The Doctor (Doctor Who)

This article is about the main character of the Doctor Who TV series. For the current Doctor, see Twelfth Doctor. For the Doctor as portrayed in the 1960s Dalek films, see Dr. Who (Dalek films).

The Doctor
Doctor Who character
The Doctor as portrayed by the series leads in chronological order, left to right from top row.
First appearance	An Unearthly Child
Created by	Sydney Newman
Portrayed by	Series leads: William Hartnell (1963–66) Patrick Troughton (1966–69) Jon Pertwee (1970–74) Tom Baker (1974–81) Peter Davison (1982–84) Colin Baker (1984–86) Sylvester McCoy (1987–89) Paul McGann (1996) Christopher Eccleston (2005) David Tennant (2005–10) Matt Smith (2010–13) Peter Capaldi (2014–present) Others: John Hurt (2013) Other actors who played the Doctor
Character biography
Species	Time Lord
Home planet	Gallifrey
Incarnations	First Second Third Fourth Fifth Sixth Seventh Eighth War Ninth Tenth Eleventh Twelfth

The Doctor is the title character and protagonist in the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. The character has also been featured in one made-for-television film, and a vast range of spin-off novels, audio dramas and comic strips connected to the series. In the series, "the Doctor" is the alias assumed by a centuries-old alien who travels through space and time in his TARDIS, frequently with companions.

Since the show's inception in 1963, the character has been portrayed by twelve lead actors. The transition from each succeeding actor is explained within the narrative of the show through the plot device of "regeneration", a biological function of his race that allows their change of cellular structure and appearance with recovery following a potentially fatal injury. A number of other actors have played the character in stage and audio plays, as well as in various film and television productions. The character's enduring popularity led The Daily Telegraph to dub him "Britain's favourite alien". The incumbent Doctor is the Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, who succeeded Matt Smith in the role in the 2013 Christmas special "The Time of the Doctor".

Character biography

Within the fictional narrative, the Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet of Gallifrey who travels through time and space in his dimensionally transcendental—"bigger on the inside"—time machine, the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space) which took the exterior form of a 1963 police telephone call box, and retains the appearance throughout the series. His kind have dedicated themselves to overseeing all of time and space without interference. The Doctor chose to leave his home by stealing an obsolete TARDIS model as revealed in the 1969 episode The War Games and depicted in the 2013 episode "The Name of the Doctor". With this vehicle, the Doctor explores the universe with usually human companions who serve as audience surrogate characters to ask questions which allow the Doctor to provide relevant exposition.

"Doctor" is his self-selected alias. In later episodes of the new series, specifically under show runner Steven Moffat, the story arcs surrounding events in the Doctor's future implied serious consequences in the event of the Doctor's true name being spoken, the nature of which is finally revealed in "The Time of the Doctor". Spin-off media offer the explanation that his true name is unpronounceable by humans. In "The Name of the Doctor", the Eleventh Doctor tells companion Clara Oswald that the name "Doctor" is essentially a promise he made. The promise itself is revealed in "The Day of the Doctor": "Never cruel nor cowardly. Never give up. Never give in."

The Doctor's earlier life and childhood on Gallifrey has been little described. The classic series often refers to his time at the Academy and his affiliation with the Prydonian chapter of Time Lords, who are notoriously devious. In "The Sound of Drums", the Doctor describes a Time Lord Academy initiation ceremony where, at the age of eight, Time Lord children are made to look into the Untempered Schism, a gap in space and time where they could view the Time Vortex. Some are inspired, some go mad (as he suggests happened to his nemesis, the Master) and some run away. When asked to which group he belonged, he replied, "Oh, the ones that ran away; I never stopped!" Fellow pupils at the Academy, where he was taught by future Lord President Borusa and Azmael, included the Master, a Time Lord who was the Doctor's childhood friend before becoming his enemy while he was in his third incarnation and antagonises him until his eventual redemption in The End of Time, the Tenth Doctor's final story, and Drax, with whom he attended a Tech course as part of the class of '92. In the Armageddon Factor, it is revealed that the Doctor just scraped through the Academy with 51% on his second attempt. In The Time Meddler, it is said that the Doctor was fifty years before the Meddling Monk. In Time and the Rani, the Doctor claims to have attended University alongside the Rani, there specialising in thermodynamics. In The Time Monster, the Doctor says he grew up in a house on the side of a mountain, and talks about a hermit who lived under a tree behind the house and inspired the Doctor when he was depressed. He is later reunited with this former mentor, now on Earth posing as the abbot K'anpo Rimpoche, in Planet of the Spiders. In "Listen", the Doctor as a child is shown sleeping alone in a barn, withdrawn from other children, and is cared for by guardian figures who privately doubt the child's ability as an eventual Time Lord.

In other media, more has been revealed of the Doctor's early life. In the Past Doctor Adventures novel Divided Loyalties, the Doctor recalls his Academy years in a dream induced by the Celestial Toymaker. According to this, he was a member of an organisation called the Deca, ten brilliant Academy students campaigning for increased Time Lord intervention, alongside Mortimus (the Meddling Monk), Ushas (the Rani), Koschei (the Master), Magnus (the War Chief), Drax, a spy named Vansell, Millennia, Rallon and Jelpax. With this group, he learns about the Celestial Toymaker and travels to his realm in a type 18 TARDIS with Deca members Rallon and Millennia, who are killed. This leads to the Doctor's expulsion from the Academy and he is condemned to five hundred years in Records and Traffic Control. In The Quantum Archangel, it is revealed the Doctor studied cosmic science alongside the Master, taught by one Cardinal Sendok. In the Virgin Missing Adventures novel Goth Opera, it is said the Doctor was a frequent prankster while at the Academy, introducing cats into Gallifrey's ecosystem with his friend Ruath and electrifying a "perigosto stick" belonging to his teacher, Borusa.

Feeling that too much of the Doctor's backstory had been revealed by the Seventh Doctor's era, writers Andrew Cartmel, Ben Aaronovitch and Marc Platt developed a new direction for the series. Cartmel wished to restore the character's "awe, mystery and strength" and make him "once again more than a mere chump of a Time Lord" – an idea the media dubbed the "Cartmel Masterplan". Under Cartmel, the show foreshadowed this concept; however, its 1989 cancellation meant that it was never realised onscreen. The proposed backstory was fully explored in Platt's 1997 novel Lungbarrow, where the Doctor is revealed as "the Other", a mysterious figure in Gallifreyan lore who co-founded Time Lord society with Rassilon and Omega. After a curse renders Gallifrey sterile, the Other devises biotechnological Looms to "weave" new Time Lords; his granddaughter Susan is Gallifrey's last natural child. To escape a civil war with Rassilon, the Other throws himself into the Loom system, where he is disintegrated and later woven into the Doctor.

Family

References to the Doctor's family are rare in the series. During the first two seasons he travelled with his granddaughter, Susan Foreman, who has since been referred to occasionally and who returned in The Five Doctors. In "Smith and Jones", he mentioned having a brother. During his second incarnation, when asked about his family, the Doctor says his memories of them are still alive when he wants them to be and otherwise they sleep in his mind (The Tomb of the Cybermen). In The Curse of Fenric, when asked if he has any family, the Seventh Doctor replies that he does not know. In the 1996 television movie, the Eighth Doctor remarks that he is half-human on his mother's side. Throughout the revival, the Doctor routinely attempts to change the topic when questioned about being a parent or his family life, as in "Fear Her", "The Beast Below" and "A Good Man Goes to War". In "The Empty Child", Dr. Constantine says to him, "Before this war began, I was a father and a grandfather. Now I'm neither. But I'm still a doctor." The Ninth Doctor's reply is, "Yeah. I know the feeling."

In The End of Time, a mysterious individual, referred to only in the credits as "The Woman", appears unexpectedly to Wilfred Mott throughout both episodes. She is later revealed to be a dissident Time Lady, who opposed the Time Lord High Council's plan to escape the Time War. When she reveals her face to the Doctor, his reaction indicates that he recognises her. Julie Gardner, in the episode's commentary, states that while some have speculated that the Time Lady is the Doctor's mother, neither she nor Russell T. Davies are willing to comment on her identity. When later asked by Wilfred who she was, the Doctor evades answering the question, making their connection unclear. In Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale – The Final Chapter, Russell T Davies states that he created the character to be the Doctor's mother and this is what actress Claire Bloom was told when she was cast.

In spin-off media, several individuals related to the Doctor have made appearances which don't appear in the television series, such as his grandchildren John and Gillian, who appeared alongside the First and Second Doctors in comics and annuals. Two different, conflicting accounts exist on the descendants of Susan after leaving the Doctor. In the audio play "An Earthly Child", it is revealed that Susan has had a child, Alex Campbell, the Doctor's great-grandson. Alternatively, in the novel Legacy of the Daleks, Susan and her husband David adopt three children whom they name David Campbell Jr, Ian and Barbara; named after David himself, Ian Chesterton, and Barbara Wright respectively. Irving Braxiatel, a character first introduced in the novel Theatre of War, was initially hinted at, and later confirmed to be, the Doctor's biological older brother. He has since become a recurring character, especially within the Big Finish spin-off audio series Gallifrey and Bernice Summerfield. In the novel Father Time, the Eighth Doctor, during his hundred-year-long exile on Earth, found an orphaned Time Lord girl named Miranda whom he adopted and raised till she was 16. Later she returned to the Doctor along with her daughter Zezanne in the novel Sometime Never.... She was also the central character in a three-issue comic book series published by Comeuppance Comics in 2003. Author Lance Parkin, who devised the character of Miranda, has hinted that her real father is actually a future incarnation of the Doctor which, if so, would make Zezanne the Doctor's biological granddaughter as well. The Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow presents an alternative take on the Doctor's origins, suggesting that Time Lords are "loomed" in large batches of "cousins" and not produced via sexual reproduction. Lungbarrow portrays the Doctor as being one of 45 cousins grown from his house's genetic loom as an adult. By contrast, the TV series has shown Time Lords as children, and stated that Time Lords can have sexual relationships.

The Doctor is assumed to be or to have been married to Susan's grandmother, including by head writer Steven Moffat. In "The Wedding of River Song", he marries recurring companion and love interest River Song. Comments by both River and the Doctor in the seventh series, particularly in "The Angels Take Manhattan", confirmed that they were married; in "The Name of the Doctor", the Doctor refers to her as his "wife" after seeing a grave stone with her name on it, after initially answering "yes" when Clara asks if she was an "ex". The End of Time references the Tenth Doctor marrying Queen Elizabeth I and implies that the two had sexual intercourse, the Doctor stating: "her nickname [the Virgin Queen] is no longer...". The joke is continued in "The Beast Below", featuring future British monarch Queen Elizabeth X or Liz Ten, and the marriage is finally shown in "The Day of the Doctor" during an adventure with Zygons. In the 2010 Christmas special, "A Christmas Carol", the Eleventh Doctor accidentally married Marilyn Monroe but later questioned the authenticity of the chapel in which they were married. Steven Moffat did not consider the marriages to Elizabeth I and Marilyn Monroe to count when questioned on how many wives the Doctor had had, remarking that he was married to Susan's grandmother and River Song.

Adventures

An adventurous scientist, the Doctor usually solves problems with his wits rather than with force. With the exception of his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor abhors weapons, and he uses violence only as a last resort. According to the alien villain Chedaki in the episode The Android Invasion, "his entire history is one of opposition to conquest."

As a time traveller, the Doctor has been present at, or directly involved in, countless major historical events on the planet Earth and elsewhere – sometimes more than once. In the 2005 series premiere, "Rose", it is revealed that the Ninth Doctor was instrumental in preventing a family from boarding the Titanic prior to her fateful voyage. In "The End of the World", the Doctor recalls having been on board and surviving the Titanic's sinking to find himself "clinging to an iceberg". The Fourth Doctor also mentioned this event in Robot and The Invasion of Time, where he insists that the sinking was not his fault; the Seventh Doctor became involved in the sinking when tracking an alien entity in the novel The Left-Handed Hummingbird. The Doctor has also encountered many of Earth's historical figures.

It is his penchant for becoming "involved" with the universe – in direct violation of official Time Lord policy – that has caused the Doctor to be labelled a renegade by the Time Lords as stated in The War Games. Most of the time, however, the Doctor's actions are tolerated as he saved Gallifrey and the universe several times over. The Time Lords are also partial to sending him on missions when deniability or expendability is needed, implied to have begun after his capture during The War Games and being witnessed further in later stories, the Time Lords directing the Doctor and/or the TARDIS to specific locations in Colony in Space, The Curse of Peladon, The Mutants, Genesis of the Daleks, The Brain of Morbius, and Attack of the Cybermen. The Doctor's standing in Time Lord society has waxed and waned over the years, from being a hunted man who was eventually punished with a forced regeneration and an exile sentence on Earth, to being appointed Lord President of the High Council. He does not assume the office for very long, fleeing Gallifrey after his appointment rather than accepting the limitations on his freedom that the role would place on him (The Five Doctors), and is eventually deposed in his absence (The Trial of a Time Lord).

