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NARRATOR: "Doctor". Doctor who?
For 50 years, the planet Earth has had a protector.
He's been from the Big *** to the end of the universe.
Wherever the Doctor goes, he makes friends,
fights monsters, and saves worlds.
If you've never met the Doctor before, you're about to now.
Get ready to run.
(INAUDIBLE)
(LAUGHS)
-Ho-ho! -Awesome.
The Doctor is an alien from the planet Gallifrey,
who travels in time and space in a blue box
which is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
The Doctor is a hero who doesn't know he's a hero,
and that's what makes him amazing.
He ran away from his own people
because he didn't like the way they ran things.
He stole a Tardis and took off in it,
and has been travelling in that Tardis ever since.
Doctor Who is an alien. He comes from somewhere else,
and he is a benevolent alien.
He's not a violent man.
He's an eccentric, and he loves life.
He would look upon violence not as a strength, but a weakness.
He has two hearts. At the moment, he wears a quiff,
and a bow-tie, and groovy boots.
Ha ha! See? Look, it's me!
Matt Smith is the Eleventh Doctor.
But "the Eleventh Doctor"
implies a previous ten Doctors, and there have been ten before him.
The first Doctor we ever encountered was an irascible, elderly,
grandfatherly character.
He was replaced by a wonderful cosmic hobo,
who was replaced by a dashing James Bond figure,
who was replaced by a tall madman with a bag of Jelly Babies
and a ridiculous scarf,
who was replaced by a dashing, good-looking,
rather ineffectual but very sweet young man in cricketing whites,
who was replaced by a Doctor in bizarre, sort of outlandish clothes,
who then gets replaced by this peculiar,
clowning conniver with an umbrella, who was replaced
by a good-looking, glorious Pre-Raphaelite dream,
who turned into an old soldier in a leather jacket.
And then the Ninth Doctor is replaced by David Tennant.
He's Cockney. He's charming. He's, again, one of the funny Doctors.
Then he gets replaced by Matt Smith.
SMITH: My Doctor
is brave, funny, clumsy, physical.
GAIMAN: And he's still a kid at heart, and that feels like
it's the thing that drives this Doctor,
is that willingness to be childlike.
NARRATOR: The Doctor is a unique hero,
and Doctor Who Explained is going to tell you
everything you need to know about his adventures.
How he travels through time and space, who he travels with,
who his adversaries are, and why he spends so much time saving Earth.
But first, let's look at the Doctor's alien origins
as a member of the mysterious Time Lords.
The Doctor's a Time Lord, and that means
he's a member of a race, you know, the Gallifreyans,
who can travel through time to any era, any planet.
The Time Lords literally are the lords of time.
Quite what that means, I'm not sure,
but I think it means they can control time.
They are the masters of time.
TENNANT: The legend is that a Time Lord can regenerate
twelve times within their life cycle.
That's what we've learnt so far.
I'm sure these things will evolve as the series requires.
But, yes, any Time Lord, when their body runs out,
or when their body would otherwise die, can regenerate,
and have a completely new body and start again.
(INAUDIBLE)
Action!
SMITH: The Doctor possesses a power of regeneration.
So it's regeneration energy, and when he does regenerate,
golden light sort of emits from him.
And he can change his guise, his personality,
his features, his accent...
All the cells of his body rearrange themselves
into another entity, which is the same, but different.
I don't wanna go.
He can turn into another actor, basically. (CHUCKLES)
(SCREAMS)
(GLASS SHATTERS)
GARDNER: Regeneration, I think, at the heart of the show,
is about the show itself constantly changing.
If you have a show that's 50 years old,
it's still relevant now to people
in the way that it was relevant in the '60s.
You can constantly not just regenerate the Doctor,
but you regenerate the show.
So you have new energy, and this Doctor has different characteristics,
and will take you in a slightly different direction.
You have a chance to see new people playing the same role,
and it's actually part of the story. It's not just like,
"Oh, the series ended. Now we're gonna cast someone new."
It's actually part of the story
that we're going to have new people playing the Doctor. So, yeah,
I mean, for a lot of reasons, Doctor Who is unique
and has a lot of potential.
NARRATOR: The Doctor may have regenerated into many different guises,
but there are some things about his character
that always remain the same.
