And to think, it all started in a junkyard.
Sixty years ago today, on November 23, 1963, Doctor Who premiered on the BBC, becoming the world's longest-running science fiction TV series. The very first episode, "An Unearthly Child", launched in the shadow of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas the day before, forcing a repeat the following week. The first four-part serial introduced the world to the enigmatic time-traveler known only as the Doctor (then called "Dr. Who" in the closing credits), his granddaughter Susan Foreman, and Susan's teachers from Coal Hill School, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. It also introduced the world to the TARDIS (short for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space), the definitive time machine ever imagined, somehow bigger on the inside and still stuck all these decades later in the shape of a 1960s British police box.
After an incredibly strong first episode that began the adventures in space and time, the remaining three episodes in that first black-and-white serial were rather dull and plodding, with our first TARDIS team encountering a tribe of prehistoric cavemen who defined their leader simply by whomever could make fire. The second serial, "The Daleks", was considerably more interesting, a seven-parter from writer Terry Nation that took us to the planet Skaro for our first encounter with the Doctor's most popular enemies, you guessed it, the Daleks. The army of blobby aliens piloting miniature metal tanks with an egg whisk on one arm and a toilet plunger on the other became insanely popular with British kids, who went around "Exterminating" their classmates on the playground. Even better, Doctor Who's ratings from the first serial had nearly doubled by the end of "The Daleks", and lo, a science fiction legend was born. The show became a pop culture hit, even spawning two feature films -- Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 AD -- starring Peter Cushing as a version of the Doctor with very few similarities to William Hartnell's First Doctor.
The rest of Doctor Who's infancy in the 1960s continued to lay the foundation for the series, when Susan became the first of the Doctor's companions to leave in the tenth serial, "The Dalek Invasion of Earth." Ian and Barbara soon followed, with only star William Hartnell continuing on as the Doctor with a number of replacement companions, until his deteriorating health affected his ability to remember his lines and ultimately forced him to leave early in Season 4, in the serial "The Tenth Planet" that also introduced another group of popular villains known as the Cybermen. At the end of that story, the show discovered an amazing way to continue on whenever the lead actor left the role of the alien Doctor, by having them "regenerate" into a brand-new incarnation played by another actor with a different persona. Patrick Troughton became the new Second Doctor, making his full debut in "The Power of the Daleks" and soon won over Hartnell's fans, ensuring the show's survival. Troughton, along with actors Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon) and Wendy Padbury (Zoe Heriot), left the series at the end of Season 6, as Doctor Who closed out its original black-and-white era.
In 1970, the show began airing colorized episodes, with Jon Pertwee debuting as the Third Doctor as the Doctor began an exile on Earth, forced upon him by his people, the Time Lords. Pertwee's first story, "Spearhead from Space", paired the Doctor up with UNIT, a fictional military organization that investigated the strange and unusual, introduced in a previous Troughton serial. Pertwee's era showed the Doctor could be a James Bond-esque man of action in addition to a scientific genius, with his main enemy and fellow Time Lord, The Master, introduced as the Professor Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes. This era also gave fans the definitive companion in the form of Elisabeth Sladen's Sarah Jane Smith, who continued with the series as Tom Baker took over the lead role in 1974's "Robot". As the mad, eccentric Fourth Doctor, Baker took the series to a new height in popularity over the course of seven seasons and became many fans' favorite of the four lead actors, at least for the following thirty years.
In 1981, Tom Baker left the role in "Logopolis", paving the way for Peter Davison's younger, more handsome Fifth Doctor. Like Troughton, Davison had the challenge of winning over the previous Doctor's fans, but proved up to the task over the course of the next three seasons, including the 20th anniversary special, "The Five Doctors", that teamed the First, Second, Third, and Fifth Doctors, with the Fourth Doctor excluded (apart from old footage from the then-incomplete serial "Shada") due to Tom Baker's refusal to return. Davison exited the series in 1984, which happened to be around the same time that my 15-year-old self discovered Doctor Who on PBS in America, with Tom Baker's "The Keeper of Traken" being the serial that made me a Whovian, even after all these decades later.
