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This article is specifically about the production history of the programme. For a more general overview of the series, please see the main Doctor Who article.
In March 1962, Eric Maschwitz, the Head of Light Entertainment at BBC TelevisionThe British Broadcasting Corporation is responsible for broadcasting several television stations in the United Kingdom. For general details on the history of their television services, please visit the main BBC article. If you were looking for more specif, asked Donald WilsonDonald Wilson (born September 1 1910, Dunblane, Scotland; died March 6 2002, Gloucestershire, England) was a British television writer and producer, best known for his work on the BBC's legendary adaptation of The Forsyte Saga in 1967. His initial career, the Head of the Script Department, to have his department’s Survey Group prepare a study on the feasibility of producing a new science-fiction series on the BBC. The report was prepared by staff members Alice Frick and Donald Bull , and delivered the following month, much to the commendation of Wilson, Maschwitz and the BBC’s Assistant Controller of Programmes Donald BaverstockDonald Baverstock ( January 18, 1924 March 17, 1995) was a British television producer and executive. He initially worked for BBC Television in the famous Talks Department, where he was the Editor of the topical magazine programme Highlight and then co-de. A follow-up report into specific ideas for the format of such a programme was commissioned, and delivered in July. Prepared by Frick with another Script Department staff member, John Braybon , this report recommended a series dealing with time travel as being an idea particularly worthy of development.
In December, Sydney NewmanSydney Newman ( April 1, 1917 October 30, 1997) was a film and television producer, and was responsible for creating and overseeing numerous popular British television shows of the 1960s, including The Avengers Doctor Who The Wednesday Play and The Forsyt arrived at BBC Television as the new Head of DramaThe British Broadcasting Corporation has been a producer and broadcaster of television drama since even before it had an officially-established television broadcasting network in the United Kingdom. As with any major broadcast network, drama forms an impo. Newman was a science-fiction fan who had overseen several such productions in his previous roles at ABC TelevisionABC logo, 1960s Associated British Corporation or ABC Television was the British Independent Television (ITV) (commercial television) contractor on Saturdays and Sundays in the Midlands and North of England between 1956 and 1968. ABC was one of a number o and the Canadian Broadcasting CorporationCBC redirects here, as this is the most common use of the abbreviation. For other uses, see CBC (disambiguation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation commonly known by the abbreviation CBC is Canada's government-owned television network and radio network.. In March 1963, he was made aware by Baverstock – now promoted to Controller of Programmes – of a gap in the schedule on Saturday evenings between the sports showcase Grandstand and the pop music programme Juke Box Jury. Newman decided that a science-fiction programme would be perfect to fill the gap, and enthusiastically took up the existing Script Department research, overseeing several brainstorming sessions with Wilson, Frick and another BBC staff writer, C. E. 'Bunny' Webber .
While Wilson and Webber contributed heavily to the formatting of the programme and its initial cast of regular characters, it was Newman who came up with the idea of a time machine larger on the inside than the out and the idea of the central character, the mysterious " Doctor" – he also gave the series the name Doctor Who. Later in the year production was initiated and handed over to producer Verity Lambert and story editor David Whitaker to oversee. Australian staff writer Anthony Coburn also contributed, penning the very first episode from a draft initially prepared by Webber, and coming up with the idea that the time machine, the TARDIS, should externally resemble a police box.
The series' theme music was written by film and television composer Ron Grainer (who would later go on to also compose the theme to The Prisoner) in collaboration with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. While Grainer wrote the theme, it was Delia Derbyshire whose realization of it made it one of the most distinctive and haunting pieces of television music ever, using a series of tape recorders to laboriously cut and join together the individual sounds she created with both concrete sources and square- and sine-wave oscillators. Grainer was amazed at the results and famously asked, "Did I write that?" when he heard it. Derbyshire replied that he mostly had. Unfortunately, the BBC (who wanted to keep members of the Workshop anonymous) prevented Grainer from getting her co-composer credit and half the royalties. The title sequence was designed by graphics designer Bernard Lodge and realized by electronic effects specialist Norman Taylor.