I was never violent with anybody.
You know, I'd push them or outwit them,
but I would never enter into fisticuffs or whatever it was.
I was always outwitting them, you know?
DOCTOR: Oof!
I say, what a wonderful butler. He's so violent.
Hello. I'm called the Doctor. That's Romana. That's Duggan.
You must be the Countess Scarlioni.
And this is clearly a delightful Louis XV chair.
May I sit in it? I say, haven't they worn well?
Thank you, Hermann, that will be all.
The Doctor is someone who stands up for the little guy,
and who really makes "smart" cool,
and who is a champion of the downtrodden.
He's not your kind of conventional law-bringer.
He has to survive on his wits,
and he has to make really difficult choices
and use his brain and his cunning to get out of trouble.
I don't think he's a passive character, but he's not openly aggressive.
There is something of the diplomat in Doctor Who, I think.
(SHOUTS) Miss Hartigan, I'm offering you a choice.
You might have the most remarkable mind this world has ever seen,
strong enough to control the Cybermen themselves.
I don't need you to sanction me.
No. But such a mind deserves to live.
The Cybermen came to this world using a dimension vault.
I can use that device to find you a home
with no people to convert, but a new world
where you can live out your mechanical life in peace.
In a way, there's something slightly nice and eccentric and gentle
about the Doctor, and the way he approaches his superhero-ness.
He must solve the problem by intellect,
by guile, by humour,
or by letting his companion blow them up. (LAUGHS)
NARRATOR: The Doctor is an alien Time Lord who can regenerate.
But how does he travel through time and space?
Many years ago, the Doctor went on the run from his own people.
He took with him a machine that has been his constant companion.
It's time you wandered into the Tardis.
CREW MEMBER: And... Action!
So you actually live up here, on a cloud, in a box?
DOCTOR: I have done for a long time now.
CLARA: Blimey, you really know how to sulk, don't you?
-I'm not sulking. -You live in a box!
That's no more a box than you are a governess.
CLARA: Oh, spoken like a man. You're the same as all the rest.
"Sweet little Clara. Works at the Rose and Crown.
"Ideas above her station." Well, for your information,
I'm not sweet on the inside, and I'm certainly not...
...little.
It's called the Tardis. It can travel anywhere in time and space.
And it's mine.
"Time And Relative Dimension In Space." That's what Tardis stands for.
NARRATOR: The Tardis allows the Doctor to travel
anywhere in space and time.
It's taken him from the Big *** to the far reaches of the universe.
But how did it get that curious name?
TENNANT: In the first episode, we're told
that the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan, made that up.
What is going to happen to you, hmm?
She'll tell everybody about the ship now.
-Ship? -Yes, yes. Ship.
This doesn't roll along on wheels, you know.
-You mean it moves? -The Tardis can go anywhere.
"Tardis"? I don't understand you, Susan.
Well, I made up the name "Tardis" from the initials.
Time And Relative Dimension In Space.
Well, of course, Susan invented "Tardis". (LAUGHS)
I shall go down in history for having done that.
Tardis, meaning "Time And Relative Dimension In Space".
Tardis.
Let me get this straight. A thing that looks like
a police box standing in a junkyard,
it can move anywhere in time and space?
-Yes. -Quite so.
But that's ridiculous!
It was absolutely bewildering.
If you went through a little telephone box,
and suddenly found yourself in an enormous space
with a lot of machines that you couldn't recognise,
you would be confused.
-Just how big is the Tardis? -Well, how big is "big"?
Relative dimensions, you see. No constant.
-That's not an answer. -How big are you at the moment?
5'4", just. And that's still not an answer.
Listen, listen. There are no measurements in infinity.
You humans have got such limited little minds.
I don't know why I like you so much.
-Because you have such good taste. -DOCTOR: That's true.
When you step through the doors of the police box, which is only
a sort of eight, nine feet tall wooden box,
but when you step inside that, you go through the dimensional portal,
dimensionally transcendental, and it is much, much, much,
-much bigger on the inside. -(DOOR CREAKS OPEN)
Take a look?
No, no, no...
MARTHA: But it's just a box!
But it's huge! How does it do that?
It's dimensionally transcendental, which means the outer shell is one thing
and the inside of the Tardis exists in a slightly different dimension.
