The Doctor

This article is about the character of the Doctor. For a more general overview of the series, see Doctor Who or, see History of Doctor Who.

The Doctor is the central character in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who, and also features in a vast range of spin-off novels, audio dramas and comic strips connected to the series.

To date, ten actors have played the role in the television series (including the 1996 television film), with these changes being explained by his ability to regenerate. Several other actors have played the character on stage and film, in audio dramas, and in occasional special episodes of the series. David Tennant currently portrays the tenth incarnation of the Doctor.

Background

The Doctor is a Time Lord, an extraterrestrial scientist from the planet Gallifrey, who wanders time and space in an internally vast time machine called the TARDIS — Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space - an acronym the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, claims to have invented. Although the TARDIS once had the ability to disguise itself according to its environment, after landing in 1963 London its facade became "stuck" in the form of a British police box because of a malfunctioning chameleon circuit. It has remained in that shape ever since. Over the course of the series the Doctor occasionally attempts to fix the circuit, most notably in Logopolis and Attack of the Cybermen (in the latter turning the TARDIS exterior into a pipe organ, among other incongruous shapes), but eventually gives up the effort out of fondness for the police box shape. The discrepancy between the small exterior of the ship and its vast interior is explained by its dimensionally transcendental nature, whereby the ship's interior and exterior dimensions exist independently of each other.

Little is known about the Doctor's childhood. In "The Empty Child" the Doctor claimed he knows "what it is like to be the only child left out in the cold". Later, during "The Girl in the Fireplace", Madame de Pompadour "saw" memories of his childhood during a telepathic session between the two and commented that it was "so lonely". However, when asked if he has a brother in "Smith and Jones", the Doctor simply replied "not any more". In the same episode, he mentioned "playing with Röntgen blocks in the nursery." In "The Time Monster", the Doctor says he grew up in a house on the side of a mountain, and talks about a hermit who lived under a tree behind the house and inspired the Doctor when he was depressed. In "The Sound of Drums" (2007), the Doctor describes a Time Lord Academy initiation ceremony where, at the age of eight, Time Lord children are made to look into the Untempered Schism, a gap in space and time where they can view the time vortex. Some are inspired, some go mad (as he suggests happened to his nemesis the Master), and some run away. When asked what he did, he replies, "Oh, one of the ones that ran away - I've never stopped!"

References to the Doctor's family are rare in the series. During the first two seasons he travelled with his granddaughter, Susan Foreman, and as noted above he apparently once had a brother. During his second incarnation when asked about his family, the Doctor says his memories of them are still alive (The Tomb of the Cybermen) but whether that means they are deceased is unknown. Also in the new series the Doctor mentions to Rose that he was once a father, but then quickly changes the subject.

Mostly due to the age and unreliability of the TARDIS's navigation system, the Doctor explores the universe at random; using his extensive knowledge of science and technology to avert whatever crises he encounters. The Doctor generally travels with one or more companions. Most of these make a conscious decision to travel with him, while others, especially early in the series, are accidental passengers.

Although Time Lords resemble humans, their physiology differs in some key respects. For example, like other members of his race, the Doctor has two hearts (binary vascular system), a "respiratory bypass system" that allows him to go without air for some while, an internal body temperature of 15–16 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit) and he occasionally exhibits a super-human level of stamina. Additionally, he has shown a resistance to temporal effects and has demonstrated a telepathic ability, albeit to a limited degree. The Doctor also exhibits some weaknesses uncommon to humans. For example, in The Mind of Evil (1971) he claimed that a tablet of aspirin could kill him.

In his final serial, the Second Doctor states that Time Lords can live forever, "barring accidents." When "accidents" do occur, Time Lords can usually regenerate into new bodies, resulting in extremely long life-spans.

In the beginning

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The title screen of the original untransmitted pilot of Doctor Who.

The character of the Doctor was created by the BBC's Head of Drama Sydney Newman, the driving force behind the creation of Doctor Who itself. The first format document for the series that was to become Doctor Who — then provisionally titled The Troubleshooters — was written up in March 1963 by C. E. Webber, a BBC staff writer who had been brought in to help develop the project. Webber's document contained a main character described as "The maturer man, 35-40, with some 'character twist'." However, Newman was not keen on this idea and — along with several other changes to Webber's initial format — created an alternative lead character named "Dr Who": a crotchety older man piloting a stolen time machine, on the run from his own far future world. No written record of Newman's conveyance of these ideas — believed to have taken place in April 1963 — exists, and the character of "Dr Who" first begins appearing in existing documentation from May of that year.

The character was first portrayed by William Hartnell in 1963, who played him as the irascible, grandfatherly figure originally conceived by Newman. When, after three years, Hartnell left the series due to ill health, the role was handed over to respected character actor Patrick Troughton. To date, ten actors have portrayed distinct incarnations of the Doctor on television. (Due to Hartnell's death in 1975, actor Richard Hurndall replaced him as the First Doctor in 1983's The Five Doctors.) Of those, the longest-lasting and perhaps the most recognisable incarnation is the Fourth Doctor, as played by Tom Baker. Currently, the Tenth Doctor is portrayed by David Tennant.

At the series' beginning, nothing at all is known of the Doctor: not even his name (the actual form of which remains a mystery). In the very first serial, An Unearthly Child, two teachers from Coal Hill School in London, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, become intrigued by one of their students, Susan Foreman, who exhibits high intelligence and unusually advanced knowledge. Trailing her to a junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane, they encounter a strange old man and hear Susan's voice coming from inside what appears to be a police box. Pushing their way inside, the two find that the exterior is actually camouflage for the dimensionally transcendental interior of the TARDIS. The old man, whom Susan calls "Grandfather" but who identifies himself as "the Doctor", subsequently kidnaps Barbara and Ian to prevent them from telling anyone about the existence of the ship, taking them on an adventure in time and space.

Becoming "involved"

The Doctor is an adventurer and scientist with a strong moral sense. He usually solves problems with his wits rather than with force, and is more likely to wield a sonic screwdriver than a gun; although he has been seen to use weapons as a last resort.

As a time traveller, the Doctor has been present at or directly involved in countless major historical events on the planet Earth and elsewhere — sometimes more than once. In the 2005 series premiere, "Rose", it is revealed that the Ninth Doctor was instrumental in preventing a family from boarding the Titanic prior to her fateful voyage. In "The End of the World", the Doctor claimed to have been on board and survived the Titanic's sinking to find himself 'clinging to an iceberg.'("It wasn't half cold") The Fourth Doctor also mentioned this event in Robot and The Invasion of Time, where he claims the sinking was not his fault. The final episode of the current season finishes with the prow of the Titanic bursting into the interior of the TARDIS.

Many historical figures on Earth have also encountered the Doctor. In City of Death it is revealed that the Doctor has met Leonardo da Vinci and William Shakespeare (whom he re-met in "The Shakespeare Code"), and that the first folio of the latter's Hamlet was transcribed by the Doctor himself (City of Death). He has also met a young H. G. Wells (Timelash), Albert Einstein (Time and the Rani), Mao Zedong (The Mind of Evil), Richard the Lionheart (The Crusade), Wyatt Earp (The Gunfighters) and Marco Polo (Marco Polo). More recently, the Doctor has shared adventures with Charles Dickens ("The Unquiet Dead"), Queen Victoria ("Tooth and Claw"), and Madame de Pompadour ("The Girl in the Fireplace"). A photograph seen in the 2005 series shows that the Ninth Doctor witnessed the death of JFK.

It is this penchant for becoming "involved" with the universe — in direct violation of official Time Lord policy — that has caused the Doctor to be labelled a renegade by the Time Lords. Most of the time, however, his actions are tolerated, especially given that he has saved not just Gallifrey but also the universe several times over. The Time Lords are also partial to sending him on missions when deniability or expendability is needed. The Doctor's standing in Time Lord society has waxed and waned over the years, from being a hunted man to being appointed Lord President of the High Council (he does not assume the office for very long, and is eventually removed from it in his absence). However, some Time Lords respect him to some degree for his heroic deeds. In the end, though, the Doctor has always seemed quite content to remain a renegade and an exile.

By the time of his ninth incarnation, the Doctor believes himself to be the last surviving Time Lord following the Last Great Time War, although he learns in his tenth incarnation that the Master also survived ("Utopia"). Despite the Doctor's desperate attempts to save the Master from his evil ways, the Master is shot by his wife and refuses to regenerate, seemingly leaving the Doctor alone once more ("Last of the Time Lords"). However, the final scenes involving the Master's body leave the possibility of future regeneration open.

