This is from 1988, the anniversaries are more than twice this now.
As a Long Runner, Doctor Who and its Expanded Universe have a plethora of anniversary stories. Uniquely, since the show was largely off the air during the anniversary periods of 1993 to 2003, it was up to the expanded universe to pick up the slack during those years.
- 10th anniversary (1973): "The Three Doctors", a Reunion Show that concludes the Doctor's exile on Earth since 1970. Interestingly, it didn't mark the actual date of the anniversary, being aired almost a year beforehand; instead, it marked the beginning of the show's tenth season.
- Averted with "The Stones of Blood", which was the 100th story and aired on the show's 15th anniversary (1978). It was going to start with a scene where the Doctor and Romana celebrated his birthday with a cake, but producer Graham Williams wisely vetoed it as too self-congratulatory. (The cake had already been ordered, and was eaten by the cast and crew during production.)
- 20th anniversary (1983): "The Five Doctors", another Reunion Show. Unlike the other two canon TV anniversary reunion episodes, this one didn't mark a major status quo change for the Doctor (unless you count him getting a spiffy new TARDIS console).
- 1985:
- The 100th Target novelisation was released, Robert Holmes' adaptation of his TV story "The Two Doctors", with an introduction by John Nathan-Turner, the TV series' producer at the time.
- Doctor Who Magazine 100 came with a poster.
- 25th anniversary (1988): "Remembrance of the Daleks", which had the Doctor revisiting the site of the first episode the next day (albeit hundreds of years later in his own timeline), and "Silver Nemesis", which was about a 25th anniversary, aired over the anniversary date, and had a cameo of Nicholas Courtney and some program staff.
- 30th anniversary (1993):
- TV: The non-canon "Dimensions in Time", which was a Children in Need Reunion Show skit that crossed over with EastEnders, and the documentary "More than 30 Years in the TARDIS".
- The Doctor Who New Adventures marked the anniversary with a story arc running from October 1993 to February 1994 and featuring a number of old villains and monsters from the TV series appearing in the novels for the first time.
- Doctor Who Magazine comics: "Time & Time Again", where the Seventh Doctor has to save his own timeline from the Black Guardian's rewriting by meeting his past selves.
- Doctor Who Magazine itself marked issues 200 and 207 (the anniversary issue, which featured "Time & Time Again") with covers that folded out into posters.
- The fiftieth Doctor Who New Adventures novel is Happy Endings (1996) by Paul Cornell, in which a new cover design is introduced, Benny gets married, a whole host of characters from previous novels are invited, a lot of dangling plot threads get resolved, and every NA writer except onenote contributes a paragraph to the reception.
- Doctor Who Magazine marked its 250th issue (1997) with the comic "A Life of Matter and Death", bringing back many of its characters in a battle inside the TARDIS' mind.
- 35th anniversary (1998):
- Novels: The Past Doctor Adventures (sort of) novel The Infinity Doctors, which features an unspecified Doctor and is filled with continuity nods.
- Doctor Who Magazine comics: "Happy Deathday", which pits the then-Eight Doctors against a Legion of Doom of their greatest enemies. The story turns out to be actually a video game the Doctor's companion Izzy has been playing on her spare time.
- Doctor Who Magazine celebrated its 20th anniversary (issue 283, 1999) with "TV Action!", a Real-World Episode comic strip where the Eighth Doctor and Izzy chase Beep the Meep to October 12, 1979note in a parallel universe where Doctor Who is just a TV show; there, they team up with none other than Tom Bakernote .
- The 100th original BBC Doctor Who novel (counting the Eighth Doctor Adventures and Past Doctor Adventures together) is Mad Dogs and Englishmen (2002) by Paul Magrs, which announces the fact on its cover, along with having its logo in reflective gold foil.
- 40th anniversary (2003):
- TV: The revival of the series was announced in that period.
- Big Finish Doctor Who: The main event was "Zagreus" (also the 50th Big Finish audio), a Wham Episode that concludes the Anti-Time Story Arc which began back at the Eighth Doctor's audio beginning, sets the stage for the Divergent Universe story arc and casts a number of previous Doctor and companion actors in completely new roles. There was also the thematic Villains Trilogy of "Omega", "Davros" and "Master", which explores just how the Doctor isn't so different from his recurring enemies, and a web-animation of the unfinished Fourth Doctor story "Shada", substituting the Fourth Doctor for the Eighthnote . The "Doctor Who Unbound" series of What If? stories also began that year.
