Significant characters and concepts
"The Doctor"?
- "Hello, I'm the Doctor."
The Doctor (not "Doctor Who"note ), a Human Alien who travels through time and space. Started off as an Anti-Hero (or even Anti-Villain) but soon settled into the hero role. Usually (though not always) functions as the series' moral centre.
Regeneration
- "So, you're my replacements, hm? A dandy and a clown!"— The First Doctor, "The Three Doctors"
One of the key abilities of the Doctor, which has helped the show's longevity to a huge degree, is their ability to "regenerate." When faced with imminent death, they transform into a basically different person, with an entirely new appearance and altered personality — but the same memories as the previous incarnation. These moments, of which fourteen have actually been seen on screen so far (the Second Doctor regenerated off-screen), are usually as big and dramatic as they sound. This makes them the Trope Namer for The Nth Doctor.
The tone surrounding regenerations has changed over the years. Early regenerations were treated as a mere change in appearance. For example, when the Second Doctor was forcibly regenerated into the Third, his main concern was his new appearance. Newer episodes treat regeneration more like an actual death. The Tenth Doctor says that when he regenerates, it feels like he dies and a new man takes his place.
The Doctor has been played by sixteen different actors in the TV series to date. 1 Most can be seen in the picture at the top of the character page for The Doctor.
In anniversaries, the different regenerations will often meet, and sometimes outside of anniversaries. The record for most times returning is the First Doctor (The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors, Twice Upon A Time, The Power of the Doctor) in the TV series (with the Second and Fifth Doctors seeing the most Role Reprisals from the original actor, as the First was recast twice due to the previous actors' deaths), and the Fifth Doctor overall (The Five Doctors, Dimensions in Time, Time & Time Again, Cold Fusion, The Eight Doctors, Happy Deathday, The Sirens of Time, Time Crash, The Four Doctors, The Light at the End, The End of the Beginning, Out of Time 2, The Power of the Doctor).
The impact this concept has on the show's longevity is profound. For starters, when an actor playing the Doctor wants to move on or isn't working out, a new actor can be slotted in to take up the role. But with the idea that regeneration somewhat reformats the Doctor, each actor can put their own spin on the basic character, add their own creative choices and generally leave their mark on the role. The new actor isn't "stuck" trying to sell that they're the exact same character, but can create a new interpretation on the fundamentals that make up the Doctor as a character. Just as two different actors might have very different interpretations on how to play Macbeth or Romeo. This not only gives actors an incentive to take up the role, but engages fans (it is a common Whovian discussion which Doctor a particular Whovian prefers over all others). Writers get to reinvent the show every so often as Doctor and Companion change, playing to the strengths of a particular cast. Especially as of the revival series, an actor doesn't need to feel "trapped" in the role of the Doctor; they can move on to other projects confident that a new talented actor will take their place and the show will continue on. Finally, rotating Doctors and Companions at different rates keeps the show fresh as the dynamics change. Rose's relationship with Ten was rather different than her relationship with Nine, Eleven had a different dynamic with Amy and Rory than he did with Clara, and Clara and Twelve were very different from Clara and Eleven. And yet, the fundamentals are still there: The Doctor's character has a solid foundation that doesn't deviate much, there's usually at least one human Companion, and the TARDIS to travel in time and space and find whatever spot of bother crops up that week. Doctor Who manages to have its cake and eat it too; keeping the show comfortably familiar yet consistently changing to keep from getting stale.
The sonic screwdriver
First used by the Second Doctor in "Fury from the Deep", this has now become an iconic item carried by the Doctor and has had at least seven different versions to date, not counting future ones. Basically a fancy tube with a light in prop form (most of the time; Fifteen's is the exception), it has a wide variety of functions including opening most locked doors, accessing computer information and actually being a screwdriver. What it doesn't do is triplicate the flammability of port. Neither does it do wood. Yes this is ironic.