It's like a box with that room just crammed in.
-It's bigger on the inside. -(MOUTHS)
Is it? I hadn't noticed.
Right, then. Let's get going.
NARRATOR: The Doctor's futuristic time machine
is bigger on the inside.
But why does it look like a blue, wooden police box on the outside?
The conceit was that the design of the Tardis was so that it would...
Wherever it ended up, it would make itself
perfectly unremarkable wherever it landed.
The Tardis. You can't just leave it. Doesn't it get noticed?
What's with the police box? Why does it look like that?
-It's a cloaking device. -It's called a chameleon circuit.
The Tardis is meant to disguise itself wherever it lands.
Like, if this was ancient Rome, it'd be a statue on a plinth, or something.
But I landed in the 1960s, it disguised itself as a police box,
and the circuit got stuck.
So the Doctor's Tardis has been a police box ever since.
So it copied a real thing? There actually was police boxes?
Yeah, on street corners. Phone for help, before they had radios and mobiles.
If they arrested somebody, they could shove them inside till help came.
Like a little prison cell.
I suppose the shape of the Tardis, and its look,
when you think back to the original series,
it made sense. It was something that would blend in.
But when you start imagining foreign planets,
a sort of 1960s police box is not something
that's going to blend in. So it makes absolute sense
that the Tardis would have a chameleon circuit.
-Why don't you just fix the circuit? -I like it. Don't you?
-I love it. -But that's what I meant.
There's no police boxes any more, so doesn't it get noticed?
Ricky, let me tell you something about the human race.
You put a mysterious blue box
slap-*** in the middle of town, what do they do?
Walk past it. Now stop your nagging. Let's go and explore.
It's great to see that that's his legacy from the past.
It's great, from a television-history point of view,
to see this man still in that spacecraft,
which actually is a very iconoclastic piece of '50s Britain.
It's so iconic, and it just represents so many things.
It is the vessel and the vehicle that allows, you know,
the Doctor and his companion to go on all these amazing adventures,
and so the Tardis is very much the third main character
in any and every episode of Doctor Who.
It's clearly the Doctor's one true friend.
NARRATOR: The Doctor's been travelling with the Tardis
through all his regenerations, but it's not just a machine.
It's alive.
It's a machine, and yet, sometimes,
it seems to be something slightly more than a machine.
The Tardis was an incredibly complex piece of machinery,
which seemed to have a mind of its own.
The Tardis is a quasi-living organism.
Are you there?
Can you hear me?
(SIGHS) I'm a silly old...
Okay. The Eye of Orion, or wherever we need to go.
It's an entity of its own which has its own personality,
which is an extraordinary character
in his journey, affects everything he does.
It's a love story between him and a blue box.
(LAUGHS)
Ha!
(LAUGHS MERRILY)
All of space and time is yours when you step through the door,
so that gives a writer scope for, actually, anything.
Any starting point that you can imagine,
and even ones that haven't been imagined yet.
NARRATOR: The Doctor has a time-travelling Tardis,
but he doesn't travel alone. He always has a companion at his side.
Each one provides a new dynamic in the Tardis.
They help the Doctor save the universe,
and, at times, stop him from going too far.
The role of the companion in the Doctor Who series
is hugely important, because it's what the audience identifies with.
Every hero needs a companion, needs a helper or someone like that,
and the Doctor's no different.
And because of the way the show is set up, you know,
each iteration of the Doctor is going to have his own set of companions.
The companion has a very vital role in the show.
I mean, the practical level is that they're asking the questions,
and the Doctor then explains what's happening.
HINES: The companion can say "Why is he doing that?"
"What's this for? Where..." And then the Doctor can explain.
The companion is always our eyes and ears, in some way.
They're the person who'll lead us through the story.
You know, we're in awe of this man, and frustrated by him,
like everybody else, and that's great, that the companion voices that for us.
And you can do things with the assistants
that you can't do with the Doctor.
I mean, the assistants can kill people. The Doctor can't.
The assistants can use guns.
The Doctor can't.
It's a great way to define him, and also to get him into trouble.
And it's always nice to have someone to rescue, occasionally.
(LAUGHS) So companions are good for that.
You need that central relationship in the show.
