Doctor Who website

For the purposes of this wiki, the Doctor Who website is deemed to be the main site operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation at http://bbc.co.uk/doctorwho. There are are other official Doctor Who websites operated by national broadcasters, but the definitive Doctor Who website is the one operated by BBC Online on behalf of the various BBC One Two and Three transmissions.

Since the re-launch of Doctor Who in 2005, the site has promoted the programme through a significant amount of original material, like:
 * behind-the-scenes interviews, such as those posted to the Doctor Who Video Explorer available during series 5
 * online games
 * craft activities like the Comic Maker and Trailer Maker
 * the annual Adventure Calendar put out for the Christmas special

Generally, the website has changed its theme weekly during the transmission of the programme on BBC One. Indeed, most of the material has been geared towards promoting the next upcoming episode. However, during the off-season, the site has reverted to a more general promotion of Doctor Who.

1998-2000
The website began in November 1998 as a section of the BBC's Cult TV site. It was created for the 35th anniversary of the show. The address was http://bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho. The original homepage was labelled "The Console Room" with the subtitle "on the official Doctor Who Site".

With the television series effectively "dead" the website chose to focus instead on information about the programme, its episodes and characters. It also featured information on UK Gold repeats, conventions, fan gatherings, merchandise and upcoming projects that featured Doctor Who alumni. It then expanded to include spin-off media such as Big Finish Productions, BBC Radio Collection, BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures, BBC Past Doctor Adventures and Telos Publishing.

The site also ran competitions with winners receiving Doctor Who CD's or videos.

It was organised into the following sections:
 * Doctor Who
 * Home
 * Features and Interviews
 * The TV Companion (The information in this section was extracted and abridged from Doctor Who: The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker; later renamed Episode Guide)
 * Who News (later renamed News)
 * Quiz (later renamed Game Zone)
 * The Doctors (later renamed Doctors)
 * Alien Fact File (later renamed Monsters)
 * Forum (later renamed Message Board)
 * Links
 * Q&A
 * Radio News (added in June 2000 to document the progress of what became WC: Death Comes to Time; later renamed Radio Pilot)

Pages in the "Episode Guide" section had a standard layout - Plot; Popular Myths; Things To Watch Out For; Quote, Unquote; and Analysis.

"Game Zone" only had one game called Escape from the Master, a quiz with ten questions. If you got all ten correct, it would send you a codeword, which you emailed to the site to enter a prize draw. This was later renamed Experts Quiz. By January 2000 The Matrix Quiz and Cult TV Quizmaster had been added, as well as a Doctor Who screensaver for PC & Mac.

"Alien Fact Files" were set out like trump cards, which you could print off, and featured 32 monsters - The Ice Warriors, Giant Maggots, Silurians, The Master, Cybermen, Daleks, Sontarans, The Autons, The Fendahl, The Krotons, Davros, The Axons, The War Machines, Quarks, Ogrons, The Kandyman, The Sea Devils, Giant Spiders, Aggedor, Omega, Draconians, Marshmen, Menoptra, Bok, The Terileptils, The Yeti, Zygons, The Krynoid, The Robots of Death, Cybermats, The Wirrn and The Nimon. The cards featured 4 catagories - Weapons, Intelligence, Speed and Stamina.

"Links" had information about other Doctor Who websites, including Beeb.com, Howe's Who, Outpost Gallifrey, Bevis & Duncan's Doctor Who Guide, Restoration Team and Doctor Who Chronology.

2000-2001
In the autumn of 2000 the website had a small refresh.

New sections of the website introduced in this era:
 * Photo Galleries (autumn 2000)
 * Books (December 2000)
 * Dead Ringers (December 2000)
 * DVD and Video (January 2001)
 * CD and Audio (January 2001)
 * Virtual TARDIS (January 2001)
 * Clips (March 2001)

2001-2003
In May 2001 the website had a substantial redesign, making use of the font Assiduous which was the main font on Doctor Who merchandise at the time. The site's tagline read "Doctor Who - news, reviews, video clips, pictures and quizzes", this was subsequently amended to "Doctor Who - news, video clips, photos and reviews from the official site".

In May 2000 Jacqueline Rayner at BBC Books set up a subscription e-newsletter called the Doctor Who Telepress to promote the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures. In August 2001 it moved to the "Books" section of the website and expanded to cover the BBC Past Doctor Adventures and added interviews with authors and sample chapters of upcoming novels.

On 4 July 2001 the Official BBC Doctor Who Book Guidelines were added to the "Books" section. This gave fans the information needed to send their proposals for Doctor Who novels to BBC Worldwide and the chance to be published.

Who Trumps was added to the "Game Zone" section on 8 November 2002.

On 5 March 2003 the Episode Guide section was greatly expanded adding text from The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping, links to clips and articles already on the site and original production paperwork in Adobe PDF format. A new tool called "Ooh, it's the one with... " was designed to help visitors jog their childhood memories and find specific serials.