After actors Hugh David and Geoffrey Bayldon had both turned down approaches to star in the series, Verity Lambert and the first serial's director Warris Hussein managed to persuade fifty-five year-old character actor William Hartnell to take the part of the Doctor. Hartnell was known mostly for playing army sergeants and other tough characters in a variety of films, but Lambert had been impressed with his sensitive performance as a Rugby League talent scout in the then-recent film version of This Sporting Life, which inspired her to offer him the role.
Hartnell's Doctor would initially be seen to be accompanied by his granddaughter Susan Foreman (played by Carole Ann Ford ), originally to have been merely a travelling companion, but with a family tie added by Coburn who was uncomfortable with the possible undertones the relationship could carry were they to be unrelated. They were joined in the first episode by two of Foreman's schoolteachers, Barbara Wright ( Jacqueline Hill ) and Ian Chesterton ( William Russell), from contemporary 20th century England. This remained the line-up of the series for the entire first season, but over time the regular line-up would change regularly as the Doctor's various companions left him to return home or having found new causes on worlds they had visited and elected to stay there, occasionally even being killed off. He would always quickly find new travelling companions, however - they were used by the production team to relate the point of view of the viewers at home, asking questions and furthering the stories by getting into trouble.
Doctor Who predates as one of the first TV series to be given two chances at producing a first episode. The very first episode of the series, "An Unearthly Child", had to be refilmed due to technical problems and errors made during the performance. During the days between the two tapings, changes were made to costuming, effects, performances, and the script.
This second version of "An Unearthly Child", the first episode of the serial 100,000 BC, was transmitted on November 23 1963, but due to both a power failure in certain areas of the country and the overshadowing news of US President John F. Kennedy's assassination, it drew minimal comment and was repeated the following week immediately before the second episode.
It was not until the second serial, The Daleks, that the programme caught the imaginations of viewers and began to ingrain itself in the popular consciousness. This was mainly due to the creatures, the Daleks, introduced in this story, devised by scriptwriter Terry Nation and designer Raymond Cusick , which were like nothing that had been seen on television before, completely un-humanoid. Lambert had in fact been strongly advised against using Nation's script by her direct superior Donald Wilson, but used the excuse that they had nothing else ready in order to produce it. Once it was clear what a great success it had been, Wilson admitted to Lambert that he would no longer interfere with her decisions as she clearly knew the programme better than he did.
Hartnell's Doctor was not initially a paternal or sympathetic figure. He was cantankerous, bossy and occasionally showed a streak of ruthlessness. However, the character mellowed over time, as he grew closer to his companions, they becoming more fond of him.
The programme became a great success, frequently drawing audiences of 12 million or more, and the Daleks came back for several return appearances. By the time of the third season in 1965, however, some difficulties were beginning to arise. Lambert had moved on, to be replaced as producer by John Wiles , who did not have a good working relationship with Hartnell. The lead actor himself was finding it increasingly difficult to remember his lines as he was suffering from the early stages of the arteriosclerosis that would later kill him. Wiles and his story editor Donald Tosh came up with a way of writing Hartnell out in the story The Celestial Toymaker , by having the Doctor made invisible for part of the story, and when he re-appeared he would be played by a new actor. However, Wiles was forbidden to replace Hartnell by new Head of Serials Gerald Savory , so the actor remained and it was Wiles who left the series.
By 1966, however, it was clear that Hartnell's health was affecting his performances, and that he would not be able to carry on playing the Doctor for a long period of time. Wiles' replacement, Innes Lloyd , discussed the situation with Hartnell and the actor agreed that it would be best to leave, although later in life he would claim that he had not wanted to go.
