Family Guy (series)

Family Guy is an American adult animated television series created by for the.

The series is set in the fictional city of Quahog, Road Island, and stars the Griffin family, consisting of the overweight, idiot husband Peter, his nasally-voiced wife Lois, their children, the teenaged Meg and Chris, their infant Stewie, and their anthropomorphic talking dog, Brian. The show is known for its raunchy comedy style, and its use of metafictional.

MacFarlane developed the series from his two early animated short films,, with the two titular characters serving as the basis for Peter and Brian, culminating in a 1998 pilot episode that led to the series being picked up by the Fox Broadcasting Company for a 1999 premiere. The show was initially cancelled twice - first after the first two seasons, and again after the third - favourable DVD sales and high ratings from syndicated reruns led Fox to revive the show for a fourth series, from which it continues to run to this day.

The show's popularity has led to various other media, from video games to comics. A spin-off television series,, ran for four seasons from 2009 to 2013.

Family Guy and Doctor Who have a number of connections with each other, most notably in the form of a brief, officially endorsed crossover within Family Guy itself.

Crossover
Inside Family Guy was the fourth episode of the show's fifteenth season, originally aired in the US on 23 October. The episode opens with one of its famous cutaway gags: in this instance, a scene of the Griffin family watching a fictional episode of Doctor Who on TV, which the announcer introduces as Doctor Who Farted.

The skit sees the Tenth Doctor, his voice provided by a returning David Tennant, exiting the TARDIS after seemingly having passed gas inside. He then tries to dissuade his unnamed companion - voiced by reoccurring Family Guy actor, and Seth MacFarlane's sister, Rachael MacFarlane - from entering the ship so as not to get caught out.

The scene was the subject of a news article on the official Doctor Who website.

Other references on Family Guy
The Family Guy Star Wars parody "Blue Harvest" has Han Solo state that he finds travelling through lightspeed as very strange. It then shows through the window of the Millennium Falcon that they're in the intro for the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who.

In the episode "420", after the legalisation of marijuana in Quahog, Brian tells Lois that ratings for Doctor Who are "through the roof".

We find out in the episode "Welcome Back, Carter" that Peter owns an owl called "Doctor Who".

Strangely, in the episode "Meg Stinks!", after losing his hand, Peter then regenerates his hand back in a similar style to the Tenth Doctor in the Doctor Who episode "The Christmas Invasion". Peter's severed hand also produces another version of Peter, called Retep, in a similar style to the Meta-Crisis Doctor from the episode "Journey's End".

Actors
The Simpsons actor Dan Castellaneta, whose archived performances were used for Homer and Krusty in LEGO Dimensions and related media, reprised his roles as Homer and other characters in the season 13 crossover episode,.

Three other LEGO Dimensions actors who voiced characters on the series in its earlier seasons were Tara Strong, Frank Welker, and Chris Cox.

Will Sasso, who played Pete in the 1996 TV movie, voiced a parodical version of in the season 2 episode,.

Jane Carr who voiced the computer in the BBC audio story, Slipback, voiced Endora in the season 4 episode,.

Simon Cowell, who played himself in Looking for Pudsey, also voiced himself in the season 6 episode,, and in the season 14 episode,.

Marina Sirtis, who voiced Karen in The Year of Martha Jones audio story, The Last Diner, voiced herself in the season 7 episode,. She also appeared on The Cleveland Show, voicing a woman in the season 1 episode, Ladies' Night.

Ricky Gervais, who played Andy Millman in Extras: The Special, and Lucy Davis, who voiced Helen in the Torchwood: The Lost Files audio story, The House of the Dead, both appeared in the season 10 episode, Be Careful What You Fish For, as Billy and Joanna Finn, respectively.

Ian McKellen, who voiced the Great Intelligence in The Snowmen, voiced Dr. Cecil Pritchfield in the season 16 episode,.

Television channels
Family Guy airs in the United States on Fox, the channel on which the Doctor Who TV movie had its premiere three years prior to the animation's debut.

The BBC held the British terrestrial broadcasting rights to Family Guy for the majority of the 2000s and the former half of the 2010s, airing on BBC Two and, primarily, BBC Three.

In 2016, the BBC relinquished these rights to ITV; the series currently airs on ITV2. Inside Family Guy, the episode containing the Doctor Who crossover, had its UK premiere on the channel on 21 November 2016, less than a month after its US broadcast.

Due to their acquisition of 20th Century Entertainment in 2019, Family Guy is currently under the ownership of The Walt Disney Company; as such, the whole series, as well as The Cleveland Show, is available to stream on Disney+ in multiple territories via the hub.