“My original idea was to have an irascible, absent-minded, unpredictable old man, running away from his own planet in a time machine which looked like a police box on the outside but was in fact a large space station on the inside, and which he didn’t really know how to operate so he was always ending up in the wrong place, and time. We called him Doctor WHO, because no-one knew who he was, where he came from, what he was running away from, and where he was headed.”

That’s what Sydney Newman (Head of Drama at the BBC in the early sixties.) envisioned, and from that embryonic notion arose Doctor WHO. Even through the haze of sadness that burdened most of the World due to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on the previous day (Nov 22nd, 1963), Doctor WHO still became a success. Though the first serial “An Unearthly Child” made something of an impact, it was the second story, “The Daleks”, that captured the viewing public to become a National phenomenon. From there, the show became something of a tradition, and many a British family settled in to watch the adventures of the Doctor and his companions every Saturday evening.

The show would keep going strong, performing quite well and drawing audiences of 12 million or more on a regular basis, despite changes to the cast as companions came and went, and a few behind-the-scenes issues. Most notable was Hartnell’s increasingly poor-health, as arteriosclerosis begin to take its toll on him. His ability to remember his lines decreased, and by 1966 it was clear that he couldn’t continue much longer. Innes Lloyd, the Head of Serials at the time, discussed the issue with the actor, and Hartnell reluctantly agreed to depart. Now the show was facing its biggest hurdle.

However, Lloyd and editor Gary Davis drew upon the Doctor’s alien nature and cooked up a novel solution, the process that was at first called a “renewal”, but would later be termed “regeneration”, a process in which the Doctor could change his body due to ill health or injury, becoming a new man. They also decided that the Doctor’s persona would change as well, which removed the touchy issue of the next actor having to mimic his predecessor. The well-regarded Patrick Troughton was selected to become Hartnell’s successor, a change that took place at the end of the introductory Cybermen serial, “The Tenth Planet”. Both the Doctor’s fictional companions and the real-world audiences were, frankly, astonished, and left on the edge of their seats.

Troughton would go on to become a huge success in the role initially, with his charming and witty manner making him less akin to a grandfather and more like a beloved, oddball uncle. Despite his more comic approach, the Doctor still hated evil, and could become deadly-serious and cunning when the need arose, sometimes showing a darker side to his personality as he manipulated his foes into ultimately defeating themselves. Troughton would stay on for 3 seasons, and with the show facing declining ratings, the producers would decide to make changes to more than their lead actor. Jon Pertwee was selected to become the Third Doctor, who was now exiled to Earth by the Time-Lords, and forced to ally himself with the United Nations Intelligence Task-force, aka UNIT, becoming their scientific adviser during a time of increasing peril for our planet. By changing the setting and making it earthbound, a great deal of money would be saved, even in the face of the series’ transition into full-color, and a more action-oriented approach. These changes proved very successful, and saved the show when it was in serious danger of cancellation.

Over the next 18 years, the show would continue, and the Doctor would keep regenerating. The immensely-popular Tom Baker would succeed Pertwee in 1974, making the show successful enough to more broadly market overseas, and the show would start to hit American shores in 1978 via PBS stations (an earlier attempt in 1972 was not successful), where it would become a cult-favorite. 1980 would see huge changes as John Nathan Turner became the newest producer of the show, and he turned much of it upside down in an attempt to make the show a bit more flashy, and to brand the show and its characters for merchandising. In 1981, the youthful peter Davison would take over as the Fifth Doctor, and would contrast sharply against his predecessor, with a more vulnerable approach. Colin Baker would follow in 1985, becoming the Sixth Doctor in a tumultuous season that would nearly see the show canceled, and eventually see it the victim of an 18-month hiatus forced upon the producers by then-controller of BBC One, Michael Grade.

When the show returned in 1986, the Doctor was on-trial in fiction by the Time-Lords, and in reality by the BBC. Baker would later be fired by Grade, and Turner would hire the relatively-unknown comedy-actor Sylvester McCoy to take the reigns as the Seventh Doctor. The show would begin to see an upturn in script quality by season 25, but it wasn’t enough, as viewing figures had sunk to a low-point somewhere between 3 and 4 million viewers. In December of 1989, the final episode of the serial “Survival” became the last episode of the original series. Its final scene was, coincidentally, recorded on 23 November, 1989 – the show’s 26th anniversary. As the Doctor and his companion Ace faded into the sunset, the Doctor Who production office was closed down for the first time in August of 1990. The original series had come to an end.

