The Doctor

"The Doctor" was the primary alias of a renegade Time Lord from Gallifrey who journeyed through time and space with various companions in his obsolete and "borrowed" Type 40 TARDIS.

Though largely a believer in non-violent conflict resolution, he was, when absolutely necessary, a great warrior. Indeed, some civilisations in the the universe translated the word doctor as warrior, (TV: A Good Man Goes to War) whilst others saw him as a compassionate benefactor, worthy of their admiration and compassion. (TV: Last of the Time Lords, The Wedding of River Song)

Numerous good deeds aside, he was indisputably responsible for billions of deaths at his conclusion to the Last Great Time War. (TV: Dalek) He was virtually the only Time Lord survivor of that great conflict with the Daleks, largely because he ended it by obliterating both races. (TV: The End of Time) However, the Daleks kept returning despite his actions. (TV: The Parting of the Ways, Doomsday, Daleks in Manhattan, The Stolen Earth, Victory of the Daleks)

From the latter years of his first incarnation onward, he had a pronounced affinity for Earth and the human race. After departing Gallifrey, he voluntarily chose to spend time on the planet, (TV: An Unearthly Child, AUDIO: Summer, The Haunting of Thomas Brewster) choosing it as the place of his exile during most of his third incarnation, (TV: Spearhead from Space - The Three Doctors) and even owning property in Kent (COMIC: Fellow Travellers, PROSE: Verdigris, Warlock, Warchild, The Dying Days, Mad Dogs and Englishmen) and New York City. (PROSE: The Forgotten Army) He favoured Great Britain as a frequently visited location, taking most of his companions from there. (TV: An Unearthly Child, Spearhead from Space, The Time Monster, Rose, Smith and Jones, Partners in Crime, etc) Even before the destruction of Gallifrey, the Doctor spent much more time on Earth than on his homeworld.

Name
The Doctor's true name remains unknown to all but a very few individuals, such as Samantha Jones and River Song. (PROSE: Vanderdeken's Children, TV: Forest of the Dead) His real name was not used by the Time Lords, even in the formal setting of legal trials. (TV: The War Games, The Trial of a Time Lord, The End of Time) According to, he chose this name according to a Gallifreyan custom to reflect his constant need to make people better. (TV: The Sound of Drums)

The title "Doctor" was not undeserved; he did hold one or more doctorates of some sort, (TV: The Armageddon Factor, The God Complex) formally studied medicine on at least 19th century Earth, (TV: The Moonbase) and frequently displayed detailed medical knowledge. (TV: The Ark, Frontios, The Empty Child, New Earth, The Time of Angels, The Curse of the Black Spot et al.) At least some versions of his sonic screwdriver performed medical scans and healed minor wounds. (TV: The Empty Child, The Vampires of Venice, A Good Man Goes to War) He showed knowledge on how to help someone thrown by an explosion recover quickly. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) Although his first incarnation had claimed not to be a doctor of medicine, (TV: "The Forest of Fear", "Mighty Kublai Khan") and his third and tenth incarnations claimed to be a doctor of "everything", (TV: Spearhead from Space, Utopia) by his eleventh life the Doctor claimed to hold doctorates in at least medicine and cheesemaking. (TV: The God Complex) The doctor fell in love with captin jack and had babies

According to Pompeiian soothsayers, his name was written in the stars of the Medusa Cascade. (TV: The Fires of Pompeii) Members of an unidentified race of pan-dimensional beings also knew the Doctor's real name at one point. (AUDIO: The Last Voyage) In one account, he had taken the moniker after his first contact with humans. Colonists on the medical/penal colony of Iwa began calling him "Doctor" after his arrival. He failed to correct them. After they left the planet, "the Doctor" simply kept the name he had been given by the humans. (PROSE: Frayed) River Song believed, however, that the Doctor had influenced the etymology of the noun doctor, and was, in several languages, the original source of the word. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)