New sections of the website introduced in this era:
 * PhotoNovels (6 June 2001 )
 * Death Comes to Time (15 June 2001)
 * A Brief History of a Time Lord (13 July 2001)
 * TARDIS Cam (21 November 2001 )
 * The Dying Days (23 May 2002 )
 * Real Time (c. 28 July 2002)
 * Human Nature (31 October 2002)
 * Ebooks (c. 20 February 2003; collected the online ebooks into one section)

"PhotoNovels" were created by using John Cura's tele-snaps along with surviving video and audio clips and captions written by Marcus Hearn, to give fans a better idea of stories they would never have a chance of seeing. They used high resolution scans which were then cleaned up in Adobe Photoshop. They were released at a rate of one episode per week on Fridays.

During this era of the website the following PhotoNovels were published - Fury from the Deep (8 June-13 July 2001); The Abominable Snowmen (20 July-31 August 2001 ); The Power of the Daleks (7 September-12 October 2001); The Wheel in Space (19 October-23 November 2001); The Macra Terror (30 November-21 December 2001); The Savages (4-25 January 2002); The Faceless Ones (1 February-8 March 2002); The Moonbase (15 March-5 April 2002); The Web of Fear (12 April-17 May 2002 ); The Ice Warriors (20 September-25 October 2002 ); and The Smugglers (23 January-13 February 2003 ).

BBCi's rights to stream Death Comes to Time only ran for a year, so it had to be taken offline. The pilot At the End of the Fourth was taken down on 1 July 2002 and the rest on 14 February 2003. A similar situation occurred with Real Time, but as it was a co-production with Big Finish Productions it only had to be offline for six months so as not to effect its CD sales. It came down on 16 December 2002 and returned on 21 June 2003.

"Ebooks" began because of fan demand for now out-of-print Virgin New Adventures and Virgin Missing Adventures novels which were becoming increasingly expensive to obtain, with some commanding as much as fifty times their cover price on auction sites such as eBay. After discovering the copyright on these had since reverted to the original authors, the website team contacted several of them to ask permission to re-publish their books online for free. Each Ebook had an introduction and chapter-by-chapter commentary by the original author, new illustrations and a dedicated message board. They were released at a rate of one-three chapters per week on Thursdays or Fridays.

During this era of the website the following Ebooks were published - The Dying Days, illustrated by Allan Bednar (23 May-15 August 2002 ); Human Nature, illustrated by Daryl Joyce (31 October 2002-17 January 2003 ); and The Well-Mannered War, illustrated by Daryl Joyce (c. 20 February-c. 1 May 2003 ).

2003-2005
In May 2003, in the build up to the 40th anniversary, the site was revamped. The site's tagline now read "Doctor Who - the official site. 10,000 pages of news, webcasts, competitions, pictures, video clips and more...". To celebrate the news of Doctor Who's return it was temporarily changed to read "Doctor Who - it's coming back. Oh my! Goodness me. What lovely news. Oooh. Well. Simply marvellous. Wheeee!". On 8 March 2005, after the launch of the news series' website, the original sites' address was amended to http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/classic.shtml.

New sections of the website introduced in this era:
 * Shada (4 April 2003)
 * BBC Connector (c. 20 October 2003)
 * Scream of the Shalka (31 October 2003)
 * New TV Series (11 November 2003 )
 * Webcasts (December 2003; collected the online webcasts into one section)
 * Companions Guide (25 May 2004 )
 * WhoSpy (20 July 2004 )
 * Radiophon-A-Tron (20 December 2004 )

During this era of the website the following PhotoNovels were published - The Highlanders (27 June-18 July 2003 ); The Underwater Menace (25 July-15 August 2003 ); The Enemy of the World (8-22 January, 5-19 February 2004 ); The Daleks' Master Plan: Day of Armageddon (30 January 2004 ); The Crusade (8-29 July 2004 ); and The Evil of the Daleks (26 August-7 October 2004 ).

During this era of the website the following Ebooks were published - Lungbarrow, illustrated by Daryl Joyce (22 August-7 November 2003 ); The Scales of Injustice, illustrated by Daryl Joyce (4 March-15 April 2004 ); The Sands of Time, illustrated by Peter McKinstry (22 April-24 June 2004 ); and The Empire of Glass, illustrated by Mike Nicholson & Clayton Hickman (14 October-9 December 2004 ).

The final two Ebooks were also made available to download to handheld devices. They used the PalmReader (.pdb), Microsoft Reader (.lit) and MobiPocket (.prc) formats.

TARDIS Tennis was added to the "Game Zone" section on 21 June 2003.

Shada was another co-production with Big Finish, and again had to be taken offline for six months when the CD was released. It came down on 8 December 2003 and returned episodically from 8 June-13 July 2004.

The "BBC Connector" chat service pilot launched on c. 20 October 2003 on the Doctor Who website. It allowed users to chat in real time with other people on the site and ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. On 4 June 2004 the website team began to run special themed chats between 8:30pm-12:00am each evening; the topics were Who history on Mondays, General Who chat on Tuesdays & Saturdays, CDs on Wednesdays, Books on Thursdays and DVDs on Fridays. The chat service shut down on 14 March 2005.

The "Message Board" section closed on 20 April 2004.