Lloyd and story editor Gerry Davis came up with an intriguing way of writing the Doctor out - as he was an alien being, they decided that he would have the power to change his body when it became worn out or seriously injured, a process that would later become known within the mythology of the series as 'regeneration'. Whereas Wiles had intended to replace Hartnell with another actor but playing the same part, Lloyd and Davis elected to change the entire personality and appearance of the Doctor. They cast actor Patrick Troughton, who first appeared in November 1966 after the changeover from Hartnell had been seen at the end of the story The Tenth Planet , which had also introduced the popular Cybermen, villains who would return to face the Doctor on several subsequent occasions.
Troughton played the role generally in a more lightweight, comical manner, albeit still with much of the original character's passionate despising of evil and desire to help the oppressed. He also on occasion showed a darker side, sometimes manipulating his companions and the people around him for the greater good (examples include The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Evil of the Daleks). He remained in the part for three seasons until 1969, eventually tiring of the workload of starring in the series. By this time the viewing figures for Doctor Who had fallen considerably, and script editor Terrance Dicks recalled that there was some talk of ending the series at the conclusion of its sixth season in 1969. In the event, however, producers Derrick Sherwin and Peter Bryant came up with the idea of reducing the cost of the series by setting all of the adventures on Earth, with the Doctor to act as the Scientific Advisor to an organisation called UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, charged with defending the Earth from alien incursions.
This new set-up was tested in the season six story The Invasion , and at the end of the season was put in place more permanently by the Doctor being captured by his own race, the Time Lords, and sentenced to exile on Earth with his appearance being changed again, as punishment for his interference in the affairs of other races. Thus Doctor Who ended its sixth production block, and its black and white era - from then on, in common with all BBC One programmes, it was to be produced in colour.
Sherwin's first choice to replace Troughton was actor Ron Moody, star of the musical Oliver!, but when he turned the part down, comic actor Jon Pertwee, another candidate from Sherwin's shortlist, was cast instead. Sherwin had hoped that Pertwee would bring much of his comic acting skill to the part, and although some lighter touches were visible throughout Pertwee's era, he essentially played it very 'straight', and not at all as Sherwin had envisioned, as he was keen to establish himself as a serious dramatic actor as well as a comedian. Pertwee's Doctor was more action-oriented than his predecessors, and the producers allowed Pertwee to indulge his love of riding various vehicles during his tenure, including motorcyles, hovercraft and introducing the Doctor's vintage roadster, Bessie.
Sherwin stayed only to oversee the first story of the seventh season, the first Doctor Who story to be made all in colour and - due to industrial action in the electronic studios - the only example of the original series to be made entirely on film, Spearhead from Space. Thereafter, he moved on to work on Paul Temple , and was replaced by director Barry Letts after another regular director on the show, Douglas Camfield , had turned down the job.
The seventh season, at twenty-five episodes, was shorter than any before, and established a pattern of Doctor Who seasons being between twenty and twenty-eight episodes in length that would last until the middle of the 1980s. However, although the new format of the Doctor being stuck on Earth had proved popular enough to save the programme from cancellation, neither Letts nor his script editor Terrance Dicks were particularly keen on the idea, and from the eighth season onwards sought reasons for the Doctor to be able to travel in time and space again, eventually having the Time Lords grant him full freedom at the conclusion of the tenth anniversary story The Three Doctors in 1973, a serial which also featured guest appearances from Troughton and, in a restricted role due to his poor health, Hartnell.
Another innovation of theirs from the eighth season onwards was the introduction of the character of The Master as a new nemesis for the Doctor, seen as being an equivalent of Professor Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes. Played by Roger Delgado, he became a highly popular character, although over the following two seasons it was felt that he became a little over-used, and Delgado and the production team eventually agreed that he should be written out during the eleventh season, killing the character off, with some ambiguity as to whether or not he had died to save the Doctor.
