DOCTOR WHO FACTFILE
The first episode of the BBC TV serial Doctor Who was screened in 1963. The Doctor was played by William Hartnell.
■ The first episode was on November 23, the day after the assassination of US President John F Kennedy.
■ It has been claimed that the transmission of the first episode was delayed by ten minutes due to extended news coverage of the assassination. In fact, it went out after a delay of eighty seconds.
■The BBC believed that coverage of the assassination, as well as a series of power blackouts across the country, caused many viewers to miss this introduction to a new series, and it was broadcast again on November 30, 1963, just before episode two.
■The show is a significant part of British popular culture and has gained a cult following. It has influenced generations of British television professionals, many of whom grew up watching the series.
■The programme originally ran from 1963 to 1989. The programme was relaunched in 2005, and since then has been produced in-house by BBC Wales in Cardiff.
■Beginning with William Hartnell, 13 actors have headlined the series as the Doctor, and in 2017 Jodie Whittaker became the first woman to play the role.
■The transition from one actor to another is written into the plot of the show with the concept of regeneration into a new incarnation.
■The programme was originally intended to appeal to a family audience as an educational programme using time travel as a means to explore scientific ideas and famous moments in history.
■Story editor David Whitaker commissioned Terry Nation to write a story under the title The Mutants. When the script was presented it was immediately rejected as the programme was not permitted to contain any “bug-eyed monsters”. According to producer Verity Lambert; “We didn’t have a lot of choice — we only had the Dalek serial to go. Had we had anything else ready we would have made that.”
■The eponymous aliens that would become the series’ most popular monsters, and was responsible for the BBC’s first merchandising boom.
■Due to his increasingly poor health, the first actor to play the Doctor, William Hartnell, was replaced by the younger Patrick Troughton in 1966.