Doctor Who on Television
Doctor Who's origin is in television, and for many fans is where the character belongs. The show first aired on the 23rd of November 1963 at 5.15p.m., the day after the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. Because of the furor surrounding the real world events of the time (and a widespread power failure that meant many people didn't get to see that first showing), the first episode, An Unearthly Child, was repeated a week later just before the airing of the second episode. The format of the show was episodic, with stories running over several weeks and individual episodes ending in cliff hangers leading into the next part. At first each episode carried an on-screen title, but the actual overall titles were not widely known. Fans gave stories their own names, often the title of the initial episode, and when more "accurate" titles were discovered on BBC documents years later, a lot of (often pedantic) renaming began - hence several early stories are known by a variety of names.
The show rapidly grew into a British institution, and if one story can be pinpointed as the start of this process, it would have to be the second story, generally known as The Daleks, which introduced the Doctor's greatest enemies, a race of hate filled beings who travelled around in heavily armoured survival suits. Another landmark in the show's history came when the original lead actor left the show; deciding that since he was an alien, the producers recast his part and made it a feature of the story - the Doctor had become so old that his body had failed him, and so he was forced to rejuvenate (later regenerate was the term used). The success of this ploy guaranteed the show a longevity others could not match, allowing the show to reinvent itself every so often. It ran for 26 years, the final regular episode airing on the 6th December 1989, when ratings (and more truthfully a huge dollop of BBC internal politics and a Director General who admitted he hated science fiction) brought it to an end. Well, not really. Because the show, like the Doctor himself, is incredibly hard to kill. Since it "ended" there has been a TV movie (a pilot for a new series which didn't happen), an aborted thirtieth anniversary special, a charity thirtieth anniversary special (which the Beeb classified officially as a "pantomime" on their records), a 1999 Comic Relief special (apparently the highest rated part of the show), and an incredible number of novels and audio plays and comic strips, and so on. Like the Doctor, the show can turn up almost anywhere. And like the Doctor, although the form might change and initially be hard to recognise, at heart it's still the same man (and show) that people grew up with. The Doctor lives!
Sadly though he's not all there. Thanks to a short sighted policy by the BBC in the sixties and seventies many episodes of Doctor Who were destroyed, to free storage space. Whole stories were thrown in the incinerator. Over the years the odd episode has been discovered, often from foreign stations who had bought copies off the BBC to show abroad. But even with this, there are over 100 episodes of the show still missing, presumed lost forever.
First in our more in depth look at the show, is the obligatory story listing. I've listed alternate titles that have been in common usage for each show, but for information such as broadcast dates and synopsis, you'll have to wait until I get time to do an episode by episode breakdown - there are plenty of other sites and various reference books that can already provide this, so I'll be concentrating on stuff I feel is less well covered elsewhere first.
Season 1
100,000 BC, a.k.a. A Tribe of Gum, a.k.a. An Unearthly Child
The Daleks, a.k.a The Mutants, a.k.a. The Dead Planet
Inside the Spaceship, a.k.a. The Edge of Destruction, a.k.a. Beyond the Sun
Marco Polo, a.k.a. A Journey to Cathay
The Keys of Marinus
The Aztecs
The Sensorites
The Reign of Terror
Season 2
Planet of Giants
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
The Rescue
The Romans
The Web Planet
The Crusade
The Space Museum
The Chase
The Time Meddler
Season 3
Galaxy 4
Mission to the Unknown
The Myth Makers
The Dalek Masterplan
The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve
The Ark
The Celestial Toymaker
The Gunfighters - the last story to have individual episode titles.
The Savages
The War Machines
Season 4
The Smugglers
The Tenth Planet
The Second Doctor takes over
The Power of the Daleks
The Highlanders
The Underwater Menace
The Moonbase
The Macra Terror
The Faceless Ones
The Evil of the Daleks
Season 5
The Tomb of the Cybermen
The Abominable Snowmen
The Ice Warriors
The Enemy of the World
The Web of Fear
Fury from the Deep
The Wheel in Space - This story was followed by a repeat of Evil of the Daleks, shown as an in context continuation of the series through the plot device of the Doctor showing his new companion Zoe what she might be letting herself in for on a viewscreen. Thus:
Evil of the Daleks (repeat)
Season 6
The Dominators
The Mind Robber
The Invasion
The Krotons
The Seeds of Death
The Space Pirates
The War Games
Season 7
The Third Doctor debuts and the show moves into colour. The seasons also become far shorter, moving from over 40 episodes a year to between 24 to 26.
