Doctor Who (1983: Doomsday)

Doctor Who
Genre	Science fiction; Adventure; Drama
Created by	Sydney Newman; C. E. Webber; Donald Wilson
Theme music composer	Ron Grainer
Composer(s)	Various
Country of origin	Celtic Alliance
Original language(s)	English
Production company(s)	Gallifrey Animation
Distributor	Celtic Broadcasting Union
Release
Original channel	RTE One; BBC One (Scotland); BBC One (Wales)
Original release	September 5, 2001

Doctor Who
	; Logo from Australian Doctor Who
Genre	Science fiction; Adventure; Drama
Created by	Sydney Newman; C. E. Webber; Donald Wilson
Creative director(s)	Jonathan M. Shiff
Theme music composer	Ron Grainer
Composer(s)	Various
Country of origin	Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand
Original language(s)	English
Production
Executive producer(s)	Jonathan M. Shiff
Production company(s)	Jonathan M. Shiff Productions; Pacific Pictures
Distributor	ANZBC
Release
Original channel	ANZBC One
Original release	22 December 1997

Doctor Who
	; The final title card for Doctor Who
Genre	Science fiction; Adventure; Drama
Created by	Sydney Newman; C. E. Webber; Donald Wilson
Creative director(s)	Various
Theme music composer	Ron Grainer
Composer(s)	Various
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	20
Production
Executive producer(s)	Various
Release
Original channel	BBC One
Original release	5 December, 1963 – 16 March 1983

This 1983: Doomsday page is a Proposal.

It has not been ratified and is therefore not yet a part of the 1983: Doomsday Timeline. You are welcome to correct errors and/or comment at the Talk Page. If you add this label to an article, please do not forget to make mention of it on the main Discussion page for the Timeline.

Doctor Who is a science fiction British television and radio drama. Featuring a time-travelling "Time Lord" known as the Doctor, the show revolves around his adventures in time and space aboard his TARDIS, a time-travelling starship disguised as a blue Police Box. The Doctor fights a vast number of aliens and foes and works to protect space and time.

Predating Doomsday, the show began in 1963 and ran until the events of Doomsday in 1983. The series remains a staple of British culture, and had been exported, where it gained a cult following. Revival efforts have been ongoing around the world, with the most prominent being a remake by the Australia-New Zealand Broadcasting Company, and a sequel by the RTE and BBC Scotland and Wales Cymru, as well as various radio shows and comic books in the British Isles and beyond.

Pre-Doomsday History[]

Doctor Who began as a television serial in the United Kingdom on 23 November 1963. Hosted by the BBC, the development of the show was a collaboration between Sydney Newman (Head of Drama) and Verity Lambert. Helping them was a team of writers and storyboard developers. The first episode, An Unearthly Child, saw the debut of the First Doctor, played by William Hartnell. Joining him was his granddaughter Susan (played by Carole Ann Ford) and schoolteachers Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterton (William Russel). Due to the Kennedy assassination, viewership was initially low. However, later episodes such as The Daleks, drew a massive number of viewers and acclaim to the show.

Hartnell's relations with his co-stars and producers had been good, but many of them began leaving the show, being replaced by members Hartnell did not have good relationships with. Due to poor health and difficulty in remembering lines, Hartnell stepped down in 1996. Instead of writing the Doctor off, however, the producers decided to replace Hartnell with a different actor. The change in actors was explained as a "regeneration": The Doctor could regenerate from near death, leading to him taking on a new appearance and personality. The Second Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton, was a stark contrast to the First Doctor. While Hartnell's character was known for being cantankerous and impatient, Troughton's character was much more light-hearted and humorous.

Troughton's role as the Doctor lasted for three years until, in 1969, he retired due to the heavy workload. The show had lost a considerable number of viewers, leading to the consideration of cancelling the show. This consideration did not go forth, however. Jon Pertwee stepped in as the Third Doctor. Banished to Earth due to a punishment by the Time Lords, the Third Doctor's plotline proved to be interesting enough to save the show from being cancelled. The episodes of the Third Doctor were shot in color TV, a first for the show. The villain known as The Master, played by Roger Delgado, also frequently worked against the Doctor, proving to be an interesting and engaging adversary.

