Fun Facts!

Dr. Who

1. Doctor Who first hit TV screens at teatime on 23 November 1963 on BBC1

2. The opening episode was An Unearthly Child, a reference to the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, who attended school on Earth and astounded teachers with her alien intelligence

3.The original series ran from 1963 to 1989

 4. It returned on 26 March 2005 with the episode Rose, starring Billie Piper as the eponymous Ms Tyler and Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor. RT celebrated with a special gatefold cover that opened to reveal the interior of the Tardis

5. The original theme tune was composed by Ron Grainer and given its innovative spine-tingling arrangement by Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

6. The original broadcast of the first episode of Dr Who was eclipsed by the assassination of JFK the previous day, so the BBC showed it again ahead of the second episode the following Saturday

7. Rated on the BBC’s scale of viewer satisfaction, the first episode of Doctor Who received an audience reaction index of 63, smack in the middle of the averages for television drama (62) and children’s programmes (64)

8. The first mention of “Dr Who” in Radio Times was a brief "Coming Next Week" piece in the issue dated 16-22 November 1963

 9. The series claimed its first RT front cover for episode one of the historical adventure Marco Polo in the issue dated 22-28 February 1964

10. 1966 episode The Smugglers is the only Doctor Who production to feature absolutely no incidental music

11. The Wheel in Space (a 1968 six-part Cyberman story) was the only story to be made in all four of the BBC’s London studio sites: Lime Grove, Riverside, TV Centre and Ealing Film Studios

12. The Daleks debuted in the second Doctor Who story and propelled the series into the ratings stratosphere, with the last four episodes hovering around the ten million mark

13. You know him as the Doctor but did you know he was also a doctor? In a sickbay in 1967 story The Moonbase, the Time Lord was asked, “Listen, are you really a medical doctor?” to which he replied, “Yes, I think I was once, Polly. I think I took a degree once in Glasgow. 1888 I think. Lister.”

14. The first colour episode of Doctor Who was part one of Spearhead from Space, starring third Doctor Jon Pertwee, which aired on 3 January 1970

15. These days, it’s viewers – and River Song – who guard against spoilers but when Radio Times previewed Spearhead from Space in its 1969 Christmas edition, producer Barry Letts complained that the article was too revealing - as well as introducing new Doctor Jon Pertwee, it gave away most of the plot of the first Auton invasion...

16. The letters page of a February/March 1974 edition of Radio Times featured some correspondence from a 15-year-old schoolboy in response to the magazine’s Dr Who special. “The Dalek construction plans will no doubt have inspired many a school to build their own Daleks,” suggested the young man. “Who knows, the country could be invaded by an army of school Daleks!” The youngster’s name? Peter Capaldi. Best known to many as spin doctor Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It, Capaldi is also familiar to Who fans as Caecilius in 2008 episode The Fires of Pompeii

17. Inspired by The Dalek Invasion of Earth, the 30 April-6 May 2005 cover of Radio Times was voted the greatest magazine cover of all time by the Periodical Publishers Association

18. William Hartnell is officially the first Doctor but, controversially, in 1976 episode The Brain of Morbius we saw many other faces on a screen, intended to be even earlier selves of the Doctor. They were posed by the production team: producer Philip Hinchcliffe, script editor Robert Holmes, writer Robert Banks Stewart, directors Christopher Barry and Douglas Camfield, production manager George Gallacio and production assistant Graeme Harper (who went on to direct several Who episodes between 2006 and 2009)