"Doctor who?"

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The Doctor's calling card (from Remembrance of the Daleks).

In the first episode, Barbara addresses the Doctor as "Doctor Foreman", as this is the surname the Doctor's granddaughter Susan goes by, and the junkyard in which they find him bears the sign "I.M. Foreman". When addressed by Ian with this name in the next episode, the Doctor responds, "Eh? Doctor who? What's he talking about?" Later, when he realises that "Foreman" is not the Doctor's name, Ian asks Barbara, "Who is he? Doctor who?" (In an ultimately-unused idea from documents written at the series' inception, Barbara and Ian would have subsequently referred to the Doctor as 'Dr. Who', given their not knowing his real given name.)

Similarly, in the 2005 series premiere, "Rose", when asked his name, the Doctor replies, "Just 'The Doctor'." New companion Rose Tyler later finds a website devoted to the Doctor on the Internet, run by a conspiracy theorist who has been tracking the Ninth Doctor's appearances throughout history, carrying the title "DOCTOR WHO?" (see Doctor Who tie-in websites). The BBC launched a "real" version of this website at "WHO IS DOCTOR WHO?", with the conceit that it is run by Mickey Smith, Rose's boyfriend (having taken over the site following the death of its originator).

In "The Empty Child" (2005), for want of a better name, Rose introduces the Doctor to Jack Harkness as "Mr. Spock". (According to the DVD commentary for this episode, the Doctor was originally to have responded "I'd rather have 'Doctor Who' than Star Trek".)

Although listed in the on-screen credits for nearly twenty years as "Doctor Who" or "Dr Who", the Doctor is never really called by that name in the series, except in that same tongue-in-cheek manner (for example, in The Five Doctors when one character refers to him as "the Doctor", another character asks, "Who?"). The only real exception is the computer WOTAN in the serial The War Machines, which commands that "Doctor Who is required." The Third Doctor's automobile, dubbed "Bessie", carried the licence plate WHO 1, the only ongoing reference to the "Doctor Who" enigma in the original series. The Third Doctor also later drove an outlandish vehicle called the "Whomobile". However, this name was only applied to it in publicity and it is never referred to as such in the series, being simply known as "the Doctor's car". The name "Doctor Who" is also used in the title of the serial Doctor Who and the Silurians, but this was a captioning mistake and not an in-story mention. The only other time this occurs is in the title of Episode 5 of The Chase: "The Death of Doctor Who".

In "The Girl in the Fireplace" (2006), Madame de Pompadour reads the Doctor's mind and remarks about his name, "Doctor who? It's more than just a secret, isn't it?" In the podcast commentary on the BBC website, writer Steven Moffat suggests that, as the Doctor does not tell even his closest companions his name, there must be a "dreadful secret" about it. Within the same commentary, Moffat and actor Noel Clarke jokingly suggest his name to be "Curtis". Ironically, according to the in-vision commentary on the DVD release, David Tennant had to inform actress Sophia Myles (who played Madame de Pompadour) that she was not, in fact, revealing the Doctor's surname as she believed was the intent of the dialogue. In "The Shakespeare Code" the Carrionite Lilith remarks, "Why would a man hide his title in such despair?"

Doctor Who spin-off media, which are of uncertain canonicity, have suggested that the character uses the name "the Doctor" because his actual name is impossible for humans to pronounce. This is also repeated by companion Peri Brown in the radio serial Slipback.

Peter Cushing, in the films Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks — Invasion Earth 2150 AD referred to himself as "Dr. Who". However, these films are not considered canon with the rest of the series, even though they were based on the first two Dalek adventures with William Hartnell.

Alias the Doctor

Quite apart from his name, why the Doctor uses the title of "the Doctor" has never been explained on screen. The Doctor, at first, said that he was not a medical doctor, often referring to himself as a scientist or an engineer. However he does occasionally show medical knowledge and has stated that he studied under Joseph Lister and Joseph Bell on separate occasions. In The Moonbase, the Second Doctor mentions that he studied for a medical degree in Glasgow during the 19th Century. He has also been mocked by his fellow Time Lords for adhering to such a "lowly" title as "Doctor", although in The Armageddon Factor he tells Drax that he achieved his doctorate, indicating it was at least a somewhat respectable title. In "The Girl in the Fireplace", he draws an analogy between the title and Madame de Pompadour's. In "The Sound Of Drums", the Master remarks to the Doctor that they both chose their names, and that it was sanctimonious of the Doctor to identify himself as "the man who makes people better".

The Telos novella Frayed by Tara Samms (which takes place prior to "An Unearthly Child") has the First Doctor being given that title by the staff of a besieged human medical facility on the planet Iwa, suggesting at the end that the Doctor liked the official title so much that he adopted it. However, this does not quite explain why the Time Lords use the same title in addressing him. The same story also has Jill, a young girl living in the facility, naming the Doctor's granddaughter "Susan" after Jill's mother. The canonicity of all non-television sources is uncertain.

To make up for his lack of a practical name, the Doctor often relies upon convenient pseudonyms. In The Gunfighters, the First Doctor uses the alias Dr. Caligari. In The Highlanders the Second Doctor assumes the name of "Doctor von Wer" (a German approximation of "Doctor Who"), and signs himself as "Dr. W" in The Underwater Menace. In The Wheel in Space, his companion Jamie McCrimmon, reading the name off some medical equipment, tells the crew of the Wheel that the Doctor's name is "John Smith". The Doctor subsequently adopts this alias several times over the course of the series, often prefixing the title "Doctor" to it. The Eighth Doctor's companion Grace briefly refers to him by the alias "Dr Bowman" in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie.

In "New Earth", it is implied that the Doctor is part of the prophecy of the Face of Boe and is referred to as "The Lonely God". In "Tooth and Claw", having landed in Scotland, the Tenth Doctor introduces himself as "Dr James McCrimmon" from the township of Balamory. James McCrimmon is in fact the full name of the Second Doctor's companion known as Jamie. Later in that episode, the Doctor is knighted by Queen Victoria as "Sir Doctor of TARDIS."

To his greatest enemies, the Daleks, the Doctor is known as the Ka Faraq Gatri, the "Bringer of Darkness" or "Destroyer of Worlds". This is first mentioned in the novelisation of Remembrance of the Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch and subsequently taken up in the spin-off media, particularly the Virgin New Adventures books and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. In "The Parting of the Ways", the Doctor claims that the Daleks call him "The Oncoming Storm" — this name is used by the Draconians (whose word for it is "Karshtakavaar") to refer to the Doctor in the Virgin New Adventures novel Love and War by Paul Cornell.

The series has also occasionally toyed with the Doctor's identity (or lack thereof). In the first part of The Mysterious Planet, the Doctor suggests writing a thesis on "Ancient Life on Ravolox, by Doctor...", but is interrupted by Peri. In The Armageddon Factor, the Time Lord Drax addresses the Fourth Doctor as "Thete", short for "Theta Sigma"; later, in The Happiness Patrol, this was clarified as a nickname from the Doctor's University days. In Remembrance of the Daleks the Seventh Doctor produces a calling card with a series of pseudo-Greek letters inscribed on it (as well as a stylised question mark). This may be a reference to Terrance Dicks' and Malcolm Hulke's book The Making of Doctor Who (1972), which claims that the Doctor's true name is a string of Greek and mathematical symbols.

The question mark motif was common throughout the eighties, in part as a branding attempt. Beginning with season eighteen, the Fourth through Seventh Doctors all sported costumes with a question mark motif (usually on the lapels, except in the Seventh Doctor's case on his pullover and the shape of his umbrella handle). In the 1988 serial Remembrance of the Daleks, the Seventh Doctor is asked to sign a document; although the signature itself is not directly seen on screen, his hand movements clearly indicate that he signs it with a question mark.

It was mentioned by Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor, during an interview with The Age in 2003, that the Doctor is called so because he is "a doctor of time and relative dimension in space". Apart from being called a doctor of the TARDIS, the Doctor has also been referred to as just a "doctor of time travel".

On-screen credits

In the early years of the spin-off comic strips, books, films and other media, the character was initially called "Doctor Who" (or just "Dr Who") in the stories as a matter of course. This usage declined as the years went by.