However, before this story could be written, Delgado was killed in a car accident in Turkey. His death had a profound effect on Pertwee - with actress Katy Manning also having departed from her role as companion Jo Grant after three seasons, and Letts and Dicks both planning to move on, he felt that his 'family' on the show was breaking up, and he decided to leave at the conclusion of the eleventh season in 1974.
Although Letts and Dicks were both planning on leaving at the end of the same season, it was they who worked closely on re-casting the role of the Doctor, in preparation to hand over to their successors, producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes, who had been a long-time writer for the programme.
Letts had intended to cast an older actor as the Fourth Doctor, harking back to Hartnell's portrayal in the 1960s, but after a long search he eventually selected actor Tom Baker, who was suggested to him by the incoming Head of Serials Bill Slater . Baker was only forty years old, but despite not being the type of actor Letts had originally been looking for, he went on to become arguably the most popular and best-remembered actor to play the role. He starred in the series for seven years, longer than any of his predecessors or successors, and during his time on the programme Doctor Who enjoyed a consistent run of popular success and high viewing figures. Baker's Doctor was a more eccentric personality, at times passionate and caring, but at other times aloof and alien. This was deliberate on Baker's part, in attempt to remind the viewers that the Doctor was not human, and therefore had non-human attitudes.
Under the control of Hinchcliffe and Holmes, who took over from the beginning of the twelfth season, Doctor Who became a much darker programme in many respects, with the pair being heavily influenced by Hammer Films' successful horror film productions. While their era is frequently praised by fans as a highly successful one, the BBC received complaints from Mary Whitehouse, chairwoman of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, that the programme was unfit for children and could traumatise them. While the BBC was publically defensive of the programme, after three seasons Hinchcliffe was moved onto the adult police thriller series Target in 1977, and his replacement Graham Williams was specifically instructed to lighten the tone of the storylines.
After staying on during the fifteenth season under Williams for a brief handover period, Holmes also left the programme, and his replacement Anthony Read worked with Williams to create a more humour-based approach, which was much to the liking of Baker. The actor now felt very possessive of the part and frequently argued with directors over his inclusion of ad-libbed lines, but he was extremely pleased when the levity of the show increased still further after the departure of Read and the hiring of Douglas Adams as script editor for season seventeen in 1979.
This season saw the show garner its highest ever viewing figures during the ITV network strike, with estimates of between 16 and 19 million viewers for episodes of the Williams and Adams-penned story City of Death. However, there were also problems: director Alan Bromley left the production towards the end of the story Nightmare of Eden due to frustrations at the technicalities of production and arguments with Baker, leaving Williams to oversee completion of the story. The scheduled final story of the season, Adams' own Shada, was abandoned due to industrial action, and the season finished after just twenty episodes in January 1980.
Williams and Adams both departed at the end of the season, Williams because he had had enough of the programme after three seasons in charge, and Adams to concentrate on his increasingly-successful Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy franchise. Williams recommended to Head of Series & Serials Graeme MacDonald that he be replaced by his Production Unit Manager John Nathan-Turner : although MacDonald agreed with the principle of appointing someone familiar with the workings of the show, he first offered the job to Nathan-Turner's predecessor George Gallaccio , who after leaving Doctor Who in 1977 had already gained experience as a producer on the BBC Scotland drama The Omega Factor . However, Gallaccio turned the role down, and MacDonald offered it instead to Nathan-Turner, who accepted, and became the new producer.
As Nathan-Turner was a new producer, MacDonald appointed Barry Letts , still working in the BBC drama department and now a senior producer there, to return to the series as Executive Producer, overseeing Nathan-Turner's initial season working on the series. Letts had, in fact, been offering unofficial advice and comment to Graham Williams for some time beforehand, briefly taking on the role of caretaker producer during season sixteen when Williams had been incapicatated with a broken leg.
