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.

1998-2001
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.

In the autumn of 2000 the website homepage had a small refresh. Newer sections introduced after this used the new style whilst existing sections remained unchanged.

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

Features and Interviews
This section had interviews and live chats with various Doctor Who people and articles about different Doctor Who topics.

The TV Companion, later Episode Guide
"Episode Guide" was a guide to various Doctor Who stories which were currently being repeated on UK Gold and BBC Two. New pages would be added as different stories were repeated, however this meant that there were many gaps in coverage especially in the First and Second Doctors' eras. The story pages were simply listed in alphabetical order. The information in this section was extracted and abridged from Doctor Who: The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker. Pages in this section followed a standard layout - Plot; Popular Myths; Things To Watch Out For; Quote, Unquote; and Analysis.

On 5 March 2003 the Episode Guide 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 tool called "Ooh, it's the one with..." which had been designed for the "Real Time" section in August 2002, was revamped and moved to this section to help visitors jog their childhood memories and find specific serials.

On 13 June 2003 a further update added pages for every cast and crew member.

Who News, later News
"Who News" was compiled monthly by Julian Knott. It covered the repeats schedule, merchandise releases, upcoming events such as signings and conventions; and film, television and radio programmes which involved Doctor Who alumni.

Quiz, later Game Zone
"Game Zone" initially 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. In c. January 2000 The Matrix Quiz and Cult TV Quizmaster had been added, as well as a Doctor Who screensaver for PC & Mac.

In c. June 2001 Cult TV Quizmaster was removed and replaced with eight easy quizzes, one each for the first seven Doctors and a Timelord Triva quiz. In c. August 2004 the Timelord Triva was replaced with a Christopher Eccleston quiz.

Who Trumps was added to the section on 8 November 2002 and TARDIS Tennis was added on 21 June 2003.

The Doctors, later Doctors
"The Doctors" had a short profile on each Doctor written by David J. Howe. On each Doctor's page there were pop-up windows for each of his companions with a short summery of their time in the TARDIS.

Alien Fact File, later Monsters
"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.

Forum, later Message Board
The Doctor Who "Message Board" was open every day from 9am-10pm on weekdays and 10am-10pm at weekends. It closed on 20 April 2004.

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

More websites were added to the section between 2001-2002: Doctor Who Appreciation Society, Big Finish, Missing Episodes Gateway, Telos Publishing, Product Enterprise, This Planet Earth and Media Collectables.

Q&A
In the "Q&A" section visitors to the website could email any question about Doctor Who and the site would try to answer them. It later moved to the Doctor Who "Message Board".

Radio News, later Radio Pilot
This section was added in June 2000 to document the progress of what became WC: Death Comes to Time. It became a sub-section of "Death Comes to Time" and renamed "The Making Of..." in June 2001.

Virtual TARDIS
The "Virtual TARDIS" was a 3D interactive version of the TARDIS console room made using Macromedia Shockwave which users could explore and pilot. It was added in c. July 2000. It was later merged into the TARDIS-Cam section when it launched.

Photo Galleries
The "Photo Galleries" section contained wallpapers to download, available in three sizes - 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768. Initially it only had one gallery of 17 Dalek photos. It was added in the autumn of 2000.

Books
The "Books" section was a guide to all forthcoming Doctor Who books. It contained a release schedule, synopses, covers, chapter extracts, interviews and fan reviews, organised by Doctor. It was added in December 2000.

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 section. This gave fans the information needed to send their proposals for Doctor Who novels to BBC Worldwide and the chance to be published.

On 9 January 2004 the section was revamped and reorganised.

Dead Ringers
The "Dead Ringers" section collected many of prank calls featuring Jon Culshaw's Tom Baker impression from the BBC Radio 4 series. It was added in December 2000. It was made a sub-section of "Clips" in c. July 2004.

DVD and Video
The "DVD and Video" section was a guide to all forthcoming Doctor Who VHS and DVD releases. It contained a release schedule, synopses, covers, clips, interviews and fan reviews, organised by Doctor. It was added in January 2001.

CD and Audio
The "CD and Audio" section was a guide to all forthcoming Doctor Who adventures on CD produced by the BBC Radio Collection and Big Finish. It contained a release schedule, synopses, covers, clips, interviews and fan reviews, organised by Doctor. It was added in January 2001.

Clips
The "Clips" section collected together the various video and audio clips uploaded to the BBC Cult site, organised by Doctor. It was added in March 2001.