Perhaps complicating the matter is that, from the first television serial through to Logopolis (the last story of Season 18 and also of the Tom Baker era), the lead character was credited as "Doctor Who" (or sometimes "Dr Who"). Starting from Peter Davison's first story, Castrovalva (the first story of the series' Season 19) to the end of Season 26, he is credited simply as "The Doctor".

This format is continued in the 1996 television movie for Paul McGann's credit, while Sylvester McCoy's incarnation is credited as "The Old Doctor". For the 2005 revival starring Christopher Eccleston, the credit reverted to "Doctor Who". However, in "The Christmas Invasion", and subsequent stories featuring David Tennant, the character is once again referred to in the closing credits as "The Doctor". According to Doctor Who Magazine #367 this reversion was specifically requested by Tennant.

Changing faces

The changing of actors playing the part of the Doctor is explained within the series by the Time Lords' ability to regenerate after suffering illness, mortal injury or old age ("wearing a bit thin"). The process repairs and rejuvenates all damage, but as a side-effect it changes his physical appearance and personality. This ability was not introduced until producers had to find a way to replace the ailing William Hartnell with Patrick Troughton and was not explicitly called "regeneration" until Jon Pertwee's transformation to Tom Baker at the climax of Planet of the Spiders (1974). On screen, the transformation from Hartnell to Troughton was called a "renewal" and from Troughton to Pertwee a "change of appearance".

The original concept of regeneration or renewal was that the Doctor's body would rebuild itself in a younger, healthier form. The Second Doctor was intended to be a literally younger version of the First; biological time would turn back, and several hundred years would get taken off the Doctor's age, rejuvenating him. In practice, however, after the Doctor stated his age in the Second Doctor serial The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), the Doctor's age has been recorded progressively, however many regenerations the Doctor goes through (but see below). Coincidentally or otherwise, the general trend has been toward increasingly younger actors for the role, with only Jon Pertwee and Colin Baker being older than their predecessors.

The actors who have played the Doctor in the series, and the dates of their first and last regular television appearances in the role, are:

1. First Doctor - William Hartnell: (23 November 1963 – 29 October 1966), Richard Hurndall (25 November 1983)
2. Second Doctor - Patrick Troughton: (29 October 1966 – 21 June 1969)
3. Third Doctor - Jon Pertwee: (3 January 1970 – 8 June 1974)
4. Fourth Doctor - Tom Baker: (8 June 1974 – 21 March 1981)
5. Fifth Doctor - Peter Davison: (21 March 1981 – 16 March 1984)
6. Sixth Doctor - Colin Baker: (16 March 1984 – 6 December 1986)
7. Seventh Doctor - Sylvester McCoy: (7 September 1987 – 6 December 1989 in the series, and 27 May 1996 in the Doctor Who film)
8. Eighth Doctor - Paul McGann: (27 May 1996, in the Doctor Who film).
9. Ninth Doctor - Christopher Eccleston: (26 March – 18 June 2005)
10. Tenth Doctor - David Tennant: (18 June 2005 – present)

Personality

Throughout his regenerations, the Doctor's personality has retained a number of consistent traits. Its most notable aspect is an unpredictable, affable, clownish exterior concealing a well of great age, wisdom, seriousness and even darkness. While the Doctor can appear childlike and jocular, when the stakes rise, as, for example, in Pyramids of Mars, he will often become cold, driven and even callous. Another aspect of the Doctor's persona, which, though always present, has been emphasised or downplayed from incarnation to incarnation, is compassion. The Doctor is a fervent pacifist and is dedicated to the preservation of sentient life, human or otherwise, over violence and war, even going so far as to doubt the morality of destroying his worst enemies, the Daleks, when he has the chance to do so in Genesis of the Daleks, and again in Evolution of the Daleks. He also, in The Time Monster, allows the Master to go free, rather than see him face torment or death, and forgives the Master for his actions in "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords", vowing to take responsibility for his former friend. Nonetheless, the Doctor will kill when given no other option and occasionally in self-defence; examples of this can be seen in The Brain of Morbius, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Invasion of Time, Earthshock, The Two Doctors and most notably in Remembrance of the Daleks when he arranges for the planet Skaro to be destroyed; it is also suggested he may have been responsible for destroying both the Dalek and Time Lord races in order to end the Time War referenced numerous times in the series beginning in 2005. On other occasions he is seen to be critical of others who use deadly force, such as his companions Leela in The Face of Evil and Talons of Weng-Chiang, or Jack Harkness in Utopia.

The Doctor has a deep sense of right and wrong, and a conviction that it is right to intervene when injustice occurs, which sets him apart from his own people, the Time Lords, and their strict ethic of non-intervention.

Although throughout his regenerations the Doctor remains essentially the same person, each actor has purposely imbued his incarnation of the role with distinct quirks and characteristics and the production teams purposefully dictate a new Doctor personality trait for each actor to portray. To contrast with the First Doctor's impish, occasionally standoffish, upstanding grandfatherly figure, the Second Doctor was played as a superficially warm and bumbling character hiding a deeply calculating mind. He was occasionally capable of panicking but always recognised and relished his role as a champion of the oppressed. The Third Doctor made the best of his Earth exile - forced on him by the Time Lords - as a cantankerous, swashbuckling dandy who was continually frustrated by his inability to repair his TARDIS, which the Time Lords had disabled and additionally blocked the parts of his memory that allowed him to effect repairs. Unlike most other Doctors, he was also a formidable hand-to-hand combatant and was also the most obvious about his love of gadgetry, machinery and the finer things in life.

The Fourth Doctor basked in freedom with his more bohemian manner and off-kilter behaviours, charisma and humour but was also perhaps the most brooding, adventurous, authoritative and aloof incarnation of all, appearing to be particularly aware of his capabilities and his Time Lord roots. He also seemed to possess the most alien personality of all the regenerations, with almost casual displays of intelligence, interpersonal skill and situational awareness mixed in with and/or buried under a mixture of exuberance, indifference, sombreness and seeming addle-mindedness. As an adventurer and a space-time traveller, he was supremely confident in his abilities, having hundreds of years of experience to draw from and was able to now both directly and indirectly turn almost any situation into one he would win. After the sensitive, vulnerable and less commanding Fifth Doctor, the Sixth asserted himself as a flamboyant, pretentious blowhard whose arrogance belied his core traits and strong desire to carry out justice across time.

The Seventh Doctor was a natural performer who at first seemed clownish and whimsical, then later also darker, calculating, more driven and manipulative. He was a gameplayer with anyone and everyone he came across, deliberately shrouding himself in mystique, carrying the weight of the universe on his shoulders and was prepared to go to ruthless extremes for the greater good, even destroying the planet of his greatest enemies and playing with the emotions of his companion to root out and defeat evil. He was driven by a near all-consuming desire to tie up loose ends and rid the universe of threats, waging his campaigns against his enemies with meticulous and complicated plans and traps. Yet he was also strongly against direct violence and possessed a unique ability to simply defeat his enemies by talking them down or outdebating them. More than any other Doctor, he utilised his intellect as his greatest weapon and even though he kept his love of science, he would rarely use an invention - if so, not usually one of his own design - to win the day. He was still capable of empathy and compassion but now adhered more and more to a different moral code. The Eighth was more of a Byronesque figure, possessed of an infectious enthusiasm about the universe.

The Ninth Doctor was an enigmatic figure, impulsive, witty and almost manic on the surface yet hiding a deep anger, sadness and loneliness that, as with some previous Doctors, his outer behaviour seemed almost designed to obscure. Although somewhat outgoing, he openly disliked certain interpersonal situations, for example stating "I don't do domestic" when refusing to have dinner with his companion and her mother. He was also much more streetwise in his appearance and speech patterns than his previous selves, lacking their usual consummate politeness and favouring a more direct and blunt approach as he saw fit. He had a colder, less forgiving personality, perhaps hardened by the Time War that destroyed Gallifrey and left him the last of the Time Lords sometime prior to his first screen appearance. He was haunted by his actions during the War, in which he was responsible for the destruction of ten million Dalek warships, an action that apparently also destroyed the Time Lords. His guilt and resultant lack of caution would often have consequences for his effectiveness in the face of danger and he often won his victories by enabling others to realise their own heroic impulses.

The Tenth Doctor is flippant, energetic, talkative and is gregarious and friendly with new people, yet with a self-assuredness that sometimes verges on hubris. His loneliness as an immortal and the apparent last member of his race has also become one of his defining characteristics and he repeatedly acknowledges it more than his previous incarnation ever did. He is still quick to anger, and on several occasions shows a hard quality and his flippancy in the face of the werewolf in "Tooth and Claw" so horrifies Queen Victoria that, shortly after knighting him, she exiles him from the British Empire. His role in the universe is now more akin to policing across time.