From the early days in 1963, and until those final days in 1989, Doctor WHO regularly set new standards for the ways in which Science Fiction/Fantasy was interpreted on Television, despite its occasionally crude effects and sets. The clever writing and interesting characters are usually what mattered, not the glitz of superb FX (although at times some of the model effects were somewhat impressive), and that’s what endeared most fans to the show.

 

The Opening Theme

The theme for Doctor Who is one of the most well-known theme arrangements ever composed for television, and the arrangement has followed the show from 1963 until the present day. While there have been many variants and rearrangements, the core of the tune has remained virtually constant.

The tune was commissioned by Doctor Who producer, Verity Lambert, in the summer of 1963. Initially she had looked outside of the BBC itself for a composer, but when this proved fruitless she was clued into Desmond Briscoe of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. This would eventually lead to collaboration with composer Ron Grainer who had done some work with the BBC recently, and Delia Derbyshire, who oversaw the output of the workshop itself.

Lambert briefly outlined what she wanted, saying that it should be something with a beat, and radiophonic (making it electronic in nature), techniques at which the workshop excelled. Grainer quickly composed a very basic theme comprised of a bass line and a melody, and a few suggestions for other sounds to be used for the composition. He then sent this over to the workshop so that they could get started.

With Grainer’s work in hand, Derbyshire began her own. In 1963 when she did her work, there were no such things as “synthesizers” as we know them today, and knowing that is a key to understanding the magnitude of what she produced at the workshop. In order to get the electronic sounds with which to create the music, she had to get the lion’s share from “pure” electronic sounds. They came from tone-generators, oscillator, white-noise generators, and so on.

Sounds from these devices were sampled, adjusted, filtered, hand cut and spliced, and then pieced together note by note, edited and mixed, using analog equipment. It was an undertaking that required a great deal of patience, time, and skill. Because of the way it was made, the original theme is often said to be “pure” electronic music, and its a label that fits.

These techniques and the resulting works were huge influences on the nascent field of electronic music, and much of what we take for granted today is a result of the work of Derbyshire and other pioneers at the radiophonic workshop. When he heard it, Ron Grainer was very impressed with Derbyshire’s work and tried to get a co-credit for her, but because of some of the rules in place at the BBC at the time, she unfortunately did not receive the due credit. Derbyshire would receive credit for other work she did for the show, including pieces of incidental music and the iconic TARDIS dematerialization sound-effect.

From 1963 to 1979, the theme would remain largely unchanged, with only some relatively minor tweaks and modifications here and there. Then, in 1980, former Production Unit Manager John Nathan-Turner received a promotion and became the show’s producer. Once in place, he would begin to make many changes, and the theme would be one of the most notable. Once again, the radiophonic workshop would get the nod, with composer Peter Howell creating the updated arrangement.

By this point many different means existed to produce electronic sounds, including a Yamaha CS80 synthesizer which Howell used for much of his work. However, he would use a variety of other instruments and methods in the creation of the updated theme instead of relying on just one. As a result of Howell’s dedication and the techniques he used, his version of the theme is also highly regarded, and like the original, it can be hard to pin down just exactly how he accomplished some of the results. You have to love little mysteries like that, eh?

Howell’s version would be used until 1986, when it would be replaced by a new arrangement by Dominic Glynn for use during “Trial of a Time-Lord”, and one year later Keff McCulloch would compose another version that would be used until the original series ended in 1989. The work of both of these freelance artists was produced rather quickly and by commercially available synthesizers and using common mixing techniques, and as a result neither one tends to be as well regarded or timeless as what had come before.

New themes would come with the 1996 TV-Movie, and the revived series in 2005, and they shall be detailed in brief below.

 

The TV-Movie – 1996

After seven years of rumors and false-starts, Doctor WHO would finally return to the screens in a 1996 big-budget American television movie. The film was the dream of the British-born TV producer, Phillip Segal, who had long harbored an ambition to produce a new Doctor Who film. Over the years, he developed several treatments that he pitched to various production studios (Steven Spielberg’s Amblin being notable among these), some of which would have served as a reboot of the property.

