D is for Doctor Who

Posted April 4, 2014 in A-Z Challenge / 5 Comments

Today is the fourth day of the A-Z Blogging Challenge! The aim is to write a post for every day of the month except for Sundays, with each post representing a different letter of the alphabet. This year I’m doing an A-Z of Great Britain, covering as much as I can about British music, literature, TV and film, food, wildlife and culture.

For the letter ‘D’ I have chosen Doctor Who. The science fiction series is a significant part of British popular culture and has become a cult favourite in the US and elsewhere. You can tell a lot about a person from which Doctor is their favourite. Mine is Tom Baker. What does that say about me? That I have exceptional taste in scarves of course.

I’ve no real direction for this post (what can I say about Doctor Who that hasn’t been said already?) so I’ve decided to  provide a collection of random links and facts associated with this great series.

Some fun Doctor Who Links:

  • The TARDIS has become an iconic symbol. You can even make a statement by incorporating it into your home décor. I love the TARDIS bookshelf below, made by Morgan. Check out her tutorial if you fancy making one for yourself.

TARDIS bookshelf by Morgan.

Some Interesting Doctor Who Facts:

  • Doctor Who is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running science fiction TV show in the world-it first aired in 1963 so will be 51 years old this year!
  • Tom Baker’s long scarf was supposedly created by accident. Legend has it that the costume designer, James Acheson, gave several balls of yarn to a knitter who was supposed to choose one she liked for the scarf of the Doctor. Instead she misunderstood and knitted it into one huge scarf, which Acheson loved.
  • Matt Smith is the youngest Doctor ever at 27 years old. William Hartnell and Peter Capaldi are joint oldest, both being 55 when they took on the role.
  • ‘TARDIS’ stands for ‘Time and Relative Dimensions in Space’.
  • 103 episodes of the series were destroyed by the BBC in the 1960s and 1970s-some by accident and some to save space. The BBC and fans keep requesting copies to be returned so they can complete the archives.
  • Bill Nighy and Benedict Cumberbatch both turned down the role of The Doctor.

  • Doctor Who employed the BBC’s first ever female producer, Verity Lambert.
  • Stephen Fry once wrote a script for the series but it was never used because it was too complicated to film. 
  • In the early days, the sound of the TARDIS taking off was created by jangling a bunch of keys!  
  • The Doctor really is a doctor. He earned his degree in Glasgow in 1888!
  • The spin-off series Torchwood, is an anagram of Doctor Who. Russell T. Davies used it as a code name to label the series tapes so that no one would find them and leak spoilers to the press.
  • The words ‘Dalek’ and ‘TARDIS’ now feature in the Oxford English Dictionary. The latter is used to describe anything that is bigger on the outside than the inside.  
  • The latest actor to play the Doctor, Peter Capaldi, applied to be the head of the Doctor Who fan club as a teenager.
  • Original 1963 Daleks are now collector’s editions and worth over £20,400 each.
  • Michael Jackson was considered for the role of the Doctor in a film by Paramount Pictures!
  • Georgia Moffett, the daughter of Peter Davidson (who played the 5th Doctor), played the timelord’s daughter alongside David Tennant and later married him!
  • Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was a Doctor Who writer in the ’70s.

    Sources

    Are you a fan of Doctor Who or never really got into it? What do you think of recent episodes compared to retro ones? Who is your favourite Doctor and why?

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    5 responses to “D is for Doctor Who

    1. I started watching Doctor Who with my father when I was just a baby, and I've watched it ever since. My favorite classic doctor is Peter Davidson, and my favorite modern doctor, so far, is Matt Smith.

    2. Ooo…that book case is awesome! I loved Dr. Who growing up, but since it didn't air in Germany, I missed out on many, many years. Guess, I have some catching up to do 🙂

    3. Thanks for the link to Brian Cox. I actually also wrote about about Doctor Who, but I compared the Doctor to Data from Star Trek (in a sloppy, I've had a long day kind of way).

      Fantastic post.

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