Doctor Who (4 page)

In the BBC novel
The Eight Doctors
by Terrance Dicks, the Eighth Doctor revisits this famous moment, noting that his first incarnation's action in
picking up the rock was indicative that he was still acting like a traditional Time Lord, so concerned with the big picture that he failed to see how each individual life had meaning. In the Big Finish audio drama
To the Death,
the Eighth Doctor discusses the same event with an older Susan.

 

DOCTOR:
“For one moment, just—I entertained the possibility. I picked up a rock and I—”

SUSAN:
“But you didn't do it. You didn't kill that man.”

DOCTOR:
“Only because Chesterton stopped me.”

 

This palpable element of danger continued into the second story arc, “The Daleks,” which also began the Doctor's path to heroism. In that adventure, the Doctor sees how his inability to compromise can endanger the lives of the group members. His goal becomes escape, but the rest of the crew doesn't want to leave after encountering people who need help. Reluctantly at first, the Doctor agrees to help and finds the role fulfilling. By the end of the adventure, he admits to Barbara and Ian that he has underestimated them. He softens considerably toward the local inhabitants, confessing that he admires the opportunity they now have to build a better world, revealing that he was once regarded as a pioneer on his own planet.

By the end of the third story arc, “The Edge of Destruction,” the Doctor openly extends friendship to his two human travelers, counting them as admirable comrades. He still has a compulsive curiosity, but now he wants to share the wonders of the universe with his companions for the joy of the experience, not to prove his superiority. While he starts fighting evil more, he dismisses violence as a primitive solution, believing that people need to seek out new knowledge and then employ reason, intellect, and imagination to solve (most of) their problems. In the program's fourth story arc, when asked by Marco Polo whom he serves, the Doctor proudly proclaims, “I serve the truth!” Late night TV host Craig Ferguson nicely summed up the philosophy behind the Doctor's personality in a song written to celebrate the show: “Intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism.”

In the 1990s, the Seventh Doctor novels released by Virgin Publishing proposed that our alien adventurer relies on human companions and their
Earth-born morality to keep him on a heroic path. Without them, he soon falls into his old Time Lord ways. This idea recurred in the Eighth Doctor audio dramas and in the modern TV program. As we benefit from his presence, so he benefits from ours. The Doctor then is not just our hero—we are also his.

Of course, becoming more heroic doesn't mean the Doctor isn't dangerous. He still acts recklessly, and his obsessive curiosity puts himself and others at risk. The TARDIS also has a knack for bringing him to places where trouble is about to happen, making him a harbinger of chaos. These traits remain consistent through the hero's subsequent incarnations. The Ninth Doctor needed the influence of a teenage shop clerk to soften him, just as his younger self once needed the company of two altruistic schoolteachers.

T
he Hero with No Name

Sydney Newman never considered a real name for the Doctor. In “An Unearthly Child,” Susan attends Coal Hill School under the alias Susan Foreman, apparently taking the surname from the fact that the TARDIS is parked in I. M. Foreman's scrap yard (some tie-in novels proposed that I. M. Foreman was a fellow Time Lord and friend of the Doctor). Naturally, Ian later addresses the girl's grandfather as “Dr. Foreman.” The Doctor responds in confusion, “Eh? Doctor
who?
” This became a running joke in several episodes across the decades. While “Doctor Who” was originally meant to be the character's alias, it instead became a question for the audience.

In the episodes of
Doctor Who
he's written, Steven Moffat has repeatedly brought attention to the secret of the Doctor's real name. Yet the classic program didn't focus on this much. People found it strange at first that this person only used a title, but they all quickly accepted the matter (except in Seventh Doctor stories, where a larger mystery was implied).

By the program's tenth year, we meet other Time Lords with strange titles: The Monk, the War Chief, the Master. One might assume that the Doctor's people only used titles—but along with Susan, the classic
Doctor Who
program introduced us to Time Lords who did have names: Morbius, Borusa, Spandrell, Goth, Runcible, Romanadvoratrelundar, and others.

