Throughout Dr Who, and in may of the books about the show, there is a discontinuity about what TARDIS means, some people say it is Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, whereas Susan Forman, in the first episode, An Unearthly Child, says it stands for Time and Relative Dimension In Space (no s at the end of Dimension). Submitted by Jeff Walker
In 1972, the BBC began a "purge" of its archives to save costs, and amongst the shows selected for disposal were all 268 black-and-white episodes of Doctor Who first broadcast between November 1963 and April 1969. Since 1978, cast, crew, and fans of the show have recovered many episodes tagged "missing believed wiped". After 25 years of effort, 109 of the 268 episodes have not been found.
As mentioned elsewhere, Doctor Who has regenerated eight times (out of a possible twelve) Here is a short summary of the regeneration events ordered by the actor that left the series ("died")... First Doctor (William Hartnell) - weakened in a battle with the Cybermen (episode: The Tenth Planet). Second Doctor(Patrick Troughton) - forced regeneration when he was exiled to Earth by the Time Lords (episode: The War Games). Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) - radiation overdose(episode: Planet of the Spiders). Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) - fell off Jodrell Bank radio telescope walkway (episode: Logopolis). Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) - poisoned with Spectrox Toxaemina (episode: Caves of Androzani). Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) - Rani's hijacking of the Tardis using a navigational guidance system distorter causes enough damage to the Doctor (episode: Time and the Rani). Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) - Shot by hoodlums in San Francisco, then dies on the operating table (episode: The 1996 Television movie). Seventh Doctor (Paul McGann) - We don't know yet, since this may or may not be part of the new series, to be broadcast in 2005. Somehow or other he has to regenerate into Christopher Eccleston - the actor who has signed up to play the Doctor in the new series...but so far the BBC aren't saying how.
In the season 14 story 'The Deadly Assassin' it is mentioned that, The Doctor, like all Time Lords, can 'regenerate' himself a maximum of twelve times. After that, "it really is the end". Since the series started in 1963, nine actors have played the role of Doctor Who: William Hartnell (1963-66), Patrick Troughton (1966-69), Jon Pertwee (1970-74), Tom Baker (1974-81), Peter Davidson (1982-84), Colin Baker (1984-86), Sylvester McCoy (1987-89)(*although, according to the BBC, it was 1987-96, due to McCoy reprising his role for the 1996 TV Movie), Paul McGann (1996:TV Movie only) ...and the ninth Doctor Who will be Christopher Eccleston, who stars in a new series, planned for broadcast in 2005.
In case you've ever wondered why everyone in the universe speaks English, Time Lords have the ability to telepathically understand and speak any language they hear and they're able to share this ability with their companions. (As for why everyone in the universe has a British accent, this can be put down to the fact that the Doctor is an Anglophile.). Submitted by Captain Defenestrator
This, the fourth Doctor Who story, is one that did not survive the BBC's purging of the archives in 1972-78. Originally seven episodes were made, and first broadcast in February-April 1964: none survive in the BBC's archives, and the entire story is one that is "missing believed wiped"
"Inside The Spaceship" is only one of two "official" titles given to this Doctor Who Story. It was also called "Edge of Destruction", and it is under this latter title that it is known when the story was made available on video.
When originally recorded on 15 Nov 63, the first episode of this Doctor Who story ('The Dead Planet') was found to be unsuitable for broadcast due to the soundtrack picking up interference from the assistant director's headphones. The episode was re-recorded on 6 Dec 63, which forced the production of all subsequent episodes (from episode 4 onwards) to be delayed a week.
Many early (Hartnell-era) Doctor Who stories are known by more than one title. The first ever story is known as "100,000 B.C.". When it was commissioned in October 1963, the story was called "Doctor Who and The Tribe of Gum". This story is also widely known by the title "An Unearthly Child", and this is the title under which it has been released on video and DVD.
It is a popular myth that the first ever Doctor Who story (broadcast on 23 November 1963) was delayed by 10 minutes due to news of the assassination of US President John F Kennedy the day before. This is not the case: the first ever episode of Doctor Who WAS delayed, but only by some eighty seconds, due to the previous programme ("Grandstand") overrunning. The source of the myth seems to have originated from the fact that, due to power cuts blacking out several TV transmitters, the first ever episode of Doctor Who ("A Unearthly Child") was repeated a week later (30th November 1963) immediately before the first ever broadcast of Part 2 ("The Cave of Skulls").
