Despite being voted the longest-running science fiction television series of all time, very little has been written about the early years of Dr WHO. But, at last, we have uncovered the secret history of TV’s venerable Timelord traveller in time/space. Let’s time-skip back more than 47 years to the nineteen hundred and sixties…

It begins with a feisty Canadian firebrand called Syd Numan who angrily arrived at the BBC in 1963 demanding that they scrap all their prestigious costume dramas and instead produce a “TV series for oddball infants who like science, history, and geometry. Or you will all get a jolly good smacked bottom!” Because he was all red in the face and in an uncontrollable rage, the frightened BBC management gave him £426, seven shillings and sixpence to produce 87 episodes a year until at least 1993.

Within minutes, Numan became bored of the idea exclaiming, “What a load of crackpot!” So he blackmailed two confused older gents, Don Winston and CBE ‘Bunny Boy’ Webster (CBE) into taking over. Both were highly experienced old-school BBC producers and, as such, had no idea what they were doing.

Winston was keen for the series to be about a mysterious ‘twerp’ stranded on planet Earth because his time machine was irreparable. Episodes would centre around his bungling efforts to fix the ship and, frustratingly, never exploring the whole of space and time; while ‘Bunny Boy’ wanted the stories to feature a team of adventurers, ‘the teenies’, whose time machine had shrunk them so small they were invisible and inaudible. “It would be very cheap because you wouldn’t need any actors,” ‘Bunny Boy’ insisted.

Numan declared both these ideas as, “Total dishwater!” So, with only half an hour left before production started, they went back to the drawing board. Out of their frantic, manic drawings, as they sobbed hot tears, a TV legend was born… Dr WHO!

The lead character would be known as ‘Doctor ?’ because he had forgotten to write down his second name, and – now more than 7 million years old – he is too embarrassed to go back and ask*. He is described as a ‘randy old codger’ who lives in a junk shop where his ship ‘Tar-Dis’ has crash-landed, with his great-granddaughter, Sue-Ann.

Tar-Dis is the most powerful space-time/time-space ship in the known solar system but it looks really crap because the BBC didn’t have the budget for anything better. The ship is pretending to be a London Police BOX, which is why ‘Dr WHO’ is often mistaken for a policeman [An AI wrote that sentence].

Sue-Ann escapes ‘Doctor’s’ clutches and, despite being more than 108, seeks refuge at the local primary school, pretending to be six years old. Her history teacher, Iain Chestnut, is suspicious because – unlike the rest of the class – Sue-Ann refuses to take a nap in the afternoons and instead dances to beat music in her fab swinging sixties gear while talking about the day she stormed the Bastille.

Chestnut tells his colleagues (and secret lovers) science teacher, Babs Right, and geometry teacher, Babs Left, about his suspicions. Babs Right also airs her concerns: Sue-Ann had taken over the class and taught them how to make a nuclear fusion reactor. Babs Left had measured Sue-Ann and found her to be transcendentally dimensional. They decide to confront her mysterious great-grandpa in his junk pile…

When he found out much later, Numan described this new idea as, ‘Unforgivable tripe!’, then beat his fists against the studio wall until he drew blood. But there was no time to come up with anything better. The red light was on and filming had started…

Winston and ‘Bunny Boy’ had gone into hiding, leaving the show to be produced by the unknown fresh-faced, inexperienced, wet-behind-the-ears, Varsity Lamppost. She quickly dried the back of her ears and proved herself to be a billion times more competent than those two jokers. Despite being left with an opening episode written on 26 stitched-together fag packets, and eight further episodes set in the prehistoric era where the only word in the script was ‘grunt’, Varsity set to work.

She cast veteran screen idol, Billy Harnell as Doctor One, after her first choice, Dicky ‘Sir Pastry’ Lewes Misheard demanded that ‘Doctor’ should be “made out of pastry” (The BBC effects department vetoed this idea after an unsuccessful screen test: “Pastry got everywhere.”)

