Peter Davison

Peter Davison (born 13 April 1951 as Peter Malcolm Gordon Moffett) played the Fifth Doctor from 1981 to 1984, beginning with an appearance at the conclusion of Logopolis, continuing from Castrovalva to The Caves of Androzani.

He reprised the role for the Children in Need specials Dimensions in Time (1993) and Time Crash (2007) and voiced him for numerous Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish Productions since 1999.

Outside of Who, Davison is also well-known for his role as Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small.

Profile
Davison was born Peter Moffett in London. His father was originally from Guyana. He studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama and appeared in several stage productions and some minor television roles before he got his big break in 1978. His performance as the ne'er-do-well Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small made him a household name. He married American actress Sandra Dickinson in the same year, but they divorced in 1994. He and Dickinson had previously appeared together in the three-part story A Man For Emily in the ITV Sci-Fi series The Tomorrow People (1975) and together composed and performed the theme tune to ITV's Button Moon, a lunchtime children's programme broadcast in the 1980s.

Davison made a cameo appearance alongside Dickinson as the Dish of the Day in the BBC television version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981), whose producers considered it humorous for an actor known for playing a veterinary surgeon to appear as a cow. Davison also appeared in some British sitcoms, including Holding the Fort and Sink or Swim during his time as Doctor Who and later Fiddlers Three and Ain't Misbehavin, as well as appearing in dramatic roles.

Doctor Who career
In 1981, Davison signed a contract to play the Fifth Doctor for three years, succeeding Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor). Twenty-nine at the time of his first appearance in the series, Davison was the youngest actor to have played the Doctor in the series or in any BBC-sanctioned Doctor Who production. In 2010, he handed over this distinction to Matt Smith, who was twenty-six at the time of his début.

Coincidentally, several of Davison's stories were directed by Peter Moffatt (only a slight variation of Davison's birth name, Peter Moffett), and, on the 2008 DVD release of The Five Doctors, Davison recalls friends thinking he not only starred in the show but directed it as well.

Attracting such a high-profile actor was as much of a coup for the programme's producers as getting the role was for him, but he did not renew his contract because he feared being typecast. Reportedly, Patrick Troughton (who had played the Second Doctor) had recommended to Davison that he leave the role after three years, and Davison followed his advice.

In 2013, Davison also wrote, directed, and starred in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, a comical film released on the Red Button in which he, alongside Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, attempts to appear in the 50th anniversary Doctor Who episode, The Day of the Doctor.

After Doctor Who
After leaving Doctor Who, he continued to appear occasionally on television, including an appearance on the American show Magnum, P.I. (following the lead of Tom Baker who similarly made a high-profile US TV appearance in Remington Steele after leaving the series).

It was not until 1986 that Davison worked on another very popular series. He played Dr Stephen Daker, the ingenuous hero of A Very Peculiar Practice, written by Andrew Davies. The surreal comedy-drama was revived several years later as a one-off TV film A Very Polish Practice. Davison also played the lead in another BBC production, Campion, a series based on the period whodunnits of Margery Allingham. This, and the opportunity to play Tristan Farnon again in 1985 and 1990 in the revived series of All Creatures Great and Small kept Davison busy until the early 1990s. He also worked on several occasions with BBV Productions, co-starring with several other former Doctors in the SF film The Airzone Solution and he reprised the Fifth Doctor for the controversial Dimensions in Time special. In 1999 he appeared as the outgoing headteacher in Hope And Glory. He appeared with Mark Gatiss in Doctor Who spoof, The Kidnappers, in which he appeared as himself (this skit was later included in The Beginning DVD box set).

In 1995 he presented Heavenly Bodies a six-part series about astronomy, broadcast on BBC1. This led to him being featured on the cover of Practical Astronomy magazine (Volume 1, number 5, dated March 1995).

It was not until 2000 that he returned in another major role, that of David Braithwaite in At Home with the Braithwaites, which ran for four seasons on ITV.

More recently, he starred in the television series The Last Detective (based on the Dangerous Davies novels by Leslie Thomas) (2003-2007) and Distant Shores (2005) for ITV, the latter where he coincidentally also played a doctor. In 2011, he took a major recurring role on Law & Order: UK.