The Time War

In the first series of the 2005 revival, writer Russell T Davies introduced the concept of the Time War to streamline the Doctor's backstory for new viewers of the show. It was a war across all of time and space which resulted in the destruction of his own people, the Time Lords, and their enemies, the Daleks, at the hands of the Doctor. The Doctor's remorse for his actions in his Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh incarnations is a key part of his characterisation throughout the series. The Time War happened between the 1996 television movie and 2005 opening episode "Rose" according to the show's internal chronology, although the events of past serials such as Genesis of the Daleks have been retroactively attributed to the Time War. It was never shown on-screen until The End of Time, which was both Davies' last story as head writer and producer and David Tennant's last regular story as the Tenth Doctor. This episode featured brief views of Gallifrey and the Time Lords on the last day of the Time War. The 2013 mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor", released as a prelude to the 50th anniversary special, featured Paul McGann reprising his role as the Eighth Doctor and was set during the Time War, albeit much earlier than during The End of Time. The mini-episode presented him as a conscientious objector to the war who regenerated under controlled circumstances into the War Doctor (John Hurt), a previously unseen incarnation created retroactively by Davies' successor as head writer, Steven Moffat, for the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor". He was a numberless "mayfly" Doctor so as not to disrupt the accepted numbering of the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. "The Day of the Doctor" revisited the last day of the Time War after The End of Time and revealed that the interference of the future Doctors and future companion Clara Oswald caused the War Doctor to change his plan at the last moment. Ultimately, Gallifrey was hidden in a parallel dimension and the Daleks destroyed themselves in the ensuing crossfire; to all observers, it appeared as though the two races had been annihilated together.

Development

File:Unearthly Child.jpg

The episode title screen of the first episode of Doctor Who, broadcast 23 November 1963.

The character of the Doctor was created by the BBC's Head of Drama Sydney Newman. The first format document for the series that was to become Doctor Who – then provisionally titled The Troubleshooters – was written up in March 1963 by C. E. Webber, a BBC staff writer who had been brought in to help develop the project. Webber's document contained a main character described as "The maturer man, 35–40, with some 'character twist.'" However, Newman was not keen on this idea and – along with several other changes to Webber's initial format – created an alternative lead character named Dr Who, a crotchety older man piloting a stolen time machine, on the run from his own far future world. No written record of Newman's conveyance of these ideas – believed to have taken place in April 1963 – exists, and the character of Dr Who first begins appearing in existing documentation from May of that year.

The character was first portrayed by William Hartnell in 1963. At the programme's beginning, nothing at all is known of the Doctor: not even his name, the actual form of which remains a mystery. In the first serial, An Unearthly Child, two teachers from Coal Hill School in London, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, become intrigued by one of their pupils, Susan Foreman, who exhibits high intelligence and unusually advanced knowledge. Trailing her to a junk yard at 76 Totter's Lane, they encounter a strange old man and hear Susan's voice coming from inside what appears to be a police box. Pushing their way inside, the two find that the exterior is actually camouflage for the dimensionally transcendental interior of the TARDIS. The old man, whom Susan calls "Grandfather", subsequently kidnaps Barbara and Ian to prevent them from telling anyone about the existence of the ship, taking them on an adventure in time and space. The first Doctor, says cultural scholar John Paul Green, "explicitly positioned the Doctor as grandfather to his companion Susan." He wore a long white wig and Edwardian costume, reflecting, Green says, a "definite sense of Englishness".

When Hartnell left the series after three years due to ill health, the role was handed over to character actor Patrick Troughton. As of 25 December 2013, official television productions have depicted thirteen distinct incarnations of the Doctor. The longest-lasting on-screen incarnation is the Fourth Doctor, as played by Tom Baker for seven years. Within the narrative, these changes were explained as regeneration, a biological process which heals a Time Lord when their incarnation is about to die. Consequently, the Time Lord is given a wholly new body. In The Deadly Assassin, the concept of a regeneration limit is introduced, giving Time Lords a fixed number of twelve regenerations, meaning that every Time Lord had a total of thirteen incarnations including the original. The plot of "The Time of the Doctor" involves the Doctor receiving a new cycle of regenerations from the Time Lords before his expected demise, triggering the regeneration into the Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi.

The origins of the show were explored in the docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of Doctor Who, which starred David Bradley as William Hartnell.

Physiology

Although Time Lords resemble humans, their physiology differs in some key respects. For example, like other members of his race, the Doctor has two hearts (binary vascular system), a "respiratory bypass system" that allows him to go without air, an internal body temperature of 15–16 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit) and he occasionally exhibits a super-human level of stamina, and the ability to absorb, withstand, and expel large amounts of certain types of radiation (the Tenth Doctor stated they used to play with Röntgen bricks in the nursery, after absorbing the radiation from an x-ray of significantly magnified power). This ability would seem to have limitations which have yet to be fully explained, as he is harmed by radiation in The Daleks, Planet of the Spiders, and The End of Time. Additionally, he has withstood exposure to electricity deadly enough to kill a human with minimal damage (Terror of the Zygons, Genesis of the Daleks, "Aliens of London", "The Christmas Invasion", "The Idiot's Lantern", "Evolution of the Daleks", spin-off audio Spare Parts). Certain stories also imply that he is somewhat resistant to cold temperatures ("42"). To counter extreme trauma, such as exposure to the poisonous fungus in The Seeds of Death and after being shot in Spearhead from Space, he can go into a self-induced coma until he recovers. His hypersensitive body and senses enables him to detect anomalies human cannot, such as identifying alien species, blood type or chemical composition by taste and determining location or time period by sniffing the air. In "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (2008) he was able to sense the changes in his body's enzymes (i.e. cyanide poisoning) and expel the cyanide from his body by ingesting a concoction of ginger beer, protein foods and salts.

Additionally, he has shown a resistance to temporal effects and has demonstrated some telepathic ability, both the ability to mentally connect to other incarnations of himself he encountered (The Five Doctors), and an ability to enter into the memories of other individuals ("The Girl in the Fireplace"). He can apparently reverse this process, sharing his memory with another, as shown in "The Big Bang". Some humans can also enter the Doctor's memories after he enters theirs, as demonstrated by Madame de Pompadour (much to the Doctor's surprise) in "The Girl in the Fireplace", when she explains, "A door, once opened, may be stepped through in either direction." In "The Fires of Pompeii", the Doctor reveals that he is able to perceive the fabric of time, discerning "fixed points" and "points in flux" – moments when history must remain as it was originally versus moments when he can change or influence the original course of events, as well as all past, present and possible future events. However, in "Kill the Moon", the Twelfth Doctor claims that there are some "grey areas", points in time for which he cannot see the outcome. Like many other alien species in the show, the Doctor is able to sense when his own species is within proximity through an inherent telepathic connection.

The Doctor also exhibits some weaknesses uncommon to humans. For example, according to The Mind of Evil (1971), a tablet of aspirin could kill him. In "Cold Blood", a process meant to decontaminate him of bacteria from the surface of Earth causes him intense pain, and he says it could have killed him if allowed to proceed to completion. In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Adventuress of Henrietta Street the Doctor lost some of his biological advantages over humans when his second heart was surgically removed when it appeared to be poisoning him, resulting in him losing the ability to metabolise drugs in his system and his respiratory bypass system, but these are restored to him when he begins to grow a new heart after his old one 'dies' (Camera Obscura).

In his final serial, the Second Doctor states that Time Lords can live forever, "barring accidents." When "accidents" do occur, Time Lords can usually regenerate into a new body. However, it is stated in The Deadly Assassin that Time Lords can only regenerate a total of twelve times, giving a theoretical final total of thirteen incarnations. It is possible to exceed this limit: in The Five Doctors the Time Lords offer the Master, who is inhabiting a Trakenite body, a regeneration cycle as reward for his help and cooperation, and at some point during the Time War they resurrected him, with his new body having at least one regeneration of its own. Regeneration is apparently optional, as in "Last of the Time Lords" the Master refuses to regenerate despite the Tenth Doctor's pleading. In addition, there are ways of killing a Time Lord that do not permit regeneration; for example, more than once it has been implied that stopping both the Doctor's hearts simultaneously would accomplish this (as demonstrated in the Eleventh Doctor story "The Impossible Astronaut"). The Chancellery Guard (Gallifrey's equivalent of a police force) are armed with stasers, weapons capable of suppressing regeneration. In Death of the Doctor, a story from spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, the Eleventh Doctor flippantly states he can regenerate "507" times in response to a child's question. Writer Russell T Davies intended this line as a joke. Due to the retroactive creation of a numberless War Doctor and the Tenth Doctor's aborted regeneration in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End", the Eleventh Doctor was the final incarnation in his natural cycle. The Time Lords used a crack in the universe to give him a new cycle consisting of an unknown number of regenerations in "The Time of the Doctor", triggering the regeneration into the current Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi). The Twelfth Doctor later claims to be uncertain he "won't keep regenerating forever." ("Kill the Moon")

Other skills include his mental communication with other Time Lords, in some cases over a galaxy's distance. His skill with hypnosis is such that he requires only a second's glance into a subject's eyes to put him/her under his spell. The Doctor can read an entire book cover to cover in a second by thumb-flipping the pages before his eyes (City of Death, "Rose", "The Time of Angels"). Though any medical skills he shows early in the series are rudimentary, by Remembrance of the Daleks he can perform sophisticated medical diagnoses merely by touching someone's ear. He is an excellent cricket player (Black Orchid) and in "The Lodger" he proves to be a prodigiously talented footballer despite unfamiliarity with some of the game's basic rules. Though reluctant to engage in combat against living opponents, this is not for any lack of skill in doing so; the Doctor is conversant with both real and fictitious styles of unarmed combat (most obviously the "Venusian Aki-Do" practised by the Third Doctor), has won several sword fights against skilled opponents, and is able to make extremely difficult shots with firearms and, in one instance (in The Face of Evil), with a crossbow. Thanks to exposure to many of history's greatest experts, including those from the future, the Doctor is a talented boxer, musician, organist, scientist, singer (able to shatter windows with his voice), and has a PhD in cheesemaking ("The God Complex").

Name

The Doctor's calling card (from Remembrance of the Daleks)

In the first episode, Barbara addresses the Doctor as "Doctor Foreman", as this is the surname the Doctor's granddaughter Susan goes by, and the junkyard in which they find him bears the sign "I.M. Foreman". When addressed by Ian with this name, the Doctor responds, "Eh? Doctor who? What's he talking about?" Later, when Ian realises that "Foreman" is not the Doctor's name, Ian asks Barbara, "Who is he? Doctor who?" In an ultimately unused idea from documents written at the series' inception, Barbara and Ian would have subsequently referred to the Doctor as "Doctor Who", given their not knowing his name.

Throughout both the classic and revived series, a running joke is that when the Doctor introduces himself as just the Doctor, characters reply "Doctor who?". The phrase has been used in related projects and spin-offs, such as in 1981's unsuccessful pilot for K-9 and Company, wherein the Fourth Doctor's robotic dog, K-9, is discovered by his former companion, Sarah Jane Smith, and describes itself as being a gift to her from "the Doctor". Supporting character Brendan Richards asks, "Who's the doctor?" to which K-9 replies with its catchphrase, "Affirmative." It has also been parodied within the show, such as in the 2013 episode "Hide", wherein a character responds to the Doctor's introduction with, "Doctor what?".

The story arc running throughout the tenure of the Eleventh Doctor involved the oldest question in the universe, revealed in "The Wedding of River Song" to be "Doctor who?", giving the phrase in-universe significance. In "The Name of the Doctor", the Doctor's real name was revealed to be the password used to enter the Doctor's tomb following his death on the planet Trenzalore. The story arc was resolved in "The Time of the Doctor", wherein it was revealed to be projected by the Time Lords across all of time and space through a crack in the skin of the universe as a means of contacting the Doctor and seeing whether it was safe to leave the parallel universe in which their planet, Gallifrey, had been left following the events of "The Day of the Doctor". This arc was penned by Steven Moffat, who has been exploring the significance of the Doctor's name in his episodes since 2006's "The Girl in the Fireplace", in which historical figure Madame de Pompadour reads the Doctor's mind and remarks, "Doctor who? It's more than just a secret, isn't it?". In the podcast commentary on the BBC website, Steven Moffat suggests that, as the Doctor does not tell even his closest companions his name, there must be a "dreadful secret" about it. Within the same commentary, Moffat and actor Noel Clarke jokingly suggest his name to be "Curtis". Ironically, according to the in-vision commentary on the DVD release, David Tennant had to inform actress Sophia Myles (who played Madame de Pompadour) that she was not, in fact, revealing the Doctor's surname as she believed was the intent of the dialogue. The 2011 mid-series finale "A Good Man Goes to War", also written by Moffat, suggested through the character of River Song that the Doctor's travels had influenced the etymology of the word "doctor", perverting its meaning on some worlds from "wise man" or "healer" to "great warrior". This ontological paradox was originally proposed by Moffat sixteen years prior on Usenet, in a thread titled "Dr. Who's real name":

Here’s a particularly stupid theory. If we take “The Doctor” to be the Doctor’s name – even if it is in the form of a title no doubt meaning something deep and Gallifreyan – perhaps our earthly use of the word “doctor” meaning healer or wise man is direct result of the Doctor’s multiple interventions in our history as a healer and wise man. In other words, we got it from him. This is a very silly idea and I’m consequently rather proud of it.