Despite his personality changes, however, the Doctor remains at his core a heroic figure, fighting the evils of the universe as he encounters them, even if his values and motives are sometimes alien.

Accent

Different actors have used different regional accents in the role. The first six Doctors spoke in Received Pronunciation or "BBC English", as was standard on British television at the time. Sylvester McCoy used a very mild version of his own Scottish accent in the role, and Paul McGann spoke with a faint Liverpudlian lilt. Only rarely, as in the case of the Eighth Doctor, who was identified by American characters as "British", or the Ninth, whose accent was clearly described as "Northern", was this even addressed in the series (in the latter case with the line, "lots of planets have a North"). Another example is in The Tomb of the Cybermen when the Doctor is identified as "English" and, dissembling, plays along. Though David Tennant speaks with a natural Scottish accent, he plays the Doctor with an Estuary accent (Except in "Tooth and Claw" when, in the Highlands, the character is pretending to be a local). According to producer Russell T. Davies, this was intended as a consequence of spending so much time with Rose. "The Christmas Invasion" would have alluded to this, but the line was cut. The audio series which aired on BBC7 in 2007 starred Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Sheridan Smith as Lucie Miller, who speaks with the actress' own strong Northern accent, so it is possible that he obtains the Ninth Doctor's Northern accent from Lucie in a similar way to Rose's 'rubbing off' on him. However, like all spin-off media, the canonicity is unclear. Davies also said that after Eccleston's accent, he did not want Tennant "touring the regions" with a Scottish one, and so asked Tennant to affect the same accent he used for the earlier BBC period drama Casanova.

Changing fashions

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The Fourth Doctor's impractically long scarf became an iconic image of the character.

The Doctor's clothing has been equally distinctive, from the distinguished Edwardian suits of the First Doctor to the Second Doctor's rumpled, Chaplinesque attire to the frills and velvet of the Third Doctor's era. The Fourth Doctor's long frock coat, loose fitting trousers, occasionally worn wide-brimmed hat and trailing, multistriped scarf added to his somewhat shambolic and bohemian image; the Fifth's Edwardian cricketer's outfit suited his youthful, aristocratic air as well as his love of the sport (with a stick of celery on the lapel for an eccentric touch); and the Sixth's multicoloured jacket, with its cat-shaped lapel pins, reflected the excesses of 1980s fashion. The Seventh Doctor's outfit — a straw hat, a coat with two scarves, a tie, checked trousers and brogues/wingtips — was more subdued and suggestive of a showman, reflecting his whimsical approach to life. In later seasons, as his personality grew more mysterious, his jacket, tie, and hatband all grew darker.

Throughout the 1980s, question marks formed a constant motif, usually on the shirt collars or, in the case of the Seventh Doctor, on his sleeveless jumper and the handle to his umbrella. The idea was grounded in branding considerations, as was the movement starting in Tom Baker's final season toward an unchanging costume for each Doctor, rather than the variants on a theme employed over the first seventeen years of the programme. When the Eighth Doctor regenerated, he clad himself in a 19th century frock coat and shirt based around a Wild Bill Hickok costume, reminiscent of the out-of-time quality of earlier Doctors and emphasising the Eighth Doctor's more Romantic persona.

In contrast to the more flamboyant outfits of his predecessors, the Ninth Doctor wore a nondescript, worn black leather jacket, V-neck jumper and dark trousers. Eccleston stated that he felt that such definitive "costumes" were passé and that the character's trademark eccentricities should show through their actions and clever dialogue, not through gimmicky costumes. Despite this, there is a running joke about his character that the only piece of clothing he changes is his jumper, even when trying to "blend into" an historical era. The one exception, a photograph of him taken in 1912, wearing period gentleman's clothing, resembles the style of the Eighth Doctor; some speculate that this may have been immediately after his regeneration, when he was still wearing the outfit of his previous incarnation.

The Tenth Doctor sports either a blue or a brown pinstripe suit - occasionally worn with ties - a tan ankle-length coat and trainers, the latter recalling the plimsolls worn by his fifth incarnation. Also like that incarnation (and his first one), he occasionally wears spectacles: a pair with brown, thick-rimmed frames. In interviews, Tennant has referred to his Doctor's attire as geek chic. According to Tennant he had always wanted to wear the trainers, however, the overall costume was influenced by an outfit worn by Jamie Oliver in a TV interview on the talk show Parkinson.

The Tenth Doctor says in "The Runaway Bride" that, like the TARDIS, his pockets are bigger on the inside. The Fourth and Seventh Doctors routinely carried numerous items in their coats without this being conspicuous.

Transitions

Save for the off-screen transition between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors, to date each regeneration has been worked into the continuing story. Also, most regenerations (save the Second-to-Third and Eighth-to-Ninth transitions) have been portrayed on-screen, in a symbolic handing over of the role. The following list details the manner of each regeneration:

1. First Doctor (Hartnell/Hurndall): apparently succumbed to old age, steadily growing weaker throughout The Tenth Planet and collapsing at the serial's end. Although the writer's intent was that this was due to the energy drain from the planet Mondas, this was not made clear in the transmitted story.
2. Second Doctor (Troughton): a forced "change in appearance" and exile to Earth by the Time Lords in the closing moments of The War Games.
3. Third Doctor (Pertwee): radiation poisoning from the Great One's cave of crystals at the end of Planet of the Spiders.
4. Fourth Doctor (Baker, T): fell from the Pharos Project radio telescope in Logopolis.
5. Fifth Doctor (Davison): spectrox toxaemia, contracted near the start of The Caves of Androzani.
6. Sixth Doctor (Baker, C): suffered unspecified injuries when the Rani attacked the TARDIS and caused it to crash land at the start of Time and the Rani.
7. Seventh Doctor (McCoy): died in San Francisco during exploratory heart surgery by a doctor unfamiliar with Time Lord physiology, after being hospitalised for non-life threatening gunshot wounds in the 1996 television movie.
8. Eighth Doctor (McGann): not yet revealed. Implied to be a result of the Time War.
9. Ninth Doctor (Eccleston): cellular degeneration caused by absorbing the energies of the space-time vortex from Rose, which she in turn had absorbed through the heart of the TARDIS in "The Parting of the Ways".
10. Tenth Doctor (Tennant): current incarnation.

In the original series, with the exception of the change from Troughton to Pertwee, regeneration usually occurred immediately following the "death" of the previous Doctor. The changeover from McCoy to McGann was handled differently, with the Doctor actually dying and being dead for quite some time before regeneration occurred. The Eighth Doctor comments at one point in the television movie that the anesthesia interfered with the regenerative process, and that he had been "dead too long", accounting for his initial amnesia.

The 2005 series began with the Ninth Doctor already regenerated, with no explanation given. In his first appearance in "Rose", the Doctor looked in a mirror and commented on the size of his ears, suggesting that the regeneration may have happened shortly prior to the episode, or that he has not examined himself in the mirror recently. However, the Ninth Doctor's appearances in old photographs, without being accompanied by Rose, may also suggest that he had been regenerated for some time. Russell T. Davies, writer/producer of the new series, stated in Doctor Who Magazine that he has no intention of showing the regeneration in the series, and that he believed the story of how the Eighth Doctor became the Ninth is best told in other media. In Doctor Who Confidential Davies revealed his reasoning that, after such a long hiatus, a regeneration in the first episode would not just be confusing for new viewers but also lack dramatic impact, as there would be no emotional investment in the character before he was replaced.

Eccleston stepped down from the role at the end of the 2005 series, and the Ninth Doctor regenerated into the Tenth in "The Parting of the Ways". It remains to be seen whether the Ninth Doctor will appear again, although Russell T. Davies has stated that he does not intend to bring back former Doctors.

Regenerations

Main article: Regeneration (Doctor Who)

File:Regeneration9to10.jpg

The Ninth Doctor regenerates into the Tenth Doctor (from "The Parting of the Ways").

It was established in The Deadly Assassin (1976) that a Time Lord can regenerate twelve times before permanently dying - a total of thirteen incarnations. In the 1996 television movie the Eighth Doctor explicitly said that a Time Lord has "thirteen lives". (The Doctor's enemy, The Master has, however, been shown circumventing this limit on several occasions.) In "The Christmas Invasion" it was stated the regenerative cycle creates a large amount of energy that suffuses the Time Lord's body. As demonstrated by the Tenth Doctor for the first time in that story, in the first fifteen hours of regeneration this energy is enough to even rapidly regrow a severed hand.