Harnell was keen to take on the role and perform in front of infants, having only played serial killers and bungling burglars up to this point. To soften his gruesome image, he insisted that his dialogue should include, “plenty of confusing nonsense and stupid-sounding errors” – these became known as ‘Billy fluffs’ or ‘Flufbills’.

The rest of the cast was made up of The Adventures of Sir Reginald Styles actor William Russell Enoch Russell (credited as Will E Russell), Jacqueline and Jilleline Hills (joint winners of Miss Cardigan 1958) as Babs Right and Babs Left, and Caro-Line Form as Sue-Ann. Form was 47 and had the tricky task of playing a 108-year-old pretending to be a 6-year-old acting like a teenager.

Performing in Dr WHO was a terrifying experience for these actors because, for the first five years, the show was recorded and broadcast live on stage in front of an unresponsive audience. And the very first episode proved to be a disaster.

Lamppost had appointed an untested, experimental new director, Warrick Hassan, who insisted that the sound of ‘banging doors’ featured loudly throughout the episode. Numan was enraged and ripped the curtain down at the end of the recording, taking to the stage to rant about the script, production, performances, and the state of his dressing room: “No bidet! You animals!”

He was furious that some of the dialogue had spoilt the mystery of the programme. At one point, Sue-Ann says, “We are aliens from the 49th century, part of a new science-fiction series that aims to bridge the gap on Saturday evenings between Grandstand and the pop music show Juke Box Jury. And also appeal to both audiences.”

With Numan sedated and incarcerated, Lamppost and Hussan set to work on a revised episode one. It started with a caption declaring: ‘PLEASE IGNORE LAST WEEK’S EPISODE’. This time, it was a success, with the audience cheering and applauding at the end. But little did they know that outside the studio, world events would scupper their second opening night…

While the episode was being broadcast, the President of the USA, John F Kenny was assassinated with a bullet. Whilst sad for America, it was a disaster for Dr WHO. With many viewers listening to the news instead of the BBC’s new science fiction series, the production team decided to remount the show the next week. It was another huge success, with many of the crowd calling for an encore: Harnell obliged by performing his ‘bungling burglar’ routine. But disaster struck again when, during the broadcast, the US President was shot for the second time in as many weeks. The production team reluctantly decided that, this time, they had to move on…

The remounted episode was followed by the ‘erotic caveman’ story, Tribe of Mummies, which proved to be a huge turn-off for viewers. The cast grunted their way in prehistoric times for the next eight weeks until Doctor hit the tribe leader on the head with a rock, and they made their escape, to the delight of both the Tar-Dis crew and the audience.

But it was the next story, The Deadly Planet AKA These Mutants AKA The Luxor Masters (the programme’s longest-ever episode title), that secured the show’s future. In desperation, Lamppost asked a failed comedian, Terrance National Express (TNE), to write the story. Strapped for cash, after being commissioned, TNE wrote seven scripts in the corridor outside Lampost’s office in about an hour, the last being just three words, “…and so on”. Then he stole the scriptwriting fee and flew away like a thief. Little did he know that he had accidentally written a masterstroke.

The Deadly Planet AKA These Mutants AKA The Luxor Masters pitted Doctor and his crew against a suitably deadly foe: Darleks. These robot creatures from the planet Scarred resembled upturned egg cups and spoke with an evil rasping cackle. While both infants and the fully-grown loved these fascist, murdering psychopaths, there was one man who took exasperated umbrage: the show’s own birth father, Syd Numan. He had been revived in order to attend the recording. But when Darleks appeared, he once again invaded the stage. In a fit of rage, Numan cried, “No BEMs! I said no BEMs,” before being dragged back into the wings by Jacqueline and Jilleline Hills.

The audience was shocked to witness this agonised outburst. Lamppost took to the stage and calmed the crowd, who assumed Numan had meant ‘No Black and Ethnic Minorities’. She explained that in Dr WHO’s DNA document, Numan had insisted the show should not include ‘Boggle Eyed Monstrosities’, and that’s what he thought the Darleks were. At that point, Numan freed himself from his shackles and burst back on stage.

