The Doctor rarely travels alone and is often joined by one or more companions on these adventures these companions are usually humans, owing to the Doctor's fascination with planet Earth, which also leads to frequent collaborations with the international military task force UNIT when Earth is threatened. The TARDIS has a vast interior but appears smaller on the outside, and is equipped with a " chameleon circuit" intended to make the machine take on the appearance of local objects as a disguise due to a malfunction, the Doctor's TARDIS remains fixed as a blue British police box.Īcross time and space, the Doctor's many incarnations often find events that pique their curiosity, and try to prevent evil forces from harming innocent people or changing history, using only ingenuity and minimal resources, such as the versatile sonic screwdriver. The Doctor fled Gallifrey, the planet of the Time Lords, in a stolen TARDIS ("Time and Relative Dimension in Space"), a time machine that travels by materialising into, and dematerialising out of, the time vortex.
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Doctor Who has also spawned numerous spin-offs, including comic books, films, novels, audio dramas, and the television series Torchwood (2006–2011), The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–2011), K-9 (2009–2010), and Class (2016), and has been the subject of many parodies and references in popular culture. The programme was relaunched in 2005, and since then has been produced in-house by BBC Wales in Cardiff. There was an unsuccessful attempt to revive regular production in 1996 with a backdoor pilot, in the form of a television film titled Doctor Who. The programme originally ran from 1963 to 1989.
The programme is listed in Guinness World Records as the longest-running science fiction television show in the world, as well as the "most successful" science fiction series of all time, based on its overall broadcast ratings, DVD and book sales, and iTunes traffic. Fans of the series are sometimes referred to as Whovians. It has influenced generations of British television professionals, many of whom grew up watching the series. The show is a significant part of British popular culture, and elsewhere it has gained a cult following. The time-travelling feature of the plot means that different incarnations of the Doctor occasionally meet. Each actor's portrayal is unique, but all represent stages in the life of the same character, and together, they form a single lifetime with a single narrative. The transition from one actor to another is written into the plot of the show with the concept of regeneration into a new incarnation, a plot device in which a Time Lord "transforms" into a new body when the current one is too badly harmed to heal normally. With various companions, the Doctor combats foes, works to save civilisations and helps people in need.īeginning with William Hartnell, thirteen actors have headlined the series as the Doctor, and in 2017 Jodie Whittaker became the first woman to play the role. The TARDIS exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. The Doctor explores the universe in a time-travelling space ship called the TARDIS. The programme depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme broadcast by BBC One since 1963.