- Doctor Who Magazine comics: "The Land of Happy Endings", which revisits the settings and characters of the TV Comic strips via All Just a Dream.
- Novels: The Past Doctor Adventures novel Deadly Reunion, penned by Third Doctor era architects Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks. The first half of it tells the early years of the Brigadier before meeting the Doctor.
- Other: The animated webcast Scream of the Shalka, which was intended to be the official revival of the series. The above announcement reduced it to an non-canon Alternate Universe tale.
- 45th anniversary (2008): The show itself (which was revived by then) did nothing explicitly celebratory, but that didn't stop the Expanded Universe any.
- Big Finish Doctor Who: "Forty-Five", a Seventh Doctor audio anthology where the number 45 is littered everywhere. There is an in-universe rationale in the last story for that.
- IDW comics: "Doctor Who: The Forgotten", which featured an amnesiac Tenth Doctor flashing back to all of his previous incarnations in order to regain his memories.
- Doctor Who Magazine 400, also in 2008, had a poster and several celebratory articles.
- Subtly done for the 200th story, "Planet of the Dead" (2009), which features a number 200 bus, which the Doctor refers to as "The mighty 200!"
- For Bernice Summerfield's 20th birthday (2012), she had the charity special audio play Many Happy Returns, which brings back a number of characters and writers, and an audio adaptation of her debut Doctor Who New Adventures novel Love and War.
- 50th anniversary (2013):
- TV: "The Day of the Doctor" and its associated prequels "The Night of the Doctor" and "The Last Day", a Wham Episode Reunion Show that aired 50 years to the day of the show's premiere and laid down a new plot strand for the Doctor to follow for the rest of the show's Steven Moffat era; "An Adventure in Space and Time", a docudrama about the creation of the show, and "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot", a parody Reunion Show short feature. Also, nearly every episode of the season that preceded "The Day of the Doctor" featured a plot or characters related to the long history of the series, as did Matt Smith's Grand Finale episode that immediately followed a few weeks later, the 2013 Christmas special, "The Time of the Doctor", which resolved a 37-year-old plot thread, an 8-year-old plot thread, a 3-year-old plot thread, and introduced a new Doctor, to boot.
- Big Finish Doctor Who: The Big Finish continuity was made a Canon Immigrant thanks to a line of dialogue in "The Night of the Doctor". For the celebratory audio plays, there was "The Light at the End", a classic series-style Reunion Show; "The Beginning", which tells the tale of the TARDIS's first flight; "Destiny of the Doctor", a series of Cross Through audiobooks involving the then-Eleven Doctors (and also the first time Big Finish has been able to outright use new series elements), and the thematic 1963 trilogy of "1963: Fanfare for the Common Men" (which is pretty much a Brick Joke to a background element in the first episode), "1963: The Space Race" and "1963: The Assassination Games".
- Novels: A series of 11 ebook short stories for each of the then-Eleven Doctors published by Puffin Books. BBC Books also saw fit to reissue a number of Past Doctor Adventures novels.
- Doctor Who Magazine comics: "Hunters of the Burning Stone", which saw the Eleventh Doctor reunited with the very first companions, Ian and Barbara, in a battle against an unexpected old foe, and "John Smith and the Common Men", published on the anniversary month of November 2013.
- Doctor Who Magazine 467, which featured "John Smith and the Common Men", also came with a special mini-magazine showing what DWM might have looked like in 1964, marking the show's first anniversary, and collectible art cards of the First through Twelfth Doctors (leaving out War).
- IDW comics: Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time, where an unexpected newer foe is disrupting the Doctor's timeline by removing his companions from his timestream. On a somber note, IDW's Doctor Who contract ran out that year.
- Other: A Doctor Who game adorned Google's home page on November 22, 2013.
- 10th anniversary of TV revival (2015):
- Titan Comics published Doctor Who: Four Doctors, a five-part miniseries crossing over their Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctor titles and throwing in the War Doctor, an evil alternate universe Twelve as the Big Bad, and a cameo by Nine for good measure.
- While the show itself didn't acknowledge this anniversary, Series 9 was heavy on return appearances by fan-favorite characters: a prologue short saw the return of Ohila from "The Night of the Doctor", and two stories followed on from "The Day of the Doctor"'s events — "The Zygon Invasion"/"The Zygon Inversion" is a direct sequel to its B-plot, and the three-part finale "Face the Raven"/"Heaven Sent"/"Hell Bent" had the Doctor returning to Gallifrey for the first time since the Time War/the revival's debut as one of several Wham Episode events.
