SPOILERS Ahoy…all the way up to the end of Series 2 of Doctor Who, as shown in the US and the UKLet's see here, crash course on Doctor Who. There's a lot of ground to cover, so I'll go with the basics first.
So far, in canon-speaking terms and not referencing specials such as the Comic Relief sketch with Rowan Atkinson playing the Ninth Doctor or the BBC one-shot The Curse of Shalka, there have been ten incarnations of the Doctor.
Confusing isn't it? Let me explain. The Doctor's homeworld is called Gallifrey, and there are several different classes on this planet. One of them, of which the Doctor is one, are the Time Lords. These are the elite of Gallifreyan society, and the title of 'Time Lord' is earned after a long time spent at the Academy. There are several little finicky details about the Academy that you can research on your own, since they're not that important in the scheme of things.
Now, as I said, the Doctor is a Time Lord. One of the little benefits of being a Time Lord is the ability to regenerate twelve times (thirteen bodies). Basically, this means that upon the moment of death (be it of old age or unnatural circumstances or even, in the case of Romana, because she felt like it), a Time Lord's body regenerates, granting that Time Lord a new lease on life. (I'll get into the Doctor's regenerations shortly)
Now, the Time Lords also have the ability to travel through time. Part of this is due to their fantastic ships, called TARDISes (Time and relative dimensions in space), and another part is due to the Time Lords themselves. Granted at the moment of their graduation with something known as the Rassilon imprimature, each Time Lord has the ability in a limited sense to see time, even manipulate it on a small scale. This imprimature also grants a Time Lord the ability to pilot a TARDIS.
Generally speaking, no-one other than a Time Lord should be able to 'drive' a TARDIS. However, in more recent years, this has been abandoned in canon so anyone that the Doctor's authorized can handle the ship.
There's a lot more about Gallifrey that I could go into, but it's best if I just point you to the wonderful Wikipedia website that has a huge and very detailed entry on the Doctor Who universe.
One of the best descriptions of Gallifrey and its peoples that I can give you is this:
They're the stuffiest, stuffed-shirts in the galaxy.
The Doctor The First Doctor (William Hartnell)
The Doctor's first incarnation actually fled Gallifrey, stealing his Type 40 TARDIS, and running to Earth with his granddaughter, Susan, in tow.
This doctor was a kind of eccentric and crochety old man. He was extremely clever, and good at getting people to underestimate him so he could get the upper hand. He said “Hmmm…” and “goodness, gracious me!” a lot.
He gained (and lost) many companions during this incarnation and he has the dubious honour of being the only version of the Doctor that died of 'natural causes' i.e. old age.
The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton)
This Doctor was a bit younger, a bit brasher, a lot more batty, really. He liked to play the recorder, wore a yeti-fur coat, and came equipped with a sonic screwdriver, which is Who-ese for Deus Ex Machina.
Sadly, poor Two really got the shaft from the BBC when, cleaning house in the Seventies, they destroyed a good number of the original copies of the episodes from this era and Hartnell's era. Details are a bit sketchy hereabouts, but some of the "well known" companions of this era are Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe. This is also the era of the Doctor's first encounter with a young bloke named Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Colonel at the time, but...well, he gets promoted later
).
This Doctor's end occurs because of his own people. This is the first time we've ever heard of the Doctor's people and his homeworld. After the Doctor takes care of another renegade Time Lord for his people and stopping galactic carnage, the other Time Lords find the Doctor guilty of interference in the affairs of other races and decide that he is to be punished by a forced regeneration and exile to 20th century Earth. Jamie and Zoe are sent home with no memories of their adventures.
The Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee)
I suppose the best way to describe the Doctor's third incarnation is James Bond meets Jackie Chan. Favouring fashionable velvet coats and lace cravats, this Doctor was all about the action (not to mention his mad Venusian Aikido skills).
His TARDIS was sabotaged as part of his punishment, so this Doctor was sort of stuck on Earth. Luckily, his friend the Brigadier (Lethbridge-Stewart) at UNIT needed a scientific advisor. There are plenty of alien invasions that need thwarting, so things stay interesting. In attempting to repair the TARDIS, the Doctor ends up reversing the polarity of the neutron flow rather a lot. This is as common a phenomenon of techno-babble as messing with dilithium crystals or tachyon pulses or whatnot. One of his most popular companions is Sarah Jane Smith (not to mention all of UNIT).
The Third Doctor meets his doom at the hands (or, rather stingers) of some rather large spiders.
The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)
This is the Doctor that most Americans think of when they think of Doctor Who. He's got big teeth, big hair, long scarf, and a rather mad personality (I equate the Fourth Doctor with a three year old child dosed with far too much sugar and caffeine...all the time). This Doctor is very capricious. He’ll be deadly serious one moment, throwing jelly babies at people the next, pouting about wanting to be childish, then tripping up baddies with his ridiculously large scarf.
He's also the longest reigning Doctor, if you can call it that. He had Sarah Jane Smith, Leela, Romanas I and II, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan all join him at one point or another during his travels. One of the most common pairings in this era (mostly because Lalla Ward and Tom Baker did get married during the show) is the Doctor and Romana II. This is also the beggining of 'hand-porn'. The Doctor and Romana II did hold hands...a lot.