The importance of this device is that it's the Doctor's primary tool and that it is not a weapon, but something designed to mend or alter (the Doctor used it to set off land mines once before, but to scare someone off rather than hurt them). This plays directly into their overall persona as a Technical Pacifist. The revival and its spinoffs have introduced a variety of other sonic devices used by the Doctor and/or others as well, such as Sarah Jane Smith's sonic lipstick and Captain Jack Harkness's sonic blaster. Series 9 featured sonic sunglasses for the Twelfth Doctor, which reflected his Character Development into less of a Grumpy Old Man.
The TARDIS
- Have you ever thought what it's like, to be wanderers in the fourth dimension?—The First Doctor, An Unearthly Child
Stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space (but not In Space!) 2 A combination Cool Ship, Living Ship, Sapient Ship, Alleged Ship, Time Machine and Bigger on the Inside (the trope-namer for that last one), who as well as having Time Travel abilities and the power to traverse the universe, can do pretty much anything. In a subversion, while the TARDIS is a product of Time Lord über-tech, it was gradually revealed as old, obsolete, and barely functional. It's gotten worse since then — like the alien equivalent of a jalopy held together with duct tape — though it's still light years ahead of all other such technology currently known to exist. The TARDIS dematerialisation noise is the distorted sound of a door key being scraped along the bass strings of a piano. This sound effect, dating back to the very first serial in the sixties, is still used as of today, and still gives millions an inevitable chill through their spines whenever they hear it.
It's Bigger on the Inside (to this day, nobody knows exactly how big other than "ridiculously huge") and has the exterior appearance (because the chameleon circuit broke in the first episode) of a police box
3 . That appearance has become so iconic of the show that when the BBC trademarked the TARDIS in 1996, the Metropolitan Police took them to court over it and lost!
And, oh yes, the TARDIS is actually a living being who loves the Doctor, considers most of their companions strays, takes the Doctor where they are needed (whether they want to go there or not) and answers to the name Sexy. How do we know this? In the episode "The Doctor's Wife", the Doctor is able to carry on a conversation with her for once.
Companions
The Doctor is rarely alone in their travels. For the purposes of Exposition and for someone the audience can identify with, they have had a large number of companions (mostly non-romantic, though fanfic disagrees). In the show's very early days, the First Doctor just travelled with his granddaughter and two of her high school teachers—who, in the very first episode, he actually kidnapped in a He Knows Too Much scenario. The idea was that the companions would be the "point-of-view" characters for the audience at home, in contrast to the mysterious, anti-heroic Doctor. Even as the Doctor became more identifiable and less of a curmudgeon, the companion remains the human element to tie them down, especially post-revival. They also give the Doctor someone to talk to. In The Deadly Assassin, the lone serial without a companion (other than Mission to the Unknown, which didn't feature the Doctor) the writers found it difficult to explain what he was thinking. In-universe, the Doctor claims to be "lonely", while others have surmised the same and that they "need someone to stop [them]" from making drastic and, sometimes, awful decisions to rectify situations.
Companions are predominantly human, young, female, and attractive. In the early episodes there would also be a companion who was young, male, and heroic. Sometimes they are humanoid aliens, or, famously, a robot dog. They have joined and left the TARDIS for various reasons. The Doctor reserves the right to kick a companion out of the TARDIS for bad behaviour (The Long Game is the only episode in which they've done it so far), or to take on a new companion even over the objections of present companions. Classic Series companions tended to have few or no ties to their homes (and often lose such ties, like in The Evil of the Daleks), and—anniversary specials aside—did not cross paths with the Doctor after leaving the TARDIS 4 . Revival series companions don't divide their lives as neatly: They continue to interact with their families while away with the Doctor, and with the Doctor before.
It's most common for the Doctor to have one companion along at a time, though periods with two (standard formula for the First and Second Doctors, and also done by the Fourth, Fifth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth) or even three companions (First, Second, Fifth and Thirteenth Doctors) are not unknown, and there are very rare occasions when the Doctor goes solo (Fourth and Tenthnote ). Older Doctors usually referred to their companions as "friends" or "assistants"; recent Doctors, in a bit of Ascended Fanon, tend to use "companion".