The crowd started chanting: “We love Darleks, more psychopathic BEMs! More monstrous killers!” Numan was taken aback and his life-long, uncontrollable rage briefly subsided. He embraced Lamppost and declared, “I was so, so wrong! Bring on the BEMs!” In tears, he called the cast back to finish the episode.

This time, no president was assassinated and 53,508,513 viewers tuned in – the entire population of the UK, except for Dicky ‘Sir Pastry’ Lewes Misheard who couldn’t watch because he was still encased in pastry. Following this huge, runaway success, the BBC decided to destroy all copies of all the episodes forever.

That is the totally unbelievable story of the longest-running science fiction series in the world – as voted by you – which has now been on our screens for more than 47 years. The rest, as they say, is Dr WHO’s history, science and geometry…

* There is a clue to Doctor’s forgotten surname in the very first episode, The Unhappy Childhood: on the junk shop gates a sign declares: ‘I’m Foreman’.

“My main starting point for The Ghost Monument was finding out that humans can survive unaided in deep space for up to 12 minutes,” Chris Chibnail and I, then-showrunner of Doctor Who revealed to Psychics Monthly, the magazine for physicists who can’t spell. “I think I learned that in a dream, but it’s definitely true and if you ever get the chance to go into space without a spacesuit, any breathing equipment, or protection whatsoever, I advise you to do so. I’ve been. Again, in a dream, but I’m sure that’s fine.”

(Our lawyers have advised us to note that you should, under no circumstances, do this. You know, in case NASA rocks up at your door and asks for you to go on an experimental mission around the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter wearing only your pyjamas and some discount crocs from Asda.)

This scene, with the Doctor and her new possible-reluctant-companions, possible-kidnapped-victims floating in the wildness of space, proved to be not only a great opener for The Ghost Monument but also a shocking cliffhanger for Jodie Whittaker’s debut episode, The Woman Who Fell Down to the Planet Below Her, By Heck. Fortunately, Chris consulted several astrophysicists (well, two of them) to confirm that the characters could be saved from their potentially-grisly deaths in space if a spaceship were passing by at just the right time; and further that space is absolutely full of spaceships. “You can hardly move for spaceships,” said an unnamed source who goes under the pseudonym Mr C. Chibnail and I.

The Ghost Monument found the Doctor, Officer Yasmin Khan PCDA QVC AOL, O’Graham O’Brien, and Ryan on the desolate planet called Desolation which was pretty darn desolated and was located in a desolate part of space in this desolate universe, as they competed in a race to reach the titular Ghostly Monument. “I bet it’s the TARDIS,” said numerous commenters, fans, casual viewers, blind nuns, Gary Barlow, and a woman called June who works in the Cardiff branch of Lego. “I bet it’s the TARDIS too,” said Chris Chibnail and I.

And though some select viewers had already guessed what said Ghostly Monument would turn out to be, the production team had a secret surprise concealed up their metaphorical sleeves: killer toilet paper.

“I think everyone has, at one point in their lives, thought, ‘what if I go to the bathroom and after casting out my unmentionables, I reach out to grasp the toilet paper and instead of cleaning up after my ablutions, it starts to strangle me and I start screaming and yelling for help but no words leave my lips because the Andrex is that triple-ply sort?’” Chris told Psychiatrists Weekly, the weighty tome for psychics who can’t spell. “So I thought I’d channel those nightmares into Doctor Who.”

The showrunner’s dreams, night terrors, and psychotic episodes further inspired the rest of the story. Those fears include: a desert; some water; solar-power; some tunnels; a self-lighting cigar; and Art Malik in a tent.

“It was pretty high-octane stuff,” one doped-out anonymous viewer told Points of View from his cell.

Though sentient loo roll wasn’t a great challenge for the design team to realise, they had their work cut out for them when it came to creating SniperBots, described in the script as “camouflaged robots, head-to-toe in khaki, wearing hoodies, one arm replaced by a massive gun, and their face a black box with one shining bright eye in the centre, like Cyclops from the X-Men”.