Jon Pertwee would eventually leave the show after 1974, reportedly influenced by the death of Delgado in a car accident, Katy Manning's departure from the show, and the upcoming departure of producer Barry Letts, and script editor Terrence Dicks. His replacement, Tom Baker, would go on to become the most well-known actor to play the character, to the point that he is frequently viewed as The Doctor when someone thinks about the original series. Baker's Fourth Doctor was characterized as an eccentric, sometimes passionate and caring, but other times aloof and alien. Tom Baker's tenure would be the longest running of any actor, lasting seven seasons and seven years.

Baker would eventually leave Doctor Who in 1980, necessitating the casting of a Fifth Doctor. This would be found in Peter Davison. A younger actor, Davison played the part as much more human than his predecessors, often reacting to his circumstances, rather than being proactive. Davison would play the role through 16 March 1983, making him the last actor of the original series. The BBC had prepared a special 20th anniversary episode that would have reunited the surviving Doctor actors, though the events of Doomsday destroyed the broadcaster before it could be aired. Miraculously, however, copies of the special would survive, and would be broadcast by various successors of the BBC.

Due to Doctor Who's popularity, several revival projects have sprung up around the world.

Australian remake[]

Doctor Who is an Australian-New Zealander remake of the original show, produced by Jonathan M. Shiff Productions and Pacific Pictures for the Australia-New Zealand Broadcasting Company. Inspired by the original show's strong presence in Australia, the show featured reimagined versions of classic episodes, in addition to new episodes produced specifically for the show. The show is primarily shot in New Zealand, though most of the production staff comes from Australia.

The ANZBC commissioned the production of the remake in late 1996. This was inspired by the strong presence the original show had, as it had been broadcast in the region by The ABC and its successor over the years, and it was believed that a remake would be in good demand because of this. For the role of showrunner, producer Johnathan M. Shiff was recruited. Under his helm, he began drafting a remake of "An Unearthly Child", the first serial of the original show.

The show began with the television movie "Not of this World", a semi-remake of the original show's first episode: "An Unearthly Child". It featured a cast comprising of Lucy Lawless, Michael Galvin, Paul Hogan and Angela Dotchin, all of whom would return for the series proper. The show's success would lead to other revivals of British productions, such as Jonathan M. Shiff and Yoram Gross's World of Gerry Anderson for Nine Network.

Five actors have played The Doctor in total: Paul Hogan, Temuera Morrison, Sam Neill, Martin Henderson, and Joe Naufahu. A sixth actor, Claudia Black, is to replace Naufahu in 2024, she will be the first female to portray the Doctor in live action.

Celtic revival[]

Doctor Who is an Irish-Scottish-Welsh animated series produced by Raidió Teilifís Éireann, the British Broadcasting Company of Scotland, and the British Broadcasting Company of Wales Cymru. One of their first original productions, Doctor Who differentiates itself from the Australian version both by being animated, and by acting as a sequel to the original show, starring future incarnations of The Doctor after the events of the classic series.

It is explained that after the events of the original show, the Daleks and the Time Lords engaged in a devasting "time-war" that left both species nearly extinct, as an allegory for Doomsday. The Doctor, one of the surviving Time Lords, narrowly escaped with his life from the events of Doomsday, and returns to wandering space-time, protecting the universe with a new host of companions.

Four actors have voiced the new incarnations of the Doctor: David McDonald, Kwame Mumba, Ioan Davies, and Clare Dunn, the first female Doctor.

British radio[]

Doctor Who remains a staple of post Doomsday radio in the British Isles, owing to its pre-war popularity. Many radio stations, both professional and amateur, have created their own radio shows based on the iconic sci-fi show. The most prominent of these is the Nothumbrian Radio production in Northumbria. This production featured retold versions of classic episodes, alongside adaptations of expanded media tales and new stories.

