History UsefulNotes / Whovians

* '''Creator/MarkGatiss'''

* '''Gareth Roberts'''

* '''Creator/RobertShearman'''

* Ian Levine, who got the BBC to grant ''Doctor Who'' immunity from their wiping policy in 1974 before serving as an unofficial "continuity advisor" for the show during the 1980s. Levine would also contribute to the BBC's efforts to recover missing episodes of the show. Levine parted ways with the fandom in 2017.

The fans are interested in the MissingEpisode area. To make [[MissingEpisode/DoctorWho a long story]] relatively short, the BBC had an official policy of wiping master tapes for reuse, as the home media market didn't exist yet, reruns were next-to-nonexistent, and buying new tapes (and storage space for them) was financially infeasible. ''Doctor Who'' was granted immunity in 1974 at the request of Ian Levine, and in 1978, the BBC dropped their wiping policy completely to capitalize on the budding home media market. Since the BBC sold film copies of their episodes to international broadcasters back in the day, the corporation has spent decades scouring the globe in search of surviving prints. Currently, 97 episodes from 26 serials are only available as off-air audio recordings, and a few "fully-recovered" serials are still missing slivers of footage, with home media releases editing around these gaps.

!!!The following [[PromotedFanBoy Promoted Fanboys]] contributed to officially licensed works, fanzines, amateur and semi-pro productions, before going on to the big time:

* '''Creator/RussellTDavies''', who revived the show in the 21st century, previously wrote one novel, ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoNewAdventuresDamagedGoods Damaged Goods]]'', for the Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures. (As well as shoving blatant ''Doctor Who'' references into many of his earlier non-franchise works.)
* '''Creator/NicholasBriggs''', who has, in the past, done ''everything'' you can imagine in spin-off media, among other things running the [[AudioPlay/DoctorWhoAudioVisuals Audio Visuals]] and playing the Doctor in those selfsame productions. He now voices the Daleks and currently runs Creator/BigFinish.
* The nearly as prolific '''Gary Russell''', also connected with Audio Visuals. He used to run Creator/BigFinish and script-edited ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures'', ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' and ''Doctor Who'' itself.
* '''Creator/PaulCornell''' based his first novel, ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoNewAdventuresTimewrymRevelation Timewyrm: Revelation]]'' in the Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures series, on early FanFic.
* '''Creator/RobertShearman'''
* '''Matt Jones'''

* '''Marc Platt''', a Classic and Creator/BigFinish writer who contributed FanFic and/or nonfiction work to {{Fanzine}}s before working on the actual series.
* '''Creator/StevenMoffat''' contributed a short story to one of the officially licensed ''Decalog'' short story collections (a spinoff of the Doctor Who New Adventures) in the 1990s, and also wrote a short story for Big Finish's spin-off book series featuring adventurer Bernice Summerfield, before beginning to write for the TV show proper, eventually becoming Davies' successor as showrunner.
* '''Creator/PeterCapaldi''', who once tried to take over the Doctor Who Fan Club, wrote articles for fanzines (including a detailed examination of the show's title sequence), drew fan art for fanzines as well, and played the Twelfth Doctor from 2013 to 2017.

* Creator/DavidTennant, who played the Tenth Doctor.
* Rona Munro

The fans are interested in the MissingEpisode area, with many such episodes being recovered from off-air audio recordings.

Fans had to go through the 16-year hiatus until 2005, resulting in a large amount of creative work during this time and licenced SpinOff media. Probably the key SpinOff material that held the ExpandedUniverse - and the fans - together for so long, however, were the official spin-off novels produced by Virgin Publishing. The Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures series continued the adventures of the Seventh Doctor, the Doctor at the time of cancellation, and the Literature/DoctorWhoMissingAdventures covered the previous six. Following the 1996 TV Movie, the BBC's own in-house publishing division took over (with two lines split between [[Literature/EighthDoctorAdventures the adventures of the Eighth Doctor]] and [[Literature/PastDoctorAdventures the adventures of his predecessors]]). Themselves a progression from [[Literature/DoctorWhoNovelisations novelisations of the TV series]], the novel ranges clearly took the Doctor into more adult waters as the writers, who were nearly all fans, thus making the lines in many ways examples of Officially Published FanFiction, began to explore him and his universe more closely. Many of the writers of the new series, including Creator/PaulCornell, Creator/MarkGatiss and Creator/RussellTDavies, who eventually brought it back, wrote novels for the range.

* Certain elements display a tendency to get a bit paranoid about the possibility of anything, whether elements of the series itself or the fan / public reaction to it, that might possibly lead to the intimation that there might be any suggestion of cancellation. This is likely because of the numerous elements and gradual sense of decay which led to the program's eventual hiatus in 1989 and the agonising 16 year wait until a full series was produced. This tends to lead to great overreactions whenever any missteps (or anything the over-reactor merely ''perceives'' as a misstep) occurs, however minor in nature. In an interview with LetsPlay/NerdCubed, Creator/StevenMoffat said that the reason the British media do so many scaremongering stories about the show's fate, at least at the time of his run as showrunner, is because they know the ''Doctor Who'' branding will sell more papers.

