A fact for every year
1 Hollywood film director Ridley Scott was at the BBC in the 1960s and was originally assigned to design the Daleks – but a clash of dates meant he couldn’t.
2 Fourth and Seventh Doctors Tom Baker, pictured, and Sylvester McCoy originally planned to become monks.
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.
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.
5 Paul McGann, pictured below, 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 included in his new role.
8 Jon Pertwee worked alongside James Bond creator Ian Fleming during his spell with Naval Intelligence in the Second World War.
9 Patrick Troughton served in the Royal Navy during the war, and survived his ship being torpedoed.
10 Oscar-nominee Carey Mulligan, right, appeared in Doctor Who episode Blink, which introduced the Weeping Angels, playing Sally Sparrow, in 2007.
11 Andrew Garfield, who later went on to play Spider-Man, featured in another David Tennant adventure, Evolution of the Daleks, also in 2007.
12 Future Who writers including Russell T Davies and Mark Gatiss had their first stories with the Time Lord published in the
New Adventures novels in the 1990s.
13 Future showrunner Steven Moffat took part in a Doctor Who short story collection in 1996 with Continuity Errors – partly reworked as A Christmas Carol for Matt Smith.
14 Moffat also reworked a story in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual, What I Did On My Christmas Holidays, as TV episode Blink.
15 Rowan Atkinson, Richard E Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Joanna Lumley all played the Doctor in a 1999 Comic Relief story, The Curse of Fatal Death. 16
Richard E Grant also played the Doctor in a 2003 animation The Scream of the Shalka, with 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 – now his father-in-law.
18 Eric, the brother of Pretty Woman star Julia Roberts, played the Master in the 1996 TV Movie, beating Back To The Future’s 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 in more than 150 original audio adventures.
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 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 Sheridan Smith’s favourite role of all time is Lucie Miller, the companion to Paul McGann’s Doctor in audio adventures. 28
TV crime queen Nicola Walker, above, has been playing McGann’s companion Liv Chenka on audio for a decade.
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 their flowing dresses.
TOMORROW: 30 MORE FACTS