In 1972, Picolo Books published
The Making of Doctor Who,
the first nonfiction book to delve into the popular TV program. Written by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks, the book suggested that the Doctor's original name among his people was expressed as ∂³∑x². Several readers accepted this as fact, while others were more skeptical, as tie-in materials didn't always agree with what became canon in the show. For instance, the Dalek comic strips gave a very different origin for the creatures than what was revealed in
Doctor Who.
They also said that Dalek armor was made of a metal called Dalekanium, whereas the classic
Doctor Who
program referred to it as “bonded polycarbide” and used the word “Dalekanium” to refer to an explosive capable of destroying Dalek casings.

In the 1977 story “The Deadly Assassin,” it was said that the Doctor was a member of the Prydonian Clan of Time Lords and that Prydonians who turned their backs on society also knowingly forfeited their birthrights. This could mean that the Doctor and the other renegades he fought all lost the right to their own names, making them forbidden things. It would explain why other Time Lords only called him “Doctor,” and only referred to other renegades such as the Master and the Rani by their chosen titles.

In the 1979 story “The Armageddon Factor,” the Doctor runs into a former classmate named Drax who immediately calls him “Theta Sigma” (
ΘΣ
) or “Thete,” for short. The hero becomes annoyed, reminding Drax that he is now called “Doctor.” Nearly a decade later, the Seventh Doctor story “The Happiness Patrol” in 1988 clarified that Theta Sigma was merely a nickname he'd earned while at Prydon Academy on Gallifrey. On-screen, this nickname only came up another time in the 2010 episode “The Pandorica Opens,” when a message left for the Doctor on the side of a diamond cliff face included the letters
ΘΣ
in the last line.

Many times, the Doctor has fallen back on an archetypal alias: John Smith. On-screen, he first used this label in the Second Doctor adventure “The Wheel in Space” in 1968. The Third Doctor used the name habitually since he was working with a military organization that needed to file paperwork. In the 2010 episode “The Vampires of Venice,” the Eleventh Doctor is seen holding a library card that he had obtained when he was still living in a scrap yard in Totter's Lane. The library card listed him as John Smith, so he had also used the name during his first life. The 1998 novel
The Witch Hunters,
by Steve Lyons, said that the Doctor adopted this moniker because he recalled that Susan's favorite band was John Smith and the Common Men (which she mentioned on-screen during “An Unearthly Child”).

But where did the title of “Doctor” come from? In his first two TV story arcs, the hero remarks that he had been a research scientist on his planet and was not a doctor of medicine (though he did pick up medical knowledge in later adventures). So he did have the Gallifreyan equivalent of a doctorate in some field of science, perhaps several. The 2013 episode
“The Name of the Doctor” confirmed that he held this rank before leaving his home.

Yet, after choosing to leave behind his people (and even his name), the hero could have chosen any new epithet. Why stick with the academic title of “Doctor”? The modern program has proposed some ideas on the matter, which we'll get into later.

In the twenty-six seasons of the classic program and the past several years of the modern-day show, our hero has been specifically called “Doctor Who” on television only once, by an artificial intelligence called WOTAN in the TV story “The War Machines.” In the spin-off pilot
K-9 and Company,
a young man asks, “Who is the Doctor?” and the titular robot dog responds, “Affirmative.” There was also a TV story entitled “Doctor Who and the Silurians.”

Fans have explained these instances, as fans often do. The title of the Silurian story, being only a title, doesn't cause any worry. As for WOTAN, the artificial intelligence could have decided to refer to our character as “Doctor Who” because, being a computer, it considered it inaccurate to refer to a man solely by a title that belonged to many professionals. As for K-9's response, perhaps he was noting that “Who is the Doctor?” is a question constantly surrounding the hero. Then again, maybe we just shouldn't take the occasionally limited robot dog too seriously.

At times the Doctor has joked about refusing to give his own name and about how often he's been asked “Doctor who?” after introducing himself. In “The Highlanders,” the Second Doctor adopted the alias of Doktor von Wer, “wer” being German for “who” or “somebody.” In “The Daemons,” the Third Doctor claimed to be a wizard named QuiQuaeQuod, a merging of the masculine, feminine, and neuter forms of the Latin word meaning “who.”