Female companions are stereotyped in pop culture memory as helpless screaming women, and the males were stereotyped as Action Heroes (and the show accused of sexism), but a number of the females have been surprisingly kickass (Sarah Jane, Leela, Ace, Clara), and some males have been quite accident-prone (Adric, Rory). They're not always female, either.
Further on the topic of romance: Due to Doctor Who's origins as a family series, the idea of romance between the Doctor and their companions often receives push-back from fans, even though hints have existed as early as 1973 when Jo Grant left the Third Doctor. It has become more overt in the modern era as companions such as Rose Tyler and Martha Jones unambiguously fall in love with the Doctor, with the Doctor fighting against returning the favour. Rose was the first companion to say the words "I love you" to the Doctor directly. River Song was the first companion established to not only marry the Doctor, and the first associate of theirs to indicate sexual relations with the Time Lord (though most of their relationship is not depicted onscreen). Most recently, the Doctor and Clara Oswald's relationship, which ended with Series 9 in 2015, pushed things to a new level — their relationship was beyond platonic yet was not (as far as was seen on screen) sexual in any way, challenging current attitudes towards depiction of romance on television. The 2020 episode "Fugitive of the Judoon" introduced a previously unknown Doctor who had actually married her companion, a man who died protecting her secret. As a subsequent episode revealed that she preceded all known incarnations who had been mind wiped to forget her, it's plausible that these experiences informed the Doctor's later reluctance to romance companions.
See also: List of characters.
UNIT, Torchwood Institute, etc.
- "Ah, Doctor, glad you could make it."
Secret (or, in some stories, not-so-secret) organizations designed to kick alien ass and/or aid the Doctor. UNIT, a Unified (originally United Nations) Intelligence Taskforce that deals specifically with alien or superscientific threats, was introduced in 1968. Torchwood, an organisation funded by the British royalty (as opposed to the government) with the specific aim of arming The British Empire with alien technology, was introduced in the 2005 Christmas special, ten months before the Darker and Edgier spinoff series.
The Doctor detests Torchwood on general principle (the feeling is mutual — the Doctor is specifically named in Torchwood's charter as its first alien enemy known), though Captain Jack, former companion and leader of Torchwood 3 5 , has been doing his best to change the Doctor's mind. The Doctor's relations with UNIT are much more cordial — they've even worked for UNIT, as a scientific advisor, for much of their third incarnation and occasionally since then — though they have little patience with its bureaucracy, established procedures, and chains of command, just as they did with their own people's.
The Evolving Show
First, a quick note: Classic Who tends to be referred to by serial, not by episode; a serial is a multi-episode story. For most of the classic show's history—aside from a little experimentation with 45 minute episodes—episodes lasted 25 minutes (give or take a few minutes). From the mid '70s onwards, serials were usually four episodes in length, with six or two episode serials here and there; from 1980 onwards, serials never went on for more than four episodes. During the McCoy years, when the series had its number of episodes halved, the production team instituted a mix of three episode and four episode serials. A few one-off epic serials lasting 8 (The Invasion), 10 (The War Games), and even 12 (The Daleks' Master Plan) episodes were also broadcast. In terms of labelling, the show officially started referring to episodes as "parts" from Season 11 onward, with one exception.The 14-episode "The Trial of a Time Lord" arc was officially split into 4 stories, however all 14 episodes carried the single title, and "Part 10", "Part 13", etc.
Generally, serials weren't continuity-heavy; one self-contained story ended and another began. Some might be loosely linked: by a common villain, for instance. But sometimes serials followed on very closely, and are thematically linked to such an extent that a Story Arc takes up a whole season. The whole of Season 16, for instance, is informally called "The Key to Time", and Season 23 was presented as a single fourteen-episode story, "The Trial of a Time Lord", though it was, in fact, made up of four separate storiesnote (three four-parters and one two-parter) with a Framing Device.