Segal would eventually decide upon a continuation instead of a reboot, and he was able to eventually secure a co-production between the BBC and Universal Pictures. FOX was the only network interested in airing it, and while they would only commit to the single tele-film, it was designed as a back-door pilot, with hopes that high-ratings would convince the network to take it to series.

Pre-production started in 1994, and filming would take place in Vancouver, British Columbia, the first time any Doctor Who story was shot in North America, and it remains the only story to be entirely filmed outside of the UK. After a string of auditions, Liverpool native Paul McGann won the role of the Eighth Doctor. Sylvester McCoy was brought in to portray the Seventh Doctor (referred to as the “old Doctor” in the credits) in the early portion of the film, and transition into McGann upon regeneration. American actors Eric Roberts and Daphne Ashbrook would portray the Master, and surgeon Grace Holloway, respectively.

Composer John Debney was brought in to score the film, and initially intended to compose an entirely new version of the famous Doctor Who theme. Segal and the BBC, however, weren’t amiable to such a departure, and Debney would end up composing a new, orchestral arrangement of Grainer’s theme. Curiously, this version would begin with a building intro heavy on brass and percussion, followed by the middle-eight portion, before moving onto the familiar baseline and melody. Ron Grainer is curiously absent from the credits, and both Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop would also go uncredited despite the production’s use of the original TARDIS sound effect.

The production would go on to use a modified version of the old Jon Pertwee era logo, and the BBC continues to use it in connection with most merchandise relating to the “classic” series.

The plot would hinge around the Doctor’s attempts to save the Earth after his previous incarnation botched the transport of the remains of his arch-enemy, The Master (who was not as dead as he seemed), back to Gallifrey following the Master’s execution by the Daleks. Initially the new Doctor suffered from partial amnesia, but with Grace’s aid, he remembered who he was and why he was there, with only hours remaining to stop the Master’s plan to steal the Doctor’s remaining lives, a gambit that would destroy the Earth in the process.

The movie made its initial debut on a Canadian network on the 17th of May, 1996, would air in the states on FOX 2 days later, and then on BBC One in the UK on May 27th. Unfortunately, the film did not fare well in the USA for several reasons. FOX’s advertising efforts were arguably half-hearted, and the film was aired against a key episode of the popular ABC series ROSEANNE. That said, Nielsen research indicated that the tv-movie was the most-recorded event on US television that week, and the UK ratings were very high, but that wasn’t enough for FOX, who opted not to pick it up as a series, which meant the BBC’s designs for the series were back at square one. Worse, they would allow their option to re-air it to lapse without a single repeat broadcast (opting not to repeat it on 31 December of 1999), and it wouldn’t air again in the states until after FOX’s broadcast-rights to the film had expired, which wasn’t until 2000.

In terms of fan-reception, the results are best-described as “mixed”. Many enjoyed the overall look of the production, McCoy’s appearance, the casting and performance of McGann, the Doctor’s first on-screen kiss, and the look of the TARDIS/Police Box prop, which hewed very closely to the model the TARDIS was based on. Some fans were dismayed, however, by the inclusion of the aforementioned kiss, the claim that the Doctor was half-human, the rather muddled plot, and a production that many felt was too “Americanized”, and some voiced hopes that the production would eventually become non-canon.

Fan-reactions aside, the tv movie would be the last onscreen Doctor WHO adventure to be broadcast for nine more years. However, the tele-film had laid a great deal of groundwork for what was to come.

 

The Rebirth – 2005 and Beyond

After nine more years in which much of franchise was supported by novels and audios, years in which the BBC felt that they could not produce the show themselves and that the most likely means of bringing back Doctor Who lay in a feature-film (again), something changed, and that something was a change in personnel.

In 2000, Peter Salmon was as Controller of BBC One by Lorraine Heggessey, who proved to be more enthusiastic about the prospect of Doctor Who’s return than anyone in such a position had been in years. She ran headlong into several tangled right-issues that prevented an immediate return to television. However, BBCi (interactive) managed to produce a quartet of webcasts that received a good deal of positive attention, “Death Comes to Time” featuring the Seventh Doctor, “Real Time” featuring the Sixth, a remake of the incomplete and un-broadcast adventure, “Shada”, starring Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor and Lalla Ward’s Romana, and the ambitious, 2003′s “Scream of the Shalka”, which cast Richard E. Grant as the Ninth Doctor. “Shalka”, most notably, was intended to be an official continuation of the series continuity, but it would be displaced in a matter of months by the announcement so many had been waiting for.