According to Dorium Maldovar and the Silence, the oldest and most dangerous question in the universe was "Doctor Who?" The Doctor's true name was apparently the answer, but his reason for hiding it is unknown. Dorium claimed the Doctor had been running from the question all his life, but why he had to flee from his own name is a mystery. According to the Silence, "Silence must fall when the question is asked", but it is unknown what this meant. (TV: The Wedding of River Song) At some point River Song learned his name, but the Doctor claimed there was only one reason he would ever reveal it. (TV: Forest of the Dead)

The Seventh Doctor mentioned to Trevor Sigma that his nickname at college was Theta Sigma. (TV: The Happiness Patrol)

Age
The Doctor's age was a matter of great confusion, largely caused by his own statements. The Second Doctor once gave his age in Earth terms as 450 (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen). On two separate occasions, the Third Doctor implied that he may have been several thousand years old. (TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Mind of Evil) Immediately after his sixth regeneration, his seventh self claimed to be 953. (TV: Time and the Rani) The Tenth Doctor later claimed to be 903. (TV: Voyage of the Damned) Also, at least prior to leaving Amy and Rory behind, (TV: The God Complex) the Eleventh Doctor maintained an age less than his seventh incarnation. (TV: Flesh and Stone, The Impossible Astronaut)

The eleventh incarnation of the Doctor later claimed to the Ponds that he was 1200 years old. (TV: A Town Called Mercy)

Romana I once caught him "rounding down" his age, (TV: The Ribos Operation) while the Eighth Doctor once flatly admitted that he didn't necessarily use the same definition of the word year each time he gave his age to someone. (AUDIO: Orbis)

Before the Time War
The Doctor's familial relations were unclear at best. According to one account, the Doctor was one of the forty-five cousins created by the Loom of the House of Lungbarrow on Gallifrey. When the House disowned him, he said he had "other families." (PROSE: Lungbarrow) However, the Eighth Doctor once let it be understood that he was born to a human mother. (TV: Doctor Who)

According to some accounts, the Doctor's father was a renegade Time Lord named Ulysses and his mother was a human from the late 19th century, Penelope Gate. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors, The Gallifrey Chronicles)

The Eighth Doctor told Grace Holloway he had a father. (TV: Doctor Who) The Tenth Doctor told Sally Sparrow he had had several weddings, (TV: Blink) and told Ood Sigma that one of them was to Elizabeth I. (TV: The End of Time) An earlier incarnation had also been wed, (PROSE: Cold Fusion) probably to Patience. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors) One brother was Irving Braxiatel. (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle) The Doctor had, in his own words, been "a dad". (TV: Fear Her) These children were "sons or daughters, or both." (PROSE: The Eleventh Tiger)

He had at least one grandchild, Susan Foreman, (TV: An Unearthly Child) and two others, John and Gillian. (COMIC: The Klepton Parasites)

At one point, the Doctor became the adoptive father of a female Time Lord named Miranda Dawkins, whom his eighth incarnation reared until her mid-teens. (PROSE: Father Time) Miranda later gave birth to a daughter, Zezanne, and died while trying to protect the Doctor. (PROSE: Sometime Never...)

The Doctor also had a great-grandson named Alex, the son of Susan and David Campbell. (AUDIO: An Earthly Child) Alex went on several adventures with the Eighth Doctor and backpacked around the Earth with Lucie Miller. (AUDIO: Lucie Miller) Susan and David also had adopted children, Barbara, Ian and David (PROSE: Legacy of the Daleks)—meaning that the Doctor was an adoptive great-grandfather as well as a biological one.

When Dr Constantine said that he used to be a father and a grandfather before the war, the Ninth Doctor said that he was the same, implying all his family had been lost. (TV: The Empty Child) Some may have been killed at his own hand at the conclusion of the Time War, (TV: The End of Time) though some had died, or at least gone missing, earlier. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Curse of Fenric, AUDIO: To the Death)

After the Time War
Genetic material from the Doctor in his tenth incarnation was used to create a daughter, Jenny. Although initially spurning her, he soon considered Jenny his daughter and invited her to travel with him in the TARDIS. Before she could join him, however, she was shot. The Doctor believed Jenny to have died, but, unbeknownst to him, she underwent a partial regeneration after his departure and survived, at which point she set out on her own life of adventure. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter)

