Whoisdoctorwho.co.uk

whoisdoctorwho.co.uk was the website created by Clive Finch in the early 21st century to document the Doctor in Earth's history. It was run by Mickey Smith after Clive's death during the "Dummy Massacre" and by David Roberts after Mickey remained in Pete's World.

Name
While the website had the url www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk, (PROSE: Rose Tyler) the name of the website varied between accounts. When Rose Tyler visited it in 2005, it was under the name Doctor Who?, (TV: Rose, PROSE: Have You Seen This Man?, Mickey's Blog) although another account indicated it was called Have you seen the Doctor????????. (PROSE: Rose) When Mickey first began using the site, he renamed it to Who is Doctor Who? to match the url, (PROSE: Dummy Massacre, Mars) and by 2007, he renamed it to Defending the Earth!. (WC: Lifeboat Museum, etc.)

2005
Beginning sometime around March, Clive Finch released an open call on whoisdoctorwho.co.uk for anyone who had seen the Doctor to contact him and tell their stories. He got replies from hundreds of people, including A. Fergus, Peri Brown, Arthur Dent, Mr Yates, and Sarah Jane Smith. Some of the readers, such as r willimas, met the Ninth Doctor on the very same day they wrote to Clive. (PROSE: Have You Seen This Man?)

The website had several photographs of the Ninth Doctor on it. (PROSE: Have You Seen This Man?) On 5 March 2005, Rose found the website as the first listed result for the search term "doctor blue box" on search-wise.net. Upon accessing the site, Rose was greeted with a photograph of the Ninth Doctor standing in a crowd, accompanied by a single sentence: "Have you seen this man[?]". Beneath was a link to contact Clive. (TV: Rose)

According to one account, in which the website was named Have you seen the Doctor????????, Rose found the website as the sixth listed result on the search engine she used, while Mickey's band No Hot Ashes worked on a new name in Mickey's kitchen, settling on "Bad Wolf". In this account, the website had a photograph of the Ninth Doctor running away from what seemed to be the Taj Mahal, with "big blurred birds" in the sky. There was a gallery of photos, primarily pictures of a curly haired man in a long scarf, taken in a variety of locations, from Paris, Berlin, Rio, the Great Wall of China, a beach, to a tundra. In three of the photos, Rose saw the same chunky wooden box.

Rose read about Clive and his family, and his plight to find the Doctor, calling upon his readers to contact him, to send photos, anecdotes or top-secret documents, via his email address or his telephone number. Rose found an "About Me" section on the website, which contained photos of Clive and his family, one at Thorpe Park. She mused that these photos could be stolen by someone with ill-intent, but these doubts were dissuaded when she clicked the provided link to the estate agents where Clive was employed, which contained a "staff bio" about Clive. Rose emailed him, and within twenty minutes got a response and they agreed to meet. (PROSE: Rose)

Immediately after what he called the "Dummy Massacre", (PROSE: Dummy Massacre) following Clive Finch's death, (TV: Rose, PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters, etc.) Mickey Smith (PROSE: Rose Tyler) took over the website anonymously and renamed it "Who is Doctor Who?". On the website, he shared stories from the site's readers who had witnessed the attack, also leaving an area for new submissions. (PROSE: Dummy Massacre) On 2 April, the webmaster updated the site about how there was very little physical evidence of the Doctor's involvement despite the many eyewitnesses that had seen him, about the attack of a "special model" of the Killer Dummies at Kennington restaurant involving Rose and the Doctor, the growing conspiracy that involved the lack of media coverage and the willingness of people to forget the attack, the death of Clive, and the claims that millions of people heard a "strange disembodied voice" over the weekend. The webmaster emphasised his determination to prove the truth, which he values more than his life. (PROSE: The Doctor Was Involved in the Dummy Massacre)

2006
By 2006, www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk website contained classified information about UNIT. This fact was mentioned in a report created by Sergeant Catherine Petts submitted on an operations board in a secure part of the UNIT website, and Sergeant J Frinkstein changed the passwords to the site, though Major Jenny Maguire's suggestion to plant misinformation onto the site was seemingly denied by Sergeant A. Frederick. (PROSE: Rose Tyler)

In late 2006, Mickey wrote about how he felt Rose had died (PROSE: Mars) following her short return to Earth after the Ninth Doctor sent Rose away from the Game Station before the ensuing Dalek attack and subsequent return to the future after breaking into the TARDIS and absorbing the Time Vortex through the TARDIS's heart and becoming Bad Wolf, (TV: The Parting of the Ways) and that Daffodil had informed him that the Guinevere probe was hiding something, which Mickey became convinced of when he investigated the Guinevere website despite initially not thinking much of a seemingly mundane Mars probe. However, he was unable to investigate further, until Christmas Day. He told his readers, in the meantime, to remember the truth of the alien attacks. (PROSE: Mars)

2007
The readers of the website were contacted by Ricky Smith, a native of Pete's World, instead of Mickey as usual, who told them they had to look on the Internet for a code to take down Cybus Industries. (WC: Secret Code) After going into a chatroom to speak with "ChatGuest1", the readers were sent across the Internet to find the correct code, going to websites belonging to International Electromatics, Cybus Industries, Cybus Fitness, Henrik & Son, and Millingdale. They eventually found the correct password, "binary9", after using the Cybus Industries Staff Intranet. (GAME: Cybus Spy)

After Mickey remained in Pete's World to fight off the Cybermen, (TV: The Age of Steel) David Roberts, (PROSE: Lights In The Sky) aka David R, took over the website, having previously met Mickey. He announced on his Cheapserve profile that he was leaving the site to focus on (PROSE: Who Am I?) Defending the Earth!. (GAME: The Wire, etc.)

When the Tenth Doctor looked up H.C. Clements on a mobile phone on Christmas Eve 2007, one of the pages he went past when he used his sonic screwdriver on the phone was Defending the Earth!, which had an interview with Henry van Statten. (TV: The Runaway Bride)

Undated events
Clive Finch's website was mentioned in The Secret Lives of Monsters, a book written to expose the previously classified information surrounding Earth's alien invasions; the book's author acknowledged the updates to the website even after Clive's death, and that if the information that was contained on the website was truthful, then it "impl[ied] a terrifying possibility" that the Nestene Consciousness was collective mind that controlled plastic and had a long-spanning history of the colonisation of other planets for millions of years. (PROSE: The Secret Lives of Monsters)

Behind the scenes
The BBC Web Team created a real-life version of the in-universe Who is Doctor Who? website, which is available at whoisdoctorwho.co.uk. This website included a variety of fiction as well as an alternate reality game.

Other information

 * The name of the website being "Doctor Who?" was mentioned by Rebecca Levene in her review of Rose.