The Doctor's regenerations are usually as a result of his previous incarnation sustaining mortal injury or (in one case) having a change forced on him by the Time Lords. Other Time Lord regenerations, like Romana's, have not been as dramatic or painful.

The Doctor frequently experiences a period of instability and partial amnesia following regeneration. Some post-regeneration experiences have been more difficult than others. In particular, the Fifth Doctor began reverting to his previous personalities and required the healing powers of the TARDIS's "Zero Room" to recuperate (Castrovalva). The Sixth Doctor experienced extreme paranoia and flew into a murderous rage, nearly killing his companion (The Twin Dilemma). The Eighth Doctor not only experienced amnesia, but some fans attribute his romantic actions towards his companion to post-regeneration trauma (1996 Doctor Who television movie).

The regeneration from the Ninth to the Tenth Doctor at first seemed smooth, with the Doctor regenerating standing up for the first time ("The Parting of the Ways"). However, shortly afterwards he began to experience spasms and became somewhat manic, frightening his companion as he pushed the TARDIS to dangerous extremes (Children in Need mini-episode). After crash-landing the TARDIS, the Doctor collapsed and remained unconscious for most of the next fifteen hours ("The Christmas Invasion"). The experience was traumatic enough to cause one of his hearts to temporarily stop beating.

As noted above, the newly regenerated Tenth Doctor was able to regrow his hand when it was severed at the wrist during a swordfight with the Sycorax leader. This ability had never been exhibited before, but no previous Doctor had ever suffered an injury of this nature so soon after regeneration (although Romana did exhibit some degree of control over her regenerative process). The Tenth Doctor's lack of reaction to the injury may also point to increased pain tolerance during this period.

The TARDIS also appears to aid in the regenerative process. Of the four occasions the Doctor regenerates outside the TARDIS, one was forced on him by the Time Lords (The War Games), one required a Time Lord to give the Doctor's cells a "little push" to start the process (Planet of the Spiders), one needed the TARDIS Zero Room to help him recover (Castrovalva) and the last occurred a few hours after he had actually "died", leaving him with temporary amnesia (the 1996 television movie).

Continuity curiosities

Over the years, different writers and production teams have introduced their own twists to the Doctor's character, sometimes as part of a grand creative reinvention; others, out of narrative convenience or outside pressures. Without one driving vision to maintain continuity, newer details may occasionally seem to contradict earlier ones. Other details — sometimes significant ones — are later ignored, sometimes leading to argument amongst series fans as to how, or whether, these details apply in a broader context.

In the early serial The Edge of Destruction, it appeared that the First Doctor only had a single heart. To rectify the apparent inconsistency, a commonly held piece of fan continuity (referenced in the novel The Man in the Velvet Mask by Daniel O'Mahony) is that Time Lords only grow their second heart during their first regeneration. In The Mind of Evil, "The Christmas Invasion" and "The Shakespeare Code" one of the Doctor's hearts temporarily stops beating due to intense trauma; this may or may not explain the First Doctor's situation.

Also during his first regeneration, and for similarly unclear reasons, the Doctor's clothes changed along with his body (The Power of the Daleks); on all subsequent regenerations, the new Doctor generally continues to wear the clothing he regenerated in until he selects a new outfit (though due to a continuity error, the regeneration from the Fourth to the Fifth Doctors included a change of footwear).

In The Brain of Morbius (produced shortly before The Deadly Assassin), visual images displayed during a mental battle between the Fourth Doctor and Morbius can be taken as implying that the Doctor had at least eight incarnations prior to the First Doctor. However, multiple dialogue references throughout the series (particularly in The Three Doctors, Mawdryn Undead and The Five Doctors) contradict this, as well as the fact that the Doctor has regenerated six times since then (as stated in "School Reunion"). Explanations have included theories that the images were of Morbius's previous incarnations (two images that are certainly Morbius also appear, and the game seems to have a symmetrical arrangement), or false images induced by the Doctor. The Doctor Who novels have suggested that these may have been faces of the Other, a figure from Gallifrey's ancient past and the genetic predecessor of the Doctor (although being from the tie-in novels, the canonicity of this character is debatable).

In the Sixth Doctor story arc The Trial of a Time Lord, a Time Lord with the title of the Valeyard (played by Michael Jayston) was revealed to be a potential future Doctor, a "distillation" created somewhere between his twelfth and final incarnations and embodying all the evil and malevolence of the Doctor's dark side. The Valeyard was defeated in his attempt to actualise himself by stealing the Sixth Doctor's remaining regenerations, however, and so may never actually come to exist.

The idea of an "in-between" version of the Doctor has its precedents. In Planet of the Spiders, a Time Lord's future self (described as a "distillation" of the future incarnation) was shown to exist as a corporeal projection that assisted his then-current incarnation. In Logopolis, an eerie and mysterious white-clad figure known as the Watcher assisted in the transition between the Fourth and Fifth Doctors. Nyssa commented that the Watcher "was the Doctor all the time" and at the moment of the regeneration, he merged with the form of the regenerating Doctor.

Perhaps the most controversial element from the 1996 television movie was the revelation that the Doctor is half-human ("on [his] mother's side"). Some fans assume that the Doctor was speaking metaphorically — or, perhaps, joking. However, the movie's plot logistically hinges on this fact, and the Master uncovers the detail on his own. Another theory goes that, due to the particularly traumatic circumstances of his regeneration, only the Eighth Doctor was half-human. Still other theories speculate that, for whatever reason, at the time of the Doctor's birth his mother may have been human, albeit of Gallifreyan origin.

The spin-off novels and audios have tried various methods to explain this revelation, suggesting that the Doctor retained some human DNA from his time as Dr John Smith (in which the Doctor, using bought technology, became biologically human with a different persona unaware of his Time Lord self) in the Virgin New Adventures novel Human Nature, that his origins have become muddied by agents manipulating his personal timestream (the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Unnatural History), or that only his mother's incarnation at the time of his birth was Human. In the New Series Adventures novel The Deviant Strain by Justin Richards, the Doctor comments that his DNA is "close" to that of humans. However, as noted above, the canonicity of the novels is uncertain.

The Time Lord ability to change species during regeneration is referenced by the Eighth Doctor in relation to the Master in the television movie, being supported by Romana's regeneration scene in the 1979 serial Destiny of the Daleks. The Daleks also implied during the events of The Daleks' Master Plan (1965-66) that the First Doctor's humanoid form is not his actual appearance. The new series has not made any allusions to mixed parentage, simply referring to the Doctor as "alien" or "Time Lord". However, the trade paperback Doctor Who: The Legend Continues by Justin Richards, published to coincide with the new series, refers to the Doctor as half-human. The 2007 Tenth Doctor episodes "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood", adapted from the above-mentioned Seventh Doctor novel, Human Nature, also show the Doctor using technology to become biologically human, although he does so through Time Lord science. Later, in "Utopia", the Master is revealed to have undergone the same process.

When incarnations meet

Due to time travel, it is possible for the Doctor's various incarnations to encounter and interact with each other, although this is supposed to be prohibited by the First Law of Time (as stated in The Three Doctors) or permitted only in the "gravest of emergencies" (The Five Doctors). In the television series, such encounters have been seen on three occasions, in The Three Doctors (1972), The Five Doctors (1983) and The Two Doctors (1985). In Day of the Daleks (1972), the Third Doctor and Jo Grant very briefly met their future selves due to a glitch during a temporal experiment. In "Father's Day" (2005), the Ninth Doctor and Rose observed but did not interact with past versions of themselves; when Rose changed history, the earlier selves vanished and a temporal paradox was created that attracted the extradimensional Reapers. The Tenth and Fifth Doctors met in the TARDIS during a short episode which was broadcast during Children in Need 2007.

The BBC novel The Eight Doctors was written by respected Doctor Who writer Terrance Dicks, the same author who wrote The Five Doctors. In it, he tries to reconcile the continuity errors of the 1996 movie, while having the Eighth Doctor meet and interact with each of his previous selves.

