Doctor Who
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Doctor Who is the long-running British science fiction series based around a mysterious time lord known only as ‘The Doctor’. Travelling through time the Doctor faces many foes whilst attempting to maintain stability in the universe and its various dimensions. Doctor Who has been running on and off for the BBC from 1963 right up until the current day.
The Doctor
Doctor Who is a Science Fiction series with elements of humour and drama. The show follows the Doctor and usually at least one human female companion as they travel through time and space to ward of alien foes and to secure the safety of humanity and the universe. The doctor takes on the appearance of a human man, but he is in fact an alien time lord from the distant planet of Gallifrey. He travels through time in the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space), which has lost it’s ability to change appearance during a stay in London, leaving it stuck in stasis as a distinctive blue Police phone box. The Doctor is a Time Lord and as such is equipped with a superior knowledge and rather oddly two hearts, making him a far stronger enemy to the forces of evil than his human form suggests. Similarly the Doctor doesn’t die like a human, he regenerates into another form making the transition from one Doctor to another, changing character and appearance but maintaining the same perspective and ethos.
History
The Doctor has regenerated 10 times in his television life of over 40 years covering 718 episodes. The first Doctor was played by William Hartnell between 1963 and ’66, followed by Patrick Troughton (‘66 - ’69), Jon Pertwee (‘70-’74), Tom Baker (‘74-’81), Peter Davison (‘81- ’84), Colin Baker (‘84-’86) and Sylvester McCoy (’87 – ’89 and 1996). The show was put on hiatus after a drop in ratings toward the end of the 1980’s, but the role was reprised albeit unsuccessfully by Paul McGann in 1996 in a one off feature length episode. After the unsuccessful incarnation and a number of parody episodes the show was finally resurrected in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the new Doctor. Doctor Who re-emerged as a loving pastiche to the old style of show, with old foes rediscovered and a new modern take on what has become an old standard. Eccleston lasted just one series before being replaced by the current incarnation of the Doctor, David Tennant.
Monsters and Foes
The shows star is not always the doctor, some of the most memorable characters have been the Doctors various adversaries. The strange alien creatures have come in all forms, killer mannequins, yetis, the ice warriors, the fear inducing cyber men and the Doctors arch nemesis The Master a fellow Time Lord but with an evil streak. However the most famous foe lies in the form of the Daleks, the evil armoured monsters from the planet Skaro. Headed by the hideous leader Davros, the Daleks are a race of malevolent evil whose one purpose is to eradicate or as they say ‘exterminate!’ humans, Time Lords or anything else that crosses their path with their vaporising ray. The one flaw in the Daleks armoury is their inability to climb stairs due to their lack of legs or any other climbing apparatus, something that is often utilised and sometimes parodied by the Doctor.