By the fall of 2003, Heggecy had convinced BBC Worldwide that a feature-film was so far out of reach, that the BBC should bring the series proper back to television, and Worldwide agreed. The official announcement came on September the 23rd of that year, when the BBC’s Head of Drama, Jane Tranter, announced that the series would return in 2005. The executive producer and head writer would be Russell T Davies, who had been involved in talks to bring the series back in 1999, producer of the popular BBC 4 drama “Queer as Folk”. He would be joined by producers Phil Collinson and BBC Whales’ Julie Gardner, and an assortment of writers such as Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, and Paul Cornell. Composer Murray Gold was selected to score the new series, which would be dubbed “series 1″, though the new version would be a direct continuation of the original.

In a bit of a departure, the programme would consist of 13 episodes of 45 minutes each, most of which would be stand-alone, and yet strongly feature an over-arching background narrative. The well-respected Christopher Eccleston would be cast as the Ninth Doctor, and Billie Piper would feature as his new companion, Rose Tyler. Filming began in Cardiff in July of 2004, amidst a storm of media/internet coverage and speculation that far eclipsed anything in the series’ prior history. Every move the production made in terms of design (from the new TARDIS exterior, and the show’s logo) and casting would be carefully watched. There was a great deal of speculation and outright fan unrest, but media coverage was largely positive in contrast.

On the 26th of march in 2005, the first episode of the new series, “Rose”, would air at 7pm on BBC One, becoming the first regular episode of Doctor Who to de broadcast in 15 years. It was followed by a new documentary series called “Doctor Who Confidential” which would follow after each episode and go behind the scenes of the series. Watched by over 10 million viewers, and praised by viewers and critics alike, the opener was so successful, that Tranter would confirm a Christmas special and second series by March the 30th. A line of action figures by Character Options would hit the toy shelves, and the BBC Books line would launch its Ninth Doctor range of novels. As successful as the show was in the UK and Canada, the United States would drag its feet, and the series wouldn’t air in the states until a year later, carried by the Sci-Fi channel.

However, after the announcement of a second series, the tabloid newspaper “The Sun” would reveal that Christopher Eccleston would not return as the Doctor, news which the BBC soon confirmed. Many fans were outraged by this news, despite the show’s long history of lead changes, and the temperamental postings came so fast and so furious on the popular Outpost Gallifrey forum, that owner Shaun Lyon shut the forum down for 48 hours in order to allow things to calm down. Eventually it was revealed that the departure of Eccleston had been prepared for well in advance, and that the news of his short tenure had been broken far earlier than intended.

The fans and the media speculated at length on the casting of the new, Tenth Doctor, but didn’t have to wait long. In April, the BBC announced that David Tennant would succeed Eccleston. Response to this announcement was mixed until the Tenth Doctor’s appearance in a 7-minute children in need “bridge” episode, followed by his debut story, “The Christmas Invasion”, aired on Christmas of 2005. Tennant’s casting would prove to be a huge success, and the show became increasingly popular during his tenure. He would star in series 2 through 4, and 4 specials in 2009, going through 3 regular companions in the process, Piper’s Rose Tyler, Freema Agyeman’s Martha Jones, and Donna Noble, portrayed by Catherine Tate.

The show remained so successful, that it was spun off into a second documentary series “Totally Doctor Who”, the adult-oriented “Torchwood”, starring the John Barrowman as the popular character Captain Jack Harkness. That was soon followed by the regular return of Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith in “The Sarah Jane Adventures”, aimed at a young audience.

Following the 2009 specials, Tennant would depart, and Russell T Davies would move on as well, with the show now being helmed by writer Steven Moffat, who had written some of the most well-received episodes of the renewed series. Tennant would be succeeded by the 26-year-old Matt Smith, who would play the Eleventh Doctor, along with his new companion Amy Pond, played by Karen Gillan. Again, news of the casting was mixed, with many feeling that Smith was too young for the role. Moffat, however, was adamant that Smith was perfect for the role, and that his performances would bear that out. The new Doctor would debut on 3rd of April, 2010, bringing in over 9 million viewers, and bringing us to the present day. Doctor Who, once again reborn, keeps running, and we keep pace right beside him, waiting to see where he’ll take us next.