And that's, I think, the most interesting part about it.
And I think that it's that relationship,
on a backdrop of all these amazing worlds, that's interesting.
It makes the show richer. If it was just the Doctor, travelling on his own,
he'd have no one to talk to, which I think would make quite quiet TV.
So it's good to have the companions there.
He wants companions, because
he's quite old, he's getting a little bit jaded, and he wants
to give people the benefit of the experiences
and the adventures that he had.
He loves to show people the universe,
and he likes to see people experience things for the first time.
(WHISPERS) Okay.
-Are you ready? -Yes. No!
Yes.
Welcome to the Rings of Akhaten.
And I think it reminds him. He's so old.
It reminds him that there's a freshness to everything.
NARRATOR: Clara Oswald is the latest companion
to keep the Doctor's outlook fresh.
Something of a mystery, this sparky companion
keeps the Doctor constantly intrigued.
I suppose, approaching the part, you kind of begin to think
"What kind of person would run off with a man in a blue box
"offering to take you anywhere in time that you want to go?"
And I think it has to be somebody who's very open,
and curious.
A sense of fun and adventure. Somebody who's kind of fearless.
And all these things I've been trying to incorporate into Clara.
Clara is a feisty, clever companion,
who tests the Doctor, because she doesn't take any of his truck.
-She's sort of plucky. -(GASPS)
(WHISPERS) You coming?
-(WHISPERS) What? -To find the ghost.
-Why would I want to do that? -Because you want to. Come on.
-I dispute that assertion! -Eh?
What's quite interesting in the dynamic so far
is that she kind of... She really does hold her own,
and she's interested and fascinated by the Doctor,
but she also thinks she is interesting, as well.
(WHISPERS) I'm giving you a face. Yeah?
Can you see me? Look at my face.
(SIGHS) Fine.
She definitely finds the Doctor absolutely amazing,
but wouldn't necessarily tell him so.
I think that sort of, in a different way, intrigues him.
-Dare me. -I dare you.
No takesy-backsies.
(CHUCKLES)
I think he likes her. I think he likes how clever she is,
and I think, as always with him, there's a...
She sort of re-ignites his curiosity in the universe,
and represents, sort of, different problems and possibilities
and adventures for him.
She's a fellow-traveller, fellow-adventurer.
A student. A teacher.
A friend. Most of all, probably, a friend.
NARRATOR: Clara may travel with the Doctor now,
but his very first companion was Susan,
his highly intelligent granddaughter.
As far as I was concerned at the time, I was just told straightforwardly
that Susan was Doctor Who's granddaughter.
So I accepted that, and we had a very strong, firm bond,
in a very grand, paternalistic sort of way.
She was a very sweet girl. She didn't have attitude. (LAUGHS)
But at the time that Susan was created, then,
that's what the female people in it did.
Scream, scream, scream, and run, run, run.
Now, of course, the lucky devils have a totally different concept.
They run towards the monsters rather than away from them,
which is something I would have loved to have done.
NARRATOR: As the show evolved, so did the companions,
and in the 1970s we had the tenacious, smart journalist Sarah Jane Smith,
a companion who had a lasting impact on the Doctor.
Elisabeth Sladen played Sarah Jane Smith
for a big chunk of the Fourth Doctor's time.
She was the first companion that I remember watching as a child,
and, erm, sort of falling in love with.
She was an investigative journalist.
She was competent.
She was beautiful, she was really smart, she was funny.
Elisabeth, from the word go, found most of what my ideas were funny.
I adored her. Fabulous taste in comedy. (LAUGHS)
So we became a double-act, you know?
So, providing we don't burn up on re-entry,
and aren't suffocated on the way down,
we'll probably be smashed to a pulp when we land.
Exactly!
Sarah, you've put your finger on the one tiny flaw in our plan.
"Our plan"? It's your plan!
Well, I'm open to suggestions, if you've got a better idea.
You get the sense that Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen
felt very comfortable in each other's company
and working together. They just felt right.
They were the perfect couple.
It's hard to put your finger on what's so perfect about her.
She's completely beautiful, of course. Incredibly charming and engaging.
Arguably, she simply played that part,
that very difficult part, better than anyone else ever has.