Sadly, the rest of the 1980s was not as kind to the series, as Colin Baker's arrogant Sixth Doctor proved unpopular with fans. Ratings declined, and then-BBC1 controller Michael Grade expressed his disapproval of the series, slashing the show's paltry budget even further. In an attempt to salvage the series, Colin Baker was fired and in 1987, Sylvester McCoy was brought in as the more Troughton-esque Seventh Doctor for the show's final three seasons, which showed a marginal improvement in overall quality but failed to restore the show's ratings. At long last, Michael Grade did what many of the Doctor's enemies couldn't, and Doctor Who ended in 1989's with McCoy's final serial, the ironically-named "Survival."
The 1990s became Doctor Who's "wilderness years", with the only new episode being a TV movie in 1996 that introduced Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor after McCoy reprised the role for an early regeneration scene. The TV movie was intended as a backdoor pilot for a new American-produced revival of Doctor Who to continue the series instead of rebooting it, but pilot became the victim of the FOX network's poor scheduling that delivered unsurprisingly poor ratings, and Whovians' hopes (especially mine) were quickly dashed. The end of the '90s provided one bright light, however, when Big Finish Productions secured the rights to produce brand-new Doctor Who audio adventure stories starring Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy as their respective Doctors, along with some of their companions. For many fans, this was the best we could imagine during this otherwise dark time. Even better, McGann agreed to reprise the Eighth Doctor for Big Finish, officially continuing Doctor Who (albeit in audio form) with 2001's "Storm Warning."
In 2003, we finally found light at the end of the tunnel. Just as Doctor Who fans tried to wrap our heads around Richard E. Grant voicing a new official "Ninth Doctor" for the first (and only) webcast Doctor Who series, "Scream of the Shalka," the BBC surprised everyone by announcing that Doctor Who would return in 2005 for a brand-new TV series with a brand-new Ninth Doctor, quickly relegating Richard E. Grant's webcast Ninth Doctor to obscure Doctor Who trivia night. Fandom resurged in anticipation, with US fans being forced to use this newfangled thing called "the Internet" to watch these new episodes due to having no American distributor for the new series.
On March 26, 2005, Doctor Who returned to television with "Rose," the first episode of Series One that introduced Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor as pop-singer Billie Piper as his new companion, Rose Tyler. New showrunner Russell T Davies used key elements from "Spearhead from Space" in his revival debut, (including bringing back the serial's villains, the Autons) but here was a redecorated Doctor Who...and fans did like it. Greater production values, improved special effects, solid acting, fun dialogue, and most importantly, it was the same damn show. Everything we loved about Doctor Who was featured in "Rose" and while the episode may not have been perfect, it was only the start of the revival that's lasted to this day.
As fans were over the moon with the return of our favorite show, a bombshell dropped just days later that Eccleston was already leaving the show after only one season for reportedly "fear of being typecast". What? WHAT?! WHAT?!!! Mercifully, David Tennant was soon announced as incoming Tenth Doctor, becoming an instant fan-favorite for Series Two through Four...and several assorted Specials because Tennant (himself a diehard Whovian) didn't want to go. Tennant's era during the rest of the 2000s turned Doctor Who into a global phenomenon, with Tennant himself becoming arguably even more popular as a Doctor than the sainted Tom Baker.
Also, for the first time, the family-friendly series Doctor Who was now popular enough to have TV spinoffs, with Modern Era companion Captain Jack Harkness getting his own series, Torchwood (Yes, an anagram of "Doctor Who") for older viewers, and Elisabeth Sladen returning for more kids-friendly series, The Sarah Jane Adventures. With Davies having his hand in both series, it truly felt that Doctor Who had expanded its fictional universe, with Doctors and companions criss-crossing all three series to everyone's delight. Our little cult TV show whispered about in dark corners had grown up for all the world to enjoy.
And even when RTD announced he was leaving along with Tennant after "The End of Time, Part Two", we were reassured that Doctor Who would be in safe hands with popular writer Steven Moffat taking over as the new showrunner. At the age of 27, Matt Smith became the youngest-ever actor to take on the role, younger than Peter Davison was when he started and was considered by some foolish mortals to be "too young for the role." When Smith debuted in 2010's "The Eleventh Hour" as the new Eleventh Doctor, the first episode in the new Steven Moffat era, he quickly put such fanboy snobbery to rest. Moffat quickly put his mark on the series, crafting some delightfully complex scripts that pushed the boundaries of what the series could do with time travel.