His daughter with Dickinson, Georgia Moffett, had a child while still in her teens, making Davison a young grandfather. Georgia auditioned for the role of Rose Tyler in Doctor Who's 2005 revival and also auditioned for a role in the 2008 episode, The Unicorn and the Wasp. She was cast as Jenny, the titular character in the Series 4 episode The Doctor's Daughter, which aired several months after her father's appearance in Time Crash. She also voiced a different character for the animated serial, Dreamland. She married the Tenth Doctor's actor, David Tennant, on 30 December 2011, meaning Davison is Tennant's father-in-law (a fact played up for laughs in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot).

Davison was also a regular in the BBC Radio 4 comedy series Rigor Mortis.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s Davison married Elizabeth Morton and had two more sons, Louis and Joel James Davison, both of whom also played themselves in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. Joel Davison later had a recurring role in Stranded, as Robin Bright-Thompson, opposite Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor.

He is also the uncle of George Watkins who played companion Marc in several Big Finish Doctor Who stories, opposite Davison's Fifth Doctor.

In fiction
Peter Davison exists within the Whoniverse. During an adventure in which the Eleventh Doctor found himself in the "real world" where his adventures are the subject of a TV series called Doctor Who, he states that he once saved the actor from a Krynoid back in his own universe, noting that he thought he looked familiar. (COMIC: The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who)

Credits
As the Fifth Doctor

Doctor Who

 * Logopolis
 * Castrovalva
 * Four to Doomsday
 * Kinda
 * The Visitation
 * Black Orchid
 * Earthshock
 * Time-Flight
 * Arc of Infinity
 * Snakedance
 * Mawdryn Undead
 * Terminus
 * Enlightenment
 * The King's Demons
 * The Five Doctors
 * Warriors of the Deep
 * The Awakening
 * Frontios
 * Resurrection of the Daleks
 * Planet of Fire
 * The Caves of Androzani

Mini-episodes

 * Dimensions in Time
 * Time Crash

Video Games

 * Destiny of the Doctors

Doctor Who Main Range

 * The Sirens of Time
 * Phantasmagoria
 * The Land of the Dead
 * Red Dawn
 * Winter for the Adept
 * The Mutant Phase
 * Loups-Garoux
 * The Eye of the Scorpion
 * Primeval
 * Spare Parts
 * The Church and the Crown
 * Nekromanteia
 * Creatures of Beauty
 * Omega
 * Zagreus
 * The Axis of Insanity
 * The Roof of the World
 * The Game
 * Three's a Crowd
 * The Council of Nicaea
 * Singularity
 * The Kingmaker
 * The Gathering
 * Circular Time
 * Spring
 * Summer
 * Autumn
 * Winter
 * Renaissance of the Daleks
 * Exotron / Urban Myths
 * Son of the Dragon
 * The Mind's Eye / Mission of the Viyrans
 * Return to the Web Planet
 * The Bride of Peladon
 * The Haunting of Thomas Brewster
 * The Boy That Time Forgot
 * Time Reef / A Perfect World
 * The Judgement of Isskar
 * The Destroyer of Delights
 * The Chaos Pool
 * Castle of Fear
 * The Eternal Summer
 * Plague of the Daleks
 * Cobwebs
 * The Whispering Forest
 * The Cradle of the Snake
 * The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories
 * The Demons of Red Lodge
 * The Entropy Composition
 * Doing Time
 * Special Features
 * Heroes of Sontar
 * Kiss of Death
 * Rat Trap
 * The Emerald Tiger
 * The Jupiter Conjunction
 * The Butcher of Brisbane
 * The Burning Prince
 * 1001 Nights
 * 1001 Nights
 * My Brother's Keeper
 * The Interplanetarian
 * Smuggling Tales
 * Eldrad Must Die!
 * The Lady of Mercia
 * Prisoners of Fate
 * 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men
 * Moonflesh
 * Tomb Ship
 * Masquerade
 * Mistfall
 * Equilibrium
 * The Entropy Plague
 * The Secret History
 * The Waters of Amsterdam
 * Aquitaine
 * The Peterloo Massacre
 * And You Will Obey Me
 * The Memory Bank and Other Stories
 * The Memory Bank
 * The Last Fairy Tale
 * Repeat Offender
 * The Becoming
 * The Star Men
 * The Contingency Club
 * Zaltys
 * Alien Heart / Dalek Soul
 * Time in Office
 * Kingdom of Lies
 * Ghost Walk
 * Serpent in the Silver Mask
 * Devil in the Mist
 * Black Thursday / Power Game
 * The Kamelion Empire
 * Tartarus
 * Interstitial / Feast of Fear
 * Warzone / Conversion
 * Time Apart
 * Ghost Station
 * The Bridge Master
 * What Lurks Down Under
 * The Dancing Plague
 * Thin Time / Madquake
 * Shadow of the Daleks 1
 * Aimed at the Body
 * Lightspeed
 * The Bookshop at the End of the World
 * Interlude
 * Shadow of the Daleks 2
 * Echo Chamber
 * Towards Zero
 * Castle Hydra
 * Effect and Cause
 * The Blazing Hour
 * The End of the Beginning