NARRATOR: One of the most unusual first meetings
between the Doctor and a companion
was when he briefly crash-landed
into the life of seven-year-old Amelia Pond,
only to return 12 years later and meet the now-adult Amy Pond.
It was a magic idea, from Steven,
to have a character
that you're gonna take through for two years,
and take on adventures for two years.
What I loved about Amy Pond is the severe development of character
from the beginning to the end.
First of all, we meet her as a child, and she is gazing up at this man
and completely idolising him in every way.
-What's your name? -Amelia Pond.
Oh, that's a brilliant name. Amelia Pond.
Like a name in a fairytale.
The first person to actually play the character of Amy Pond was not me.
It was my cousin, Caitlin,
who set up the whole character, essentially.
-Are we in Scotland, Amelia? -(SIGHS DEEPLY) No.
Had to move to England. It's rubbish.
So what about your mum and dad, then?
Are they upstairs? Thought we'd have woken them by now.
Don't have a mum and dad. Just a Nan.
To meet her as a little girl,
it added a dimension to the relationship.
A sort of paternal one, almost. A protective one, one where there was...
It almost increases the sense of responsibility
-that he has towards her. -Can I come?
Not safe in here, not yet. Five minutes. Give me five minutes.
I'll be right back.
And he didn't want to let her down, as a little girl,
and he kept making her wait.
DOCTOR: Geronimo!
(SPLASH)
So she's been waiting, which I think is such a brilliant thing.
It's such a kind of fairytale thing, but it makes Amy's character so feisty,
because she's been waiting, she's been so angry,
for so much of her life, because he's promised her the universe.
-You're Amelia. -You're late.
-Amelia Pond? You're the little girl? -I'm Amelia, and you're late.
-What happened? -Twelve years.
-You hit me with a cricket bat. -Twelve years.
-A cricket bat! -Twelve years and four psychiatrists.
-Four? -I kept biting them.
-Why? -They said you weren't real.
GILLAN: She started off as this kind of, like, overgrown child,
and then sort of became more settled as a person
as her life was restored by the Doctor.
He spent the rest of the time kind of almost making up to her for that,
and showing her the universe, you know?
As it went on, they became best friends, really.
Best time-travelling friends.
She probably idolises the Doctor more than any other companion,
but doesn't want to show it more than any other companion.
NARRATOR: The Doctor is an alien time-traveller,
sharing adventures in his Tardis with his companions.
But there are some corners of the universe
which have bred the most terrible things.
They seek to conquer, invade, and destroy,
and it's up to the Doctor to stop them.
Doctor Who is about good and evil. It's basic stuff.
So, in order for good to be seen to be that good,
you've got to have evil that's pretty darned evil.
So we have the monsters.
GARDNER: You've got to have monsters in Doctor Who. It's part of the fun.
It's part of the weirdness of the world.
It's the monsters and the aliens
give the show enormous breadth of storytelling.
A Doctor Who monster can be, really, anything
strange and alien that the Doctor encounters.
The programme works at its best
when the back of the sofa becomes attractive.
They've got to scare you. You've got to be afraid of them.
But I think, also, you've got to understand quite quickly
what it is they want, and how they operate.
The Daleks are the perfect example.
NARRATOR: The Daleks were the first aliens
to appear in Doctor Who.
With an aggressive attitude and a futuristic design
that was unlike anything TV audiences had seen before,
they were an instant hit.
TENNANT: You can mount quite a considerable argument
that without the Daleks, Doctor Who wouldn't still be here.
They came along very early,
and caught the whiff of public imagination
in a way that very few things ever do, and they became...
and this word is overused, but they became iconic.
MCCOY: As soon as the Daleks... Anyone saw Daleks in Britain,
they knew it was Doctor Who, and they'd be getting so excited.
Everybody knew what it meant. You know, it's part of our culture.
You know, it's there.
And those amazing pepperpots are such stars.
(SQUEALS)
(MECHANICAL HUM)
You will move ahead of us
and follow my directions. This way.
Immediately.
TENNANT: The Dalek design is recognised around the world,
even by people who don't necessarily know...
who have never seen an episode of Doctor Who,
probably still, often, know what a Dalek is.
I think one of the reasons that the Daleks terrified me,
or intrigued me, was because
you couldn't see their eyes, as it were. You didn't know what was in their soul.