A perfect example of this? "The Day of the Doctor", Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary Special in 2013, which not only brought Tennant back as the Tenth Doctor, but also introduced Sir John Hurt as the War Doctor, a "secret" Doctor never revealed before now that was developed as a replacement character for Christopher Eccleston, who declined to return as the Ninth Doctor for personal reasons. Anyone else getting Tom Baker vibes? The Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey, once thought destroyed as part of RTD's Time War idea to get rid of the Time Lords, was suddenly back in play again and a new Doctor was right around the corner. And there were more 50th Anniversary treats, including the long-awaited TV return of Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor in a mini-episode entitled "The Night of the Doctor" and the docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time, scripted by Doctor Who actor and writer Mark Gatiss and starring David Bradley as William Hartnell.
It was around this time in 2014 that Southgate Media Group's Rob Southgate approached my longtime friend Jesse Jackson about doing a Doctor Who podcast and much to my surprise, Jesse asked me if I was interested in co-hosting it with him. I'd never hosted a podcast before, let alone listened to any, but the idea was far too tempting for me to resist. On August 3, 2014, we recorded the first episode of Next Stop Everywhere: The Doctor Who Podcast, devoted to exploring all eras of Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures (I mean, Everywhere is right there in the title), with me as the longtime Whovian and Jesse as the noob who got into New Who through Torchwood. Over nine years and three hundred episodes later, we're still recording as I continue Jesse's education of all things Who and we share our love of everything timey-wimey.
After a couple of "prologue" episodes, our first review was "Deep Breath", Peter Capaldi's first story as the new Twelfth Doctor. A much older actor than Matt Smith, Capaldi (another longtime Whovian like Tennant) remained in the role for Series Eight, Nine and Ten, despite some declining ratings and Moffat getting some criticism for trying to be too clever with his often overly-complicated story ideas. Capaldi and Moffat both ended their Doctor Who runs with 2017's "Twice Upon a Time", another multi-Doctor story with the Twelfth Doctor meeting the First Doctor (now played by David Bradley) during events from Hartnell's final story, "The Tenth Planet." It was time for the show to change again, this time Torchwood showrunner Chris Chibnall taking the helm from Moffat.
And change the show did. For the first time ever, a woman was selected for the lead role, with Jodie Whittaker becoming the Thirteenth Doctor. Right from the announcement trailer, a segment of Doctor Who fandom turned to hating the very same series they once professed to love, openly and trollishly campaigning for its cancellation simply because Chibnall dared to let someone with two X chromosomes play the Doctor. Ratings continued to suffer as some fans continued to pine for their Space Boyfriends, David Tennant and Matt Smith, and Chibnall often proved himself to be not as nearly as talented with scripts as Davies or Moffat. To his credit, Chibnall introduced some interesting story ideas, such as another "secret" previously unmentioned Doctor, this time another woman (and black no less, gasp!) called the Fugitive Doctor. In the process, he teased the divisive concept of the Timeless Child, a possible amount of unknown Doctors sometime before William Hartnell's First Doctor left Gallifrey with Susan all those years ago. Oh, and Gallifrey and the Time Lords? They're gone again, this time wiped out by Sacha Dhawan's incarnation of the Master.
Regardless, Jodie Whittaker got her three seasons as the Thirteenth Doctor, albeit the last two truncated due to complications resulting from the COVID pandemic. Whittaker and Chibnall made their exit with "The Power of the Doctor", arguably Chibnall's finest story during his and Whittaker's era, which brought back many Classic Era companions that Davies and Moffat somehow failed to do during their times as showrunner.
Speaking of Davies, a deal was made for him to return as showrunner for the show's 60th Anniversary with the announcement that Ncuti Gatwa would become the next Doctor and the show's first black actor in the lead role. (I know, gasp!) Of course, with Davies, nothing is that straightforward, so David Tennant has returned again, this time as a mysterious Fourteenth Doctor who recalls the teeth he had from his tenth incarnation. So here we are, three 60th Anniversary Specials with David Tennant, followed by Ncuti Gatwa at Christmas as the Fifteenth Doctor with Millie Gibson as his new companion Ruby Sunday.
What happens next? Who knows, eh? Who. Knows.
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