When the Earth was relocated to the Medusa Cascade, a clone of the Doctor was created; this clone later was exiled by the Doctor to Pete's World. Technically, the clone could be considered a relative of the Doctor's. Also, Sarah Jane Smith referred to the Doctor's companions as his family, saying, "You act like such a lonely man, but you've got the biggest family on Earth!" (TV: Journey's End)

The Eleventh Doctor married River Song, making Amy Pond and Rory Williams his mother- and father-in-law. (TV: The Wedding of River Song) He also shared an adventure with Brian Williams, his grandfather-in-law. (TV: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)

Marriages
The First Doctor was accidentally engaged to Cameca in the 15th century. (TV: The Aztecs)

After Gallifrey was destroyed in the Second War in Heaven, the Eighth Doctor married Scarlette in order to ceremonially tie himself to the planet Earth. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)

During an encounter with Ood Sigma, the Tenth Doctor claimed to have married 'Good Queen Bess', or Elizabeth I, a decision that didn't end well and led to her declaring him an enemy. (TV: The Shakespeare Code, The End of Time, The Beast Below, The Wedding of River Song) This does not appear to be the Doctor's only marriage, as he remarked to Sally Sparrow about being "rubbish at weddings, especially my own." (TV: Blink) In his eleventh incarnation, the Doctor accidentally became engaged to Marilyn Monroe, and married her the same night in what he later claimed was not a real chapel. (TV: A Christmas Carol)

River Song often hinted that she and the Doctor had a physical relationship somewhere in her past and his future relative to the Eleventh Doctor's encounter with the Silence in Florida. (TV: Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead, The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone, The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, Day of the Moon)

A Teselecta version of the Eleventh Doctor with him hiding inside married her in an alternate timeline shortly before his "death". Later in their individual timelines, they spoke as if they considered themselves husband and wife. (TV: The Wedding of River Song, The Angels Take Manhattan)

Languages
The Doctor said he could speak five billion languages. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) His native language was probably Modern Gallifreyan, but he seemed to prefer speaking British English, (TV: The Mind Robber) always with an accent that was similar to accents used in the British Isles. (TV: An Unearthly Child, The Power of the Daleks, Spearhead from Space, Robot, Castrovalva, et al.) This accent changed from incarnation to incarnation. For example, the Doctor's seventh incarnation spoke with an accent similar to one used in Scotland. (TV: Time and the Rani) Both Rose Tyler and Harriet Jones noted the accent of his ninth self sounded like he came from "the north" or was "a northern accent", referring to the north of England. (TV: Rose, World War Three) American Grace Holloway once told a San Franciscan policeman that the Eighth Doctor was "British". (TV: Doctor Who)

He could read and write Old High Gallifreyan, (TV: The Time of Angels) a skill unusual even among Time Lords. (TV: The Five Doctors) He spoke the language of the Judoon, (TV: The Stolen Earth) Delphon (a language "spoken" using only eyebrow movements), (TV: Spearhead from Space) several Chinese languages, (TV: The Mind of Evil, The Talons of Weng-Chiang) Ancient North Martian, (TV: The Waters of Mars) and Tritovore (TV: Planet of the Dead). He knew at least some Sycoraxic. (TV: The Christmas Invasion) He did not seem to understand French in his second incarnation, (TV: The War Games) but later became fluent in it across several periods of French history. (TV: The Girl in the Fireplace) He also spoke "sabre-toothed tiger" (PROSE: Sick Building), "baby" (TV: A Good Man Goes to War, Closing Time), "cat". (TV: The Lodger) and "horse". (TV: A Town Called Mercy)

The Doctor is gay deal with it

Influence
The Doctor belonged to the Prydonian Chapter, the most important chapter of Time Lord society. (TV: The Deadly Assassin) He had a profound influence on many worlds and was written into their histories (TV: Forest of the Dead); as a result, he was the recipient of many honours including being made a noble of Draconia (TV: Frontier in Space) and a knight of the British Empire. (TV: Tooth and Claw)