“When we first saw the word ‘SniperBot’ in the script,” explained Supervising Art Director, Dafydd Shurmer, in the November 2018 issue of In Vogue, a magazine dedicated to reporting about what was in the previous month’s issue of Vogue, “I thought they’d be so far away, we wouldn’t need to design them. You never see snipers up close, right? They’re always like… over there. In the distance. So I thought we could just do a silhouette or something. Maybe a plank of wood with a face drawn on it in Sharpie. Sadly, Chris was worried the audience would confuse them with Ryan, so instead, we simply designed the SniperBots as camouflaged robots, head-to-toe in khaki, wearing hoodies, one arm replaced by a massive gun, and their face a black box with one shining bright eye in the centre, like Cyclops from the X-Men.”

“I wasn’t happy with the design,” Chibnail and I later complained in an episode of Open Air. “Totally not what I’d envisioned.”

That would be the only controversial thing in The Ghost Monument. On a completely unrelated topic, the episode also featured the first mention of the Timeless Children.

The Ghost Monument further gave the series one of its most iconic images, courtesy of guest star, Shaun Dooley. The image showed the silhouette of Jodie’s Doctor against a dazzling sky, the TARDIS in sight, with fresh new adventures beckoning and a whole universe of wonder ready to be discovered. “I was trying to take a selfie, but got my phone the wrong way round,” Dooley told everyone who would listen.

Whittaker was especially pleased with it and asked him to send it to Chibnail and I. She told Nightly Northern News for the Northern Nation: “ey up, ey up, eyy upp. Eyyy ooop, ey up, ey oop, eyy uppp, whippets, ey up.” The picture was then used on the steelbook version of Series 11.

“I wasn’t happy with the design,” Chibnail and I later complained in an episode of Open Air. “Totally not what I’d envisioned.”

At the conclusion of the episode, the Doctor got back to her TARDIS, only to be surprised with a new interior design. After throwing up for numerous hours, seeing a therapist for six weekly sessions, and writing letters of complaint to the BBC, the Doctor realised that this was still her TARDIS and, epzo facto, was charged with getting it off Desolation. “I was very happy with the design,” Chibnail and I said in an issue of Physicists Daily, the newspaper for psychiatrists who can spell but have delusions of grandeur. “Totally what I’d envisioned.”

And so, with a new title sequence, new TARDIS trio made up of four people, a new direction, a new costume, a new showrunner, and Bradley Walsh, Series 11 was off to a refreshing start. In the coming weeks, Doctor Who would teach viewers that racism is bad, spiders are bad, things that eat too much are bad, dying is bad, Amazon is bad, sexism is bad, child abuse is surprisingly forgivable, and revenge is bad.

“I am The Watcher. I am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and dare to face the unknown, and ponder the question, ‘What if’…?”

Leonardo da Vinci was a man ahead of his time. CENTURIES ahead of his time.

We can talk about his art of course. His collection of Mona Lisas, etc (although only one’s real).

Perhaps his revolutionary, groundbreaking work studying human anatomy, making discoveries about human organs, including how the heart works with blood flow, well before anyone else. Indeed, he was the first human to sketch many human organs.

He, more than anyone else, knew humans inside and out.

But I think maybe some need a reminder about his prowess at invention.

As concepts go, he first conceived the use of concentrated solar power, the calculator, theorized plate tectonics, and much more.

He conceptualized the tank, over 400 years before its creation. In modern times, a team built said tank to his design specs. This war machine had over 30 gun placements and was completely operational. They only had to change one single gear, which was thought to have been specifically placed as a red herring by da Vinci to thwart anyone who might try and steal his designs.

He was a pioneer in robotics. His sketches and schematics for what has become known as “Leonardo’s Mechanical Knight” were utilised and the creation built in 2002 by NASA personnel. It worked. 

He designed a workable precursor to the modern diving suit. 

He conceptualized the parachute, glider, helicopter, and landing gear.

He discovered the processes governing friction.