- Doctor Who Magazine marked its 500th issue in 2016 with the comic "The Stockbridge Showdown", pitting the Twelfth Doctor and most of the living DWM-original companions against one of the strip's major villains in a finale to a long-Aborted Arc, a bonus magazine covering DWM's history, a double-sided poster, the first of nine collectible art cards, and a sheet of stickers (calling back to DWM's first issue, back when it was Doctor Who Weekly, which came with transfers).
- The first two Third Doctor season Blu-ray box sets were released on milestone dates: Season 10 on July 8, 2019, the centenary of Jon Pertwee's birth, and the Master's First Appearance Season 8 in March 2021, 50 years since its original run in January-June 1971.
- The Thirteenth Doctor's final story, "The Power of the Doctor", was part of The BBC's centenary celebrations in 2022, featuring her regeneration and surprise guest appearances from several past characters.
- 60th anniversary (2023):
- TV:
- Three specials on BBC 1 in November-December 2023, starring David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor. Yes, you read that right, Fourteenth: "The Star Beast", "Wild Blue Yonder", and "The Giggle". Together, these resolved a 14-year-old plot thread; brought back a villain last seen 57 years ago; introduced a new Doctor; introduced (or reintroduced) several recurring characters and plot threads for Russell T Davies' second era; established a Genre Shift for the Fifteenth Doctor's era, bringing in more fantasy; and drew a line under the trauma-ridden characterisation of the Doctor that had held sway since the revival began, letting them be more assured and emotionally open.
- A colorised, 75-minute cut of "The Daleks" on BBC 4, airing on the date of the anniversary, November 23rd, 2023.
- A special showing of An Adventure in Space and Time, with Ncuti Gatwa replacing Matt Smith in a cameo near the end of the film. Aired immediately following the above airing of "The Daleks", also on BBC 4.
- Big Finish Doctor Who: Once and Future, an eight-part series (seven parts in 2023 and a coda in November 2024) which sees the Doctor start randomly flitting between past incarnations after getting injured during the Time War and setting out to discover what's going on, and The Box of Terrors, an audionovel featuring the Third and Fourth Doctors teaming up against Omega, with the help of two Sarah Jane Smiths.
- BBC Books: The Decades Collection, a set of six standalone children's novels, each set in a different decade from the show's history: Imaginary Friends (60s), The Cradle (70s), The Self-Made Man (80s), Wannabes (90s), The Monster in the Cupboard (00s), and The Angel of Redemption (10s).
- Cubicle 7: Sixty Years of Adventure, a two-volume release exploring the Doctors' many adventures, with a new RPG adventure for each Doctor.
- Doctor Who Magazine 597, on shelves during the first two TV specials, came with two double-sided posters. Issue 598, on shelves during the final special and the Fifteenth Doctor's first episode, came with a double-sided poster and a supplement reprinting the original "Doctor Who and the Star Beast" comic.
- Multiplatform: Doom's Day, a transmedia series following Doom, the Universe's greatest assassin, as she travels through space and time chasing the Doctor, who she needs to rescue her from Death, with only 24 hours and a vortex manipulator to do so, featuring the appearance of several fan-favourite characters and the occasional Punny Title riffing on the series's existing Doomsday titles ("Four to Doomsday" and "Doomsday").
- Other: Tales of the TARDIS, a series of feature length episodes released on iPlayer showcasing various reunions of classic characters, including Jamie and Zoe, Vicki and Steven, and the Seventh Doctor and Ace, as they recalled old adventures.
- TV:
- 2024:
- To mark the 50th anniversary of the Sontarans' introduction in 1974's "The Time Warrior", Big Finish announced a four-part series, Sontarans vs Rutans, a Cross Through featuring the Third, Sixth, Eighth, and War Doctors as they encounter different fronts of the two species' Forever War, comprising The Battle of Giant's Causeway, The Children of the Future, Born to Die, and In Name Only.
- Doctor Who Magazine 600 came with a diorama, an art card, and a supplement with a pictoral history of the magazine, a photo-comic, and the fifteen main Doctors talking about the show in their own words (in William Hartnell's case, posthumously, as he'd died before the magazine began).