You didn't know what was inside that funny little trundling thing.
BRIGGS: A Dalek, as you see it,
this sort of mechanical thing covered in armour
and a strange grating, and an eyestalk, and a gun, and a sucker-thing,
that's a travel machine
that was designed by an evil genius called Davros
to house what he felt was the ultimate mutation
of his race, the Kaleds.
So, inside a Dalek is this strange, helpless, mutated thing
that's connected up to all the machinery.
And the result of this creature trying to communicate with the outside world
is this appalling voice that comes out of it,
that terrifies everyone.
Exterminate all lifeforms below!
Exterminate!
It doesn't really have a conscience,
It's a bit like a politician, really.
It only thinks of its own aims and its own survival,
and that's somehow got really out of control, to the point
where they will just exterminate anything that gets in their way.
DALEK: It is the Doctor! Exterminate him!
They are as much part of the Doctor Who legend
as the Doctor and the Tardis, without doubt.
NARRATOR: If the Daleks are full of hate,
what makes the Cybermen so frightening is that they are empty.
After the Daleks, the Cybermen are probably the creatures
that were most alive in the public consciousness.
I'd always been a very big fan of Cybermen.
I think, probably, they were my favourite Doctor Who enemy,
-even over the Daleks. -They just seemed the most relentless.
I know Daleks are, obviously, the most famous,
and Daleks are the ones that most people are, you know, in awe of.
But when you're a kid, you kind of go "Yeah, they can't catch me!"
You know? But Cybermen could march, and they could go anywhere.
They were just a merciless army.
And for me, they were always the scariest ones.
Come on! Come on!
(SCREAMS)
No!
The Cybermen want what every species wants.
They want to make more of them. But whereas most species
have a very much more pleasant way of doing that,
what they like to do is go and get people
and turn them into Cybermen.
They want to proliferate and to spread. Simple as that.
ROBOTIC VOICE: All reject stock will be incinerated.
(KLAXON)
They are a species that has
literally rebuilt themselves, seeking perfection.
They've got rid of all their flawed limbs
limbs that get sick, and wither, and die,
and they've made themselves perfect.
MOFFAT: They regard themselves as an improvement.
They think they're better. They think, in there with their emotionless brains,
that we'd all prefer to be them.
Live longer, and never waste, and never get sick.
But by making themselves apparently perfect,
they've lost their souls. They've lost their humanity,
or whatever we might think of as their humanity.
Their capacity for feeling, capacity for kindness.
SHEPPARD: There's no humanity at all.
There's no... There's no conversation. There's no real...
There's nothing to trade with. There's nothing to plead with.
If they were capable of surprise, they'd be quite surprised
that we are so resistant to their advances.
NARRATOR: It should be no surprise that the Doctor still encounters
uniquely strange monsters.
One of the most terrifying of all doesn't even move.
At least, not while you're looking at it.
The Weeping Angels are a race of monster made of stone,
and I think they are probably the classic "Moffat monster",
ever since Blink.
Okay, boys, I know how this works.
You can't move so long as I can see you.
The Weeping Angels... These are just, you know,
terrifying beings that you never get to rationalise
or kind of communicate with on any level.
Oh, and there's your one.
-Why is it pointing at the... -(ELECTRICITY FIZZLES)
...light?
Weeping Angels are quantum-locked, so you can't...
You will never see them move.
They can only move when they're not being witnessed.
That alone is quite hideous, let alone how ugly they are.
I mean, in that kind of guise of an angel
that's, you know, the epitome of everything that is good and pure.
When they have got their faces covered, they do look like all those things.
And then that kind of juxtaposition of
you turning your back for a second, and seeing that.
I mean, those faces.
Oh, my God, it's turning out the light!
-Quickly! -I can't find the lock!
Sally, hurry up!
Get it open! They're getting closer.
-Sally, come on! -It won't turn!
They're based on a very simple idea, on "Grandma's Footsteps",
that when you look away, they can move.
And they can get nearer to you. And then, when they do get near to you,
they can displace you in time, or they can snap your neck.
So you don't want them to get near to you,
so you've got to look at them the whole time, and you can't blink.
Oh, Sally, hurry up!