The show isn't formatted into serials since its return. It follows the more recent pattern of The X-Files, Buffy, etc., of standalone episodes (sometimes with two-parters and even a couple of three-parters) that develop a season-long (or longer!) arc. Series 13, as a byproduct of a reduced episode count due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is an exception, being presented as a single six episode story, "Flux", with episodes being 50-60 minutes. Because of the different ways stories are formatted between the Classic and Revival Series, they tend to be generally referred to as just "stories," with "serials" specifically singling out the Classic-era stuff.
Doctor Who stories vary wildly in their style and tone, depending on writers and showrunners. They range from comedic to gothic or nihilistic, sometimes changing approach within a single serial, and the Science Fiction goes all over the place from soft to hard. Officially there have been 304 stories aired to date, counting Season 23's The Trial of a Time Lord as one arc, and not counting the abandoned (but belatedly completed) Shada. That Other Wiki has them all numbered at the bottom of this page. Since the series returned in 2005 there have also been 6 canonical mini-episodes broadcast as of November 2023, each lasting no more than 8 minutes, aired as charity specials or during special events. Making matters even more confusing, BBC Radio has also produced or co-produced a number of audio-only Doctor Who serials since 1985.
The above number 304 does not include the 2 Comic Relief mini-episodes aired in March 2011, the Children in Need episodes aired in 2005, 2007, and 2023, and the mini-episode produced for the 2009 Doctor Who at the Proms concert special, or Shada. If you count Shada and Trial of a Time Lord as four, this makes 308. The mini-episodes are rarely counted — if spinoffs are included, that's probably the only time you'll see them.
Those aspects of the show that would normally be set by the series creator — style, tone, mythology — are largely the province of the showrunners. In the Classic Series, this referred to the producers and script editors, while in the Revival Series, it refers to the head writer, who functionally fulfils both roles (though credited producers and script editors are still present, albeit with heavily reduced levels of involvement) and writes a good chunk of episodes as well (the "head writer" credit helps sidestep BBC limitations on staff credits). Over its sixty years, the show has seen several producers and script editors, each of whom has left his or her mark for better or for worse. Moreso than individual Doctors (whose tenures usually featured more than one creative redirection), mentioning a particular producer or script editor is the most common shorthand for a particular tone or style of Doctor Who. Every showrunner is, for some fan, the one who either singlehandedly saved the series or ruined it forever. Possibly even Verity Lambert and Sydney Newman, who co-created the show.
Children's or Family Show
Technically, the BBC classify (and have always classified) Doctor Who as a drama series, created under the aegis of BBC Drama, rather than a children's series under the aegis of the BBC Children's department - although Children's was in a short period of not existing when the show was created. The Beeb has no such thing as a "Family Show" department.That said, one of the most controversial discussions in fandom is whether Doctor Who is a (to quote a line from a newspaper article which used to explain the show's appeal on the blurbs of the novelizations) "the children's own programme that adults adore", a "family show" or a "dark and edgy show like Battlestar Galactica (2003) meets The X-Files, at midnight in an unlit cellar! Constant death and misery! Pain! Lots of pain!" That Doctor Who can plausibly be described in all of these terms is a possible key to its long-term appeal. In the opinion of Steven Moffat it's fundamentally a children's programme that adults can appreciate; if an episode of Doctor Who isn't keeping kids entertained, it isn't doing its job properly. A large part of this disagreement is down to the fact that most American Who fans would have discovered the show as teens or adults, while many Brits remember the show as a ubiquitous childhood favourite. An examination of broadcast schedules for the show around the world reveals the schism in its audience: in the UK, the show traditionally airs around the supper hour on Saturdays, and on those occasions it changes days, it still airs around the same time. In the US, Canada, and other countries the "classic" series is often shown late at night, and newer episodes often air in prime time, often at "late hours" such as 8 and 9 PM.