Special Releases

 * Excelis Dawns
 * No Place Like Home
 * Cuddlesome
 * The Four Doctors
 * The Five Companions
 * The Light at the End
 * The Legacy of Time
 * Relative Time
 * Collision Course

The Lost Stories

 * The Elite
 * Hexagora
 * The Children of Seth
 * Nightmare Country

The Fifth Doctor Adventures

 * The Fifth Doctor Box Set
 * Psychodrome
 * Iterations of I
 * Wicked Sisters
 * The Garden of Storms
 * The Moonrakers
 * The People Made of Smoke
 * The Lost Resort and Other Stories
 * The Lost Resort
 * The Perils of Nellie Bly
 * Nightmare of the Daleks
 * Forty: Volume 1
 * Secrets of Telos
 * God of War
 * Forty: Volume 2
 * The Auton Infinity
 * Conflicts of Interest
 * Friendly Fire
 * The Edge of the War

Novel Adaptations

 * Cold Fusion

Classic Doctors, New Monsters

 * Fallen Angels
 * Empire of the Racnoss

Once and Future

 * Past Lives

The Tenth Doctor and River Song

 * Expiry Dating

Out of Time

 * The Gates of Hell

Short Trips

 * The Deep
 * Sock Pig
 * Wet Walls
 * The Lions of Trafalgar

The Diary of River Song

 * The Lady in the Lake
 * A Requiem for the Doctor
 * My Dinner with Andrew
 * The Furies

Other Roles

Doctor Who

 * Arc of Infinity - Omega
 * The Power of the Doctor - Holo-Doctor / Guardian of the Edge

P.R.O.B.E.

 * The Zero Imperative - Patient One
 * The Devil of Winterborne - Gavin Purcell
 * Ghosts of Winterborne - Gavin Purcell

The Collection Blu-Ray Trailers

 * Jovanka Airlines - Himself

Doctor Who Main Range

 * Omega - Omega
 * Zagreus - Reverend Matthew Townsend
 * The Eternal Summer - Lord of the Manor
 * The Cradle of the Snake - The Mara

The Fifth Doctor Adventures

 * The Auton Infinity - Auton Doctor (uncredited)

The Diary of River Song

 * My Dinner with Andrew - Andrew Edwardson
 * The Furies - Andrew Edwardson

Target Novelisations

 * Warriors of the Deep
 * Kinda
 * Castrovalva
 * Earthshock
 * The Caves of Androzani
 * Time-Flight

Documentary

 * Once Upon a Time Lord
 * Doctor Who's Who's Who
 * Daleks: The Early Years
 * The Doctors: 30 Years of Time Travel and Beyond
 * Adventures in Space and Time
 * Putting the Shock into Earthshock
 * The Story of Doctor Who
 * Doctor Who Confidential
 * The Crowded TARDIS
 * Being Doctor Who: In conversation with Peter Davison
 * A New Body at Last
 * Anti-Matter from Amsterdam
 * They Came from Beneath the Sea
 * The Depths
 * Celebration
 * Winner Takes All
 * Talking About Regeneration
 * Who Wants to Live Forever?
 * The Flames of Sarn
 * Chain Reaction
 * Come in Number Five
 * Snake Charmer
 * The Women of Doctor Who
 * The Timey-Wimey of Doctor Who
 * The Destinations of Doctor Who
 * Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor
 * The Doctors Revisited
 * William Hartnell: The Original
 * Doctor Who Live: The Afterparty
 * Doctor Who: The Ultimate Companion
 * A Fishy Tale
 * The Fan Show

Other

 * Blue Peter 1983
 * Children in Need 1983
 * Children in Need 1985
 * The Kidnappers
 * Doctor Who at the Proms 2013
 * The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot (also writer & director)