But despite the character's official name being “The Doctor,” many BBC releases, along with the show's creators, staff, and actors over the years and up to today, have still referred to him as “Doctor Who.” Many novelizations of the TV stories did this in their titles, the first of which being
Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks.
In the first comic strip series in
TV Comics,
the hero introduces himself on multiple occasions literally as “Doctor Who.”

Along with this, the end credits of the television program itself called him “Dr. Who” or “Doctor Who” from 1963 all the way until 1981, when then-producer John Nathan-Turner altered it to “The Doctor.” When the modern program began in 2005, the credits again labeled the hero “Doctor Who,” until David Tennant took over the role and it changed back to “The Doctor.”

Moral of the story? The hero has used many names and it's not a crime to call him “Doctor Who” in conversation—despite heated claims in online forums and at conventions.

3

Rise of the Monsters

“The monsters and the Doctor, it seems you cannot have one without the other. . . . One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.”

—Reinette, from “The Girl in the Fireplace” (2006)

 

“Absolutely no bug-eyed monsters.”

So ruled Sydney Newman, and Donald Wilson agreed. The same 1962 report by John Braybon and Alice Frick that advised how the BBC could pursue new science fiction programming also concluded that “bug-eyed monsters” or “B.E.M.s” were to be avoided. Newman wanted to explore humanity, not deadly alien creatures.

Originally, Anthony Coburn was supposed to script the second
Doctor Who
story, the title of which shifted between “The Robots” and “The Masters of Luxor.” But Verity Lambert instead produced a script featuring aliens called Daleks. The story was commissioned from writer Terry Nation, who had impressed Whitaker with his writing for ABC's science fiction program
Out of This World.
In later years, Nation would create the science fiction shows
Blake's 7
and
Survivors.
He had initially turned down Whitaker's offer to join
Doctor Who,
as he was working as chief writer for comedian Tony Hancock. When he and Hancock fell out, Nation called Whitaker and went to work on a script featuring strange aliens.

Nation didn't want these beings to look like actors wearing suits and makeup. While watching a performance of the Georgian National Ballet, he saw dancers glide across the stage like ghosts, an illusion created with long skirts and roller skates. Inspired, Nation made the Daleks legless beings living inside machines that floated across surfaces, their metal casings armed with mechanical limbs and a single eye-stalk. The true creature existed inside, the body completely atrophied except for a brain plugged into circuitry, making it a strange type of cyborg. The story proposed that Daleks
had once been like humans but mutated because of radiation unleashed during a war that engulfed their entire planet. The metal shell was both a personal tank and life-support system.

David Whitaker worked with Terry Nation to flesh out the script, adding more characterization for the TARDIS crew and others. One initial idea was that the Daleks and Thals, a human-like race inhabiting the same planet, join forces to face a mutual threat from outer space. But very quickly the Daleks became the villains, symbolizing the dangers of prejudice and single-mindedness. Nation intentionally made them analogous to the Nazis, with their fascist behavior, distrust of individuality, and obsessive need to exterminate or enslave all “inferior” life forms that threatened them. The pacifistic Thals—who not coincidentally resembled the physical Aryan ideal—counterbalanced them.

Though they may have looked like robots, the Daleks didn't act as such. They were single-minded, true, but their debut story revealed their fear, impatience, and hatred. When the Doctor tells a Dalek that its plans amount to nothing more than sheer murder, the monster clarifies: “No. Extermination.” Ian and a Thal named Ganatus discuss the narrow-minded purpose of the villains:

 

GANATUS:
“Yes, but why destroy without any apparent thought or reason? That's what I don't understand.”

IAN:
“Oh, there's a reason. Explanation might be better. It's stupid and ridiculous, but it's the only one that fits . . . a dislike for the unlike.”

 

Doctor Who
designer Raymond Cusick first drew the Dalek casing as a tall cylindrical machine with robotic claws. But he realized he couldn't force the actors inside to stand for hours during filming and redrew the Dalek shell around the figure of a man seated on a plank of wood. When speaking with others, Cusick used a pepper shaker to demonstrate how the Dalek would move. Which of course led many to say later, inaccurately, that a pepper shaker had inspired his design.