The anonymity of the Doctor is the theme of series 7 of the revived show. After faking his death, the Doctor erases himself from the various databases of the universe. In "Asylum of the Daleks", a "time splinter" of future companion Clara Oswald using the name Oswin wipes all knowledge of the Doctor from the Daleks' collective memory. This knowledge is regained when the Daleks conquer the Church of the Silence in "The Time of the Doctor". The Doctor is not present on Solomon the trader's database in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" and holds a conversation about his new-found anonymity in "The Angels Take Manhattan" with River Song. In "Nightmare in Silver", the collective consciousness of the Cybermen informs the Doctor that he could be reconstructed from the "hole"—the missing records—that he has left behind, a mistake which the Doctor intends to rectify.

Few individuals are said to know the Doctor's true name. River Song whispered something to the Tenth Doctor to make him trust her during "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", confirmed by writer Steven Moffat to be his name in the accompanying Doctor Who Confidential. The events of "The Time of the Doctor" make it clear that his people, the Time Lords, know his true name, despite referring to him by his chosen alias as "the Doctor", even in formal settings such as court.

Although listed in the on-screen credits for nearly twenty years as "Doctor Who" or "Dr Who", the Doctor is seldom called by that name in the series, except in a tongue-in-cheek manner. For example, in The Gunfighters the Doctor assumes the name of Doctor Caligari and subsequently responds to the question "Doctor who?" with "yes, quite right". Also, question marks adorning his costuming in the 1980s seem to imply the "Who" moniker. The only real exceptions are the computer WOTAN in the serial The War Machines, which commands that "Doctor Who is required" and, towards the end of the Second Doctor serial Fury from the Deep, the Doctor is addressed as "Doctor Who" by Mr Harris during the dinner party. The Third Doctor's car, dubbed "Bessie", carried the plate WHO 1, the only ongoing reference to the "Doctor Who" enigma in the original series. The Third Doctor also later drove an outlandish vehicle called the "Whomobile" in publicity materials, but it is never referred to as such in the series, being simply known as "the Doctor's car" or "my car", as the Doctor puts it. The name "Doctor Who" is also used in the title of the serial Doctor Who and the Silurians, but this was a captioning error rather than an in-story mention. The only other time this occurs is in the title of episode five of The Chase, which is titled "The Death of Doctor Who".

On occasion, the Doctor uses other aliases, such as "John Smith". In the Fourth Doctor serial "The Armageddon Factor", the Doctor runs into a former classmate of his named Drax. Drax calls the Doctor Theta Sigma or "Thete" for short, an alias which is clarified as the Doctor's nickname at the Prydon Academy on Gallifrey in The Happiness Patrol and referred to again in 2010 episode "The Pandorica Opens".

Doctor Who spin-off media have suggested that the character uses the name "the Doctor" because his actual name is impossible for humans to pronounce. For instance in the novel Vanderdeken's Children, it's told that the Doctor already told Sam his real name which is entirely alien and virtually unpronounceable. This is also repeated by companion Peri Brown in the radio serial Slipback. The Faction Paradox encyclopaedia The Book of the War states that all renegades from the Homeworld/Gallifrey abandon their names to symbolise how they leave their culture. Similarly, the novel Lungbarrow reveals that the Doctor's name has been struck from the records of his family and therefore cannot be spoken.

The character played by Peter Cushing in the films Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. referred to himself as "Dr. Who". However, these films are not considered part of the same narrative continuity as the television series, as they were based upon two television serials featuring William Hartnell and made considerable alterations to the characters of the Doctor and his companions.

Alias "The Doctor"

Quite apart from his name, why the Doctor uses the title of "The Doctor" has never been fully explained on screen. The Doctor, at first, said that he was not a physician, often referring to himself as a scientist or an engineer. However, he does occasionally show medical knowledge and has stated on separate occasions that he studied under Joseph Lister and Joseph Bell. In The Moonbase, the Second Doctor mentions that he studied for a medical degree in Glasgow during the 19th century. The Fourth Doctor was awarded an honorary degree from St. Cedd's College, Cambridge in 1960. He has also been mocked by his fellow Time Lords for adhering to such a "lowly" title as "Doctor", although in The Armageddon Factor Drax congratulates him on achieving his doctorate, indicating it was at least a somewhat respectable title. In "The Girl in the Fireplace" (2006), he draws an analogy between the title and Madame de Pompadour's.

In The Mutants (1972) an official asks the Third Doctor if he is, in fact, a doctor, to which the Doctor replies "I am, yes"; when asked what he is qualified in, the Doctor replies, "Practically everything." The Fourth Doctor states that his companion, Harry Sullivan, is a Doctor of medicine, while he is "a doctor of many things" (Revenge of the Cybermen, 1975). The Fifth Doctor claims to be a doctor "of everything" in Four to Doomsday (1982), and a message is related from the Tenth Doctor in "Utopia" (2007). In talking with Harry in Robot (1974–1975) the Doctor states "You may be a doctor, but I'm the Doctor. The definite article, you might say." In The Ark in Space, aired later that year, the Doctor states that his doctorate is only honorary; the Tenth Doctor, however, considers the name to be his legitimate academic rank in "The Waters of Mars" (2009), describing his "name, rank and intention" as "The Doctor; doctor; fun." In an interview with The Age in 2003, Tom Baker mentioned that the Doctor is called so because he is "a doctor of time and relative dimension in space". Apart from being called a doctor of the TARDIS, the Doctor has also been referred to as just a "doctor of time travel."

The revived series establishes that Time Lords invent their own names. In "The Sound of Drums" (2007), the Tenth Doctor remarks to the Master that they both chose their names, with the Master calling him sanctimonious for identifying himself as "the man who makes people better." "The Name of the Doctor" and "The Day of the Doctor" elaborates that the Doctor chose the name as a promise for the sort of man he wants to be: "Never cruel or cowardly. Never giving up and never giving in." By contrast, the Eleventh Doctor spoke of the War Doctor (John Hurt) as being the man who broke that promise, being the one to fight in the Time War before learning the actual fate of the Time Lords. Since contradicted by the television series, the 2003 Telos novella Frayed by Tara Samms, set prior to the programme's first episode in 1963, presents the alternative explanation that the Doctor was given that name by medical staff on a foreign planet and liked it.

In "A Good Man Goes to War" (2011), Dr River Song explains that, as the Doctor has travelled throughout space and time, cultures have adopted his name as a word for "healer" and "wise man". In some worlds, however, "Doctor" has an entirely different definition. To the people of the Gamma Forests, his name came to mean "mighty warrior." (Episode writer Moffat publicly suggested this as a fan in 1995, nine years before he began writing for the show.) In The End of Time (2009–2010) it is mentioned that after he smote a demon in the 13th century, the residents of a convent called the Doctor the "sainted physician."

To make up for his lack of a practical name, the Doctor often relies upon convenient pseudonyms. In The Gunfighters, the First Doctor uses the alias Dr. Caligari. In The Highlanders, the Second Doctor assumes the name of "Doctor von Wer" (a German approximation of "Doctor Who"), and signs himself as "Dr. W" in The Underwater Menace. He similarly poses as "the Great Wizard Quiquaequod" in The Dæmons; 'Qui', 'quae', and 'quod' being, respectively, the masculine, feminine and neuter Latin translation of the nominative form of 'who' -- the Master was utilising Latin translation in the same serial, posing as "Mr Magister". The Eighth Doctor's companion Grace briefly refers to him by the alias "Dr. Bowman" in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie.

In The Wheel in Space, his companion Jamie McCrimmon, reading the name off of some medical equipment, tells the crew of the Wheel that the Doctor's name is "John Smith." The Doctor subsequently adopts this alias numerous times over the course of the series, sometimes prefixing the title "Doctor" to it.

In the audio adventure, The Sirens of Time, when the Fifth Doctor is asked his name, this conversation ensues:

"I'm the Doctor."
"Doctor? That's a profession, not a name."
"It's all I have."

To his greatest enemies, the Daleks, the Doctor is known as the Ka Faraq Gatri, the "Bringer of Darkness", or "Destroyer of Worlds". This is first mentioned in the novelisation of Remembrance of the Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch and subsequently taken up in the spin-off media, particularly the Virgin New Adventures books and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. Davros uses the title "Destroyer of Worlds" to describe the Doctor in "Journey's End." In the Virgin New Adventures novel Love and War, the Doctor is referred to as "The Oncoming Storm" by the Draconians (whose word for it is "Karshtakavaar"); according to the episode "The Parting of the Ways", the same title is used by the Daleks. The Doctor refers to himself as "The Oncoming Storm" in "The Lodger." In "Asylum of the Daleks", it is stated that Daleks refer to the Doctor as "The Predator". The Virgin New Adventure Zamper establishes that the Chelonians refer to him as "Interfering Idiot".

The series has also occasionally toyed with the Doctor's identity (or lack thereof). In the first part of The Mysterious Planet, the Doctor suggests writing a thesis on "Ancient Life on Ravolox, by Doctor...", but is interrupted by his companion Peri. In The Armageddon Factor, the Time Lord Drax addresses the Fourth Doctor as "Thete", short for "Theta Sigma". Later, in The Happiness Patrol, this was clarified as a nickname from the Doctor's University days; he is called by this name again in the Paul Cornell novel Goth Opera. In Remembrance of the Daleks, the Seventh Doctor produces a calling card with a series of pseudo-Greek letters inscribed on it (as well as a stylised question mark). This may be a reference to Terrance Dicks's and Malcolm Hulke's book The Making of Doctor Who (1972), which claims that the Doctor's true name is a string of Greek letters and mathematical symbols.

The question mark motif was common throughout the eighties, in part as a branding attempt. Beginning with season eighteen, the Fourth through Seventh Doctors all sported costumes with a red question mark motif (usually on the shirt collars, except for the Seventh Doctor – it appeared on his pullover and in the shape of his umbrella handle). In the 1978 serial The Invasion of Time, the Fourth Doctor is asked to sign a document; although the signature itself is not directly seen on screen, his hand movements clearly indicate that he signs it with a question mark. A similar scene occurs with the Seventh Doctor in Remembrance of the Daleks.

On-screen credits

In the early years of the franchise, the character was credited as Doctor Who or Dr Who, up to the final story of season 18, Logopolis, which was also the last story featuring Tom Baker as the then incumbent Fourth Doctor. Beginning with the debut of Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor in Castrovalva, the character was credited as "The Doctor", which he had been referred to in-universe since the tenure of William Hartnell. This credit remained from season 19 to season 26. In the television movie, the trend is continued, with Paul McGann's debuting Eighth Doctor credited as "The Doctor" and Sylvester McCoy's out-going Seventh Doctor as "The Old Doctor". The 2005 resurrection of the show credited Christopher Eccleston—playing the Ninth Doctor—as "Doctor Who" again in series 1. "The Parting of the Ways", featuring the Ninth Doctor's regeneration into the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) credits Tennant as "Doctor Who". However, the credit reverted to "The Doctor" for 2005 Christmas special "The Christmas Invasion" and all subsequent stories at Tennant's request. Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi have continued to be credited as "The Doctor".

John Hurt plays a mysterious past incarnation of the Doctor in the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor", with minor roles in "The Name of the Doctor" and mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor", created as a "mayfly Doctor" by Steven Moffat. In the television episodes, he is credited as "The Doctor", but he is introduced as "The War Doctor" in "The Night of the Doctor". The end of "The Name of the Doctor" closes with text superimposed over footage of Hurt introducing him, pictured to the left. This was unprecedented for the show. In "The Day of the Doctor", Hurt appears in a "multi-Doctor" special alongside Matt Smith and David Tennant as the Eleventh and Tenth Doctors respectively. The three are collectively credited as "The Doctor" alongside Christopher Eccleston, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell, although the latter nine appeared only through the reuse of archive footage. Tom Baker did reappear, but as "the Curator", an ambiguously different character who he was not credited for playing. A voice actor, John Guilor, recorded a line of audio impersonating the First Doctor, for which he was credited as "Voice Over Artist".

