24 November 2023 , 15:08
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It’s 60 years since Doctor Who burst onto the screen on November 23, 1963. So what better way to celebrate the iconic BBC sci-fi series than with 60 facts about every aspect of the show - one for each year since it began.
Did you know that Colin Baker’s best man when he married was the son of another Time Lord, that Peter Davison changed his name because of Doctor Who or that the idea for Cybermen came from a fear of where medical science would lead? If you want to know which Oscar-nominated names have guest starred, which Doctors planned to be monks rather than actors and how many action figures of David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor have sold - read on!
1. Hollywood film director Ridley Scott at the BBC in the 1960s and was originally assigned to design the Daleks - but a clash of dates with other work meant he couldn't take on the task.
2. Fourth and Seventh Doctors Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy originally planned to have careers as monks, before taking up acting.
3. David Tennant's first appearance in a Doctor Who adventure came in an audio story, Colditz, in October 2001, playing a Nazi in a Sylvester McCoy story – four years before he became the Time Lord.
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4. Peter Capaldi featured in a local newspaper, the Bishopbriggs Times in 1975, as a super fan of Doctor Who, including pictures of him with Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. The article also mentions that Peter wants to become an actor.
5. Paul McGann became the Eighth Doctor for the 1996 TV Movie - but among the unsuccessful people to audition for the role was his own brother, Mark.
6. Patrick Troughton's sons David and Michael have appeared in the show, David appearing three times, starting in 1967, with Michael debuting in 2014.
7. Christopher Eccleston's first part after leaving Doctor Who was in US show Heroes - and his catchphrase of "Fantastic!" was including in his new role.
After Doctor Who Christopher Ecclestone went on to star in Heroes (BBC)8. Jon Pertwee worked alongside James Bond creator Ian Fleming during his spell with Naval Intelligence in World War II.
9. Patrick Troughton served in the Royal Navy during the war, and survived his ship being torpedoed.
10. Oscar-nominee Carey Mulligan appeared in the acclaimed Doctor Who episode Blink, which introduced the Weeping Angels, playing Sally Sparrow, in 2007.
11. Future Spider-Man Andrew Garfield featured in another David Tennant adventure, Evolution of the Daleks, also in 2007.
12. Future Who writers including Russell T Davies and Mark Gatiss has their first stories with the Time Lord published in the New Adventures novels in the 1990s, which continued the show when it was off air.
13. Future showrunner Steven Moffat took part in a Doctor Who short story collection in 1996 with Continuity Errors - the idea was later partly reworked as A Christmas Carol for Matt Smith's Doctor.
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14. Moffat also reworked a story from the 2006 Doctor Who Annual, What I Did On My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow, as the TV episode Blink.
15. Rowan Atkinson, Richard E Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Joanna Lumley all played the Doctor in a Comic Relief story from 1999, The Curse of Fatal Death.
16. Richard E Grant also played the Doctor in a 2003 animation The Scream of the Shalka, which featured a cameo from David Tennant.
17. When David Tennant was a little boy, he once asked his granny to knit him a cricket jumper like Fifth Doctor Peter Davison - who is now his father in law.
18. Pretty Woman star Julia Roberts' brother Eric played the Master in the 1996 TV Movie - beating Back To The Future star Christopher Lloyd to the part.
19. When Matt Smith and Karen Gillan filmed their final scene together before he regenerated, both actors were wearing wigs, having both had their heads shaved for recent film parts.
20. Russell T Davies has borrowed story ideas from previously published Doctor Who novels, audio adventures and comic strips - David Tennant's return this weekend is based on a 1980 strip The Star Beast.
21. Although Paul McGann has only featured in one full-length story, he has made two brief returns on television, and featured in more than 150 original audio adventures.
Paul McGann as The Doctor and Daphne Ashbrook as Dr Grace Holloway (BBC)22. William Hartnell's time as Doctor Who was made into a biopic in 2013, written by Mark Gatiss, with Harry Potter star David Bradley playing Hartnell. Bradley has since appeared as the Doctor in the TV show on several occasions.
23. Sixth Doctor Colin Baker appeared in 1983 story Arc of Infinity as a Time Lord commander who shot Peter Davison's Doctor. He caught producer John Nathan-Turner's eye, and took over in the TARDIS a year later.
24. Future Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall appeared on the BBC's Open Air in 1986, complaining about the direction of the show. He later cast the first female Doctor, Jodie Whittaker.
25. Peter Capaldi, a former singer/guitarist with punk band The Dreamboys, played the Doctor Who theme on his guitar, which featured on the opening credits of 2015 episode, Before The Flood.
26. Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith's sister Laura Jayne appears in the video for Eric Prydz's 2004 hit Call On Me.
27. National treasure Sheridan Smith has said that her favourite role of all time is Lucie Miller, the companion to Paul McGann's Doctor in audio adventures.
28. TV crime drama queen Nicola Walker has been playing McGann's companion Liv Chenka on audio for a decade, and cites the role as one of her favourites too.
29. Jon Pertwee asked accomplished artist Peter Capaldi to illustrate his personal Christmas cards in the 1970s.
30. The design of the Daleks was influenced by the Georgian State Dancers, whose legs were hidden by flowing dresses.
31. The original idea for the Cybermen came from a fear of where spare part surgery would ultimately lead, with people's bodies being replaced by machines.