The production budget allowed for four Daleks. There wasn't enough money to make proper mechanical claws, so simple plungers replaced them,
with a magnet inside to take hold of certain objects. Later exposition explained that the plunger or “manipulator arm” used an intense vacuum or focused energy field to grab objects, interact with computers, and even crush a human's skull in moments. The plunger also shifted modes when required. In their debut story, one Dalek's arm alters into a blowtorch. In “The Daleks' Master Plan,” several of the villains utilize flamethrowers built into their limbs.

The Dalek operators were cast for size (they had to fit inside the casing) and muscular ability, needing to endure long hours in cramped conditions. Along with the marks and cues for the characters, they had to coordinate their performances with the Dalek voice actors.

Since Daleks didn't have faces, their voices became a key character element. While operators manipulated the creature from within, voice actors stood elsewhere in the studio speaking into ring modulators. Over the years, Dalek voices shifted from sounding very stilted and robotic to resembling an enraged machine, both because of performer experimentation and because people kept forgetting to note which modulator levels were most effective. Notable early Dalek voice performers included Peter Hawkins, David Graham, and Roy Skelton.

When the directors and camera crew had difficulty identifying which Dalek was speaking at any given time, Cusick added lights to each of the monsters' headpieces that activated when they spoke. He had also wanted to add lights beneath each sensor sphere, which would illuminate chaotically when a Dalek panicked. However, this would have required a car battery housed within each monster, and the budget couldn't cope.

In tie-in media, it's been said that Dalek mutants have no true voice box, using computers to translate their thoughts into words that their prey may understand. Richard Martin, one of the directors of the monsters' debut story, later explained his thinking behind the sound of the Dalek voices and personalities: “The other thing that we thought . . . which I developed with the voices a lot, was that inside their metal machinery, they were nearly insane with claustrophobia. You only had to say one thing to them for them to lose their cool, and their only way out was to use this weapon.”

The Story That Almost Wasn't

“No one can succeed who opposes the Daleks.”

—A Dalek, from “Day of the Daleks” (1972)

 

Verity Lambert was proud of the Terry Nation story and happily turned it over to Donald Wilson . . . who hated the script. Sydney Newman, livid, agreed with Wilson that the story should be scrapped in favor of another already in production.

Lambert argued that the story wasn't just about one-dimensional monsters but had obvious moral value and worked as a social allegory. She also sagely pointed out that the Daleks were already built and production hadn't begun for any other script. If they dismissed the story, the program had to go on hold for a few weeks before they could prep another. Having already delayed once to reshoot “An Unearthly Child,” Wilson and Newman conceded, and the second story arc went forward. The story was called “The Mutants” initially, but a Third Doctor adventure produced years later also used this title. To differentiate the two, the BBC officially renamed the earlier story “The Daleks.”

When “The Daleks” debuted, the show's viewership almost doubled. Older viewers appreciated the science fiction take on a Nazi threat, and the inhuman creatures both frightened and fascinated children. A near instant outcry arose for Dalek toys and more stories. Playgrounds filled with children chasing one another while shouting in imitation Dalek voices. Suddenly the show entered the cultural mainstream. Over the next months, merchandising followed. In November 1964, David Whitaker adapted the first Dalek story into the TV program's first novelization:
Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks
(later retitled
Doctor Who and the Daleks
). The public embraced these monsters so much that, seeing a parallel with four mop-top lads from Liverpool, the media referred to it as “Dalekmania.”

Newman and Wilson conceded that they had been wrong. Audiences enjoyed monsters if the story was good. Moreover, the Daleks clearly had to return. Newman jokingly said in a later interview, “There again is the wisdom of being a great Head of Drama. . . . I didn't want any bug-eyed monsters and ‘The Daleks' is what made
Doctor Who.
”

The mystery of the true appearance of a Dalek mutant captivated viewers. In the debut story, the Doctor and Ian open the metal casing of a dead Dalek and, visibly startled, quickly close it again. Needing access to the technology inside, they use a cloak to pick up the creature (hidden from view) and place it on the floor. As they leave, a strange, jelly-like claw emerges from the cloak. In other adventures, Daleks occasionally were destroyed, briefly revealing green blobs or brainlike creatures with tentacles. In “Genesis of the Daleks” in 1975, the Doctor visits a Dalek incubator room, spying several mutants resembling jellyfish. In “Remembrance of the Daleks” in 1988, a Dalek that had been further genetically engineered was seen to have a lobsterlike claw.