In other multi-Doctor stories, the multiple actors are all credited as "The Doctor", the exception being The Three Doctors, which credited William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee as "Doctor Who" as the 1972 serial preceded the practice of crediting the character as "The Doctor". In "Human Nature", the plot involves the Tenth Doctor altering his biology and becoming a human to avoid detection. As a human, he takes the name "John Smith". David Tennant is credited as "The Doctor/Smith" for the episode, although the two-parter's concluding episode, "The Family of Blood", credits him simply as "The Doctor".

Changing faces

See also: Regeneration (Doctor Who) and List of actors who have played the Doctor

The changing of actors playing the part of the Doctor is explained within the series by the Time Lords' ability to regenerate after suffering illness, mortal injury or old age. The process repairs all damage and rejuvenates his body, but as a side effect it changes his physical appearance and personality. This ability was not introduced until producers had to find a way to replace the ailing William Hartnell with Patrick Troughton and was not explicitly called "regeneration" until Jon Pertwee's transformation to Tom Baker at the climax of Planet of the Spiders (1974). On screen, the transformation from Hartnell to Troughton was called a "renewal" and from Troughton to Pertwee a "change of appearance".

The original concept of regeneration or renewal was that the Doctor's body would rebuild itself in a younger, healthier form. The Second Doctor was intended to be a literally younger version of the First; biological time would turn back, and several hundred years would get taken off the Doctor's age, rejuvenating him. In practice, however, since the Doctor stated his age in the Second Doctor serial The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), his age has been recorded progressively (see below). In six out of ten transitions, the new actor was younger than his predecessor had been when he began the role. In the revived series, the pattern is resumed with the transition of the Ninth to the Tenth and the Tenth to the Eleventh Doctor, although current showrunner Steven Moffat is on record stating the intention was to cast an actor in his mid-30s to 40s for the role of the Eleventh Doctor, despite casting Matt Smith, who is the youngest actor to ever have played the role.

The actors who have played the lead role of the Doctor in the series and the dates of their first and last regular television appearances in the role, are:

Actor	Incarnation	No. of series	No. of episodes	Original start		Original end
				Date	Age	Date	Age
William Hartnell	First Doctor	4	134 (29 stories)	23 November 1963	55	29 October 1966	58
Patrick Troughton	Second Doctor	3	119 (21 stories)	29 October 1966	46	21 June 1969	49
Jon Pertwee	Third Doctor	5	128 (24 stories)	3 January 1970	50	8 June 1974	54
Tom Baker	Fourth Doctor	7	172 (41 stories)	8 June 1974	40	21 March 1981	47
Peter Davison	Fifth Doctor	3	69 (20 stories)	21 March 1981	29	16 March 1984	32
Colin Baker	Sixth Doctor	3	31 (8 stories)	16 March 1984	40	6 December 1986	43
Sylvester McCoy	Seventh Doctor	3	42 (12 stories)	7 September 1987	44	6 December 1989	46
Paul McGann	Eighth Doctor	—	1 (2 stories)	27 May 1996	36	27 May 1996	36
Christopher Eccleston	Ninth Doctor	1	13 (10 stories)	26 March 2005	41	18 June 2005	41
David Tennant	Tenth Doctor	3	47 (36 stories)	18 June 2005	34	1 January 2010	38
Matt Smith	Eleventh Doctor	3	44 (39 stories)	1 January 2010	27	25 December 2013	31
Peter Capaldi	Twelfth Doctor	2	26 (22 stories)	25 December 2013	55	Current	—

In addition to the above-listed actors, others have played versions of the Doctor for the duration of particular storylines. Notably, John Hurt guest starred as the War Doctor in the closing moments of the 2013 episode "The Name of the Doctor", the webcast "The Night of the Doctor" and the 50th Anniversary episode "The Day of the Doctor". The War Doctor is an incarnation existing between those of McGann and Eccleston. Hurt was never the series' lead actor; his Doctor was retroactively inserted into continuity for the show's 50th anniversary, and was written so as not to disturb the ordinal naming of the established Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. In the 1986 serial The Trial of a Time Lord, Michael Jayston played the Valeyard, an amalgamation of the Doctor's darker sides from between his twelfth and final incarnations.

Personality

Throughout his regenerations, the Doctor's personality has retained a number of consistent traits. Its most notable aspect is an unpredictable, affable, and clownish exterior concealing a well of great age, wisdom, seriousness, and even darkness. At times he has been described as "fire and ice and rage, he's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun, he's ancient and forever, he burns at the centre of time..." and "the man who can turn an army around at the mention of his name". While the Doctor can appear childlike and jocular, when the stakes rise, as, for example, in Pyramids of Mars, he will often become cold, driven, and callous. Another aspect of the Doctor's persona, which, though always present, has been emphasised or downplayed from incarnation to incarnation, is compassion. The Doctor is a fervent pacifist and is dedicated to the preservation of sentient life, human or otherwise, over violence and war, even going so far as to doubt the morality of destroying his worst enemies, the Daleks, when he has the chance to do so in Genesis of the Daleks, and again in "Evolution of the Daleks". He also, in The Time Monster, begs Kronos to spare the Master torment or death, unintentionally winning the evil Time Lord's freedom, which he tells Jo Grant was preferable anyway, and forgives the Master for his actions in "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords", vowing to take responsibility for his former friend.

Nonetheless, the Doctor will kill when given no other option and occasionally in self-defence; examples of this can be seen in The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Dominators, The Invasion, The Krotons, Spearhead from Space, The Sea Devils, The Three Doctors, The Brain of Morbius, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Invasion of Time, Earthshock, Arc of Infinity, Vengeance on Varos, The Two Doctors, Silver Nemesis, "World War Three", "The Christmas Invasion", "Tooth and Claw", "The Age of Steel", "The Runaway Bride", and most notably in Remembrance of the Daleks when he arranges for the planet Skaro to be destroyed; it has also been stated numerous times in the series, beginning in 2005, that he was responsible for destroying both the Dalek and Time Lord races in order to end the Time War. Another example of the Doctor purposely taking a life is The Sontaran Experiment, where he tells his companion Harry Sullivan to remove a device from the Sontaran ship, which causes the death of the Sontaran, something the Doctor knew would happen but Harry did not. Later incarnations were more ruthless and murderous, however. In the 2005 episode "The End of the World", the Doctor teleports Cassandra back onto the ship and does nothing to prevent her death, even ignoring her cries for help and pity. Similarly, in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", he strands Solomon on a spacecraft with a homing device to which several missiles have locked on, effectively consigning him to death. In situations where fixed points in history must be preserved, the Doctor is sometimes faced with hard choices resulting in the deaths of many; In The Visitation he started the Great Fire of London, and in "The Fires of Pompeii" (2008) he caused the volcano above Pompeii to erupt, which killed everyone in the city except one family that he rescued (but saved the rest of the world). On other occasions he is seen to be critical of others who use deadly force, such as his companions Leela in The Face of Evil and Talons of Weng-Chiang, or Jack Harkness in "Utopia" (2007). In the episode "The Lodger" (2011), a member of the Doctor's football team offhandedly mentions annihilating the team they will play next week. The Doctor looks very angry and says "No violence, not while I'm around, not today, not ever. I'm the Doctor, the oncoming storm... and you basically meant beat them in a football match, didn't you?"

The Ninth Doctor intentionally electrocuted the Dalek he encountered in "Dalek" despite its pleas for him to have pity, coldly stating "you never did". The Tenth Doctor notably had a "one chance only" policy when dealing with aliens invading the Earth, leading to his companion Donna Noble commenting that he needs "someone" to keep his temperament in check. In "The Family of Blood", the alien the Doctor defeats noted retrospectively that "he never raised his voice – that was the worst thing, the fury of a Time Lord". The Eleventh Doctor was the only Doctor to undergo three significant personality changes, becoming even more ruthless when alone in his travels, when Amy Pond and Rory Williams were absent, then fell into a depression beyond his other incarnations when the couple were lost to him, becoming the first Doctor to retire voluntarily, before finally being overjoyed at the prospect that Clara Oswin Oswald was still alive.

The Doctor has an extreme dislike for weapons such as firearms or rayguns and will often decline to use them even when they are convenient. The Tenth Doctor was especially put off by guns, going out of his way to make his feelings known. In "Doomsday" (2006) the Daleks declare the Doctor is unarmed, to which he replies "That's me. Always." In "The Doctor's Daughter" (2008) he is enraged at the death of Jenny and points a gun at the head of the man who shot her before throwing it away and yelling "I never would!". He has proven capable of using weapons effectively when necessary, as seen in Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks. In The End of Time he hit a small diamond with a single shot to destroy a machine and prevent the destruction of time itself. He will occasionally use a firearm as a convenient way to bluff his way through a situation, hoping that his foe will not suspect that he does not intend to shoot. He will also occasionally present non-threatening items as weapons so as to fool his enemies and buy himself time. In two concurrent episodes in 2012 however, the Eleventh Doctor resorts to real violence. He throws Kahler-Jex out of the town where he knows the Gunslinger will find and kill him, and aims a pistol at him to keep him out.

The Doctor has a deep sense of right and wrong, and a conviction that it is right to intervene when injustice occurs, which sets him apart from his own people, the Time Lords, and their strict ethic of non-intervention.

While the Doctor remains essentially the same person throughout his regenerations, each actor has purposely imbued his incarnation of the character with distinct quirks and characteristics, and the production teams dictate new personality traits for each actor to portray.

Accent

Different actors have used different regional accents in the role. The first six Doctors spoke in Received Pronunciation or "BBC English", as was standard on British television at the time. Sylvester McCoy used a very mild version of his own Scottish accent in the role, and Paul McGann spoke with a faint Liverpudlian lilt. Only rarely is this even addressed in the series. In the case of the McGann's Doctor, who is identified by American characters as "British," he seems only slightly conscious of the way he sounds, responding with "Yes, I suppose I am." When the accent of Eccleston's Doctor is clearly described as "Northern," he responds with the line "Lots of planets have a North." Capaldi's portrayal of the Doctor explicitly identified his own accent as "Scottish" after commenting on the English accents of his friends, Jenny Flint and Clara Oswald, while experiencing post-regeneration amnesia ("Deep Breath").

Another example is in The Tomb of the Cybermen when the Doctor is identified as "English" and, dissembling, plays along. Though David Tennant speaks with a natural Scottish accent, he played the Tenth Doctor with an Estuary accent (apart from when, in the Highlands-set episode "Tooth and Claw" the character is pretending to be a local). According to producer Russell T Davies, this was intended as a consequence of spending so much time with Rose. "The Christmas Invasion" would have alluded to this, but the line was cut. Davies also said that after Eccleston's accent, he did not want Tennant "touring the regions" with a Scottish one, and so asked Tennant to affect the same accent he used for the earlier BBC period drama Casanova. In contrast, Peter Capaldi was explicitly allowed to continue using his native Scottish accent as the Twelfth Doctor.

In the Big Finish audio adventure The Sirens of Time the captain aboard a German U-boat assumes he is English because of the way he pronounces his words: "So, you speak German, ... but you speak it like an English gentleman."

Clothing

File:Fourth Doctor.jpg

The Fourth Doctor's impractically long scarf became an iconic image of the character.

The Doctor's clothing has been equally distinctive, from the distinguished Edwardian suits of the First Doctor to the Second Doctor's rumpled, clownlike Chaplinesque attire to the dandy-esque frills and velvet of the Third Doctor's era. The Fourth Doctor's long frock coat, loose fitting trousers, occasionally worn wide-brimmed hat and trailing, multistriped scarf added to his somewhat shambolic and bohemian image; the Fifth's Edwardian cricketer's outfit suited his youthful, aristocratic air as well as his love of the sport (with a stick of celery on the lapel for an eccentric touch, though in The Caves of Androzani it is revealed to turn purple when exposed to gases the Doctor is allergic to); and the Sixth's multicoloured jacket, with its cat-shaped lapel pins, reflected the excesses of 1980s fashion. The Seventh Doctor's outfit – a straw hat, a coat with two scarves, a tie, checked trousers and brogues/wingtips – was more subdued and suggestive of a showman, reflecting his whimsical approach to life. In later seasons, as his personality grew more mysterious, his jacket, tie, and hatband all grew darker.

Throughout the 1980s, question marks formed a constant motif, usually on the shirt collars or, in the case of the Seventh Doctor, on his sleeveless jumper and the handle to his umbrella. The idea was grounded in branding considerations, as was the movement starting in Tom Baker's final season toward an unchanging costume for each Doctor, rather than the variants on a theme employed over the first seventeen years of the programme. When the Eighth Doctor regenerated, he clad himself in a 19th-century frock coat and shirt based on a Wild Bill Hickok costume, reminiscent of the out-of-time quality of earlier Doctors and emphasising the Eighth Doctor's more Romantic persona.