Nathan-Turner and his new script editor, Christopher H. Bidmead , sought to return to a more serious premise for the series, reigning in much of the humour that had been prevelant during Williams' tenure. This was to the displeasure of Baker, who did not see eye-to-eye with Nathan-Turner on the new direction in which the series was moving. The new producer also sought to bring the show "into the 1980s", commissioning a new title sequence, bringing all the incidental music in-house to be produced electronically by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and commissioning Peter Howell of the Workshop to come up with a brand new arrangement of the series' famous theme tune.
These changes arrived with season eighteen in the autumn of 1980, however the audience for Doctor Who had fallen dramatically to around five million viewers, due chiefly to competition from the ITV network's American import Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. There was a further blow when Tom Baker decided that after over six years in the part he would leave the role at the end of the season - his departure was heavily publicised in the press, with Baker attracting much comment for his tongue-in-cheek suggestion that his successor could be a woman, which the publicity-aware Nathan-Turner was not quick to deny.
The producer initially sought actor Richard Griffiths to succeed Baker, but when he proved unavailable, cast actor Peter Davison, with whom he had previously worked on the popular drama series All Creatures Great and Small. Davison was very different to his four predecessors, being much younger, in line with Nathan-Turner's desire for the Fifth Doctor to be completely unlike the massively popular Fourth, so that the public would not draw unfavourable comparisons between the two. Davison's Doctor was arguably the most vulnerable and human, more often reacting to circumstances around him rather than being proactive, and with an air of a young aristocrat about him in contrast to Baker's bohemian personality.
Davison made his first appearance at the end of the season eighteen closer Logopolis , although it was to be a year until his first full season in the part began in 1982, as Controller of BBC One Alan Hart had decided to move the programme from an autumn to a spring transmission slot. This was partly because, after eighteen years on Saturday evenings, he had also decided to change the transmission date, running the series twice-weekly on weekdays instead of once a week on Saturdays. This had the effect of halving the number of weeks the series was on-air for, thirteen instead of twenty-six, hence the move from an autumn to a spring debut.
This experiment in seeing the viability of running a twice-weekly drama serial would later lead to the launching of the massively popular soap opera EastEnders in such a slot. It also had the short-term effect of doubling the Doctor Who audience, with the story Black Orchid being the final story of the regular run - and only one of the 1980s - to break the double-figure millions barrier, with a recorded figure of ten million viewers.
During production of the nineteenth season, Bidmead had moved on and been replaced as script editor briefly by Anthony Root and then on a more permanent basis by Eric Saward , who remained in the role for several years. He and Nathan-Turner oversaw an increasing reliance on the show's history in following seasons, with the return of various characters and adversaries from the Doctor's past, culminating in the twentieth anniversary special 90-minute episode The Five Doctors in 1983.
Davison left the part after only three seasons in 1984. He had been advised by Patrick Troughton to stay no longer than three years, and was also disenchanted with the quality of the scripts on the programme during the twentieth season. Although he felt things had improved in the twenty-first, by then his departure had already been announced, and Nathan-Turner had selected actor Colin Baker - who had guest starred in the season twenty story Arc of Infinity - to replace him, becoming the Sixth Doctor on screen in March 1984 at the conclusion of Davison's final story, The Caves of Androzani.
Baker's first full season in 1985 was reasonably successful despite several changes - Alan Hart had decided to experiment with doubling the length of Doctor Who episodes, with season twenty-two comprising of thirteen forty-five minute episodes rather than twenty-six twenty-five minute ones as had previously been the case. The series also returned to Saturday evenings, where even though it faced stiff opposition from another American import on ITV, this time The A-Team, it still drew reasonably respectable figures of seven to eight million viewers for most episodes. Baker's portrayal of the Doctor also met with criticism - a more bombastic and overbearing personality than any of the others. The Doctor's use of deadly force against his enemies in a few stories also caused controversy.
