Teletubbies (series)

Teletubbies was a British children's television series created by Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport for the BBC.

Aimed at toddlers and young children, the series focuses on the four titular, differently-coloured creatures which are named after the television screens on their bellies. Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po, as they are individually named, live in the fictional Teletubbyland - a seemingly endless field of green hills and plant life - where they spend their days playing and interacting with the various wonders that inhabit their world, as an omnipresent narrator explains their antics.

The series originally launched in 1997 with a series that ran until 2001, and a revival that ran from 2015 to 2018, airing on both BBC One and BBC Two via CBBC, and later on CBeebies.

The series became a worldwide cultural phenomenon following its launch, with its popularity spawning an abundance of merchandise and other events, leading it to be branded "the most lucrative show in BBC television history".

Its significance to the broadcaster led to the characters making a cameo appearance within the Children in Need short subject, Future Generations, in celebration of the BBC's fifty-year legacy of children's programming, which also featured other past children's programming from that legacy including, of course, Doctor Who.

Crossover
The aforementioned Future Generations was cohabited by appearances of elements from both Teletubbies and Doctor Who, although neither directly interacted.

Towards the end of the short, which involved a little boy walking through locales from various BBC children's shows whilst reciting the story of how the broadcaster started creating programming for "small people" - during which he was seen exiting the Doctor's TARDIS as a pair of Daleks rolled past - the boy walked through the world of The Borrowers as the camera pulled back to reveal that the Teletubbies were watching him on Po's belly screen, before the camera pulled back even further to reveal the Teletubbies themselves were being viewed by the boy on a screen in a control room.

References in the DWU
The series first acknowledgment in the DWU was in the 2004 Short Trips: Past Tense short story, Bide-a-Wee, where it was mentioned as a show that Craig Atkins watched.

The show went on to have a much more explicit cameo in the 2007 television episode, The Sound of Drums. Echoing a similar scene from The Sea Devils in which he watched and enjoyed an episode of Clangers, the Saxon Master watches a Teletubbies episode in wonderment, marvelling at the idea of the characters having televisions in their stomachs. The scene used footage from the episode, Numbers - 1.

The show was name dropped again just days later in the Short Trips: Snapshots story, Salva Mea, where Luke Tillyard was mentioned to have watched the programme in his youth.

In the 2011 novel, Touched by an Angel, Mark Whitaker sees a cardboard cut-out of a Teletubby outside of a Woolworths.

Other references
DWA 20 humorously contemplated a scenario in which the Abzorbaloff and the Wire tried to absorb each other. Ultimately, the Abzorbaloff succeeds in absorbing the Wire, resulting in his stomach sporting a television screen with the Wire's image. In a clear reference to the Teletubbies, the Abzorbaloff exclaims "Eh-oh!" and is said to be getting his own show on CBeebies.

Connections
Jack Jameson, who went on to be an assistant producer for Totally Doctor Who, served as a director on the original series.

In the revival series, Tinky Winky was played by Dark Water and Death in Heaven stuntman, Jeremiah Krage.

The voice trumpets, periscope-like objects that rise from the ground and interact with the Teletubbies, are voiced by various actors. In the original series, two of these actors were Rudolph Walker (Harper in The War Games) and Toyah Wilcox (interview subject in various documentaries and a Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who contributor), the latter of whom also provided opening and ending narration.

The original series' American release had a different set of voices for the trumpets, which included Sandra Dickinson (voice of Maggie in audio story, The Ghosts of N-Space) and John Schwab (Owen Bywater in Dalek, and various voices for Big Finish Productions).

Finally, voices for the trumpets in the revival series included Jim Broadbent (the Eleventh Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death), David Walliams (Gibbis in The God Complex), and Teresa Gallagher (various voices for Big Finish). Gallagher also provided the voices of the Tiddlytubbies, characters who appeared exclusively in the revival.