In contrast to the more flamboyant outfits of his predecessors, the Ninth Doctor wore a nondescript, worn black leather jacket, V-neck jumper and dark trousers. Eccleston stated that he felt that such definitive "costumes" were passé and that the character's trademark eccentricities should show through his actions and clever dialogue, not through gimmicky costumes. Despite this, there is a running joke about his character that the only piece of clothing he changes is his jumper, even when trying to "blend into" a historical era. The one exception, a photograph of him taken in 1912, wearing period gentleman's clothing, resembles the style of the Eighth Doctor.

The Tenth Doctor sports either a brown or a blue pinstripe suit – usually worn with ties – a tan ankle-length coat and trainers, the latter recalling the plimsolls worn by his fifth incarnation. Also like that incarnation (and his first one), he occasionally wears spectacles. In the 2007 Children in Need "Time Crash" special he states that he doesn't actually need glasses to see, but rather wears them to "look a bit clever," as did the Fifth, whom he meets in the special. On some occasions he wears a black tuxedo with matching black trainers. In interviews, Tennant has referred to his Doctor's attire as geek chic. According to Tennant he had always wanted to wear the trainers. The overall costume, however, was influenced by an outfit worn by Jamie Oliver in a TV interview on the talk show Parkinson.

The Tenth Doctor says in "The Runaway Bride" that, like the TARDIS, his pockets are bigger on the inside. The Second, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Doctors routinely carried numerous items in their coats without this being conspicuous.

The Eleventh Doctor's appearance has been described as appearing like "an Oxford professor", with a tweed jacket, red or blue striped shirt, red or blue bow tie, black or grey trousers with red or blue braces, and black boots. He maintains "Bow ties are cool" even when his companions do not agree, and is delighted to meet Dr Black, the first man who agrees with him, in the episode "Vincent and the Doctor". As a running gag, he exhibits attraction to unusual hats, like a fez, a pirate hat, and a stetson, often only to have them destroyed by River Song shortly afterwards.

Starting in the second half of Series 7, the Eleventh Doctor reverted to wearing a frock coat, similar to those worn by his predecessors, with a waistcoat and black trousers, black braces, an off-white shirt, bow tie and brown boots. He also added round-rimmed glasses that belonged to former companion Amy Pond.

The Twelfth Doctor's costume has been described as looking like a magician. It echoes his third incarnation's look, specifically the red lining on the inside of his Crombie coat. It has been described as "no frills, no scarves, just 100% rebel Time Lord." The Twelfth Doctor wears a white shirt with no tie, with his top button fastened, a black cardigan (sometimes replaced with a waistcoat), navy trousers and black boots.

The Doctor has occasionally expressed distaste and confusion about his own fashion choices in other incarnations. The youngest Doctor referred to his third incarnation as a "Dandy" The Tenth Doctor cringed at his fifth self's choice of wearing celery on his lapel. The Eleventh Doctor, upon meeting his previous self, referred to his Converse trainers as "sandshoes." The Twelfth Doctor believes his previous incarnation's long scarf "looked stupid" and his prior love of bowties is "embarrassing."

Transitions

Each regeneration to date has been worked into the continuing story. Also, most regenerations (minus the Second-to-Third) have been portrayed on-screen, in a handing over of the role. Before permanently dying, a Time Lord can regenerate twelve times for a total of thirteen incarnations. The following list details the manner of each transition between incarnations:

• First Doctor (William Hartnell): Frail and steadily growing weaker throughout The Tenth Planet, the Doctor collapses at the serial's end.
• Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton): A forced "change in appearance" and exile to Earth by the Time Lords in the closing moments of The War Games.
• Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee): Radiation poisoning from the Great One's cave of crystals on the planet Metabilis 3 at the end of Planet of the Spiders.
• Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker): Fell from the Pharos Project telescope in Logopolis and was assisted in the regeneration by a mysterious "in-between" incarnation named "The Watcher".
• Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison): Spectrox poisoning, contracted near the start of The Caves of Androzani.
• Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker): Suffered great injuries when the Rani attacked the TARDIS and caused it to crash land at the start of Time and the Rani.
• Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy): Gunned down in a gang shooting. Died in San Francisco during exploratory heart surgery by a doctor unfamiliar with Time Lord physiology in the 1996 television movie.
• Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann): Died aboard a crashing gunship in "The Night of the Doctor", landing on the planet Karn. There, the Sisterhood of Karn revived the Doctor and offered him an elixir that allowed him to choose the outcome of his next regeneration.
• War Doctor (John Hurt): Having spent the duration of this incarnation's lifetime fighting in the Time War, regenerates due to age and exhaustion in "The Day of the Doctor".
• Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston): Cellular degeneration caused by absorbing the energies of the time vortex from Rose Tyler in "The Parting of the Ways".
• Tenth Doctor (David Tennant): Having aborted one regeneration to heal from Dalek gunfire in "Journey's End", he later succumbs to radiation poisoning incurred while saving the life of Wilfred Mott, using up his twelfth regeneration in The End of Time.
• Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith): Aged after several hundred years defending the planet Trenzalore, and in his final body, the Time Lords remotely send the Doctor a new cycle of regenerations, allowing him to regenerate once again, in "The Time of the Doctor".

The Doctor's first (Hartnell to Troughton), ninth (Hurt to Eccleston), and thirteenth (Smith to Capaldi) regenerations occur due to natural causes – in all three cases the Doctor shows increasing signs of age, and comments that his body is "wearing a bit thin," though in the First Doctor's case this is apparently exacerbated by the energy drain from Mondas. All of the other regenerations have been caused by some external factor, such as radiation poisoning, infection or fatal injuries.

In the original series, with the exception of the change from Troughton to Pertwee, regeneration usually occurred when the previous Doctor was near "death". The changeover from McCoy to McGann was handled differently, with the Doctor actually dying and being dead for quite some time before regeneration occurred. The Eighth Doctor comments at one point in the television movie that the anaesthesia interfered with the regenerative process, and that he had been "dead too long", accounting for his initial amnesia. Kate Orman's novel The Room with No Doors, set just before the regeneration, also notes that this is one of the few regenerations in which the Doctor was not conscious and aware that he was dying.

The Second Doctor (Troughton), was the only Doctor whose regeneration was due to nothing more than a need to change his appearance. He was not aged, in ill health, or mortally wounded at the end of The War Games. Prior to his exile, the Time Lords deemed that his current appearance was too well known on Earth and therefore forced a "change of appearance" on him. This method of changing appearance was a source of early speculation that the Second and Third Doctor were actually the same incarnation, since the second was never seen to truly "die" onscreen. Continuity has since established that one of his allotted regenerations was indeed used up for this transition.

The 2005 series began with the Ninth Doctor already regenerated and fully stabilised, with no explanation given. In his first appearance in "Rose", the Doctor looked in a mirror and commented on the size of his ears, suggesting to some viewers that the regeneration may have happened shortly prior to the episode, or that he has not examined his reflection recently. Some draw the conclusion that the Ninth Doctor's appearances in old photographs, without being accompanied by Rose, may also suggest that he had been regenerated for some time, but these appearances could have also occurred afterwards. Russell T Davies, writer/producer of the new series, stated in Doctor Who Magazine that he had no intention of showing the regeneration in the series, and that he believed the story of how the Eighth Doctor became the Ninth is best told in other media. In Doctor Who Confidential, Davies revealed his reasoning that, after such a long hiatus, a regeneration in the first episode would not just be confusing for new viewers but also lack dramatic impact, as there would be no emotional investment in the character before he was replaced. The circumstances of the Eighth Doctor's regeneration were finally explored during the 2013 specials, with the revelation of the secret incarnation played by Hurt that existed between the Doctor's Eighth and Ninth incarnations.

In the 2013 mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor", a prelude to the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor", it was revealed that the Eighth Doctor had been revived by the Sisterhood of Karn after dying in a spacecraft crash. The Sisterhood offered him an elixir that enabled him to choose the characteristics of his next regeneration, and he opted for 'a warrior'; the final scene of the mini episode shows him regenerating not into the Ninth Doctor, as had been widely assumed, but into the War Doctor, played in the final scene of "The Name of the Doctor" by John Hurt.

Regenerations

Further information: Regeneration (Doctor Who)

File:Regeneration 9-10.jpg

The Ninth Doctor regenerates into the Tenth Doctor (from "The Parting of the Ways").

It was established in The Deadly Assassin (1976) that a Time Lord can regenerate twelve times before permanently dying – a total of thirteen incarnations. The 20th Anniversary special, the 1996 television movie and the 2013 special "The Time of the Doctor" all confirm this with the latter showing that the Time Lords can circumvent the cap of 12 regenerations in total by giving a Time Lord another regeneration cycle. While many of the previous regeneration sequences were unique, the Doctor's regenerations of the revived series were similar with each transition being an explosion of energy in a particularly violent fashion. This can be seen from the Tenth Doctor's regeneration damaging the TARDIS, to the Eleventh Doctor's causing a shock wave that devastated the countryside while obliterating a Dalek mothership.

In the BBC Series 4 FAQ, writer Russell T Davies made a joke that now the Time Lord social order has been destroyed, the Doctor may be able to regenerate indefinitely: "Now that his people are gone, who knows? Time Lords used to have 13 lives."

In "The Christmas Invasion" it was stated the regenerative cycle creates a large amount of residual regeneration energy that suffuses the Time Lord's body. As demonstrated by the Tenth Doctor for the first time in that story, in the first fifteen hours of regeneration this energy is enough to even rapidly regrow a severed hand. This is in keeping with earlier serials, such as Robot, where the newly regenerated Fourth Doctor splits a brick with his bare hand, and also in the 1996 television movie, where the Doctor is depicted battering down a heavy steel door in a hospital morgue.

In the case of the Doctor, his regenerations are usually a result of a previous incarnation sustaining mortal injury, though he can also regenerate from old age and was once forced to regenerate by the Time Lords. A common side effect the Doctor frequently experiences is a period of instability and partial amnesia following regeneration. Some post-regeneration experiences have been more difficult than others. In particular, the Fifth Doctor began reverting to his previous personalities and required the healing powers of the TARDIS's "Zero Room" to recuperate (Castrovalva). The Sixth Doctor experienced extreme paranoia and flew into a murderous rage, nearly killing his companion (The Twin Dilemma). The Eighth Doctor experienced amnesia due to the anaesthetics affecting his physiology (1996 Doctor Who television movie). While his regeneration first appeared to be smooth ("The Parting of the Ways"), the Tenth Doctor began to experience spasms and became somewhat manic, frightening his companion as he pushed the TARDIS to dangerous extremes (Children in Need mini-episode). After crash-landing the TARDIS, the Doctor collapsed and remained unconscious for most of the next fifteen hours ("The Christmas Invasion"). The experience was traumatic enough to cause one of his hearts to temporarily stop beating.

The TARDIS also appears to aid in the regenerative process, with few occasions where the Doctor regenerates outside of it. Three are initiated by Time Lords: one forced on him before banishment to Earth (The War Games), one requiring a Time Lord to give the Doctor's cells a "little push" to start the process (Planet of the Spiders), and one needing the Watcher, which the Doctor's travelling companions believed to be some version of the Doctor himself (Logopolis). The Eighth Doctor's regeneration apparently occurred a few hours after he had actually "died", leaving him with temporary amnesia due to his body's adverse reaction to earth medicines.

In "Journey's End", the Tenth Doctor manages to avert his own regeneration by using some of the energy to heal himself, then channelling the remaining energy into his severed hand, thus retaining his appearance and personality. That regenerative energy was a key point in a "human-time lord biological metacrisis" inadvertently caused by Donna Noble that creates the Meta-Crisis Doctor while she obtains a Time Lord intellect. The Eleventh Doctor revealed that it was a regeneration; he just kept the same face due to "vanity issues," and he was in his last life. However, during "The Time of the Doctor", the Doctor is given a new cycle of regenerations by the Time Lords, allowing him to regenerate into the Twelfth Doctor.

Inconsistencies

Over the years, different writers and production teams have introduced their own twists to the Doctor's character, sometimes as part of a grand creative reinvention; others, out of narrative convenience or outside pressures. Without one driving vision to maintain continuity, newer details may occasionally seem to contradict earlier ones. Other details – sometimes significant ones – are later ignored.

In the early serials The Edge of Destruction and The Sensorites, it appeared that the First Doctor had only a single heart. It was not until the Third Doctor serial Spearhead from Space that the shows then writers came up with the concept that the Doctor has two hearts. The tie-in novel The Man in the Velvet Mask states (incorporating an explanation for the discrepancy from fan lore) that the Doctor did not grow his second heart until his regeneration into the Second Doctor. However, the canonicity of spin-off media has never been clear.