TENNANT: And they send you back in time, and they feed off
the time-energy that that generates.
It's... Timey-wimey.
NARRATOR: The Doctor travels through time and space in his Tardis,
fighting evil foes with the help of his companions.
But there's one planet in the whole universe
that the Doctor keeps on coming back to,
because it really needs saving.
In the beginning of Doctor Who,
he would save distant planets,
but the Earth tended not to need that much saving.
And then, very rapidly, it was decided
that actually, the Earth is a great place to save.
He's a benevolent alien, who is always,
hopelessly, on the side of people on Earth.
TENNANT: The Doctor does spend a lot of time saving the Earth.
It may be that he spends as much time saving other planets,
but the stories we get to see have an Earth bias.
Battle stations! Geneva declaring ultimate Code Red.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war.
I think the Doctor spends a lot of time saving the Earth, directly,
because you have this planet that is so under threat all the time.
GAIMAN: As a 12-year-old, I had not been aware
of how much danger the Earth was in on a weekly basis
until I discovered that the Doctor was saving us
from the Sea Devils, saving us from the Silurians,
saving us from Autons... We got so saved, it was fantastic.
By the ancient rites of combat,
I forbid you to scavenge here for the rest of time.
And when you go back to the stars and tell others of this planet,
when you tell them of its riches, its people, its potential,
when you talk of the Earth, then make sure that you tell them this.
It is defended!
He obviously just fell in love with Earth, years ago,
and he hasn't fallen out of love. And thank goodness.
We need a Doctor to look after us.
Yes, he is somebody who is at home in the entire universe,
in the entirety of space and time,
but it is personal, perhaps because he's saved it so many times.
He actually wants to keep saving it.
He just likes it. A lot of his favourite companions come from here.
He has a responsibility to protect us
from ourselves, and from outsiders.
And he represents hope in the most, truest form.
I think that's what one of the great fascinations
of the Doctor has always been.
He does seem to inevitably come back to Earth.
I don't think there's ever been a season of Doctor Who
where he hasn't at least visited it once.
There are very, very few things that are consistent
from right back in the early days of Doctor Who,
all the way through.
One of the most fun ones of those is UNIT.
NARRATOR: UNIT is a military organisation
tasked with saving the Earth from alien threats.
Over the years, UNIT has crossed paths
with many of the Doctor's regenerations.
MOFFAT: UNIT was introduced during Patrick Troughton's time as the Doctor,
as a sort of Earth-based military force
to repel the many alien invasions
that they had finally discovered that they were on the receiving end of.
Doctor, get down! Right, bazooka!
(MECHANICAL SCREECH)
-You all right, Doctor? -What? Yes, yes.
It's there, in that building. The radio transmitter control.
-You've got to destroy it. -Leave it to us. Forward!
-Just a second. -But I...
GAIMAN: It was, for many years,
under the control of Major,
then Brigadier, Lethbridge-Stewart.
In my head, at least, it was always the sort of
"Secret Alien Menace Defence Department"
and it was the one where the odd stuff went.
And when things got menacing and alien,
then UNIT get involved. And one of the delights has been
watching UNIT come back.
(INDISTINCT ORDERS OVER RADIO)
-Target unconfirmed, may be hostile. -Approaching source now.
Area will be secure in 60 seconds. Ultimate force available.
WILSON: I think, as the series has evolved, from '63 to now,
and got more action and adventure into the show,
I think the introduction of UNIT
was definitely a big turning point for that. The show became more dramatic,
more action-packed at that point.
And that's something we're very careful to do
with every episode of the show.
Sorry about the raucous entrance.
Spike in artron energy reading at this address.
In the light of the last 24 hours, we had to check it out.
And the dogs do love a run out.
Hello. Kate Stewart, Head of Scientific Research at UNIT.
Now Matt Smith has had his own encounter with UNIT,
and with Lethbridge-Stewart's daughter.
And you feel that UNIT is going to continue.
In some form or another, there will always be a UNIT,
just as there will always be a Doctor.
-(SCANNER BLEEPS) -You must be the Doctor.
I hoped it'd be you.
I think UNIT has a very cherished place
in the history of Doctor Who.
They're, you know, definitely one of the Doctor's allies.