Physical contact between two versions of the same person can lead to an energy discharge that shorts out the "time differential". This is apparently due to a principle known as the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, and was seen when the past and future versions of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart touched hands in Mawdryn Undead. Oddly, the Doctor's incarnations do not appear to suffer this effect when encountering each other and shaking hands. Why this is has never been explained; fan theories include the possibility that this may have something to do with regeneration rendering the different incarnations effectively different people. An essay in the About Time series by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood suggests that Time Lords are somehow exempt from the effect by their very nature. Rose Tyler is seen holding an infant version of herself in "Father's Day", with no visible energy discharge, but the contact does allow the Reapers to enter the church in which the Doctor and several others are taking refuge. While doing a live commentary on the episode at the 2006 Bristol Comic Expo, episode author Paul Cornell said that this is supposed to be due to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, even though it not mentioned by name. He also suggested that the lack of a spark may be down to the fact that the Time Lords were no longer around to manage anomalies.

The interaction of the Doctor's various incarnations produces a continuity anomaly that requires suspension of disbelief on the part of viewers, as one may assume that his past selves would forget that he would later regenerate. In Castrovalva, the newly-regenerated Fifth Doctor clearly indicates that the outcome of his regeneration cannot be predicted; however, the Fifth Doctor should have had memories from his earlier incarnations of having met himself per the events of The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors. Also, the Second, Third and Fifth Doctors should be already familiar with the events of The Five Doctors, having already lived through them multiple times. It has been suggested in fandom that the Time Lords erase the Doctor's memory after such encounters (and in The Two Doctors there is mention of Dastari administering to the Second Doctor a drug that he bemoans "affects the memory"); the novel The Empire of Glass features the First Doctor directly after his return from the events of The Three Doctors, his memory of the adventure having been totally erased barring a vague recollection of meeting "a dandy and a clown". The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Cold Fusion by Lance Parkin suggests that memory-erasure is sometimes, but not always, due to something called "Blinovitch Conservation".

In the 2006 episode "School Reunion", the Tenth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith both seem to indicate in dialogue that they haven't seen each other since her departure from the TARDIS in The Hand of Fear, even though this contradicts their having met later during The Five Doctors. It is possible that he is being disingenuous and that she, in that story, did not realise that one of the other Doctors she met was actually a later incarnation than the one she had last travelled with.

Another possibility to explain away the whole Doctors-interacting paradox is that the events of The Three Doctors effectively rewrite all that had gone (been televised) before, though this remains necessarily unseen. Such changes (unknowable, in detail, to the audience) would be in consequence of the current Doctor having his own past altered by his contemporaries, the High Council, in bringing forward his earlier selves. His memory is thus only filled in as events unfold trebly for him in his present, meaning there are no foreknowledge issues. This would certainly fit with the fact that his previous selves had no dealings with the Time Lords in their own eras. Likewise events within The Five Doctors, in which the earlier Doctors recall each other from The Three Doctors (and the Second Doctor knows of the events of his (originally) final adventure The War Games, which would be impossible unless his history as originally presented to viewers had been altered). The Two Doctors, in which the Second Doctor is now actively working for the Time Lords (presumably ones from his own future and not his contemporaries, though he may or may not be aware of this), is also thus explained. Such dangerous adulteration of a Time Lord's own past is after all what the First Law of Time exists to prevent, and it may go some way to explaining why the Doctor ends up "more than just a Time Lord" (and even, we may speculate, how he can survive the eventual extinction of the species: their otherwise being apparently wiped from time). It may be noted that in both Three... and Five... the various incarnations of the Doctor share telepathic conferences to fill each other in on all that's happened to them; the consequences of this are never explored, but may be imagined to be profound.

Russell T Davies has expressed a dislike for stories in which multiple incarnations of the Doctor meet, stating that he believes they focus more on the actors than on the story itself. However, David Tennant has revealed that he is enthusiastic about the idea, opening the possibility of further appearances by Paul McGann and Christopher Eccleston, perhaps, but he has expressed doubts about the practicality of the idea given that three of the actors who played the Doctor in the past are now deceased.

File:Past Doctors.jpg

The temporarily human Doctor (John Smith) draws his dreams of past incarnations in "Human Nature"

Since the series revival, the only references to past incarnations (from 1963 to 1996) have been in the aforementioned episode "School Reunion" (in which the Doctor acknowledges having regenerated "half a dozen times" since last seeing Sarah Jane) and in drawings that the Doctor (who has temporarily become human to hide from the Family Of Blood) makes based on dreams of his other life in the 2007 episode "Human Nature". Seen on screen are the First, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors, but a fuller view briefly available on the BBC website depicted all ten incarnations.

The latest multiple-doctor story line was the children in need special 'Time Crash', which featured Peter Davison returning as the fifth doctor. This event is explained as occuring due to the current doctor (Tennant) having left his shields down and then crossing the fifth doctors timeline, allowing the two TARDISes to merge. The two share some banter, the fifth doctor initially believing his future self to be an over enthusiastic fan. When the current doctor is able to effortlessly avert the impending black hole cuased by the two TARDISes merging, he reveals he was only able to because he saw himself do it and remembered. He goes on to tell the fifth how fond he was of his incarnation and how he influences the current doctor's personality. The special, entitled Time Crash, aired on November 16, 2007 and was established as taking place between the events of Last of the Time Lords and Voyage of the Damned.

Reprising the role

On a few occasions, previous Doctors have returned to the role, guest-starring with the incumbent:

• William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton with Jon Pertwee in The Three Doctors. Originally Hartnell's role had been intended to be more extensive, but his health had deteriorated to the extent that he could only make a limited appearance. In the end, it turned out to be his last television role.
• Troughton and Pertwee with Peter Davison in The Five Doctors, the twentieth anniversary special, with another actor, Richard Hurndall, standing in for the late William Hartnell. The story began with a clip featuring Hartnell. Tom Baker declined to appear, feeling that the role came too soon after he had left the programme (a decision he later said he regretted) and the narrative was reworked to use clips from Shada, an intended six-part story from the Fourth Doctor's era that was never completed due to industrial action. A waxwork dummy of Baker from Madame Tussauds was used in the publicity photographs.
• Patrick Troughton with Colin Baker in The Two Doctors.
• Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy — with rubber dummy heads standing in for the late William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton — in Dimensions in Time, a charity special in aid of Children in Need in 1993, the programme's 30th anniversary year. Except for the mannequin versions of Hartnell and Troughton, no two Doctors are shown on screen at the same time (ultimately, the canonicity of Dimensions in Time is still a matter of debate).
• Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy with Paul McGann in the audio adventure Zagreus, a fortieth anniversary special and the fiftieth release, with Jon Pertwee posthumously joining them by virtue of an extant fan recording. The first three had also united for the very first audio adventure, The Sirens of Time.
• Peter Davison with David Tennant in the 2007 Children in Need special Time Crash.

Other actors have portrayed the character of the Doctor outside of the television series. For details on this see under Adaptations and other appearances in the main article and Doctor Who spin-offs.

For a list of all actors who have played the Doctor see List of actors who have played the Doctor.

Age

In early production documents, the Doctor was said to be 650 years old, although this was never stated on screen. By the time the Doctor did cite his age ("Let me see, in human terms, 400, yes, 450 years" in the serial The Tomb of the Cybermen; he also kept a 500-year diary), he had already regenerated to a younger form. The intention at that time was that regeneration had turned back the Doctor's clock, making him younger both in appearance and in biological age. Since the Doctor's age had never previously been given, 450 Earth years became a starting point onto which further years would be progressively added as the series continued and the character lived out his further incarnations.

The Third Doctor implied in The Mind of Evil that he had a lifetime that covered "several thousand years", though he may have been referring to the breadth of time he had visited (or was able to visit) rather than actually lived through, or perhaps his own life expectancy.

By the time of The Brain of Morbius, the Fourth Doctor was stated to be 749 years old ("something like 750 years" in the prior Pyramids of Mars). In The Ribos Operation, the first Romana said the Doctor was 759 years old and had been piloting the TARDIS for 523 years, making him 236 when he first "borrowed" it. In Revelation of the Daleks the Sixth Doctor was 900 years old, and in Time and the Rani, the Seventh Doctor's age was 953, the same as villainous Time Lady the Rani (in both serials, the Doctor's age is stated in dialogue). In Remembrance of the Daleks the Seventh Doctor said that he had "900 years’ experience" rewiring alien equipment. At the beginning of the 1996 television movie, the Seventh Doctor was shown to have a 900-year diary in his TARDIS.

