Doctor Who (TV Series)

Doctor Who is a television show, film series and a global multimedia franchise created and controlled by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and the CBS Corporation.

Origins
Several individuals share credit for establishing Doctor Who in 1963, but it is generally accepted that the original impetus for the series, as well as the establishment of certain aspects, such as the concept of the TARDIS, the basic character of the Doctor and the title Doctor Who itself belong to Canadian-born Sydney Newman, who is also credited with creating another iconic series, The Avengers. Others involved in piecing together the puzzle that became the series include Head of Serials Donald Wilson, writer C. E. Webber, script editor David Whitaker and the show's first producer, Verity Lambert, the first woman to hold such a position at the BBC.

Premise
It centres on a time traveller called "the Doctor", who comes from a race of beings known as Time Lords. They travel through space and time in a time machine they call the TARDIS. This ship — which looks like a small, London police box on the outside — has nearly infinite dimensions on the inside. It has become such an iconic shape in British culture that it is currently the intellectual property of the BBC rather than its actual makers, the Metropolitan Police Service.

In order to accommodate cast changes, the narrative allows the Doctor to regenerate into an essentially new person on occasion. The cast is rounded out by one or more "companions", often females. On average, the main cast completely changes once every three or four years — a significant factor in the longevity of the programme.

Cast

 * The Doctor - William Hartnell
 * The Doctor - Patrick Troughton
 * The Doctor - Jon Pertwee
 * The Doctor - Tom Baker
 * The Doctor - Peter Davison
 * The Doctor - Colin Baker
 * The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
 * The Doctor - Richard Griffiths
 * The Doctor - Michael French
 * The Doctor - Richard E Grant
 * The Doctor - Anthony Head
 * The Doctor - Paterson Joseph
 * The Doctor - David Suchet
 * The Doctor - Samantha Bond
 * The Doctor - Adjoa Andoh
 * The Doctor - Ace Bhatti

Season 7
Colour production began in this season.

Season 22
The show's format changed to 45-minute episodes in this season.

Season 23
25-minute episodes resumed. The Trial of a Time Lord was produced as four separate serials with 3 of them consisting of 4 episodes and the last being 2 episodes, making up 14 episodes. It is considered a single story by this wiki.

Season 41
From the start of Season 41, the multi-episode serial format was abandoned in favour of standalone single-episode stories, in an ongoing story arc. Standard episode length changed to 90 minutes.

Season 44
From this season onward, episodes began being filmed in High Definition (HD).