Comics[]

Dominion Comics launched TV Century 21 in January 2000. A relaunch of a similar title from the 1960's, TV Century 21 is a biweekly comic book featuring various titles taken from classic British television, such as the works of Gerry Anderson (both live action and "supermarionation"), ITC's The Avangers, and Doctor Who. The Who stories feature many stories taken from the original series; notably, it would tell the story of how Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor regenerated. These comics would eventually be spun-off into their own magazine, Doctor Who & the Universe, in 2007.

Proposed film serial[]

In 2013, film producers at Colorado Films proposed a film serial based on Doctor Who. The serial was to be based around the Doctor travelling to the past of World War II, and having to stop his enemy, the Master, from escalating the conflict to destroy mankind before they could achieve their destiny. The pitch was inspired by the original show's relative popularity in reruns on PBS and other public broadcasters in the NAU, however it would be rejected as many felt they would have to Americanize the show. Instead, the pitch would be reworked into Star Trek Year 2: City on the Edge of Forever.

Characters[]

The Doctor (pre-Doomsday)[]

The title character of the show, "The Doctor" is an alias assumed by a millennia old alien, a Time Lord, from the planet Gallifrey. He travels through time and space in his TARDIS, usually with companions. Many actors have played The Doctor over the years, with the change being explained via regeneration.

The First Doctor is the original incarnation of the Doctor, as portrayed by William Hartnell. Hartnell's portrayal of the character was initially a stubborn and abrasive old man who was distrustful of humans, but he mellowed out into a much friendlier, grandfatherly figure who adored his travels with his companions. The First Doctor's original companions were his granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford) and her schoolteachers Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill). In later episodes, he travelled alongside 25th-century orphan Vicki (Maureen O'Brien), space pilot Steven Taylor (Peter Purves), Trojan handmaiden Katarina (Adrienne Hill), and sixties flower child Dodo Chaplet (Jackie Lane). His final on-screen companions were the working-class sailor Ben Jackson (Michael Craze) and the sophisticated socialite Polly (Anneke Wills).

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article First Doctor, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).

The Second Doctor was played by actor Patrick Troughton. Troughton's Doctor was an outwardly scruffy, lighthearted and bumbling tramp, a portrayal that was nicknamed the Cosmic Hobo. He hid a more firm and slightly darker side that he would often use to manipulate his enemies and allies for the greater good. His original "swinging sixties" companions were Polly and Ben Jackson, who had travelled with his previous incarnation. They were later joined by 18th century Jacobite Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines), who would become the Second Doctor's most loyal and trusted companion. Following Ben and Polly's departures, the Doctor and Jamie were joined by the Victorian orphan Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling) and 21st century astrophysicist Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury). Jamie and Zoe stayed with the Second Doctor until the Time Lords sent them back to their own times, with their memories of all but their first encounter with him wiped.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Second Doctor, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).

The Third Doctor was played by Jon Pertwee. He portrayed the Doctor as a dapper man of action in stark contrast to his wily but less action-orientated predecessors. While previous Doctors' stories had all involved time and space travel, for production reasons Pertwee's stories initially depicted the Doctor stranded on Earth in exile, where he worked as a scientific advisor to the international military group UNIT. Within the story, the Third Doctor came into existence as part of a punishment from his own race, the Time Lords, who forced him to regenerate and also disabled his TARDIS. Eventually, this restriction is lifted, and the Third Doctor embarks on more traditional time travel and space exploration stories. His initial companion is UNIT scientist Liz Shaw (Caroline John), who unceremoniously leaves the Doctor's company between episodes to be replaced by the more wide-eyed Jo Grant (Katy Manning), who then continues to accompany the Doctor after he regains use of his TARDIS. His final companion is intrepid journalist Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen).

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Third Doctor, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).