He designed the first self propelled machine — an early ancestor to the automobile.

It’s said that many of his designs were lost over time, or at least never rediscovered, so it’s difficult to know what we’re missing. But here’s a man who had an instinctive knowledge of science, the human condition, could conceive of the inner workings of fantastic inventions centuries before their actual creation.

These conceptualisations of the tank, diving suit, weapons, submarine, helicopter, numerous machines such as the lens grinder, all these sketches and designs — those were things that could in some way be explained to some of the higher thinkers of his time. They certainly made sense in the modern era, where our tech finally caught up with da Vinci. These were things we recognised.

But what about the concepts that were deemed pure fantasy back in Leonardo’s day? That are still deemed an intriguing impossibility today? This was a man who could create anything. Who’s to say he didn’t have other, more fantastic plans?

Did Leonardo da Vinci, using his incredible and instinctive knowledge of science, combined with his innate ability to create amazingly complex machines, build the very first time machine? 

And if this fantastic creation is hurtling through time — PERHAPS AS WE SPEAK — would Leonardo come to the here and now and be… the new showrunner for Doctor Who?!?!?!

No, of course not.

1. He’d want to direct or be director of photography or something similar.

And 2. He’s going to far more interesting places.

Besides, the job’s a hassle. 

But it’s fun to think about!

So what if anyone in time and space could be the new showrunner? Who would you pick? Who is in charge of Doctor Who somewhere in this vast multiverse?

Author’s note: the following is offered in a spirit of fun and is intended, like Vorg’s Scoop, to amuse – simply to amuse. It isn’t meant to be taken too seriously and is certainly not meant to sneer at those who, perfectly legitimately, enjoy Chris Chibnall’s era of Doctor Who. We’re all enriched by our different opinions, after all.

I just wondered what it might have been like if Chris Chibnall, rather than Verity Lambert, had helmed the early Doctor Who stories.

Here’s what some of them might have looked like…

An Unearthly Child

Schoolteachers Ian and Barbara are worried about one of their pupils, Susan, who isn’t doing too well with her homework. They track her home through the fog to a junkyard in Totter’s Lane, Shoreditch. There, they find a police box and a mysterious stranger: a cheerful, bubbly lady who’s really pleased to see them and welcomes them to her nice junkyard. The stranger explains that she’s called the Doctor and has a time machine called a TARDIS and that she’s a Time Lord, well sort of, but she’s actually recently discovered she’s really the Timeless Child who’s lived for billions of years and has forgotten most of what she did until the last 2000 years or so. This explanation goes on for 10 minutes and the schoolteachers politely try not to look bored. The Doctor had overheard Barbara telling Ian to “use a match” to illuminate the gloom and surmises he must have matches to light cigarettes with; she tells him off for being a smoker and says it’s very, very bad to smoke and he’s setting a very, very bad example to the lovely young people he teaches. Reeling from the harangue, Ian craves a cigarette but he can’t because he’s left his Woodbines in the staff room. The Doctor is, though, very grateful to Ian and Barbara for their concern about Susan’s homework and says it’s very, very important that all children do their homework so that they can all do well at school and go on to live happy and fulfilled lives. (This last speech is delivered straight to camera.)

The Doctor invites Ian and Barbara to travel with her in time and space and they happily agree. They enter the TARDIS and the Doctor re-introduces them to her granddaughter. They travel to prehistoric Earth. The Doctor tells Za that he must be nice to Kal because Kal is from another tribe and is therefore a foreigner and that therefore they must all be nice to him because that would be nice.