During his first regeneration the Doctor's clothes (save for his cloak and ring, both of which quickly thereafter fall off) changed along with his body (The Power of the Daleks); on all subsequent regenerations the new Doctor generally continues to wear the clothing he regenerated in until he selects a new outfit (though the regeneration from the Fourth to the Fifth Doctor included a change of footwear).

In The Brain of Morbius (produced shortly before The Deadly Assassin), a series of faces displayed during a mental battle between the Fourth Doctor and Morbius imply that the Doctor had at least eight incarnations prior to the First Doctor. However, multiple dialogue references throughout the series (particularly in The Three Doctors, Mawdryn Undead and The Five Doctors) contradict this, as well as the fact that the Doctor has regenerated nine times since then (as confirmed in "The Time of the Doctor"). The producers, however, intended these to be figures from the Doctor's past. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe has said, "We tried to get famous actors for the faces of the Doctor. But because no one would volunteer, we had to use backroom boys. And it is true to say that I attempted to imply that William Hartnell was not the first Doctor." The Doctor's previous incarnations are represented by images of production unit manager George Gallaccio, script editor Robert Holmes, production assistant Graeme Harper, director Douglas Camfield, producer Philip Hinchcliffe, production assistant Christopher Baker, writer Robert Banks Stewart, and director Christopher Barry.

In the Sixth Doctor story arc The Trial of a Time Lord, a Time Lord with the title of the Valeyard (played by Michael Jayston) was revealed to be a potential future Doctor, a "distillation" created somewhere between his twelfth and final incarnations and embodying all the evil and malevolence of the Doctor's dark side. The Valeyard is defeated in his attempt to actualise himself by stealing the Sixth Doctor's remaining regenerations, however, and so may never actually come to exist.

The idea of an "in-between" version of the Doctor has its precedents. In Planet of the Spiders, a Time Lord's future self (described as a "distillation" of the future incarnation) is shown to exist as a corporeal projection that assists his then-current incarnation. In Logopolis, an eerie and mysterious white-clad figure known as the Watcher assists in the transition between the Fourth and Fifth Doctors. Nyssa comments that the Watcher "was the Doctor all the time" as he merges with the supine form of the fourth Doctor, initiating his regeneration.

Perhaps the most controversial element from the 1996 television movie was the revelation that the Doctor is half-human ("on [his] mother's side"). The spin-off novels and audios have tried various methods to explain away this revelation. It was implied by Russell T. Davies that "The Woman" in The End of Time is the Doctor's mother, and she is clearly one of the Time Lords with a vote on the Council. Steven Moffat stated in a question and answer session during an interview on the BBC's The One Show: "None of them were half-human. The Eighth Doctor was lying on that occasion." The show again teased this possibility in 2015, when in "Hell Bent", a character speculates that the Doctor's fondness for Earth might suggest he is the prophesied "Hybrid" that will destroy Gallifrey, and that he is half-human. The Doctor does not reply, and his interlocutor recants this theory as unlikely, and suggests another theory that she likes better.

The Time Lord ability to change species during regeneration is announced by the Eighth Doctor in relation to the Master in the television movie, being supported by Romana's regeneration scene in the 1979 serial Destiny of the Daleks. The Daleks also implied during the events of The Daleks' Master Plan (1965–66) that the First Doctor's humanoid form is not his actual appearance. The trade paperback Doctor Who: The Legend Continues by Justin Richards, published to coincide with the new series, refers to the Doctor as half-human. The 2007 Tenth Doctor episodes "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood", adapted from the above-mentioned Seventh Doctor novel, Human Nature, also show the Doctor using technology to become biologically human, although he does so through Time Lord science. Later, in "Utopia", the Master is revealed to have undergone the same process to escape the Time War, subsequently remembering and regaining his true identity on meeting the Doctor again.

Multi-Doctor stories

Due to time travel, it is possible for the Doctor's various incarnations to encounter and interact with each other, although supposedly prohibited by the First Law of Time (as stated in The Three Doctors) or permitted only in the "gravest of emergencies" (The Five Doctors). In the 1963–1989 television series, such encounters were seen on three occasions, in The Three Doctors (1972), The Five Doctors (1983) and The Two Doctors (1985). In Day of the Daleks (1972), the Third Doctor and Jo Grant very briefly met their future selves due to a glitch during a temporal experiment (the serial was supposed to end with the same scene depicted from the perspective of the "other" Doctor and Jo, but was excised because it was anticlimactic). In "Father's Day" (2005), the Ninth Doctor and Rose observed but did not interact with past versions of themselves; when Rose changed history, the earlier selves – after momentarily noticing Rose running past – vanished and a temporal paradox was created that attracted the extradimensional Reapers. The Tenth and Fifth Doctors met in the TARDIS in the mini-episode "Time Crash", which aired on 16 November 2007 as part of the BBC's annual Children in Need appeal. This marks the first time the Doctor has met a previous incarnation since the show's revival. Although the scene aired outside the series itself, it was established as taking place between the events of "Last of the Time Lords" and "Voyage of the Damned."

The BBC novel The Eight Doctors was written by respected Doctor Who writer Terrance Dicks, the same author who wrote The Five Doctors. In it, he tries to reconcile the continuity errors of the 1996 movie, while having the Eighth Doctor meet and interact with each of his previous selves.

Physical contact between two versions of the same person can lead to an energy discharge that shorts out the "time differential". This is apparently due to a principle known as the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, and was seen when the past and future versions of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart touched hands in Mawdryn Undead. Oddly, the Doctor's incarnations do not appear to suffer this effect when encountering each other and shaking hands. This has never been explained. An essay in the About Time series by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood suggests that Time Lords are somehow exempt from the effect by their very nature. Rose Tyler is seen holding an infant version of herself in "Father's Day", with no visible energy discharge, but the contact does allow the Reapers to enter the church in which the Doctor and several others are taking refuge. While doing a live commentary on the episode at the 2006 Bristol Comic Expo, episode author Paul Cornell said that this is supposed to be due to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, even though it is not mentioned by name. He also suggested that the lack of a spark may be down to the fact that the Time Lords were no longer around to manage anomalies.

The interaction of the Doctor's various incarnations produces a continuity anomaly that requires suspension of disbelief on the part of viewers, as one may assume that his past selves would forget that he would later regenerate. In Castrovalva, the newly regenerated Fifth Doctor clearly indicates that the outcome of his regeneration cannot be predicted; however, the Fifth Doctor should have had memories from his earlier incarnations of having met himself per the events of The Two Doctors and The Five Doctors. Also, the Second, Third and Fifth Doctors should be already familiar with the events of The Five Doctors, having already lived through them multiple times.

In the 2006 episode "School Reunion", the Tenth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith both seem to indicate in dialogue that they haven't seen each other since her departure from the TARDIS in The Hand of Fear, although this contradicts their having met later during The Five Doctors. In that story, she does not appear to realise that the Fifth Doctor is a later incarnation of the third and fourth Doctors with whom she had previously travelled. In "Time Crash", the Tenth Doctor remembers and reproduces what he saw himself do when he was the Fifth Doctor, a fact that seems to surprise the Fifth Doctor himself.

Russell T Davies has expressed a dislike for stories in which multiple incarnations of the Doctor meet, stating that he believes they focus more on the actors than on the story itself. In 2007, David Tennant showed enthusiasm for the idea of a multi-Doctor story, but expressed doubts about the practicality of shows involving multiple previous Doctors, given that three of the actors who played the character were deceased.

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The temporarily human Doctor, John Smith, draws his dreams of past incarnations in "Human Nature" A page from The Journal of Impossible Things showing the first ten incarnations of the Doctor. (Left hand page: Tenth and Ninth; Right hand page, left to right, top to bottom: Fourth, Third, Second, Seventh, Eighth, First, Sixth, Fifth)

Since the series revival, there have been two multi-Doctor stories, the Children in Need special "Time Crash" and the 50th anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor". Before that, the only references to past incarnations (from 1963 to 1996) have been in the aforementioned episode "School Reunion" (in which the Doctor acknowledges having regenerated "half a dozen times" since last seeing Sarah Jane) and in drawings that the Doctor (who has temporarily become human to hide from the Family Of Blood) makes based on dreams of his other life in the 2007 episode "Human Nature". Seen on screen are the First, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors, but a fuller view briefly available on the BBC website depicted all ten incarnations. However, in the 2008 Christmas episode, The Next Doctor, the Tenth Doctor discovers an info stamp originally held by the Cybermen, which includes images of all his past selves. This is a clear affirmation of his past, and that the (then) current incarnation was indeed the Tenth. This was reaffirmed in the episode "The Eleventh Hour", when the Doctor asks the Atraxi whether this planet is protected. The Atraxi then shows 10 images, one of each Doctor from the first to the tenth, with the eleventh walking through the image of the tenth at the end. This is also confirmed in the episode "The Lodger", when the Doctor, explaining to Craig who and what he is, points at his face and says, "Eleventh."

Because each new Doctor is different from his previous incarnations, how their personalities interact varies when two or more different incarnations encounter each other. Time Crash featured Peter Davison returning as the Fifth Doctor. This event is explained as occurring due to the current Doctor having left his shields down when rebuilding the TARDIS following "Last of the Time Lords" and then accidentally crossing the Fifth Doctor's timeline, allowing the two TARDISes to merge. When the Tenth Doctor effortlessly averts the impending Belgium-sized hole in the Universe caused by this temporal anomaly, he reveals having known what to do because he saw himself do it as the Fifth Doctor and remembered. He goes on to tell the Fifth Doctor how fond he was of his incarnation and how he influences the current Doctor's personality. However, in their two meetings, the Second Doctor and Third Doctor had a degree of antagonism towards each other, with the patriarchal First Doctor critical of them both. During the Virgin New Adventures, the Seventh Doctor was occasionally at odds with his subconscious memory of his previous incarnation as his memory of his past self became increasingly associated with the Valeyard, his dark, future self, but he eventually accepted his dark side and 'reformed' his memory of his former self, although it was never established how the two Doctors would interact if they had met in person.

On many occasions the Eleventh Doctor has actually encountered himself from a different point in his timeline: in "The Big Bang", the mini-episodes "Time" and "Last Night", and in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS", at the end, the Doctor interacted with his past self to reset time, by giving himself a device that helps get the TARDIS to escape the salvagers' magnetic beam before they can activate it. In all stories, multiple versions of the Eleventh Doctor from different timelines meet and carry on brief conversations. Additionally, the Eleventh Doctor encountered an artificial (though physically and mentally identical) copy of himself in "The Almost People", fought against "Mister Clever", an artificial personality generated out of his own by the Cybermen in "Nightmare in Silver", and was pitted against "The Dream Lord", a manifestation of his self-loathing and anger, in "Amy's Choice".

Later, the Eleventh Doctor entered his own timeline in "The Name of the Doctor" to rescue his companion Clara Oswald, and while there observed a past incarnation portrayed by John Hurt, one whose actions caused him to be unworthy of the name "Doctor" and viewed as shameful by his future selves. In the 50th anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor", the Eleventh Doctor encounters both the Tenth Doctor and the War Doctor (played by John Hurt). The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors are generally amicable towards each other, despite some bickering, although the War Doctor treats them both as behaving too childishly. Despite this, he does come to admire both of his future incarnations, working together with them and eventually choosing to go through with the act of destroying Gallifrey because he knows it will help them become what they are. The Tenth and Eleventh are initially somewhat leery of the War Doctor, the Eleventh describing him as the "one life I have tried very hard to forget." However, both of them later recognize that the War Doctor followed what seemed to be the only course open to him, and are even willing to help him carry it out so that he won't have to suffer the guilt alone. Fortunately, with some influence from the Moment-a sentient Time Lord weapon that brought about their meeting-the three are able to stumble upon an alternative: sending Gallifrey into a pocket universe, making it seem as though it has been destroyed. The three are then joined by the other nine previous Doctors and the future Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) in this act (the War, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors having evidently contacted them off-screen). The Eleventh Doctor is also shown to have memories of these events, but only recalls them after they have begun. This is explained in dialogue as an instability in the timeline, which causes the War and Tenth Doctors to forget their meeting, thus maintaining the continuity in which the Doctors from the War Doctor onwards believe themselves to have destroyed Gallifrey.

