Golden age: 1963-1979 — The beginning and peak popularity.
In terms of baseline quality, the Seventies is probably the most consistent Doctor Who has been until the 21st Century. There's a classic story in nearly every season, and fondly-thought-of stories throughout.
Operation Golden Age included General Finch and Captain Mike Yates, the latter of whom had recently suffered a breakdown that made him more open to their goals. Believing Earth was becoming too polluted and humanity was too corrupt to change, they developed an elaborate plan to restart civilisation.
Played by William Hartnell
An exile from his homeworld, wandering space and time in his trusty TARDIS with granddaughter Susan, the First Doctor appears to be a frail old man.
The series is listed in Guinness World Records as the longest-running science-fiction television series in the world, as well as the "most successful" science-fiction series of all time, based on its overall broadcast ratings, DVD and book sales, and iTunes traffic.
The Doctor is no longer from Gallifrey
She's found as a child on a planet far from Gallifrey, though it's implied that even this remote world is not her true home and that she actually arrived from somewhere else via the Boundary, a gateway to other parts of the universe. So the Doctor is not Gallifreyan.
The very first companion introduced in 1963 was the Doctor's own granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford) and numerous characters have filled her shoes since all the way to Catherine Tate reprising her role as fan-favourite companion Donna Noble for the 60th-anniversary episodes due to air next year.
Currently, David Tennant portrays the Fourteenth Doctor, succeeding Jodie Whittaker at the end of "The Power of the Doctor" (2022). Tennant previously played the Tenth Doctor between 2005 and 2010, with his current tenure marking the first time an actor has returned to the role as a new incarnation.
In Hesiod's version, the Golden Age ended when the Titan Prometheus conferred on mankind the gift of fire and all the other arts. For this, Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus, where an eagle eternally ate at his liver.
As the old saying goes, “life begins at 40”, but recent trends suggest that 50 could be the age we really start to enjoy life. By this age, many of us feel more confident than ever before and are in a position to start getting the most from life.
This was part of fivefold division of Ages of Man, starting with the Golden age, then the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Age of Heroes (including the Trojan War), and finally, the current Iron Age.
Despite getting off to a solid start, the Doctor Who ratings skyrocketed after the debut of the villainous Daleks in late 1963 / early 1964. This triggered a period that is affectionately known as 'Dalekmania,' synonymous with the similarly-named 'Beatlemania' that was sweeping the country at the same time.
And in figures released in March 2020, the same month the series ended, Doctor Who's ratings slipped to its lowest since the show made a comeback in 2005. The season finale of series 12 had a total TV audience of 4.6million, making it the lowest Doctor Who has ever had. The previous all-time low was 4.7million in 2017.
Daleks are the Doctor's greatest foe, apart from The Master. No matter how many times The Doctor defeats them, the Daleks always manage to survive. Their tenacity is matched only by their martial prowess. A Dalek's body is near-indestructible, and their weapons can kill most living creatures in a single hit.
The Doctor's name is...
Theta Sigma – or ΘΣ, if you're feeling flash – was the nickname given to the Doctor at the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey, according to Drax, a student contemporary from “the class of '92” who the Fourth Doctor bumped into again during The Armageddon Factor.
Hugh Grant (who also played an incarnation of the Doctor in Curse of Fatal Death) has stated that he turned down the role and expressed his regret once he saw how the show turned out.
Throughout Doctor Who, there have been multiple reasons why the Doctor's name was never revealed. The sixth Doctor claimed it was simply because a human could not pronounce it, but the eleventh Doctor revealed his name was a signal that would bring the Time-Lords to this universe and restart the Time War.
To some, companion Rose Tyler was the greatest love of the Doctor's life. He seemed to have a closer bond with her than almost anyone he'd travelled with before, and as time went on it was increasingly clear that she was deeply in love with him.
Millie Gibson has been cast as Ruby Sunday, companion to Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor in Doctor Who season 14.
At 26 years old, Smith was three years younger than Peter Davison was at the time of his casting as the Doctor in 1981, making him the youngest Doctor and the youngest actor to be suggested for the role.
Time Lords are extremely long-lived, routinely counting their ages in terms of centuries; the Second Doctor claimed in The War Games that Time Lords could live "practically forever, barring accidents." The series has suggested that Time Lords have a different concept of ageing from humans.
But as every "Whovian" knows, the Doctor cannot last for ever: Time Lords are able to regenerate only 12 times before they die.
We may never know for certain, but whatever its genesis, the outcome of this epic conflict was horrifying and only two Time Lords survived - the Doctor and the Master. With the latter's apparent death the Doctor is left to continue his travels with the lonely knowledge that he is the last 'child of Gallifrey'.