Tom Baker played the Fourth Doctor. Baker portrays the Fourth Doctor as a whimsical and sometimes brooding individual whose enormous personal warmth is at times tempered by his capacity for righteous anger. His initial companions were the journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who had travelled with his previous incarnation, and Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) of UNIT. His later companions were the warrior Leela (Louise Jameson), robotic dog K9 (John Leeson and David Brierly), female Time Lord Romana (Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward), teen mathematical genius Adric (Matthew Waterhouse), teen alien aristocrat Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), and Australian flight attendant Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding). Baker portrayed the character for seven consecutive seasons, which remains the longest tenure of any actor to portray the lead, counting the classic and both revival series. Baker's tenure as the Doctor is highly regarded among fans of the show and considered one of the most iconic incarnations of the character.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Fourth Doctor, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).

The Fifth and final "classic" Doctor was played by Peter Davison. Davison portrays the Fifth Doctor as having a vulnerable side and a tendency towards indecisiveness, dressed as a boyish Edwardian cricketer. He travelled with boy genius Adric, alien aristocrat Nyssa and Australian flight attendant Tegan Jovanka, who had travelled with his previous incarnation.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Fifth Doctor, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).

The Doctor (ANZBC version)[]

The First Doctor is the original incarnation of the Doctor in ANZBC continuity, as portrayed by Paul Hogan. Hogan played him as essentially going through a mid-life crisis, someone who was growing old, but too afraid to admit it. Storylines also played up Hogan's broad Australian accent and how enemies tended to underestimate his intelligence because of it. His first companions were his granddaughter, Susan Foreman (Angela Dotchin, then Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell), 1963 science teacher Ian Chesterton (Michael Galvin), 1997 history teacher Barbara Wright (Lucy Lawless), and robotic dog K-9 (Keith Scott). He was later joined by working class mechanic Steve Jackson (Shane Jacobson), and Roman handmaiden Julia (Angela Bloomfield).

The Second Doctor, as played by Temuera Morrison, was the next incarnation. Playing him as much more energetic and fuller of life than the First Doctor, the Second remained intelligent and kindhearted, but gained a stronger sense of wit. His first companions were Steve Jackson, K-9, Susan, and Julia. Susan would leave after a season, to be replaced by Kronon (physically Zoe Bell, vocally Stig Wemyss), a rehabilitated Cyberman. Other future companions include investigative journalist Sara Jane Smith (Rena Owen), Samoan pilot Randall Gaoa (Pua Magasiva), and the psychic Vicky West (Sally Martin).

The Third Doctor was portrayed by Sam Neill. Playing him as a world-wearier man, the Third Doctor often reminisced about his previous adventures and previous companions, and always seemed to have a story about his home world. Neill also emphasized the Doctor's love of human culture to a noticeably greater extent than either. His first companions were K-9, Randall Gaoa and Vicky West. His other companions included Hawaiian retiree David Yoshida (Keone Young) and cold war Chinese spy Fan Wei (Kelly Hu).

The Fourth Doctor was played by Martin Henderson. Fun loving and a bit easy going, The Fourth Doctor still retains his compassion and intelligence, even if he seems a bit goofy at times. His first companions were David Yoshida and Fan Wei, they were later joined by former director of EGO Peter Wells (Wayne Pygram).

The Fifth Doctor is played by Joe Naufahu. More serious minded compared to his previous incarnation, the Fifth Doctor was afriad of losing his companions, and was often reluctant to take on another one. Despite this, he still carried on, never giving up.

The Sixth Doctor will be played by Claudia Black. The first female incarnation of The Doctor in this continuity, Claudia Black is also notable as the second Australian to take the role, as every actor after Paul Hogan had been from New Zealand or Samoa.

The Doctor (CBU version)[]

The Sixth Doctor was voiced by Scottish actor David McDonald.

The Seventh Doctor was voiced by Black Irish actor Kwame Mumba.

The Eighth Doctor was voiced by Welshman Ioan Davies.

The Ninth Doctor is voiced by Irish actress Clare Dunn.