The series once again drew some criticism for the horrific content of some of the episodes. Unlike similar criticisms levelled at the earlier reign of producer Philip Hinchcliffe, however, many of these came from within the BBC itself. Michael Grade had taken over as Controller of BBC One in 1984, and was not a fan of the series. In fact, he later admitted in interviews that he "hated" the programme, and he wanted to cancel it outright. When he attempted to do so, however, the press and public outcry was much larger than he or the Board of Governors of the BBC had expected, and the cancellation turned into an eighteen-month suspension instead, with season twenty-three eventually airing in the autumn of 1986.
Production of the season was complicated by various factors. Although the episode length had been reduced to twenty-five minutes again, the number of episodes was increased to just fourteen, only just over half the length of most previous seasons. Nathan-Turner had decided on an over-arching storyline for the entire season entitled The Trial of a Time Lord, but its complexities proved confusing to both writers and viewers, with the season drawing viewing figures of only four to five million. Robert Holmes, who had returned to writing for the series on a semi-regular basis in 1984, died before he could deliver the final episode. In addition, Saward and Nathan-Turner had a falling out, with Saward resigning from the programme. Despite all of this, Grade consented to allow the series to continue, but moved it away from Saturday nights into a mid-week slot once more, but only at one episode per week. He also ordered that a new Doctor be found, as he was not enamoured of Colin Baker's portrayal. Baker thus became the first actor to leave the role not of his own volition.
Nathan-Turner had thought that he too would finally be leaving the series, but with no other producer available or willing to take on the series, he was instructed to remain. As a BBC staff producer, he had little choice but to either accept this or resign from the Corporation's staff. Not having expected to be producing season twenty-four, Nathan-Turner was left with little time to prepare, hiring inexperienced Andrew Cartmel as script editor (on the advice of a friend who had run a BBC Drama Script Unit course Cartmel had attended) and casting little-known Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. In his first season, McCoy, a comedy actor, portrayed the character with a degree of clown-like humor, but Cartmel's influence soon changed that. The Seventh Doctor developed into a darker figure than any of his earlier incarnations, manipulating people like chess pieces and always seeming to be playing a deeper game than he ever let on.
The new season was placed by Grade at 7.35 p.m. on Monday evenings opposite the phenomonally popular ITV soap opera Coronation Street. Street was the most-watched programme on British television, and the viewing figures for Doctor Who suffered accordingly. The season's quality was also derided by many fans of the programme, although over the following two seasons the criticism was balanced out by some happier viewers, who felt that the young team of writers being assembled by Cartmel was taking the programme in the right direction.
Nathan-Turner attempted to leave once more at the end of production on the twenty-fifth season in 1988, but was once again persuaded to stay for a further year after another BBC producer - Paul Stone , who had produced Box of Delights - was offered the role but declined. He and Cartmel remained as the production team for the twenty-sixth season in 1989, and although once again the season drew praise in some quarters, the viewing figures were disastrous, starting at around the 3 million mark and improving to only around 4.5 million by the season's conclusion. At the end of the year, Cartmel was head-hunted to script edit the BBC's popular medical drama Casualty, and Nathan-Turner also finally left the show, although no replacements were assigned for either man as in-house production was being brought to a close.
Although Michael Grade had left the BBC in 1988 to take up a new position as Chief Executive of Channel 4, Doctor Who remained in its poor slot opposite Coronation Street and suffered accordingly. Jonathan Powell, the new Controller of BBC One, decided to suspend the series, a decision which was clear to the production team by the end of production on the twenty-sixth season in the August. The final story to be produced as part of the original run was Ghost Light , although it was not the last to be screened: this was Survival, the final episode of which was transmitted on December 6 1989, bringing the original twenty-six year series to a close. John Nathan-Turner decided close to transmission that a more suitable conclusion should be given to the final episode in view of the likelihood that it could turn out to be the last ever instalment of the programme, and certainly would be for some time. To this end, Andrew Cartmel wrote a short, melancholic closing monologue for Sylvester McCoy, which McCoy recorded on November 23, 1989 - by coincidence, the show's twenty-sixth anniversary. This was dubbed over the closing scene as the Doctor and his companion Ace walked off into the distance, apparently to further adventures. The Doctor Who production office at the BBC finally closed down, for the first time since 1963, in August 1990.