Reprising the role

On a few occasions, previous Doctors have returned to the role, usually guest-starring with the incumbent:

• William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton with Jon Pertwee in The Three Doctors. Originally Hartnell's role had been intended to be more extensive, but his health had deteriorated to the extent that he could only make a limited appearance. In the end, it turned out to be his last television role.
• Troughton and Pertwee with Peter Davison in The Five Doctors, the twentieth anniversary special, with newly released footage of Tom Baker and another actor, Richard Hurndall, standing in for the deceased William Hartnell. Archive footage of Hartnell taken from The Dalek Invasion of Earth introduced the story. Baker declined to appear, feeling that the role came too soon after he had left the programme (a decision he later said he regretted) and the narrative was reworked to use clips from Shada, an intended six-part story from the Fourth Doctor's era that was never completed due to industrial action. A waxwork dummy of Baker from Madame Tussauds was used in the publicity photographs.
• Patrick Troughton with Colin Baker in The Two Doctors. This story is notable for not being produced either to celebrate the show's anniversary or as a Children in Need production.
• Sylvester McCoy was joined by Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and the first and the second Doctor being represented by rubber heads, in Dimensions in Time, the programme's 30th anniversary 1993 charity special in aid of Children in Need. Except for the mannequin versions of Hartnell and Troughton, no two Doctors are shown on screen at the same time. (This story was a crossover with EastEnders).
• Sylvester McCoy returned to film the early segments of Doctor Who, the TV movie featuring the Seventh Doctor's regeneration scene.
• Peter Davison with David Tennant in the 2007 Children in Need special "Time Crash".
• Paul McGann returned to film the Eighth Doctor's final moments and regeneration in the 2013 mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor", a prelude to the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor". None of the other Doctors appeared in this mini-episode, although archive footage of John Hurt appears briefly in the closing scene, for which he provided original audio.
• David Tennant appeared in the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor" with Matt Smith. Also co-starring was John Hurt as a newly revealed incarnation of the Doctor. Tom Baker had a cameo appearance in the special as the curator of the National Gallery. He was implied to be a future Doctor who was "revisiting" an "old favourite" face, but the script never explicitly states this. Dialogue states that "perhaps it doesn't matter either way" whether the Doctor and Curator are the same individual. Archive footage of the original eight Doctors was reworked with new audio from voice actor John Guilor, and a brief appearance by future Doctor actor Peter Capaldi was also inserted, to represent all thirteen incarnations of the Doctor.
• Matt Smith made a cameo appearance in "Deep Breath", the first full episode after his regeneration. He made a telephone call from Trenzalore to the future to reassure Clara Oswald and urge her to accept his successor, portrayed by Peter Capaldi. The cameo was filmed on the set of "The Time of the Doctor", Smith's last story as the incumbent Doctor, for the eighth series.

In addition to the above, Tom Baker, Davison, Colin Baker, McCoy, and McGann have reprised the role on many occasions since 1999 in audio dramas from Big Finish Productions.

Other actors have portrayed the character of the Doctor outside of the television series. For details on this see under Adaptations and other appearances in the main article and Doctor Who spin-offs.

For a list of all actors who have played the Doctor see List of actors who have played the Doctor.

Age

In early production documents, the Doctor was said to be 650 years old, although this was never stated on screen. By the time the Doctor did cite his age ("Let me see, in human terms, 400, yes, 450 years" in the serial The Tomb of the Cybermen; he also kept a 500-year diary), he had already regenerated to a younger form. The intention at that time was that regeneration had turned back the Doctor's clock, making him younger both in appearance and in biological age. Since the Doctor's age had never previously been given, 450 Earth years became a starting point onto which further years would be progressively added as the series continued and the character lived out his further incarnations.

The Third Doctor implied in Doctor Who and the Silurians and in The Mind of Evil that he had a lifetime that covered "several thousand years". While the Doctor's age has never been a known quantity, these numbers are the most difficult to reconcile with the rest of the series.

By the time of The Brain of Morbius, the Fourth Doctor was stated to be 749 years old ("something like 750 years" in the prior Pyramids of Mars). In The Ribos Operation, Romana said the Doctor was 759 years old and had been piloting the TARDIS for 523 years, making him 236 when he first "borrowed" it. When the Doctor encounters his old friend Drax in The Armageddon Factor, Drax says it has been 450 years since their time together at the Academy, suggesting only that Drax was 450 years younger, but implying nothing about the Doctor's age, since it could have been a different amount of time for him. Drax also implies that the Doctor got his doctorate after that. In The Robots of Death, the Fourth Doctor states he is 750 years old.

In Revelation of the Daleks the Sixth Doctor said that he was "a 900-year-old Time Lord", and in Time and the Rani, the Seventh Doctor's age was 953, the same as villainous Time Lady the Rani (in both serials, the Doctor's age is stated in dialogue). In Remembrance of the Daleks the Seventh Doctor said that he had "900 years’ experience" rewiring alien equipment. At the beginning of the 1996 television movie, the Seventh Doctor was shown to have a 900-year diary in his TARDIS.

In the spin-off prose fiction, in the Fourth Doctor comic "The Time Witch" after the Doctor and Sharon cross through the split in time which they age four years which the Doctor says "I shall still think of myself as 743 ... or was it 730, I never can remember...", the Sixth Doctor celebrated his 991st birthday in the short story "Brief Encounter: A Wee Deoch an..?", written by Colin Baker, in Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1991: UNIT Exposed, while the Seventh Doctor celebrated his 1,000th birthday in Set Piece by Kate Orman, and the Eighth Doctor declared his age to be 1,012 in Vampire Science by Orman and Jonathan Blum. The Eighth Doctor spent nearly a century on Earth during a story arc spread over several novels, and around 100 years asleep in The Sleep of Reason by Martin Day. In the Big Finish Productions audio play Orbis, the Eighth Doctor says that he has spent 600 years living on the planet Orbis since the previous play. He also states that he lost count of his true age long ago, and rounds it down, taking into account the differing lengths of a "year" in different locations.

In the 2005 series, the Doctor's age is stated in publicity materials as 900 years, and in "Aliens of London", he says, "Nine hundred years of time and space, and I've never been slapped by someone's mother." Rose follows up by asking him if he is 900 years old, and he replies affirmatively, though it is unclear whether he is being disingenuous. He restates this as "Nine hundred years of phone box travel and it's the only thing left that surprises me", however, in "The Empty Child". In "Voyage of the Damned", the Tenth Doctor states that he is 903 years of age, the first time since Time and the Rani that an exact number has been stated in dialogue; previously, the Master also indicated the Doctor's age to be about 900 in the "The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords" story arc.

In "The Sound of Drums", the Master ages the Doctor by 100 years using his laser screwdriver, leaving the Doctor with an elderly appearance. In "Last of the Time Lords", the Master states to the population of Earth that the Doctor is nine hundred years old, and informs his subjects he will show them the Doctor's true form, suspending his ability to regenerate. The Master proceeds to age the Doctor further with his laser screwdriver, reducing him to a tiny, wrinkled being, subsequently imprisoned inside a bird cage until reverted to his current form with the help of Martha Jones, 15 satellites and the entire population of Earth. However, as the resolution of that story is by means of a reversal of time, there is a suggestion that the events of that year never actually took place, and yet are present in the Doctor's memory.

In "The End of Time" the Doctor tells Wilfred Mott he is 906 years old. In "Flesh and Stone", he tells Amy Pond that he is 907. "The Impossible Astronaut" depicts the Eleventh Doctor from two different points in his life, one at age 909 and the other at 1103. In "The Doctor's Wife", the TARDIS while embodied as Idris says the Doctor has been travelling with her for 700 years. By the end of the series, the Doctor has reached the age of 1103, the older version that appeared in "The Impossible Astronaut". The next series ages the Doctor further, with "A Town Called Mercy" establishing that he is now approximately 1,200 years old. However, in "The Bells of Saint John", the Doctor says that he was "one thousand years old", whilst in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" commenting that he had piloted the TARDIS "for over 900 years".

In the 50th anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor" (2013), the Eleventh Doctor is queried about his age by his younger self, to which he replies "I dunno, I lose track. Twelve hundred and something I think, unless I’m lying. I can't remember if I'm lying about my age – that's how old I am." He also makes several references to being 400 years older than the War Doctor, which would encompass the timelines of the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. In the next episode, "The Time of the Doctor", the Doctor spends centuries defending the planet Trenzalore. After one interval, the Doctor states he has lived there for 300 years. Another long interval passes, during which the Doctor's age is not given, but he physically ages considerably before regenerating into the Twelfth Doctor. The 2014 e-book Tales of Trenzalore states the Doctor spent 900 years on Trenzalore.

In the following episode, "Deep Breath", the Twelfth Doctor states that he is over 2,000 years old. However, writer Steven Moffat has said, "He's lying. How could he know, unless he's marking it on a wall? He could be 8,000 years old, he could be a million. He has no clue. The calendar will give him no clues."

Romance

Original series

The very first episode of the television series established that Susan Foreman is the Doctor's granddaughter, but neither Susan nor the Doctor ever speak of her parents. In "Fear Her" (2006), the Doctor states that he was "a dad once". In "The Doctor's Daughter", his DNA was used to produce an "offspring".

The First Doctor did flirt with – and was accidentally engaged to – the character Cameca in The Aztecs, although this was part of a plot to get the TARDIS back, there was a hint of mutual attraction in Hartnell's performance (especially as he is ultimately unable to leave behind the love token she has given him).

As the series progressed and grew more popular among children, the Doctor was firmly established as an avuncular figure to his younger companions, the one exception being the Third Doctor's hurt reaction to his companion Jo Grant's leaving him for an idealistic scientific adventurer whom she describes as "a younger version" of the Doctor (The Green Death). Jo kisses the Doctor on the cheek before she departs, the second time this form of affection had been shown on screen (the second Doctor having similarly kissed Zoe in The War Games).

There was on-screen chemistry between Fourth Doctor Tom Baker and his wife-to-be Lalla Ward's Second Romana. In fact, a 1980 television commercial broadcast in Australia for Prime Computers showed Baker and Ward romancing each other, in character as the Doctor and Romana, with the commercial ending with The Doctor (prompted by the computer) proposing marriage.

In some of the voiceovers on Peter Davison's DVDs, the matter of physically expressed sexual attention is discussed. According to Davison and Matthew Waterhouse (Adric), producer John Nathan-Turner had very strict rules laid down about how the companions were allowed to physically interact with the Doctor, and Adric was allowed more physical contact with the Doctor than the female companions to downplay any potential romantic and/or sexual connotations.

Revived series

Beginning in 2005 the series has suggested that the Doctor has romantic feelings towards different people. This shift is satirised in "The Day of the Doctor" wherein the War Doctor, having witnessed a passionate kiss exchanged between his tenth incarnation and Queen Elizabeth I, asks of the eleventh, "Is there a lot of this in the future?" To which he replies, "It does start to happen, yeah."

The series has played with the idea of a romantic relationship between the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler, with many characters assuming they were a couple. Rose's boyfriend Mickey Smith clearly views the Doctor as a romantic rival for whom Rose has left him. Both showed flashes of jealousy when the other flirted with other characters. In "The Parting of the Ways", the Doctor's male companion Jack Harkness kisses both the Doctor and Rose in what he believes is a last goodbye. In the same episode, the Doctor kisses Rose Tyler to get the time vortex energy that was killing her back into the TARDIS, subsequently "killing" him and causing his next regeneration.

In the New Series Adventures novel Only Human by Gareth Roberts, Rose asks the Doctor how he would know that marrying for love is overrated, to which he cryptically answers, "Who says I don't? You ask the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu." In a December 2005 interview on BBC Four, actor David Tennant, who had just taken the role of the Tenth Doctor, described the relationship between the Doctor and Rose as "basically a love story without the shagging".

The Doctor's relationship with Rose intensifies after he regenerates into the Tenth Doctor. In "New Earth", Rose's body is temporarily inhabited by Cassandra, who kisses the Doctor romantically. This is one of the few scenes in the entire series where the Doctor is kissed romantically by his companion. In "School Reunion", the arrival of the Doctor's previous companion Sarah Jane Smith and his reaction to seeing her again prompts jealousy and worry from Rose, and Sarah all but admits that she has long been in love with the Doctor. The Doctor also expresses dismay at having his companions age while he regenerates. In the episode, "The Girl in the Fireplace" (written by Steven Moffat), the Doctor falls in love with Madame de Pompadour, who he shares a passionate kiss and a strong romantic connection with. She later takes him away to "dance", but how far the metaphor (coined in the episode "The Doctor Dances") is taken is not seen on screen. Rose does not seem to exhibit jealousy towards Madame de Pompadour. In the novel The Stone Rose, by Jacqueline Rayner, the Doctor kisses Rose after she saves him from being petrified, although it is described as "a kiss of gratitude and joy and unspeakable pleasure at being alive." In "The Impossible Planet" the Doctor and Rose share an awkward moment when they have to consider settling down in one time period and Rose suggests they do so together. She later plants a kiss for good luck on the Doctor's spacesuit prior to his descent into the pit. In "The Satan Pit" the Doctor, fearing for his life, tells someone "If you see Rose, tell her... tell her... oh, she knows". In "Doomsday", when the Doctor says his goodbye to Rose, she finally tells him that she loves him. He begins to reply, but the message is cut off, and he is unable to reciprocate; in the episode's audio commentary, executive producer Julie Gardner had stated that "he absolutely was going to say it...he was going to tell her he loved her."