Before the BBC committed itself to Doctor Who, a pilot episode was made in September 1963. Once approval was given for a 13-week series of Doctor Who, the pilot episode was remade as part one of the first-ever Doctor Who story. The pilot episode was intended purely for internal use at the BBC and NOT for transmission. However,unusually, the pilot episode survived on film, and was broadcast on BBC TV on 26th August 1991, as part of "The Lime Grove Story"...a series of shows commemorating the BBC's Lime Grove TV Studios, which closed in 1991. It has since been made available on Video.
Such was the popularity of Doctor Who in Britain in the mid-1960s that even THE BEATLES wanted to make an appearance in the show. So a scene was written into "The Chase" to allow them to appear. The idea had been devised of including a scene on the Time and Space Visualiser depicting a Beatles fiftieth-anniversary concert in 2015, with the Fab Four dressed up as old men. John, Paul, George, and Ringo themselves were interested in the proposition, but it was vetoed by their manager, Brian Epstein. It was then thought that an appearance by the Beatles on 'Top Of The Pops' might be used instead, but no such footage was available. Fortunately, the Beatles were scheduled to perform 'Ticket To Ride' at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith on April 10th, 1965, and that footage was used instead.
The first episode of the Doctor Who story "The Crusades" was called "The Lion" (a reference to King Richard I, "The Lionheart") and was first broadcast on March 27, 1965. This episode was really bad. The only surviving copy was returned to the BBC Archives in January 1999, from a film collector in New Zealand, who had bought it at a car boot sale for $5.00NZ (about $3US). The vendor of this episode of Doctor Who had recovered it several years before from a landfill site in Wellington, New Zealand, where TV NZ had dumped it when clearing out its archives.
The plot for this Doctor Who story was adapted and remade by Hammer Films into a full blown cinema release "Daleks; Invasion Earth 2150AD", which was released in 1966 and starred Peter Cushing as Doctor Who. The major change in the plot was to redate the story from 2164AD to 2150AD.
This Doctor Who story was originally scripted and produced as a four-episode story, but, just two weeks before transmission, upon viewing the story, co-creators Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson felt that the final two episodes (Episode 3:'Crisis' and Episode 4:'The Urge to Live') should be combined into a single episode. The new 'condensed' episode incorporated the opening titles of 'Crisis' with the closing credits of 'The Urge to Live'.
For the first three seasons of Doctor Who, each individual episode had a title, as well as an "umbrella" title for the whole story (like the titles of chapters in a book). This has caused much confusion over the years. For example, the story "100,000BC" is the title of the first Doctor Who story, but this story is also widely known as "An Unearthly Child" after the title of the first episode. By the time of "The Gunfighters" (first broadcast in May 1966) this source of confusion was realised, and the practice ceased. From 28th May 1966, each Doctor Who story had just the "umbrella" title, followed by "Part One" "Part Two" and so on.
For many years, it was thought that every episode of "The Daleks Master Plan" had been destroyed by the BBC, in their 1970s purge of the archives. However, in 1983, two episodes (5 and 10) were found and returned to the BBC for preservation. They were found in a highly unlikely location: the basement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Clapham, South London. No one knows how they got there...
The most recent recovery of a "missing, believed wiped" episode was as recently as January 2004, when 'Day of Armageddon', the second episode of *The Daleks' Master Plan* was returned to the BBC by an employee of Yorkshire Television. He had rescued the print from destruction in the early 1970s when, as a young BBC engineer, he had found it in a room at the BBC's Ealing Film Studios, which he had been asked to clear of rubbish. He disobeyed the instruction to destroy the episode and took it home with him. Arguably, he stole it from the BBC, but if he hadn't, it would never have survived.
Originally the Time Destructor's core was made out of "Vitaranium." It was changed to "Taranium" after William Hartnell kept calling it "Vitamin."
Most people think that episode 10 of the Dalek's Master Plan (Escape Switch) was deleted. It was, in fact, never filmed. The BBC instead, Showed episode 3 of the chase, hoping that most people would forget most of the story as it was the 10th episode.