In the Beginning There Was Who?

This cult series has been around for a long time but when and how did it all start? To answer that question we need to go back to its origins—or to November 23rd 1963, when the British local TV station started broadcasting the adventures of the mysterious time traveller, only known as 'The Doctor'.

It all began—as most things do—with an idea. In the 1950s the Britain was invaded by two new sci-fi series (the first ones at the time) BBC’s Quatermass Experiment and ITV’s Pathfinders in Space, the latter created by a Canadian Sydney Newman.

Then we materialise in the 1962, where we meet up with Mr Newman again, now a Head of BBC Drama and find out that he had a new idea—he needed a new family series to fit in with the other attention grabbers on a Saturday night. He knew what he wanted and a couple of concepts were trown his way, such as telepathy, flying saucers, scientific trouble-shooters from the future and a time machine.
Of course the time machine won and all he had to do next was to decide on the stars of the show. And he didn’t wait long before it was decided that the show will have four main characters and one of which will be more mysterious than the others.

The characters were a a couple of school teachers—known as Ian Chesterton (the intelligent and fit science professor) and Barbara Wright (the noble and brave history professor). Another character—a young student Susan Forman was added into the mix, so that the audience (children and younger adults or teenagers) could identify with her, even if she was an alien. And the last mentioned but the most important character was a mysterious stranger or an anti-hero and he was to be known only as ‘The Doctor’.

His name will later give birth to a question that will be repeated numerous times during the series' long history of broadcasting. Even today in the new series, you’d hear one of the characters ask Doctor Who?

The two teachers followed the Doctor and his grandaughter Susan and travelled with them trough space and time in their ship and time machine called the TARDIS (an abbrevation of the words: Time—And—Relative—Dimensions—In—Space) and even got back to the Earth’s history and the origins of man in the pilot episode The Unearthly Child which was broadcasted the day after JFK’s assassination on 23rd of November 1963.

And the classic show continued to amaze and entertain people until its abrupt cancellation in 1989 but no matter the state it was placed in, it managed to stay alive through other media: comedy spoofs (see The Curse of the Fatal Death), webcasts (Shada, Scream of the Shalka), books (New Adventures, 5-8th Doctor novels) and audio/radio dramas (5th-8th Doctor), spin offs etc; till its regeneration into the new and modern form it has today. Forty or so years on it still grabs attention and more and more fans discover it across the world each day.

Long live the BBC and their brainchild The Doctor…