We don't see a fully revealed Dalek until 2005 in an episode starring Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston, who took a keen interest in the nature of the villains. As he said in
Doctor Who Magazine
#343, “As a child, I was absolutely fascinated by the episode where we saw what was inside a Dalek. . . . This great, cold, steel instrument of destruction, all that casing, all that armor, is actually to protect this very vulnerable, strange, frightened creature. So yeah, you can think about that on different levels, and think about what it is that actually frightens us.”

Unable to travel outside their own city, relying on its metal floors to power them, the original Daleks seemed dangerous but limited. When it came time to bring them back in the show's second year, the production team gave them improved personal power sources so they could leave not only their city but the planet Skaro itself, traveling through the universe in spinning, flying saucers. Tie-in media later proposed that the first Daleks the Doctor met were a weaker tribe that had split off, while the others had largely left Skaro already to build the interstellar Dalek Empire.

Along with improved travel, the Daleks were more vicious now. The story “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” did not involve the TARDIS crew stopping the monsters from invading. They had already done so and won by the time the Doctor and his allies arrived on Earth in the twenty-second century, having used germ warfare to eliminate most human resistance. As if this weren't bad enough, the Daleks now also stole the souls of those they conquered, turning many human survivors into cyborg slaves called “Robo-Men” (a precursor to the Cybermen). It was a new level of evil and
horror for
Doctor Who,
perhaps best summed up by the armor-plated monsters themselves when they later declared: “Daleks conquer and destroy!”

Less than a year later, the Daleks truly cemented themselves as uniquely dangerous arch-enemies of the Doctor in “The Chase.” In this adventure, the monsters added solar panels to their armor and developed their own form of time travel.

Daleks—In Color!

“This is only the beginning. We will prepare. We will grow stronger. When the time is right, we will emerge and take our rightful place as the supreme power of the universe!”

—A Dalek, from “Genesis of the Daleks” (1975)

 

Terry Nation wisely made sure he had joint rights with the BBC to his monstrous creations. In 1964, he began a regular Dalek comic strip in
TV Century 21
magazine. These stories followed battles between the Dalek Empire and other races, with the Doctor conspicuously absent. Rare Daleks developed individuality, such as one that took the name Zeg. The strip also introduced the Dalek Emperor (and the narrative explained that this was only the first of such rulers). Although these comics ran for years, the
Doctor Who
TV program didn't reference them.

In 1965, the villains from Skaro hit the silver screen in full color. The theatrical film
Dr. Who and the Daleks
was loosely adapted from the first Dalek story. Peter Cushing played an English scientist literally named Dr. Who, who has invented a time machine that he calls
Tardis,
treating it as the ship's proper name rather than an acronym. He travels in it with his granddaughters, young Barbara and preadolescent Susan, as well as Barbara's boyfriend, Ian Chesterton.

The movie's full-color Daleks have proper mechanical claws and guns that release a deadly smoke. The production team originally intended to arm each monster with a flamethrower, but concern arose that this would frighten children, so fire extinguishers were used instead.

The film did well, and a sequel,
Daleks–Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.,
hit theaters the next year. With Ian and Barbara gone now, Dr. Who is
accompanied by Susan and his niece Louise. Policeman Tom Campbell joins the gang just before
Tardis
takes them all to Earth's future, where the Daleks are in charge. Tom was portrayed by Bernard Cribbins, who later played Wilford Mott in several Tenth Doctor episodes.

The same year that the first Dalek film was released, David Whitaker and Terry Nation wrote a stage play entitled
The Curse of the Daleks
that premiered at the Wyndham's Theatre in London. The Doctor was nowhere to be found in this story, which ran for a month. In 1974, Terrance Dicks wrote
Doctor Who and the Seven Keys to Doomsday,
a stage play that introduced Dalek slaves called Clawrantulars and featured a quest for seven crystals that could control the universe. It ran for four weeks at the Adelphi Theatre in London, starring Trevor Martin as the Doctor, along with two new companions named Jenny and Jimmy. Jimmy was played by James Matthews and Jenny was played by Wendy Padbury, who years earlier had played the Second Doctor's companion Zoe.