Having broken the Time Lords' non-interference policy, in his second incarnation he was put on trial as a renegade. (TV: The War Games) Subsequently, for a time, he acted as agent of the Time Lords' Celestial Intervention Agency before the beginning of his sentence on 20th century Earth. (PROSE: Players, World Game) Following his defeat of Omega, which saved Gallifrey, he was granted a pardon and given his freedom. (TV: The Three Doctors)

In his fourth incarnation, as part of a ploy to outwit invaders of Gallifrey, he was a candidate for the position of Lord President of the High Council. (TV: The Invasion of Time) In his fifth incarnation, he was put on trial again for recklessness. (COMIC: The Stockbridge Horror) He was later given the title of Lord President by Councillor Flavia, against his wishes. He pretended to accept the office but ran away in his TARDIS. (TV: The Five Doctors) Prior to the Doctor's trial during his sixth incarnation, he was deposed in absentia and put on trial for breaking the non-interference policy and later in the same trial, for genocide. The validity of the trial was called into question when it was discovered it had been orchestrated by an evil future manifestation of the Doctor, the Valeyard, and mooted. (TV: The Trial of a Time Lord)

He is really really really gay and fucked captin jack

"Doctor Who"

 * For a further in-universe reference of the Doctor's name, please see the "Doctor Who?" running joke.

The use of the name "Doctor Who" when referring to the Doctor is disapproved of by most fans. Despite this, the ending credits for the series gave his name as "Doctor Who" or "Dr. Who", from 1963 until 1980, when new producer John Nathan-Turner changed this policy, making his name in the end credits "the Doctor". This remained in place through the end of the original series in 1989. Executive Producer Russell T Davies used "Doctor Who" when the series returned in 2005, but Tenth Doctor actor David Tennant asked to change it back to "the Doctor" beginning in 2006. This tradition has continued into the Matt Smith era.

Throughout the franchise's history it has been common for media and cast members to refer to the character as "Dr. Who".

In the series, only one character, WOTAN in 1966's The War Machines, has ever directly referred to him by this name. In the 2005 episode Rose, a website called "Who is Doctor Who?" is introduced, though the name is presented as a question put forward by a conspiracy theorist and no one actually uses the name in dialogue. A line of dialogue written for TV: The Empty Child, but cut, would have had the Doctor himself use the name as part of a joke involving Star Trek (after being hailed as Mr. Spock by Rose, the Doctor was to have muttered, "I'd rather be Dr Who than Star Trek").

Other media, 1960s and early 1970s Doctor Who annuals, comics and Target Books (most notably the Doctor Who and the Zarbi, not technically a Target Books novelization, but reprinted by them) have called the Doctor "Doctor Who". Even then, dialogue between characters usually referred to him as "the Doctor".

Casting
, every actor to portray the Doctor has been male, white, and born in the United Kingdom. Despite the fact that the Doctor is not a native of Britain, or of Earth for that matter, every actor to play him so far has had a British accent, much in the way most aliens in the Star Trek franchise tend to speak with an American accent. The type of English accent has varied from one incarnation to the next. The earliest incarnations used RP, whereas more recent incarnations have had Estuary accents. The Ninth Doctor was unique in that he had a Northern accent, causing Rose to ask why an alien would have a Northern accent, to which he replied, "Lots of planets have a north." (TV: Rose) At least one black actor (Paterson Joseph) was considered a leading contender for the role of the Eleventh Doctor. Actors from the United States and Canada (in one case Australia) have been rumoured as contenders for the role over the years. Actors considered for the role have varied widely in age, from their twenties to sixties. To date the oldest actor to be cast as the Doctor has been William Hartnell, who was 55; the youngest has been Matt Smith, who was 26 when cast. In 2012, Tom Baker was 78 after his appearance in Big Finish Productions' Fourth Doctor Adventures audio dramas was released, making him the oldest actor to play the part in an officially licensed capacity. Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann, all in their fifties or sixties, also continue to portray the Doctor in licensed audio dramas produced by Big Finish, with McGann also appearing in audio dramas produced by Big Finish and BBC Radio for broadcast on BBC7 radio. In the 2000s and 2010s, Tom Baker also portrayed the Doctor in AudioGO's Hornets' Nest, Demon Quest and Serpent Crest audio dramas.