Spearhead from Space
Doctor Who and The Silurians
The Ambassadors of Death
Inferno
Season 8
Terror of the Autons
The Mind of Evil
The Claws of Axos
Colony in Space
The Dæmons
Season 9
Day of the Daleks
The Curse of Peladon
The Sea Devils
The Mutants
The Time Monster
Season 10
The Three Doctors
Carnival of Monsters
Frontier in Space
Planet of the Daleks
The Green Death
Season 11
The Time Warrior
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
Death to the Daleks
The Monster of Peladon
Planet of the Spiders
The Fourth Doctor takes over
Season 12
Robot
The Ark in Space
The Sontaran Experiment
Genesis of the Daleks
Revenge of the Cybermen
Season 13
Terror of the Zygons
Planet of Evil
Pyramids of Mars
The Android Invasion
The Brain of Morbius
The Seeds of Doom
Season 14
The Masque of Mandragora
The Hand of Fear
The Deadly Assassin
The Face of Evil
The Robots of Death
Season 15
Horror of Fang Rock
The Invisible Enemy
Image of the Fendahl
The Sun Makers
Underworld
The Invasion of Time
Season 16
The Ribos Operation
The Pirate Planet
The Stones of Blood
The Androids of Tara
The Power of Kroll
The Armageddon Factor
Season 17
Destiny of the Daleks
City of Death
The Creature from the Pit
Nightmare of Eden
The Horns of Nimon
Shada - never finished because of a strike, and hence never aired.
Season 18
The Leisure Hive
Meglos
Full Circle
State of Decay
Warriors' Gate
The Keeper of Traken
Logopolis
The fourth Doctor gives way to the fifth.
Season 19
Castrovalva
Four to Doomsday
Kinda
The Visitation
Black Orchid
Earthshock
Time-Flight
Season 20
Arc of Infinity
Snakedance
Mawdryn Undead
Terminus
Enlightenment
The King's Demons
20th Anniversary Special, not part of a Season
The Five Doctors
Season 21
Warriors of the Deep
The Awakening
Frontios
Resurrection of the Daleks
Planet of Fire
The Caves of Androzani
The fifth Doctor bows out and the sixth replaces him.
The Twin Dilemma
Season 22
Attack of the Cybermen
Vengeance on Varos
The Mark of Rani
The Two Doctors
Timelash
Revelation of the Daleks
Season 23 (delayed by the BBC, meaning the original stories were junked - see the Missing Adventures section)
The Mysterious Planet
Mindwarp
Terror of the Vervoids
The Ultimate Foe
Season 24
The Doctor hits his head and regenerates into the Seventh Doctor
Time and the Rani
Paradise Towers
Delta and the Bannermen
Dragonfire
Season 25
Remembrance of the Daleks
The Happiness Patrol
Silver Nemesis
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
Season 26
Battlefield
Ghost Light
The Curse of Fenric
Survival
The TV Movie
Doctor Who - the seventh Doctor departs, and the eighth arrives.
As well as the series, the Doctor has made appearances in a number of other shows, most often in comedy sketches or charity specials (and in one notable case, a special that fitted both of those descriptions).
In character appearances of the Doctor
Disney Time 1975 (presented by Tom Baker in character as the Doctor)
Prime Computers Adverts
The Master (five minute short)
U.N.I.T. Recruitment Film
In A Fix With Sontarans (special spot within Jim'll Fix It Show)
Search Out Space (part of the Search Out Science educational series, presented by Sylvester McCoy in character as the Doctor, Sophie Aldred in character as Ace, and John Leeson, in character as K-9)
Dimensions in Time
Comedy Sketches with New Doctors
Crackerjack
Lenny Henry
Lilly Savage
Curse of the Fatal Death
The Pitch of Fear
The Web of Caves
The Kidnappers
Documentaries
Lively Arts: Whose Doctor Who
Bigger on the Inside
The Antique Doctor Who Roadshow
Missing In Action
I Was That Monster
Resistance Is Useless
(More Than) Thirty Years In the TARDIS
Doctor Who Night - including Adventures in Time and Space; How to Live Together; Carnival of Monsters; How to Build a TARDIS.
Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.
All images and characters depicted on this site are copyright their respective holders, and are used for informational purposes only. No infringement is intended and copyrights remain at source.