NARRATOR: When Doctor Who began in 1963,
it was just another television programme.
Nobody knew it would grow up to be a global phenomenon
with an enduring appeal for audiences of all ages.
It is such a success now, such an enormous success.
And quite rightly, too. I mean, it is a brilliant show, I think.
What else has been made where people are still being asked
"What was it like when you did this?" and being expected to remember?
(LAUGHS)
And although it's very, very different to the show that went out in 1963,
you would still recognise it if you were
an alien who came to Earth, aptly, and saw an episode from 1963
and an episode from 2013. You'd...
There are enough elements that are the same
that you would know it's the same show. It hasn't changed that much,
considering how much television itself has changed over 50 years.
If I could imagine myself, I'm now a TV producer
going into an office and trying to sell Doctor Who...
"You know, it's about this guy who travels
"round the universe in a telephone box,
"and he has these ever-changing companions with him,
"and then, when he dies,
"he comes back as another actor." Well, that's not going to work, is it,
because where's the loyalty for the audience?
You get used to one character. You don't want somebody else
to be playing it. I mean, anybody would blow you apart.
But it does work.
DARVILL: It wouldn't have been going for so long
if it wasn't a good concept. But it's such a brilliant concept,
because it can be anything. It can be anywhere and anything.
I think, you know, that's why
people are desperate to find out what happens next.
Because it could be anything.
Douglas Adams, who was script editor on Doctor Who,
once said to me that the secret of Doctor Who
is to make it simple enough for the adults to understand,
and complicated enough to hold the children's attention.
Because it's not true, you know?
Adults sit there going, "I can't understand this.
"How can my children understand it?" But, of course, they do.
NARRATOR: The Doctor's adventures can be life-changing
for those involved,
and working on the show can also have a big impact
on the lives of the actors.
I would say to anybody joining Doctor Who,
as a Doctor or a companion, particularly the new companion,
it's with you for life, now.
Once you are part of it, you feel like you are always part of it.
There is such an interest in the show that goes far beyond just the drama.
You can always... You always have some level of involvement,
whether it's doing something like this, whether it's the conventions,
whether it's other appearances, you know, you just...
For the fans, it isn't just about a show.
It's sort of about a community, really, that it's kind of provided, as well.
It changed my whole life, and here I am now, nearly 80 years old...
We're talking about it still, you know?
So now, for nearly half a century, it's been Doctor Who,
and people call me "Doctor" locally, and, er...
and it was the greatest thing that ever, ever happened to me.
You know, it was the most wonderful part I ever had.
It's rare that you make something that you know
is going to be well-received. Very often, you're making something,
and you don't know whether it's going to be liked or not.
But we knew that Doctor Who was a central part of British television.
SMITH: God, this show has changed my life.
You know, your life outside of the show changes really drastically, as well.
It's sort of a really transformative experience
in a million ways, which you could write a book about.
DARVILL: I mean, I came into it and just tried to treat it
like another job, and, of course, it's not.
It's one of the most amazing things in the world.
You get swept up in the whole family of it.
You know, working with amazing people for a very long time.
But I didn't know how long I'd be doing the show for.
I didn't know what their plan was for me.
Apparently Steven did know, just, you know, neglected to tell me.
I had the best years of my life, genuinely.
Those were the best years of my life.
And, yeah, we got to run away from monsters,
and just go on spaceships, and go around different worlds.
I mean, that is just so much fun. So it changed my life, in that respect.
That was pretty cool.
I grew up loving the show. I grew up...
inspired by it. I mean, I loved the adventure of it.
I loved the monsters, and I loved the stories, and I loved all that.
But I also loved this character, because he can go anywhere,
and he can be anything, and it's really exciting,
and he's really cool.
So, yeah, it should go on forever.
NARRATOR: The story of the Doctor has been told for 50 years,
and we're still nowhere near the end.
As we approach the 50th anniversary,
you know, we're celebrating the history of the show.
It's amazing to be part of a series that's run for 50 years. It's...
I'm very proud. I'm very privileged to be part of it.
We've had 50 years of adventures with the Doctor,
but that's just the beginning.
Having two Doctors on set was amazing. It was just brilliant to see
the way that Matt and David responded to each other.
Fifty years celebrating Doctor Who.