The Doctor intervenes in the power struggle between Kal and Za and shows the tribe how to hold elections, based on the proportional representation single transferable vote system. After an entire episode of mucking about with different coloured pebbles being placed into hollowed out stones, Hur (who the Doctor campaigned for) is elected leader and an age of prosperity, with food and fire for all, follows. Ian is overjoyed when he is shown how to make fire by the Old Mother (who knew how to do it all along but wasn’t going to say because she doesn’t like how the men had all the power and got to make all the decisions). A sabre-toothed tiger tries to jump on Za but the Doctor intervenes, tickling it between its ears until it calms down and rolls over on its back so the Doctor can tickle its tummy. She tells the tribe they mustn’t kill and eat beautiful animals like this because they’re beautiful and animals and that animals have rights too, and she shows them which plants they should eat. The whole tribe eagerly embrace vegetarianism. The Doctor and her Fam depart in the TARDIS, but not before the Doctor has given Za a big hug.  

In return, Za has given her a big bunch of flowers from the Tribe’s local retailer, The Florist of Fear.

The Daleks

The pacifist Thals will not fight the Daleks, evil intelligences housed in metal casings. Ian tries to organise the Thals into a fighting force. The Doctor is aghast. How dare Ian impose his violent ideas on a peace-loving people? We must respect their viewpoint and never, never try to change anyone’s minds. “Good on you, chuck,” she tells Alydon when he explains his people will not fight the Daleks. The TARDIS crew beam seraphically on the Thals and the Doctor explains to the Fam that they have all learnt something new today: that violence never, ever pays. They wish the Thals all the very best and depart in the TARDIS.

However, the Daleks have by now worked out how to leave their city and they find the Thals and kill them all.

The Edge of Destruction

The Doctor is very cross with Susan when she goes mad and tries to attack Ian with a pair of scissors. She patiently explains to the dim teenager that we must all live in peace and that talking to someone and explaining your point of view calmly but assertively is much more productive than any attempted homicidal assault with domestic implements. The Doctor shows Susan how to use scissors in a much more productive way and the TARDIS Fam all sit down together to cut doilies out of pretty paper.

The Aztecs

The Doctor doesn’t want to stop the Aztec practice of human sacrifice because, as she explains, we must respect the Aztecs’ culture, that any deviation from moral relativism is always morally wrong (except when it is to condemn deviation from moral relativism), and that if the Aztecs believe that ripping people’s hearts out will make the sun rise tomorrow, then who are we to say this deeply held belief is incorrect?

However, the Doctor is worried that the practice of throwing the corpses of the recently mutilated off the top of the ziggurat will pollute the environment and might interfere with the delicate balance of the eco-system because pollution is very, very bad. So she distracts the Aztecs from carrying out any more sacrifices by organising a big party where they all sit down together and drink lots of yummy cocoa. A distraught Tlotoxl bursts into tears at this moving scene. The Doctor persuades the Aztecs to elect Cameca as the new High Priest of Sacrifice and everyone lives happily ever after.

The Reign of Terror

The Doctor and her Fam arrive in France during the Revolution. The Doctor applauds the spirit of the Revolution because it will make the lot of the oppressed in France much, much better, and she explains to the Fam how the guillotine is actually a measure designed to improve human rights because it is much more humane than previous methods of capital punishment as it was designed to end life instantaneously. But capital punishment is very, very naughty and should be abolished. The Doctor’s rousing speech gives great comfort to Barbara and Susan and they remember it when they’re in a tumbril on the way to the guillotine.

The Doctor patiently explains to the Fam, too, that there are lots of other good things about the Revolution, especially as it got rid of the monarchy, and the concept of a monarchy is very, very bad because it’s very, very bad that people should live lives of privilege based simply on who their family was rather than on the enlightened principle of a meritocracy where talent will always win out, as we know it always will.

The TARDIS food machine has run out of bread and the Doctor explains that’s all right as it will let them eat cake instead.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth

The Doctor is thrilled to meet Dortman, a scientist confined to a wheelchair, and she patiently explains to him that disabled people are just as good as everybody else, and he shouldn’t stop trying to be a scientist just because he is in a wheelchair. Dortman tells her a) to stop patronising him and b) that no amount of wittering will help defeat the Daleks. The Doctor sulks for the rest of the episode.