Although the character is portrayed as white, there have been black actors who were considered for the role. Among them included comedian Eddie Murphy back in 1996, David Harewood, Charles Venn, Paterson Joseph and Robbie Gee. Colin Salmon was a strong contender to play the Eleventh Doctor.

Longest-serving Doctor
There are several different methods for calculating who was the "longest serving Doctor". The most commonsensical definition is simply that of the actor who played the role on television for the longest continuous period. This mantle goes to Tom Baker, who was the Fourth Doctor from June 1974 to March 1981, or 7 years, 9 months. Baker is also the longest-serving Doctor in terms of number of individual episodes and amount of screen time. Thus he is generally considered to be the "longest-serving Doctor".

But there are other methods of measurement — all of which exclude Dimensions in Time.
 * For 92 of the 104 Saturdays that comprised 1964 and 1965, William Hartnell's credit appeared after each episode of Doctor Who without fail. Sure, he did sometimes take a holiday and pre-film the odd insert, but, to paraphrase WOTAN, "Dr. Who was required" for all but six weeks in both 1964 and 1965. Call Hartnell the "longest-serving-within-a-single-year-Doctor".  Troughton is the closest Doctor to this record, but by 1966, Doctor Who was getting more like an eight- or nine-week gap each year.
 * Peter Davison holds the record for the greatest length of time between his initial performance in the last episode of Logopolis, and Time Crash . The two events were separated by 26 years 8 months.
 * Sylvester McCoy had the longest run between bookending regeneration scenes. The span from the premiere of the first episode of Time and the Rani to his regeneration in Doctor Who was approximately 8 years and 8 months.
 * Paul McGann was notionally the longest-serving incumbent in the role, as he debuted in May 1996 and Christopher Eccleston's premiere didn't happen until March 2005. Being very generous, therefore, McGann was the "current Doctor" for a total of 8 years and 10 months.  However, this is probably stretching a point, since obviously he was actually replaced not once but twice by the BBC.  He effectively lost his incumbency once Richard E. Grant was cast as the Shalka Doctor.
 * McGann is on more solid ground when all forms of media are considered., he's starred in more performed Doctor Who, given his prolific run on audio, than anyone else.  If audio is considered as an equal performed art to television, he has far surpassed even Tom Baker in terms of amount of recorded material featuring his Doctor — though the fact that Baker began recording audio adventures in 2010 threatens McGann's record.
 * The Eighth Doctor, though not McGann himself, is the longest-serving incumbent comic strip Doctor, in terms of the amount of time between his debut in Dreadnought on 1 June 1996, and his final appearance in The Flood on 2 March 2005. Call it 9 years and 9 months.
 * The Tenth Doctor is the longest-serving comic strip Doctor, in terms of the total number of stories which featured his incarnation. This is primarily due to the number of different publications that were granted comic licences during David Tennant's tenure in the role.
 * The situation with books is a very close battle between the Seventh and Eighth Doctors, both of whom had long-running series. However, the Eighth Doctor is the longest-running both in terms of time and number of books published, as seen at this list of novels per Doctor.

The issue of the longest-serving Doctor was a source of controversy on British game show The Million-Pound Drop, which asked the question with the choices of McCoy, McGann, Eccleston, and Tennant; the team split their £650,000 between McCoy and McGann, only to find out that the "correct" answer was Tennant. Once the error was discovered (partly since the question was fundamentally flawed due to the absence of Tom Baker), the team was brought back to continue where they left off with £325,000 and ended up winning £25,000.

Analogous characters
There have been several characters outside the confines of the DWU which have been broadly modelled on general aspects of the Doctor. Such "pastiches" are examined in greater detail elsewhere.

Docteur El Doctor (general) Докторът Доктор Der Doctor De Doctor Doctor