The large gap in years between the Fourth and Sixth Doctors can be partially covered by the fact that the Fourth Doctor travelled alone for a time or with an equally long-lived Time Lady as a companion, allowing for several decades or centuries of untelevised stories to take place. Such gaps occur between the stories The Deadly Assassin and The Face of Evil when he travelled without a companion and between The Invasion of Time and The Ribos Operation when he was accompanied by K-9. Another potential gap occurs between The Horns of Nimon and The Leisure Hive when he travelled with Romana. The Face of Evil also revealed that the Fourth Doctor travelled on his own at a point prior to that serial (the chronology of this is not revealed in the story, but the novelisation places it within the events of Robot, right after his regeneration).

While the Fifth Doctor was never seen without a companion, there was a period (between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity) when he was travelling with Nyssa of Traken, who, not being human, may not have aged normally. There was also a gap just after The Trial of a Time Lord which can account for the difference in ages between the Sixth Doctor in Revelation of the Daleks and the Seventh Doctor in Time and the Rani. Likewise, the age gap between the Second and Fourth Doctors is occasionally explained as part of the "Season 6B" theory. One other possible gap occurs between Seasons 10 and 11, when the Third Doctor was between companions and could have spent time adventuring on his own before returning to Earth and UNIT.

In the spin-off novels, the Seventh Doctor celebrated his 1,000th birthday in Set Piece by Kate Orman, and the Eighth Doctor declared his age to be 1,012 in Vampire Science by Orman and Jonathan Blum. The Eighth Doctor also spent nearly a century on Earth during a story arc spread over several novels.

In the 2005 series, the Doctor's age is stated in publicity materials as 900 years, and in "Aliens of London", he says, "Nine hundred years of time and space, and I've never been slapped by someone's mother." Rose follows up by asking him if he is 900 years old, and he replies affirmatively, though it is unclear whether he is being disingenuous. He restates his age as 900, though, in "The Doctor Dances".

How this figure is to be reconciled with the Doctor's age in the rest of the series and spin-off media is uncertain. Possibilities include the Doctor estimating his age (relatively rather than absolutely) or lying about it for convenience's sake or out of vanity (in The Ribos Operation he gave his age at 756, although Romana insisted it was 759. Incidentally, her own age is the subject of some discrepancy – it is given in Ribos but contradicted later in City of Death).

Another possibility is that the Doctor is simply referring to the years he has been travelling, for simplicity's sake, as opposed to his physical age. In "The Empty Child" he speaks of 900 years of "phone box" travel, which, if he began at 236, would make him 1,136 years old. This figure does fit roughly with the Eighth Doctor's period as chronicled in the spin-off media (including his century-long exile on Earth). In fact, considering that the TARDIS did not acquire its police box shape until it landed in London prior to "An Unearthly Child", he may be even older. Again, of course, all this also presupposes that the figures given correspond to Earth years and not Gallifreyan, which may account for some of the discrepancies.

In the 2006 episode "Rise of the Cybermen", the Doctor transfers part of his life energy to a component of the TARDIS in hopes of regenerating the disabled craft; he states that he has given up 10 years of life in doing so.

At the end of "The Sound of Drums", the Master ages the Doctor by 100 years using his laser screwdriver, leading the Doctor to assume an elderly appearance. In "Last of the Time Lords", the Master states to the population of Earth that the Doctor is nine hundred years old, and informs his subjects he will show them the Doctor's true form, suspending his ability to regenerate. The Master proceeds to age the Doctor further with his laser screwdriver, reducing him to a tiny, wrinkled being subsequently imprisoned inside a bird cage until reverted to his current form with the help of Martha Jones and the entire population of Earth.

Romance

In the very first episode of the television series it is established that Susan Foreman is the Doctor's granddaughter, but neither Susan nor the Doctor ever speaks of her parents. In "Fear Her" (2006), the Doctor states that he was "a dad once", suggesting that he reproduced at some point. Thus, the Doctor's family history, including the time period "before" the beginning of the series, is largely a matter of conjecture.

During the initial series, William Hartnell's age precluded any involvement of the character with the only other female lead at the time. The First Doctor did flirt with — and was accidentally engaged to — the character Cameca in The Aztecs; although this was part of a ploy to get the TARDIS back, there was a hint of mutual attraction in Hartnell's performance (especially as he is ultimately unable to leave behind the love token she has given him). The fact that the TARDIS crew kept pressing forward in their travels was probably also a factor in preventing any romantic attachments.

As the series progressed and grew more popular among children, the Doctor was firmly established as an avuncular figure to his younger companions, the one exception being the Third Doctor's hurt reaction to his companion Jo Grant's leaving him for an idealistic scientific adventurer whom she describes as "a younger version" of the Doctor (The Green Death).

Despite the press (and, occasionally, the production team) trying to play up the sexiness of some of the female companions or suggesting "hanky panky" in the TARDIS, the series reached the point where any suggestion of the Doctor as a sexual being was avoided altogether. One example was during City of Death, when the Fourth Doctor says to Countess Scarlioni, "You're a beautiful woman, probably," suggesting that he is incapable of appreciating a human woman's attractiveness. This rule held true even when the Doctor's apparent age was closer to those of his companions, or if there was on-screen chemistry between the actors, as there was between Fourth Doctor Tom Baker and his wife-to-be Lalla Ward's Romana II. In fact, a 1980 television commercial broadcast in Australia for Prime Computers showed Baker and Ward romancing each other, in character as The Doctor and Romana, with the commercial ending with The Doctor (via the computer) proposing marriage. These commercials are not, of course, part of the regular series continuity.

The perception of the Doctor as essentially an asexual character, uninterested in romance, is why some portions of fandom reacted so strongly to the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) kissing Dr. Grace Holloway in the 1996 television movie, breaking the series' long-standing taboo against the Doctor having any romantic involvement with his companions.

Spin-off passion

However, the spin-off media both before and after the television movie have toyed with the idea in various ways. In the 1995 Virgin New Adventures novel Human Nature by Paul Cornell, the Seventh Doctor takes on the human guise of "Dr John Smith" and has a romance with a science teacher in 1913, albeit as a means to understand the human condition and with the Doctor's own memories as a Time Lord suppressed. The concluding chapter of The Dying Days, an Eighth Doctor novel by Lance Parkin, strongly implies intimacy occurring between the Doctor and Bernice Summerfield. In the Virgin novel Death and Diplomacy, by Dave Stone, the Seventh Doctor implies that he intentionally creates an image of asexuality to keep things simple.

In various novels — especially Lungbarrow — it is also established that Time Lords do not reproduce sexually, but emerge from genetic Looms fully grown, although in equivocal fashion the same book also hints that the Doctor's birth was an exception. This idea was brought to the forefront in the '96 movie, where the Doctor states he is "half-human, on [his] mother's side", suggesting he had a normal human birth, rather than a synthetic Gallifreyan one. Madame de Pompadour's reference to the Doctor's lonely childhood in "The Girl in the Fireplace" would also seem to contradict the Loom theory. The 2007 episode "The Sound of Drums" also directly contradicts this, with Gallifreyan children leaving for the academy when they reach the age of 8. This episode also shows a young Master.

The classic series also made occasional references to the Doctor's childhood on Gallifrey (The Time Monster, State of Decay and Black Orchid), and there had been the occasional reference to Gallifreyan children, also referred to as "Time Tots" by Romana in the audio adventure Zagreus and the incomplete 1979 serial Shada.

In the Big Finish Productions audio play Loups-Garoux, the Fifth Doctor reluctantly agrees to marry the werewolf Ileana De Santos and although he gets out of it later there is, as in Cameca's case, a degree of mutual attraction present. In the plays involving the Eighth Doctor, his companion Charley confesses her romantic feelings for him in Zagreus, but although he admits he loves her back at the time, it is a highly dramatic moment and the relationship does not progress beyond the platonic.

The recurring novel and audio character Iris Wildthyme, created by Paul Magrs, is first introduced in the Short Trips story Old Flames, is a past romantic interest of the Doctor's who continues to flirt with him whenever they meet. In the audios Iris is played by Katy Manning, the actress who had formerly played Jo Grant during the Third Doctor's era. More of the Doctor's past relationships are explored in The Infinity Doctors and Cold Fusion.

The question of romance is sometimes side-stepped with plot devices in the spin-off media. In the 2001 BBC Books novel Father Time by Lance Parkin, the Doctor adopts an orphaned Gallifreyan-like alien called Miranda. It is implied in the book that Miranda is actually the daughter of the Doctor himself from the far future. Miranda returns in the novel Sometime Never... by Justin Richards, with her own daughter Zezanne. At that novel's end, a time-active being called Soul travels into the past accompanied by Zezanne, the two believing themselves to be the Doctor and Susan, respectively.