The programme had, however, not been cancelled outright as such; although in-house production had ceased, the BBC were hopeful of finding an independent production company to re-launch the show and had been approached for such a venture by Philip Segal, a British expatriate who worked for Columbia Pictures' television arm in the United States.
Segal's negotiations dragged on for several years, and followed him from Columbia to Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment company and finally to Universal Studios' television arm. At Amblin Segal had come close to interesting the CBS network in commissioning the series as a mid-season replacement show in 1994, but this eventually came to nothing. Finally, at Universal Segal managed to interest the Fox Network in the programme, in the form of their Vice-President in charge of Television Movie production, Trevor Walton , an Englishman who was already familiar with the series. Although Walton had no power to commission a series, he was able to commission a one-off TV Movie that, if successful, could possibly act as a 'back-door' pilot for a full-length revival.
The original plan had been for a completely new American version of Doctor Who, in the same way that Sanford and Son was an unrelated re-make of Steptoe and Son and All in the Family had re-made Till Death Us Do Part. However, when new scriptwriter Matthew Jacobs came on board in 1995 - at Walton's persuasion, feeling that a simpler story was needed than the intricate back-stories Segal had created with writer John Leekley - he persuaded Segal that the movie should instead be a direct continuation of the BBC series, something no American production had ever attempted before when buying the rights to the British programme.
Segal agreed, and to this end Sylvester McCoy appeared briefly at the beginning of the film, before 'regenerating' into the Eighth Doctor, as played by Paul McGann, who had been Segal's first choice for the part, although both the actor himself and the Fox Network had not initially been keen. Segal later claimed that the BBC's Executive Producer on the project, Jo Wright , had wanted the role of the 'previous Doctor' to be played by Tom Baker, as it was felt he was regarded as the definitive Doctor by the British public and McCoy's tenure had not been as popular, but she backed down when Segal explained how this went against the continuity of the programme.
Transmitted on the Fox Network on May 14 1996 and on BBC One thirteen days later - although actually having debuted on City TV in Vancouver, Canada, where the film had been shot, on May 12 - the production drew only 5.5 million viewers in the United States, although it was far more successful in the UK with 9 million viewers, one of the top-ten programmes of the week.
McGann's Doctor was a combination of boyish glee and wonder at the universe with occasional flashes of an old soul in a young body, and was well received by fans, even if the reactions to the television movie were mixed. However, the disappointing US figures meant that Fox declined to commission a series, and with no broadcast network attached in the United States Universal could not produce a series for the BBC alone, for whom it would have been cheaper to make a new series themselves than pay for a Universal series with no production partner. Thus the series went into hiatus once more, with no new production looking likely as the 1990s drew to a close.
Between 1989, when the programme was taken off the air, and 2005, when the new series is scheduled to debut, various projects were produced about the Doctor under license by the BBC. For information on these, see the Doctor Who spin-offs article.
Following the 1996 telemovie, Universal retained some rights to produce new Doctor Who but, without a broadcaster attached due to the Fox Network's lack of interest in following up on the movie, they allowed them to expire. Full production rights therefore returned to the BBC during 1997.
Little happened at the BBC regarding new Doctor Who production until the following year, when producer Mal Young arrived at the Corporation's in-house production arm as Head of Continuing Drama Series. Young was keen on reviving the programme, and this interest was shared by the then-current Controller of BBC One, Peter Salmon. Tony Wood, a producer in Young's department, had previously worked at Granada Television, and recalled his former colleague there Russell T. Davies' enthusiasm for the programme, recommending him to Young as someone who might make an effective writer of a new version. Davies had recently written for the popular Granada dramas The Grand and Touching Evil for the ITV network, and earlier in the decade had worked for the BBC, writing the well-received children's science-fiction serials Dark Season and Century Falls.