Doctor Who was originally intended to be an educational show explaining science and history to children in an entertaining science-fiction context (this is why two of the first three companions were a science teacher and a history teacher). However, the popularity of the outer-space romps and outlandish aliens (particularly the Daleks) eventually shifted the series' emphasis from education to adventure. The TARDIS' police box appearance was, apparently, a matter of budget. Just as the Star Trek transporters papered over the Enterprise's budgetary inability to send shuttles, the TARDIS' supposed shape-shifting circuit was jammed from the outset to avoid having to create a new TARDIS prop for each episode. The First Doctor acts as if this is the first time it's happened: "It's still a police box! Why hasn't it changed? Dear dear, how very disturbing."
Since the beginning, the show has had a high number of deaths which are unpleasant in many cases (the show has been mild on blood since it returned). However, sometimes the level of violence and gore can be downright brutal, ranging from stabbing to graphic dismemberments, impalements, blood squibs and implied decapitation. The show occasionally features difficult subject matter such as implied rape, racial hatred, genocide, drug use and very discreet references to child molestation. Sex references also abound in the modern series, with a 2010 episode featuring a companion quite openly trying to have sex with the Doctor (he doesn't let her).
Missing Episodes
In The '60s and The '70s, BBC policy was to junk or overwrite the media of television programmes that had already aired. 6 Various episodes from the show's first ten seasons were wiped before the BBC abandoned its wiping policy in 1978; the upshot is that, out of around 800 episodes filmed, 97 scattered across 26 serials are currently lost, with ten of those serials being completely missing apart from a few scattershot clips. William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton's eras are the only ones still affected, though audio tapes of all missing episodes still exist from fans who made recordings of the show when it aired (the BBC has released most of these commercially on cassette and CD, and occasionally have also produced reconstructions of missing episodes for DVD using them). Every Jon Pertwee onwards episode still exists, though a number of them had to be restored through various means thanks to them only surviving via black and white film copies or NTSC tapes made for international broadcasters.A life-size Dalek is being offered for anyone who can find a missing episode.
There is also a lot of material on episodes that weren't made (such as the original Season 23, which would have included the return of the Celestial Toymaker, the Autons, and the Ice Warriors), some of which has been used by Big Finish, a production company that since 1999 has produced several hundred BBC-licensed and sanctioned Doctor Who audio dramas featuring original cast members.
In 2006, the BBC and animation studio Cosgrove Hall released an animated reconstruction of Parts 1 and 4 of Patrick Troughton serial "The Invasion", using remastered audio tapes and the original stage notes. For the next few years, fans were disappointed that no similar reconstructions were made, with the company in charge of releasing episodes to DVD claiming that it was too expensive to hire an animation company to do a couple of one-off episodes. However, in 2011 it was announced that "The Reign of Terror" would be released in 2012 with two missing episodes similarly reconstructed. Subsequently, "The Ice Warriors", "The Tenth Planet", and "The Moonbase" were all released on DVD with animated reconstructions of missing episodes. In 2016, all six episodes of the Second Doctor's totally lost first story, "The Power of the Daleks", were reconstructed and released on iTunes, DVD, and BBC America, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the story's broadcast. Subsequently, "The Macra Terror", "The Faceless Ones", "Fury from the Deep", "The Evil of the Daleks", "Galaxy 4", and "The Underwater Menace" were all released on DVD and Blu-ray with animated reconstructions of all episodes alongside any surviving original episodes. "The Web of Fear" was released on DVD and Blu-ray with an animated reconstruction of its missing episode.
Theme Tune
No discussion of the show is complete without mentioning its Theme Tune, which has a number of variations (as do the logos and Title Sequences). The original 1963 version of the Doctor Who theme is a hallmark of pre-synthesizer electronic music and, when paired with the trippy feedback titles, looked forward to late-60s psychedelica. Ron Grainer composed the music, and Delia Derbyshire, working in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, realized it by taping a variety of electronic tones and distorted instruments, and splicing the tapes together by hand over many hours. It was so popular that it was one of the Trope Codifiers of early Electronic Music.The original theme recording was used, with various edits and mixes (including the introduction of an "electronic scream" at the beginning of the closing theme in the 1970s, a version of which has been used on all subsequent versions) until 1980, when a totally new recording was made by Radiophonic Workshop member Peter Howell. Subsequent remixes were provided by Dominic Glynn, Keff McCulloch, John Debney (who arranged the theme for the American TV movie) and David Arnold (who arranged the theme for Big Finish's Eighth Doctor adventures).