The reunion between the Doctor and Rose in 2008 episode "The Stolen Earth" is stated by executive producer Russell T Davies in Doctor Who Confidential to be a parody of romantic film conventions, because the heightened emotional content is abruptly interrupted by the Doctor being shot by a Dalek. In the next episode, "Journey's End", Rose challenges the Doctor to say what he didn't get to say before, to which he replies, "Does it need saying?". His half-human clone, however, does whisper it into Rose's ear, and the two of them kiss; Rose gets an emphatically romantic resolution to her romance storyline, as the clone-Doctor and Rose continue to live together on a parallel Earth. Gardner commented in Confidential that although the audience cannot hear, it is obvious that he is saying "I love you". David Tennant stated that Rose was the Doctor's girlfriend, though it was never explicitly stated on screen.

Throughout series three (2007), companion Martha Jones pines for the Doctor's affection ever since a kiss between them which was only used as a "genetic transfer" to distract their pursuers. She is distraught when, temporarily turned into a human in "Human Nature", the Doctor's human persona John Smith, falls in love with nurse Joan Redfern. She admits in "The Family of Blood" to Smith that "[the Doctor] is everything to me, and he doesn't even look at me, but I don't care, because I love him to bits, and I hope to God he won't remember me saying this". The Doctor tells Joan he is capable of everything that Smith was, but she rejects his attempt to establish a relationship with her as the Doctor. In the following episode, "Blink", he refers to being "rubbish at weddings, especially my own". Martha eventually quits as the Doctor's full-time companion in the series finale "Last of the Time Lords" because she is in love with the Doctor and he seems unable or unwilling to reciprocate; she received similar commiseration from Jack Harkness, who is also infatuated with him, in "The Sound of Drums".

Subsequently in the 2008 series, the Doctor's friendship with Donna Noble is strengthened, after the infatuations with Martha and Rose, by the knowledge that she has no romantic interest in him whatsoever. Davies' last clear allusion to the Doctor's romantic capacity occurs at the beginning of his last episode as showrunner, The End of Time. The Tenth Doctor claims to have married "Good Queen Bess, and let me tell you, her nickname is no longer... (clears throat)", a reference to Elizabeth I of England's nickname "The Virgin Queen". The marriage, which is referred to as "a mistake", explained Queen Elizabeth's reaction to seeing the Tenth Doctor in an earlier episode, "The Shakespeare Code". Subsequent episodes have alluded to this romantic, possibly sexual relationship. This relationship, including the marriage and the "mistake" which led to it (a case of mistaken identity involving a Zygon commander in 1562), eventually unfolds on screen in "The Day of the Doctor".

In "The Next Doctor" he tells Jackson Lake that his companions "break [his] hearts".

Episodes written by Steven Moffat have continued to hint at the Doctor's romantic capacity: his stories during the Russell T Davies tenure as showrunner included the admission of a sex life in "The Doctor Dances" and the romance with Madame de Pompadour in "The Girl in the Fireplace", past marriages in "Blink", and the introduction of recurring character River Song in 2008 episodes "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", who indicates she is a lover of the Doctor. In his tenure as showrunner (2010–present), the series continued to imply that the Doctor will have a relationship with, and perhaps marry, River Song. Additionally, Moffat has companion Amy Pond attempt to seduce the Doctor in "Flesh and Stone", although he expresses shock at the idea, protesting that she was human. In "A Christmas Carol", the Eleventh Doctor finds himself accidentally engaged to film star Marilyn Monroe during a visit to 1950s Hollywood. The Doctor's past romantic relationship with Elizabeth I is also alluded to in Moffat episodes "The Beast Below" and "The Wedding of River Song", as well as in "Amy's Choice" by Simon Nye.

In her 2010 appearances, River continues to hint at a relationship with the Doctor in her relative past and his relative future. In "The Big Bang", River suggests to the Doctor that she is married to him in his personal future. When River kisses the Doctor in "Day of the Moon", it becomes clear that whereas this is the Doctor's first kiss with her, it is to be her last with him and that she shall soon be heading to The Library where she dies. In "A Good Man Goes to War", River is seen returning from a date with the future Doctor, and repeatedly calls the present-day Doctor "my love". In "Let's Kill Hitler", a young River Song compares herself to Mrs. Robinson and kisses the Doctor; the first time in an attempt to kill him, the second to save his life. Later she resolves to study archaeology so that she can encounter the Doctor again. Because she loves him, she refuses to shoot him in "The Wedding of River Song", creating an alternate timeline. In this world, the Doctor marries River in a very brief ceremony witnessed by Amy and Rory, so that he may allow time to return to normal and go to his death, while secretly disclosing to River that he will fake his death. Although the alternate time line is erased, all future episodes act as though the wedding was real. Later, when Dorium comments that River is incarcerated in the Stormcage for "all her days", the Doctor responds "Her days, yes, her nights...well...that's between her and me". After this episode, the banter and gentle sexual innuendo between them becomes less teasing and more serious.

Later, in "The Name of the Doctor", the Doctor kisses a holographic projection of River Song, based on the copy of her mind archived in the great Library of the 51st century. This is the first time (onscreen) that the Doctor has initiated a romantic kiss, apart from the kiss that restarted time in "The Wedding of River Song". During this episode, both the Doctor and River call her his wife. He also reveals that the reason he has avoided mentioning her since her death was for fear that the memory would hurt too much - as River notes to colleagues, "he hates endings". After this exchange, he bids her a final farewell – but at her request – phrasing it with the implication that they may meet again.

Despite this, the Doctor's limited understanding of human romance and sexuality has been the subject of many jokes. For example, in "Flesh and Stone", after being kissed by Amy Pond, his first response is to gasp, "But you're human!", and he later blithely mentions this embrace to her fiancé Rory in the following episode, "The Vampires of Venice", not realising this would upset Rory. "The Doctor's Wife", when he tells Amy and Rory that he is redoing the TARDIS's guest room, they suggest, "Perhaps not bunk beds this time," and he does not understand why a married couple would not find bunk beds preferable to other furniture. In "A Good Man Goes to War", he is asked about Amy and Rory's sex life and refers to it as "private human stuff".

In "The Time of the Doctor", it is revealed that the Doctor, in an unspecified prior incarnation to the Eleventh, engaged in a romance with a woman named Tasha Lem. Their attraction appeared to continue when the Eleventh encountered her again, even after Lem was technically killed and made into a Dalek/human hybrid.

The Twelfth Doctor explicitly rejects the idea of having a romantic relationship with his companion Clara Oswald. He implied that in his previous form, he had come to see himself as Clara's "boyfriend" in an attempt to avoid confronting his extreme age and alien nature. Actor Peter Capaldi told tabloids there would be "no flirting" between him and Clara, likening such a potential relationship to Papa and Nicole. The episode "Deep Breath" introduces a character named Missy who identifies the Doctor as her boyfriend. Missy is later revealed to be a female incarnation of the Master.

Other media

However, the spin-off media both before and after the television movie have toyed with the idea in various ways. In the 1995 Virgin New Adventures novel Human Nature by Paul Cornell, the Seventh Doctor takes on the human guise of "Dr John Smith" and has a romance with a teacher named Joan in 1914, albeit as a means to understand the human condition and with the Doctor's own memories as a Time Lord suppressed. The relationship ended when the Doctor was restored to normal, the Doctor admitting to Joan that he knows that Smith was fond of her but unable to reciprocate those feelings himself. This novel was adapted to the screen and comprised two episodes in the new series: "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood", featuring the Tenth Doctor, with the Doctor implying that he retained Smith's feelings for Joan, although the more traumatic nature of the transformation may have impacted his feelings after he returned to normal.

In the Virgin novel Death and Diplomacy, by Dave Stone, the Seventh Doctor implies that he intentionally creates an image of asexuality to keep things simple.

The concluding chapter of The Dying Days, an Eighth Doctor novel by Lance Parkin, strongly implies intimacy occurring between the Doctor and Bernice Summerfield. This encounter was later confirmed in the audio drama "Benny's Story", a chapter of the Big Finish Productions release The Company of Friends, marking the only time to date that a classic-era Doctor has been confirmed as sleeping with one of his companions.

Writer Lawrence Miles has stated that he believes the Eighth Doctor has sex with I. M. Foreman between the events of his novels Interference – Book One and Interference – Book Two. In Book Two, the Doctor explains that he has become interested in romance and the idea of being close to someone in his current body, but that he is reluctant to explore these feelings with his companions because of the emotional baggage a relationship with him would bring.

In various novels – especially Lungbarrow – it is also established that Time Lords do not reproduce sexually, but emerge from genetic Looms fully grown, though the same book hints that the Doctor's birth was an exception (unlike his cousins, he has a belly button). Lance Parkin's novels Cold Fusion (1997) and The Infinity Doctors (1998) suggest that "wombborn" families have survived in secret, and that the Doctor and the Master were born to these families. In the 1996 film Doctor Who, the Doctor states he is "half-human, on [his] mother's side". The revived series portrays Time Lord children, with a child version of the Doctor appearing in the 2014 episode "Listen".

In the Big Finish Productions audio play Loups-Garoux, the Fifth Doctor reluctantly agrees to marry the werewolf Ileana De Santos and although he gets out of it later, as in Cameca's case, a degree of mutual attraction is present. In the plays involving the Eighth Doctor, his companion Charley confesses her romantic feelings for him in Zagreus, but although he admits he loves her back at the time, it is a highly dramatic moment and the relationship does not progress beyond the platonic.

The recurring novel and audio character Iris Wildthyme, created by Paul Magrs, is first introduced in the Short Trips story Old Flames, is a past romantic interest of the Doctor's who continues to flirt with him whenever they meet. More of the Doctor's past relationships are explored in The Infinity Doctors and Cold Fusion.

The question of romance is sometimes sidestepped with plot devices in the spin-off media. In the 2001 BBC Books novel Father Time by Lance Parkin, the Doctor adopts an orphaned Gallifreyan-like alien called Miranda. It is implied in the book that Miranda is actually the daughter of the Doctor himself from the far future. Miranda returns in the novel Sometime Never... by Justin Richards, with her own daughter Zezanne. At that novel's end, a time-active being called Soul travels into the past accompanied by Zezanne, the two believing themselves to be the Doctor and Susan, respectively.

In The One Doctor, the Doctor kisses Sally-Anne Stubbins to bluff to the Sussyurat that he wasn't the Doctor but Banto Zane but this kiss showed no affection.

Discontinuities

While over the decades several revelations have been made about his background – that he is a Time Lord, that he is from Gallifrey, among others – the writers have often strived to retain some sense of mystery and to preserve the eternal question, "Doctor who?" This back-story was not rigidly planned from the beginning, but developed gradually (and somewhat haphazardly) over the years, the result of the work of many writers and producers.

This has led to continuity problems. Early histories of races such as the Daleks were rewritten, and so on. Series writer Paul Cornell, discussing continuity errors, opines that the modern series' "Time War" can explain away (or retcon) such discontinuities, giving the example of Earth's different destructions in The Ark (1966) and "The End of the World" (2005). Writer and Doctor Who executive producer Steven Moffat has gone further, arguing that "a television series which embraces both the ideas of parallel universes and the concept of changing time can't have a continuity error – it's impossible for Doctor Who to get it wrong, because we can just say 'he changed time'".

Some of the stories during the Seventh Doctor's tenure, part of the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan", were intended to deal with this issue by suggesting that much of what was believed about the Doctor was wrong and that he was a far more powerful and mysterious figure than previously thought. In both an untelevised scene in Remembrance of the Daleks and the subsequent Silver Nemesis it was implied that the Doctor was "more than just another Time Lord". The suspension of the series in 1989 means that none of these hints were ever resolved onscreen. The "Masterplan" was used as a guide for the Virgin New Adventures series of novels featuring the Seventh Doctor, and the revelations about the Doctor's origins were written into the novel Lungbarrow by Marc Platt.

Reception

The character has been generally well received by the public. The character's enduring popularity led The Daily Telegraph to dub him "Britain's favourite alien". UGO Networks listed the Doctor as one of their best heroes of all time.

See also

• From The Doctor to my son Thomas
• List of Doctor Who parodies

References

Bibliography

• Lawson, Mark (interviewer) (2005, 8 December). Front Row (radio series), BBC Four.

External links

• The Doctor on TARDIS Data Core, an external wiki
• Doctor Who Radio Times covers Archived 26 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine – photos of the Doctor
• "WHO IS DOCTOR WHO?"
• The Doctor at the Internet Movie Database