** Fandom has calmed down a bit on this (well, a little) since Peter Capaldi became the Doctor, since he (being old school) insists of referring to the character as "Doctor Who".
* Likely to have parents or children (sometimes both) who are fans as well; LongRunner status and all.
* Until about 2010 tended to be Britons, Australians or New Zealanders - the show was far more mainstream there. American and Canadian fans were plentiful during the so-called Classic Era, but only from the late 1970s onwards once the show received wide exposure on PBS, but due to PBS in general being considered a niche channel, it was still not considered mainstream. [[note]]Ontario may be a bit of an exception for Doctor Who fandom in Canada, as Classic Who was broadcast for many years on TV Ontario and the show is probably better known there.[[/note]] The revival of the series saw it become mainstream in Canada (where it initially aired on one of the major networks as a co-production), and it finally became mainstream in the late 2000s in the US once BBC America began airing it, and it also gained a larger worldwide audience; as such the stars of the show were mobbed by thousands in places like New York during publicity for the 2014 season, which included the cast going on a round-the-world tour that illustrated the international popularity of the show. The 50th anniversary special held a world record for two years as the most widely simulcast broadcast in history as it aired worldwide.

* Has quite a large LGBTQ+ following, perhaps due in large part to the tendency of the classic series to avoid coding the Doctor as overtly heterosexual and instead treat him as a largely asexual intellectual hero who tended to form mainly non-romantic friendships with his female companions rather than attempt to seduce them (this also tended to result in a lot of HoYay, real or imagined, with male characters -- see the Master for one example). The classic series also contains a lot of {{Camp}} elements which no doubt help here. The modern show's tendency to instead have the Doctor form overtly romantic heterosexual attachments with his female companions thus led to a lot of blowback from this segment of the fan base, as well as some asexual people who had viewed the character as a hero of their own kind.

* '''Classic Who''': The 1963-89 series. Generally also includes [[Recap/DoctorWhoTVMTheTVMovie the 1996 made-for-TV movie]], despite it being made by an American production company independent of the BBC. For merchandising, the term encompasses anything done prior to the revived series (i.e., 1963-2004) or anything from afterward that primarily involves Doctors prior to the Hurt and Eccleston incarnations, with ''[[Recap/DoctorWho50thPrequelTheNightOfTheDoctor The Night of the Doctor]]'' being the in-universe end of the "Classic" lineage. Some fans are touchy about this term as it can be interpreted as casting a negative light on the revival, plus it is sometimes used by those who don't consider anything from 2005 onwards to be canon.

* '''New Who''': The post-2005 revival. Alternately, nuWho (mostly by its detractors).

* '''Pseudo-historical''': A story set in the past that ''does'' feature science fictional elements - often, an alien in disguise is responsible for mayhem and the Doctor must stop them.
* '''Pure historical''': A story set in the past that features ''no'' science-fictional elements other than the Doctor's presence. These almost never appear after William Hartnell's era, and the last one to date was ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E5BlackOrchid Black Orchid]]'' (1982). They were unpopular with the production teams and garnered low ratings, but fans continue to clamour for their return.
* The Pure Historical episodes were (indirectly) the reason for the TARDIS' chameleon circuits getting stuck; originally, the ship would disguise itself as an appropriate object for each time period, but the budget didn't allow for constantly re-dressing the TARDIS prop every week or so
* '''Shipping''': Since 2005 the series has been more open in suggesting romance between the Doctor and some of his companions. As such there are numerous shipping names that have been applied to some of the more longstanding ships. (Of course, every ship is controversial and debated, even if the show itself makes it explicitly canon). A few examples include [=TenRose=] (Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler); Youzah (Eleventh Doctor/River Song); Whouffez or Whouffle (Eleventh Doctor/Clara Oswald); Whouffaldi (Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswald). Of course, although there was less overt romanticism on-screen, there were well established ships in the old show, especially Doctor/Master (which 21st-century ''Who'' has made practically canon), Ian/Barbara (which is likewise assumed to be canon in much of the Expanded Universe), Two/Jamie, Three/Brigadier, Three/Jo, Four/Romana, Tegan/Nyssa, and others.

* '''Gothic''': Fandom uses the shorthand "Film/HammerHorror" or just "gothic" to describe a moody story dipping into GothicHorror tropes in the way that they did during the reign of Producer Philip Hinchcliffe and his Story Editor Creator/RobertHolmes during the tenure of Tom Baker, which ran from Seasons 12-14. Specifically, they mean Seasons 13 and 14, over which they had full creative control.

* '''One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, (War), Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen''': Where formerly fans would refer to, say, [[Creator/PeterDavison Peter Davison's]] Doctor as the Fifth Doctor, or, umm, "Peter Davison's Doctor", younger fans would tend to refer to him as 5, Five, or even Fivey. The same goes for the others. [[Creator/JohnHurt John Hurt's]] Doctor tends to switch between "8 1/2" and "War" to avoid any numbering confusion.