Most of the themes since the show returned were arranged by Murray Gold, with the first (Series 1-3) remixing the original recording with orchestral and electronic embellishments, and was extended for the start of Series 2 to include a tribute to the 'middle eight' section of the original theme. Another version was recorded for Series 4, this one with more of a rock-n-roll feel (electric guitar, bass and drumkit). This theme was remixed for the four specials that transitioned from Ten to Eleven with an orchestral backing.
There was a rather different version for Series 5 through 7a, featuring electronic instruments in a more central position as well as a strong brass sound at the beginning. It was revised for "The Snowmen", giving it a deeper sound and de-emphasising the percussion, and with some tweaks, this version remained in use through Series 7b. "The Day of the Doctor" got its own special theme, dropping the brass sound at the beginning, removing or replacing many of the electronic elements, making the percussion and bass more prominent, and again including a tribute to the 'middle eight'. Series 8 introduced another new version that also dropped the brass sound, and gave it a more electronic, 'futuristic', feel; from "Robot of Sherwood" on, it incorporated the bass elements from the Series 4 version as well.
Murray Gold left Doctor Who after Series 10 and was replaced by composer Segun Akinola. Akinola dropped the bombast of Gold's themes and incorporated much more of the original theme, with an underlying electronic beat going from deep and dark to clear and rhythmic. The electronic scream was dropped as episodes began opening with the titles again rather than a cold open as had been common. Overall it is quite a departure from other themes in the revival.
Gold returned for the 60th anniversary with a new arrangement of the theme tune, this one heavily leaning to the orchestral over the electronic.
Spin-offs
Along with countless books and semi-canonical audio/video releases, the show has four official television spin-offs: Darker and Edgier Torchwood (bisexual alien hunters in Cardiff); the (somewhat) Lighter and Softer The Sarah Jane Adventures (beloved ex-companion and a handful of Meddling Kids fight aliens in London); the Darker and Edgier Class (students at Coal Hill School fight aliens in London); and K9 by Park Entertainment, which was filmed in Australia and initially aired in Scandinavia in early 2010 before being broadcast on a UK cable network in the summer of 2010 and a terrestrial network there in the autumn; a US broadcast has yet to occur. It also falls into the Lighter and Softer category. One spinoff, K-9 & Company, was stillborn in 1981, only producing a pilot episode. Another, Rose Tyler: Earth Defence, was actually given space in the BBC budget before the production team went back on the idea. There was also a behind the scenes documentary series called Doctor Who Confidential which immediately followed every episode from "Rose" to "The Wedding of River Song" on BBC Three. An additional behind the scenes series, aimed more for children, was titled Totally Doctor Who and aired for two series; its primary claim to fame was broadcasting the first-ever animated Doctor Who serial for television, The Infinite Quest, in 2007. A third, Doctor Who Extra, aired in conjunction with Series 8 and 9, before behind the scenes videos moved to the BBC Doctor Who YouTube channel. A fourth, Doctor Who: Unleashed, launched alongside the 60th anniversary specials on BBC Three.Expanded Universe
See Doctor Who Expanded Universe.The pop-culture impact
The TARDIS and the Doctor's recurring enemy the Daleks have become British cultural icons and it is fair to suggest that the overwhelming majority of Britons would instantly recognize both. It is, in fact, difficult to over-state the extent to which Doctor Who, ostensibly a slightly daft children-oriented sci-fi show, has become a part of the British cultural landscape. The often-used phrase 'hiding behind the sofa' to refer to films or telly that scared someone as a child originates from people's reactions to watching the show in the sixties and seventies. It casts as much a shadow over British culture, as one Anthropology Professor put it, as Star Trek casts over American culture; more so, in fact, as while acknowledged fans of Star Trek are still rather consistently made fun of by mainstream culture, Doctor Who is beloved by Britons of all ages and demographics. Including, as it happens, Elizabeth II and Charles III.