The Doctor realises the true extent of the Daleks’ villainy when she learns that their dehumanised human slaves are called Robomen. She goes down to the River Thames by Hammersmith Bridge, where the Daleks like to go sub-aqua diving. A Dalek has just emerged from its daily swim and she patiently explains to it that women are just as capable as men to be reduced to zombies and that the Daleks should make sure that at least 50% of their recruits are women and that they should call their slaves “Robopersons” instead. The dripping but enraged Dalek fires its gun at her and she runs away.

The Doctor meets the Slyther, the Daleks’ pet from their home planet, who snacks on human slave workers. Having made friends with the Slyther, the Doctor leads it by the paw to the lush patches of stinging nettles that grow in abundance in the Dalek labour camp. The Slyther tucks in to the tasty vegetation and decides it likes the taste better than humans and anyway, it doesn’t have to spit the buttons out afterwards. So, there is no need to chuck the Slyther down a mine shaft, which was Ian’s preferred scheme.

When the Daleks decide to blow up half of London with a Dalekanium bomb, the Doctor calls on the help of her cute friend the Pting, who she has brought with her in the TARDIS from another world. The Pting gobbles up the bomb, which then explodes in his stomach and makes him a bit fatter when it goes off. Then the Pting burps and everybody laughs and laughs.

The Daleks realise they are no match for the Doctor and fly their ships back to Skaro, vowing to develop temporal technology so they can pursue the Doctor and her Fam through all of time and space and finally have their revenge.

The Web Planet

The Doctor will not allow the Menoptra to pursue their terrorist campaign against the Zarbi because terrorism is very, very bad and although the Zarbi are insects, we must respect all life. She entices the Zarbi into a big room and locks them all in together, where they will live out their natural lives in peace. When Ian points out this means they will either starve to death or eat each other, she scowls and doesn’t talk to him again for the rest of the story.

But of course, this opens up other parallel worlds in which Douglas Adams wrote for the Second Doctor, Robert Holmes introduced us to the Eleventh Doctor, and Steven Moffat helmed an American reboot in 1996. What other tales from the multiverse would you like to glimpse?

It seems hard to believe, when you look back on it, that Harry Sullivan was originally only going to be in Doctor Who for a single series.
Harry – played to perfection by Ian Marter – is one of the show’s most beloved companions, faithful and steadfast, if prone to occasional bouts of stupidity. Despite earning the Doctor’s wrath on more than one occasion, his sense of pluck, resolve and loyalty never wavered throughout his two years in the TARDIS, from that first appearance as the newly-regenerated Doctor’s physician in Robot to that eloquent farewell in the closing moments of The Seeds Of Doom. It’s impossible to imagine the likes of Planet of Evil or Pyramids of Mars without him, and yet it came so close to not happening, – because, as is well-documented, Harry very nearly jumped ship after his encounter with the Zygons.
According to a popular urban legend, the original decision to dispense with Harry was made purely on the basis that the character felt redundant. Tom Baker was not the older man the creative team had initially envisaged casting, and was able to do most of his own stunts; hence the need for a younger man to handle the action sequences (Terrance Dicks pithily refers to this construct to as ‘The Muscle of Russell’) was eradicated overnight, and it was felt that three was a crowd, at least in the TARDIS.
It’s a reasonable theory, but it couldn’t be further from the truth – as Dicks himself would later attest.

It seems hard to believe now that Doctor Who’s phenomenal revival was all thanks to a simple Flash animation.
Picture the scene: it’s 2003, and Russell T Davies’ constant lobbying for a TV resurrection is beginning to bear fruit. He’s had to compete with Matthew Graham, Dan Freedman, and Mark Gatiss, and he’s beaten them off. The BBC have finally caved in, and hell, it seems, is about to freeze over. There’s just one problem – Doctor Who’s already back. Sort of.
Because in the absence of anything on the box, Muirinn Lane Kelly has produced an animated story: Scream of the Shalka, starring Richard E Grant as a rather grizzly Ninth Doctor, facing off against a bunch of noisy insects in a Lancashire village. Told in six parts, it’s only been on the internet until now – so how will it fit into the BBC’s plans to resurrect the show?