Modern-day romance

The 2005 series played with the idea of a romantic relationship between the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler, with many characters assuming they were a couple (although they always both denied it), and Rose's boyfriend Mickey Smith clearly viewing the Doctor as a romantic rival for whom Rose has, in some sense at least, left him. Both showed flashes of jealousy when the other flirted with other characters.

In the finale for that season, "The Parting of the Ways", the Doctor even kissed Rose (although the kiss also served a plot purpose). Earlier in the same episode, the pansexual Jack kissed both the Doctor and Rose goodbye full on the lips before leaving to fight the Daleks.

In the New Series Adventures novel Only Human by Gareth Roberts, Rose asks the Doctor how he would know that marrying for love is overrated, to which he cryptically answers, "Who says I don't? You ask the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu." In a December 2005 interview on BBC Four, actor David Tennant, who had just taken the role of the Tenth Doctor, described the relationship between the Doctor and Rose as "basically a love story without the shagging".

In the 2006 series, the Doctor and Rose kiss in "New Earth", but Rose is possessed by Cassandra at the time. In "School Reunion", the arrival of the Doctor's previous companion Sarah Jane Smith and his reaction to seeing her again prompts jealousy and worry from Rose, and Sarah all but admits that she has long been in love with the Doctor. In the same episode, the Doctor hints at deeper feelings for his companions when he remarks that humans wither and die, and it is hard to watch that "happen to someone you..." but leaves the rest unsaid. In the following episode, "The Girl in the Fireplace" (written by Steven Moffat), the Doctor shares a passionate kiss and a strong romantic connection with Madame de Pompadour, who takes him away to "dance", but how far the metaphor (coined in the episode "The Doctor Dances") is taken is not seen on screen. Although Rose does not seem to exhibit jealousy towards Madame de Pompadour, she does show some jealousy with regards to a woman called Lucy whom the Doctor speaks kindly of in the next episode, "Rise of the Cybermen". In the novel The Stone Rose, by Jacqueline Rayner, the Doctor kisses Rose after she saves him from being petrified, although it is described as "a kiss of gratitude and joy and unspeakable pleasure at being alive."

In "The Impossible Planet" the Doctor and Rose share an awkward moment when they have to consider settling down in one time period and Rose suggests they do so together, and she later plants a kiss for good luck on the Doctor's spacesuit prior to his descent into the pit. In "The Satan Pit" the Doctor tells Ida Scott that Rose already knows how he feels about her, saying "If you see Rose, tell her...tell her...oh, she knows". In "Doomsday", when the Doctor says his goodbyes to Rose, she finally tells him that she loves him. He begins to reply, but only gets as far as saying her name before he gets cut off, and the next scene shows him standing silently alone, a single tear down his cheek, whatever words he had intended to say remaining unspoken. In the audio commentary for the episode, executive producer Julie Gardner had stated that she thought "he absolutely was going to say it...he was going to tell her he loved her."

In "Smith and Jones", the Doctor says that he would rather 'be alone'. He kisses his new companion, Martha Jones, but only as a "genetic transfer" to distract their pursuers and he is extremely alarmed when she attempts to flirt with him on the TARDIS. The Doctor tells Martha that he and Rose "were together", and is clearly upset over losing her, although Martha points out that it was the Doctor who initiated their kiss and that he chose to take her away in the TARDIS (and moreover, she states that she 'only goes for humans', albeit to hide her disappointment).

Later, in "Daleks in Manhattan", Martha confesses to Tallulah that she is attracted to the Doctor (though Tallulah euphemistically guesses that the Doctor is "into musical theatre", implying that she believes the Doctor is gay). In "Human Nature", as in the original novel, the Doctor's human self, John Smith, falls in love with Joan Redfern (now a nurse, rather than a science teacher) and Martha notes that the Doctor 'had to fall in love with a human' other than herself. When the Doctor is himself again at the end of "The Family of Blood" — during which Martha admits, in an attempt to convince Smith to change back to being the Doctor, that "he is everything to me, and he doesn't even look at me, but I don't care, because I love him to bits, and I hope to God he won't remember me saying this" — he tells Joan he is capable of everything that Smith was, but she rejects his attempt to establish a relationship with her as the Doctor.

In the following episode, "Blink", he refers to being "rubbish at weddings, especially my own".

In the penultimate 2007 series episode The Sound of Drums, Martha shares a wordless moment with Captain Jack in which her attraction to the Doctor is suggested, to which Captain Jack replies, "You too?" Martha unambiguously states in the season finale, The Last of the Time Lords that she is in love with the Doctor and ultimately chooses to leave him as he seems unable or unwilling to reciprocate.

Discontinuities

A common contention among fans and producers of the series is that a large part of the Doctor's appeal comes from his mysterious and alien origins. While over the decades several revelations have been made about his background — that he is a Time Lord, that he is from Gallifrey, among others — the writers have often striven to retain some sense of mystery and to preserve the eternal question, "Doctor who?" This back-story was not rigidly planned from the beginning, but developed gradually (and somewhat haphazardly) over the years, the result of the work of many writers and producers.

Understandably, this has led to continuity problems. Characters such as the Meddling Monk were retroactively classified as Time Lords, early histories of races such as the Daleks were rewritten, and so on. The creation of a detailed back-story has also led to the criticism that too much being known about the Doctor limits both creative possibilities and the sense of mystery.

Some of the stories during the Seventh Doctor's tenure, part of the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan", were intended to deal with this issue by suggesting that much of what was believed about the Doctor was wrong and that he was a far more powerful and mysterious figure than previously thought. In both an untelevised scene in Remembrance of the Daleks and the subsequent Silver Nemesis it was implied that the Doctor was more than "just another Time Lord." The suspension of the series in 1989 meant that none of these hints were ever resolved. The "Masterplan" was used as a guide for the Virgin New Adventures series of novels featuring the Seventh Doctor, and the revelations about the Doctor's origins were written into the novel Lungbarrow by Marc Platt. However, the canonicity of these novels, like all Doctor Who spin-offs, is unclear.

Other appearances

• In the comic Death's Head
• In various episodes of The Simpsons including "Treehouse of Horror X" (see Doctor Who spoofs)
• In a Pinball Arcade game
• With Dan Dare in the 1991 Comic Relief Charity Magazine
• In a cameo, stepping briefly out of the TARDIS in the sitcom Chelmsford 123.
• In a skit with Catherine Tate's character Lauren Cooper in the March 16, 2007 edition of Comic Relief. The Doctor is shown disguised as a substitute teacher much as he was in "School Reunion" (though in the sketch Tennant uses his Scottish accent) and becomes annoyed at Lauren's taunts (including a metafictional reference to Billie Piper) before pulling out his sonic screwdriver and turning Lauren into a Rose Tyler action figure.
• In Family Guy's "Star Wars" parody episode, "Blue Harvest," Peter Griffin (as Han Solo) comments on how odd it looks as they enter hyperspace. It is revealed to be a portion of the Doctor Who main title, from the time of the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker).

References

• Cornell, Paul, Martin Day and Keith Topping (1995). The Discontinuity Guide. London, UK: Doctor Who Books. ISBN 0-426-20442-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Howe, David J, Stammers, Mark & Walker, Stephen James (1996). Doctor Who: The Eighties (1st ed. ed.). London, UK: Virgin Publishing. ISBN 1-85227-680-0. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Howe, David J & Walker, Stephen James (1998). Doctor Who: The Television Companion (1st ed. ed.). London: BBC Books. ISBN 0-563-40588-0. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Howe, David J & Walker, Stephen James (2003). The Television Companion: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to DOCTOR WHO (2nd ed. ed.). Surrey, UK: Telos Publishing Ltd. ISBN 1-903-88951-0. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Lawson, Mark (interviewer) (2005, December 8). Front Row (radio series), BBC Four.
• Parkin, Lance (2006). Additional material by Lars Pearson. (ed.). AHistory: An Unauthorised History of the Doctor Who Universe. Des Moines: Mad Norwegian Press. ISBN 0-9725959-9-6.

External links

• Who's Doctor Who - biography based on the TV series only.
• The Doctor's Biography - biography based on the TV series plus other media.
• Marvel Appendix - Doctor Who entry.
• Doctor Who Radio Times covers - photos of the Doctor
• Doctor Who Radio Times covers on TV & Radio Bits
• Template:Imdb character