘When Donald Wilson and I…’, Sydney Newman. Howe, David J, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker,
Doctor Who: The
Handbook – The First Doctor, The William Hartnell Years: 1963–1966.
London: Virgin Publishing Ltd, 1994.

‘She had never directed…’, Sydney Newman. Howe, David J, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker,
Doctor Who: The Handbook
– The First Doctor, The William Hartnell Years: 1963 –1966.
London: Virgin Publishing Ltd, 1994.

‘I think it just looked so very strange…’, Verity Lambert. Tulloch, John and Manuel Alvarado,
Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text.
London: Macmillan, 1983.

Donald Bull, Alice Frick and John Braybon, Internal BBC Reports on Science Fiction, April–July 1962.

Newsom, John (Chair).
The Newsom Report
(1963),
Half Our Future:
A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England)
. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1963.

‘I was intent upon it containing…’, Sydney Newman. Howe, David J, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker,
Doctor Who: The
Handbook – The First Doctor, The William Hartnell Years: 1963–1966.
London: Virgin Publishing Ltd, 1994.

‘We were going backwards and forwards in time…’, Verity Lambert.
Doctor Who Magazine
, issue 234. January 1996. London: Panini.

‘We have in mind…’, Sydney Newman. Howe, David J, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker,
Doctor Who: The Handbook
– The First Doctor, The William Hartnell Years: 1963–1966.
London: Virgin Publishing Ltd, 1994.

‘He works very well for us…’, David Whitaker. Howe, David J, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker,
Doctor Who:
The Handbook
– The First Doctor, The William Hartnell Years: 1963–1966.
London: Virgin Publishing Ltd, 1994.