A meeting was arranged between Davies and Mal Young's development producer, Patrick Spence, and the following year the media took hold of the story following the success of and comment surrounding Davies' Channel 4 drama Queer as Folk. Although various sources claimed that a provisional title of Doctor Who 2000 had been given to the proposed new series, in reality very little work had been done, as Peter Salmon had been informed by BBC Worldwide they any new series would upset tentative plans they were making for a new film version of the series. Thus plans for the television revival were shelved for the time, and seemed to become even less likely in 2000 when Salmon was replaced as Controller of BBC One.
However, Salmon's successor, Lorraine Heggessey, proved to be equally enthusiastic about the idea of new Doctor Who, often commenting to the press that she would like to pursue the idea but that "rights difficulties" - presumably BBC Worldwide's film negotiations - prevented it. Equally positive comments were made by the Corporation's overall Head of Drama Jane Tranter, and finally in September 2003 Heggessey managed to persuade Worldwide that as several years had now passed and they were no nearer to producing a film, BBC television should be allowed to make a new series.
Heggessey had received several new series proposals since she had taken over control of BBC One, the highest-profile being from producer Dan Freedman - who had produced a full-cast, official, audio Doctor Who story, entitled Death Comes to Time for the BBCi website in 2001 - and another from actor / writer Mark Gatiss, who in 2002 drew up and submitted a proposal in collaboration with writer Gareth Roberts and Doctor Who Magazine editor Clayton Hickman .
Tranter and Heggessey, however, elected to approach Davies once again, who had often told the BBC when approached for other projects that he would only return to them to take charge of a new series of Doctor Who. He quickly accepted, and on September 26 2003 it was officially announced that Doctor Who would be returning to BBC One, produced in-house at BBC Wales in 2004 for transmission in 2005. Davies is chief writer and Executive Producer, and other writers for the first season include Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Paul Cornell and Rob Shearman. The Producer will be Phil Collinson and the other Executive Producers are Mal Young (to be replaced by John Yorke as Young is leaving the BBC), and BBC Wales Head of Drama Julie Gardner.
The new series is to comprise of thirteen 45-minute long episodes, with the first story titled Rose after the Doctor's new companion Rose Tyler . After much speculation in the press about possible candidates, Christopher Eccleston was announced as the Ninth Doctor on March 20, 2004. Rose will be played by former pop singer Billie Piper, who was announced on May 24. Filming of the first season began in Cardiff on July 18, 2004. Unlike past seasons which utilized serial-style storytelling, the new series is expected to consist of mainly standalone or two-part episodes.
In April 2004, Michael Grade returned to the BBC, this time as the Chairman of the Board of Governors, although this position does not involve any commissioning or editorial responsibilities. Asked on BBC Radio 4 about his thoughts on the new series, Grade commented on April 2, "This time it's none of my business what happens to Doctor Who, as long as I don't have to watch it." However he was later quoted as saying, "I have every confidence it will meet the audience's expectations. I am hoping to be a new convert."
On July 2, 2004, the BBC announced that the Daleks would not be appearing as an adversary in series one of the new programme. This followed the breakdown of negotiations with the estate of Terry Nation, which jointly owns the rights to the monsters along with the BBC. Russell T Davies, however, was hopeful that things could be worked out for the Daleks to appear in series two. Talks apparently progressed more productively than had been expected, and on August 4, it was announced that an agreement had been reached between the BBC and the Nation estate and the creatures would indeed feature in series one.
On October 18, 2004, the new series logo was revealed on the BBC Doctor Who site. [1]
BBC Worldwide has also confirmed that their Doctor Who movie plan is still in development, as it has been for much of the last ten years. Details on the movie are very sketchy and it is not even known if a script exists. It remains to be seen if it will have any tie to the new TV series.
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