2001-2004
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 2003, in the build up to the 40th anniversary, the site was revamped. The pages were made wider with new banners. 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!".

PhotoNovels
"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. It was added on 6 June 2001.

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 ); The Smugglers (23 January-13 February 2003 ); 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 ).

Webcasts
"Webcasts" were new animated episodes of Doctor Who broadcast over the internet beginning in July 2001. Originally each webcast had its own section until in December 2003 they were collected together in one section.

Death Comes to Time (13 July 2001 & 14 February-3 May 2002)
The first webcast Death Comes to Time came about after a pilot radio episode commissioned by BBC Radio 4 was rejected. BBCi decided to broadcast it instead but with animated artwork by Lee Sullivan. The pilot was a huge success and BBCi commissioned more episodes.

The "Death Comes to Time" section began on 15 June 2001. It only had the trailer for the episode but each Friday teaser images were added in the run-up to its broadcast. There were three teasers for the pilot, added on 22 June, 29 June & 6 July 2001.

The pilot broadcast on 13 July 2001, afterwards more features were added to the section including A Brief History of a Time Lord, TARDIS Databank, 4 photo galleries, a screensaver, a poll asking whether Doctor Who should return?, FAQs about the webcast and Cast and Crew listings.

Weekly teaser images were again added in the run-up to broadcast of the remaining episodes, there were five in total added on 11 January, 18 January, 25 January, 1 February & 8 February 2002

Again after the broadcast more features were added to the section including 13 video interviews, 5 more photo galleries, and Death Comes to Time: The Striptease.

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.

Real Time (2 August-6 September 2002)
The "Real Time" section began on c. 28 July 2002 with daily teaser images in the run-up to its broadcast. There five teasers added between c. 28 July-1 August 2002.

Throughout the broadcast new features were added to the section including a competition to win a signed copy of the script, a competition to win a copy of Spare Parts, History of the Cybermen, 5 photo galleries, 7 screensavers, 7 video interviews, clean music cues, FAQs about the webcast and Cast and Crew listings.

As with Death Comes to Time, BBCi's rights to stream Real Time only ran for a limited 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.

Shada (2 May-6 June 2003)
The "Shada" section began on 4 April 2003. It only had the trailer for the serial but each Friday teaser images were added in the run-up to its broadcast. There were three teasers, added on 11 April, 17 April & 25 April 2003.

Throughout the broadcast new features were added to the section including 11 video interviews, 3 photo galleries, outtakes' from the recording sessions, Director's Notes by Nicholas Pegg and Cast and Crew listings.

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.

Scream of the Shalka (13 November-18 December 2003)
The "Scream of the Shalka" section began on 31 October 2003 with a web teaser trailer.

Throughout the broadcast new features were added to the section including a competition to win a life-size Ninth Doctor display figure, 9 video interviews, a photo gallery, clean music cues, a puppet theatre craft kit and Cast and Crew listings.

TARDIS-Cam
"TARDIS-Cam" launched on 23 November 2001 for the 38th anniversary, it was a webcam with a constant feed of pictures and video of the TARDIS travelling throughout the universe. Fans could send in their own artwork and photos which were put into a sister webcam called Your TARDIS-Cam. Other features included A Beginner's Guide to the TARDIS, a screensaver and Making of gallery.

Chatrooms
In c. January 2002 a Doctor Who "Chatroom" was set up, it operated from 8pm-10pm on Wednesdays and Fridays. BBC Chatrooms were real-time rooms where up to 40-50 people chatted together online at the same time.

eBooks
"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. It was added on 23 May 2002.

Initially, like the webcasts, each eBook had its own section but by the start of third one on c. 20 February 2003 they were collected into one section.

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 ); The Well-Mannered War, illustrated by Daryl Joyce (c. 20 February-c. 1 May 2003 ); 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.

BBC Connector
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.

New TV Series
The "New TV Series" section started on 11 November 2003, it collected together all the information, news and interviews about Doctor Who's return to television. A feature called WhoSpy started on 20 July 2004. It uploaded a new behind-the-scenes photo every day throughout the filming of Series 1.

Companions Guide
The "Companions Guide" section began on 25 May 2004, following the casting of Billie Piper as Rose Tyler.

2004 onwards
On 17 August 2004 the website had a re-design increasing emphasis on the new series which was now in production. 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.

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

On 20 December 2004 the site launched Radiophon-A-Tron, a flash-based application to mix and re-mix the theme tune, it contained excerpts and samples of every version of the theme tune from 1963-89 including the "Deleware" theme.

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.