Other famous fans include John Oliver, Alton Brown, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Groening, Seth MacFarlane, Patrick Stewart, Steven Spielberg, Rian Johnson and Richard Dawkins, just to name a few.
It has to be remembered that, during its most successful periods, the show has had a huge UK level of popularity, well above stereotypical "cult TV" or SF genre audiences. Audience figures as of Peter Capaldi's tenure were regularly about 5 to 7 million an episode (with about 8 million for Christmas specials), often putting it within the top twenty broadcasts of the week, equivalent in US terms to something like 30 million viewers based on proportion of the population - some episodes from the classic series have clocked more than that, with "City of Death" getting an average of 14.5 million, although ITV was suffering from a strike at the time, and there were only three channels back then. It is beaten consistently in the UK only by Talent Shows and major sporting events (though "Journey's End" trounced Wimbledon), and often holds its own against Soap Operas (though this wasn't the case in the waning days of the classic series in the late 1980s when it was constantly beaten by Coronation Street). It is probably the only non Talent Show or Soap Opera to regularly have spoilers (accurate or not) appear in the mass market tabloid press.
Additionally, the revival has retained a strong consistent audience in the UK for decades, with a notable peak during David Tennant and Matt Smith's eras; it's only dropped out of the top thirty weekly broadcasts twice, both times during Series 12 (Jodie Whittaker's second season). In the BBC's eyes, it's one of their most important shows in terms of demographic reach (its audience skews younger than pretty much any other BBC drama) and how much money it brings in from overseas sales, and should it ever drop into cancellation territory, they'd do everything in their power to get it back into safe territory, as happened with a similarly important show, Top Gear.
The show, because of its heyday in the seventies and eighties, has resulted in children growing up and starting careers for the sole purpose of working on the show: Russell T Davies started his screenwriting career with a (failed) submission to the BBC; David Tennant has confessed that the show got him into acting; and Steven Moffat has joked that he applied to be the executive producer when he was seven. Other people on the show also work so their kids can see their parents in something that's not inappropriate, such as John Simm, known more for gritty dramas before taking the role of the Master. 7 Even if an actor wasn't a fan when they were a kid, it's almost certain their little kid will be.
The revival's been running long enough at this point that kids who grew up with it are now working on the show themselves (and if that makes you feel old, you're not alone).
The Daleks themselves are the show's most famous villains and instantly recognizable to any Briton. There was a major bout of "Dalekmania" in 1964-65, which nearly resulted in a Dalek-themed US produced show.
Unfortunately, in the United States, the show isn't as widely popular and is often considered the territory of nerds and public television. The 1996 movie was partially an attempt to gain enough American recognition to warrant an American co-produced revival of the series (which failed). Since its revival in 2005, the show has been acknowledged by the mainstream television press as among the best shows on television, and pulls consistently high ratings for a basic (when it was on Sci-Fi Channel) and digital (when it was on BBC America) cable television show. In fact, "The Impossible Astronaut" is the highest rated BBC America programme in the network's history. Since "A Christmas Carol" at Christmas 2010, the show aired in the United States only a few hours after its original British airing (except for "The Almost People" and "A Good Man Goes To War", both delayed one week due to Memorial Day weekend). Compare this to the weeks or months of wait that Sci-Fi Channel imposed on fans when they aired the first four revival series. Examples of the show's slow acceptance into American pop culture include the mentioning of the series on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (being the only host on a US late night talk show that has talked to three of the Steven Moffat-era main cast, complete with making a song and having a miniature TARDIS prop), and the parody Inspector Spacetime, which appeared as a Show Within a Show on the third season premiere of the sitcom Community, which has become a bit of meme here at TV Tropes (sadly, given Community's own low ratings and cult status, that isn't exactly a mainstream mention just yet).
TV Tropes is proof of how much of a phenomenon the series has become — we have a page for guessing if characters are members of the Doctor's race.
Perhaps you'd like to try your hand at writing Doctor Who?