Doctor Who created a number of fearful creatures for the sci-fi show (BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/Disney)32. Tom Baker was out of work as an actor when he was told he'd won the part of the Doctor - he was working on a building site at the time.
33. Peter Davison's real name is Peter Moffett. He changed his name to avoid confusion with director Peter Moffatt, who would later work on several of his Doctor Who stories.
Peter Davison played Doctor Who (BBC)34. John Simm played the Master, but under the alias of Mister Saxon. This was an anagram of Master No Six.
35. In the 1980s, to hide surprise appearances from the Master by actor Anthony Ainley, he was credited as Neil Toynay and Leon Ty Naiy (Tony Ainley), and on another as James Stoker (Master's joke).
36. The appearance of Davros in 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks was kept a surprise too, with actor Terry Molloy credited as Roy Tromelly.
37. Colin Baker's roommate was David Troughton, the son of Patrick, with David being best man when Colin married actress Lisa Goddard.
38. In Little Britain's first series, the hapless inventor is named Matthew Waterhouse - named after an actor of the same name, who played the Fourth and Fifth Doctor's companion Adric.
39. Long before he wrote for Doctor Who on television, League of Gentleman star Mark Gatiss wrote a Doctor Who audio play, Phantasmagoria, which he namechecked in the Christopher Eccleston episode The Unquiet Dead.
40. Scottish writer Rona Munro is the only person who has written scripts for 20th and 21st century Doctor Who, with Survival for Sylvester McCoy, and The Eaters of Light for Peter Capaldi.
41. Peter Capaldi's Doctor Who debut came as a surprise in the 2013 50th anniversary special, with a close up of his eyes in The Day of the Doctor, an episode before Matt Smith's regeneration.
42. The Twelfth Doctor met the Fifteenth Doctor at a BAFTA awards night in Glasgow. Peter Capaldi met Ncuti Gatwa, swapped numbers, and later discovered they were on the same train back to London, so sat with each other.
43. To keep Billie Piper's return to Doctor Who in 2008 as a surprise, the preview copy shown to the media omitted the brief scene in which she featured.
44. The action figure of David Tennant as the Doctor has sold more than 750,000 units.
45. Rare and out of print Doctor Who novels from the 1990s Lungbarrow and The Dying Days sell for hundreds of pounds on eBay.
46. At present, 97 black and white episodes are missing from the BBC archives, but these are being animated using the original soundtracks, recorded off-air by fans in the 1960s.
47. Only eight Doctor Who episodes were ever repeated in the 1960s, with the first episode, An Unearthly Child, being repeated on 30 November 1963, following Kennedy's assassination the week before. The other repeat was 1967's The Evil of the Daleks.
48. Matt Smith auditioned for the part of Dr Watson in Sherlock, but producer Steven Moffat - then in charge of Doctor Who too - felt he was too quirky and similar to Benedict Cumberbatch. The role went to Martin Freeman, but Moffat remembered Smith when casting for the Eleventh Doctor.
49. When Benedict Cumberbatch auditioned for the part of Sherlock, he had spent the morning recording a Doctor Who audio drama with Sylvester McCoy.
50. Talking of Benedict, his mother, Wanda Ventham, appeared in three Doctor Who stories, The Faceless Ones (with Patrick Troughton), Image of the Fendahl (with Tom Baker) and Time and the Rani (with Sylvester McCoy).
51. David Tennant and Ncuti Gatwa both trained as actors at the same venue, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.
David Tennant became a memorable Doctor Who (BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/Disney)52. Companion actors Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier), Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), Lalla Ward (Romana), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones) and Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) all played other parts in Doctor Who before becoming regulars.
53. Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Class were 21st century Doctor Who spin-offs, but Christmas 1981 saw the first attempt, with K9 and Company, starring the Doctor's robot dog and Sarah Jane Smith actress Elisabeth Sladen. They finally got their show 26 years later!
54. Costume designer James Acheson, who won Oscars for his work on The Last Emperor, Dangerous Liasons and Restoration, designed Tom Baker's costume with the lengthy scarf. He also created Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man outfits.
55. Peter Capaldi won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film in 1993, with Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life.
56. Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer, whose work includes Gladiator, Inception and The Lion King, played synthesisers on 1985 charity record Doctor In Distress, after the show was taken off air. It has been dubbed: "The worst charity single of all time."
57. Doctor Who met EastEnders in 3D for a charity special in 1993, with Phil and Grant Mitchell featuring, along with Pat Butcher and Pauline Fowler - but due to contracts signed at the time, it has never been repeated or released on DVD.
58. EastEnders' Lisa Fowler (Lucy Benjamin) made her TV debut aged 12, in Peter Davison story Mawdryn Undead in 1983, under her real name of Lucy Baker.
59. Following the death of original Master actor Roger Delgado in a car accident, his wife was cast as the voice of an evil spider queen, by producer Barry Letts, in Jon Pertwee's final story.
60. Bernard Cribbins makes his final appearances as Donna's grandad Wilfred in the new specials. He was originally a one-off character in 2007 Christmas special Voyage of the Damned, but was brought back when the actor playing Donna's dad, Howard Attfield, passed away after shooting began on the series. The scenes with her dad were re-shot with Bernard.