2005 onwards
In August 2005 the original site's address was moved to http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/index.shtml, and the site was refreshed to match the design and layout of the new series site, but focused solely on the "Classic Series". This coincided with BBC Radio 7's broadcast of four Eighth Doctor Big Finish audio stories starting on 6 August 2005.

On 8 June 2006 the site launched The Beginner's Guide to Doctor Who, a flash-based animated guide to the classic series, targeted at fans of the new series who wanted to learn about the history of the show. Alongside this the "Episode Guide" was refreshed incorporating the new series graphics and fonts.

In c. March 2009 the site had one final refresh, with a new flash-based animated homepage with links to five new "Monster" pages, all of which had appeared in the new series - The Sontarans, The Master, The Cybermen, The Daleks and Davros. As of February 2019 this is still the homepage, although many sections have been taken down or no longer work properly.

2005
See main: Doctor Who website/Gallery Beginning on 8 March 2005 in the run-up to Rose, the new series content on the cult page was moved to a new website, with the address http://bbc.co.uk/doctorwho. The design was based on various sizes of hexagonal graphics and the home page featured a countdown clock, counting down to the broadcast of Rose. The site was designed by Lee Binding & Clayton Hickman.

The new site was split into the following sections:
 * DOCTOR WHO
 * Video Clips and Trailers (various new & classic series clips in RealPlayer format)
 * Downloads (featuring screensavers, .mp3 and .wav audio files and the officially licensed Doctor Who theme ringtone)
 * Desktop Wallpaper (quickly renamed Pictures; featuring pictures in the following sizes for mobile phones and PCs - 128px, 176px, 288px, 800px & 1024px)
 * Meet the Doctor & Meet Rose (both linked to the Characters page, which was then renamed The TARDIS Crew after Jack joined)
 * The Making of Doctor Who (featuring WhoSpy, Video Diaries, Photo Stories and TARDIS 360° Views)
 * The Classic Series (linking back to the old cult page)
 * Series Info

Once the series started more sections were added:
 * Confidential
 * Episode Guide
 * News
 * Dalek Game

2005-08
See main: Doctor Who website/Gallery On 18 November 2005 the website had a small refresh to coincide with the start of David Tennant's tenure as The Doctor. The site made more use of the circular Gallifreyan text motifs and animated gifs.

During the RTD era, BBC Online worked extensively with the Doctor Who production office to deliver a considerable amount of content for the show, particularly when it was actively in season. Each episode got its own home page, and each of these home pages had extensive content, ranging from interviews to Doctor Who Confidential snippets, to flash video games.

2008-10
See main: Doctor Who website/Gallery The website got a fairly extensive facelift on 2 April 2008 for the Donna Noble season, and it stayed with this "series 4" design until David Tennant left the programme. The new site's address was http://bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4.

At this point the site was split into the following sections:
 * Home
 * News (split into the following categories - Latest, Production, Media, Awards, Reviews, Classic and Archive; was replaced Features)
 * Episodes (split into the following categories - Series Four, Series Three, Series Two, Series One and Specials - with features like Fact File and Fear Forecast.
 * Characters (split into the following categories - The Doctor, Companions, Friends & Allies, Monsters/Villians and Ships & Gadgets)
 * Games (split into the following categories - Action Games, Strategy Games, Jigsaws and Other Games)
 * Videos
 * Images (split into the following categories - Wallpapers and Screensavers)
 * Audio
 * Create (contained Comic Maker & Trailer Maker)
 * Confidential
 * Archive (link to the old series 1-3 site; removed once those series content was added to the new site)

Sections added later:
 * Classic (link to the classic series website)
 * Features (added on 20 August 2009; split into the following categories - Adventure Calendar, Main Features, Bulletins, Interviews, Galleries, Quizzes, Video Features, Stories, Reviews, All Features and Archive)
 * Blog (ran to document the making of Dreamland between 20 August-12 November 2009 )

After initially focusing on Series 4, the new site gradually added Series 1-3 content from the old website, adding to it in some cases. The video and audio content was converted from RealPlayer/Windows Media Video to high quality flash format. This process was completed on 8 December 2008.

After transmission of The End of Time the RTD era logo was replaced with the new Series 5 one.

In very general terms, webpages developed for the site during this period were characterised by a red colour palate and use of the Deviant Strain and Trebuchet MS fonts.

Moffat era
On 24 March 2010, the Doctor Who website underwent radical simplification, with all parts of the BBC website being made to follow a more modular, unified design. Though still active, the volume of new material flowing into the Doctor Who website radically decreased. The new site's address was http://bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw.

In the spring of 2012, the BBC website underwent further simplification, with the standard template modified to add more integration with social media and iPlayer, and remove all flash animated content.

Broadly speaking, webpages during this time were readily identifiable by their blue colour palate and use of the Gazz font.

BBC Studios website
In 2013, BBC Studios opened a second website at http://doctorwho.tv to celebrate Doctor Who's 50th anniversary. , this website has more content and activity than the programme website at bbc.co.uk.

Along with games, and short articles on the Doctor's friends and enemies, this website is used frequently to report on the latest news in the wider Doctor Who franchise — on television, comics, novels and audio stories.

Chibnall era
The present website address is https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006q2x0.