This Doctor met his demise because he met Tegan, er...because he fell off a really big telescope stopping an evil Time Lord known as the Master from destroying the universe. You know, usual stuff that.
The Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison)
Falling was rather traumatic for the poor Doctor, and it takes him a bit to recover from this regeneration. This incarnation has quite a bit of the crochetyness of the first Doctor, while appearing younger (and hotter) than he had ever before.
This Doctor doesn’t always have all the answers. He is fallible, vulnerable, and tends to need rescuing about as often as his companions do. Plus, he loves cricket. A lot. Which is probably why he wanders through the universe wearing a cricket uniform.
His most famous companions are Tegan, Nyssa, Turlough and Adric. Adric gets the dubious honour of being the second companion to die on the show (and did the fans rejoice at that).
This Doctor dies because of poison (notice how these deaths get more traumatic as time goes by?), as he gives up the antidote to save his companion, Peri, from certain death. Instead, we get to watch him die instead...
The Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker)
Using the manner of the Doctor's most recent death to explain this incarnation's personality, he gets the honour of being the first Doctor to try to kill one of his companions. Though, sadly, he didn't succeed...and we were stuck with listening to Peri's appalling American accent for a while longer...
*ahem* Anyway, this Doctor first seemed amusingly nasty, but turned out to be excessively brash and to have appalling fashion sense. Multi-coloured coats, a cat badge, and bright yellow and red striped trousers seem to be the way to go for number Six.
This is widely considered the point where the show started losing its footing and part-way through the Sixth Doctor's reign, the show was temporarily cancelled. But he came back, as unsteady and brash as before, and met his demise thanks to a rather nasty bump on the head (at least that's the popular theory) inside the TARDIS.
The Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy)
Ah, Seven, how I love you...ahem. Okay, I'm a bit biased here (don't look at me like that, Wendy..), but Seven is one of my all-time favourite incarnations. He's got a lot of the battyness of the second Doctor, but he's also a lot darker than the Doctors that preceded him. He's a manipulative bastard and tends to employ a lot of mental hijinks (think of the Jedi mind-trick) to get out of trouble, or to get people to do what he wants them to do.
There are all sorts of hints at bad things that he did or was involved in long ago, perhaps before we ever met the character. People tend to either love or hate this Doctor.
He also is the Doctor that introduces us to the loveliness of Ace. Ace is a sixteen-something girl from Perivale who created her own type of explosive, fondly known as Nitro-Nine. One of her favourite things to do is blow stuff up, much to the Doctor's sometime chagrin.
Ace is love *nods*
This is also where Doctor Who first left our screens, supposedly for good. In the early nineties, a book line called the Virgin New Adventures, took up the story after the last episode aired and kept merrily going for over 65 novels. These books were aimed for an adult audience and contained a lot more violence and tricky situations than ever seen in the episodes. (And do I love them *happy sigh*)
The Seventh Doctor comes back to the screens for a mere fifteen minutes in the Doctor Who movie only to die…by getting shot and then pumped full of anaesthetic (not to mention an inept attempt at heart surgery by one Grace Holloway…).
The Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann)
In 1996, an attempt was made to revive the show by means of a TV movie. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to Americanize the show in order to catch a bigger audience. Somebody was wrong. It was absolutely terrible, but oddly endearing. A bit like watching a train-wreck, really, but I still love it
This Doctor is generally fabulous. He has a sense of wonder like we haven’t seen before. He’s fascinated with life and loves every bit of it. He’s so much more emotional than he’s ever been and so open to these emotions that he *gasp* kisses Grace. Twice. (And fanboys have heart-attacks the globe over because the Doctor just snogged a companion, omg! The scandal!)
Here canon diverges. You can follow the newly revived BBC novels (They cancelled the Virgin line, damn them, and the quality's a bit off, but they're still aimed at adults, just not as beefy as the Virigin adventures), which is a bit screwy. There's apparently a group of rogue Time Lords called Faction Paradox and they destroy Gallifrey at least three times. Yeah, it's really screwy.
Or you can follow the audio adventures. A bit of info on the audios, they were introduced in 1999 and are adventures with all the classic Doctors. Well, most of them. Five, Six, Seven and Eight all have adventures and they're all brilliant. I have much love for Big Finish audios, yes.
Most important thing to know if you follow the audios is something called 'Zagreus'. Go on, google it. Not only will you find some Greek mythology, but you'll also find one of the creepiest nursery rhymes ever that tells you all you need to know. Or, as Eight puts it, 'tea-time terror for Time Tots'.
The implication for this Doctor's end is the "Time War". Not to be mistaken for the BBC novel's multiple Time Wars, or something along those lines. I mostly just call it the "Last Great Time War" and leave it at that.
Oh, and by the way? The Doctor destroyed his people to destroy the Daleks. (Daleks = mechanical pepperpots with a penchant for killing anything that isn't like them.)
After this point, I go into spoilers for Series 1 and 2 of the new series as shown on SciFi, PBS, BBC America and in the UK. Don't read any further if you don't want to be spoiled.The Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston)
The show is revived in 2005 with a bang. We've got angst, we've got a hot guy in leather, we've got… right, where was I? Oh, yes. The Doctor. This Doctor's main concern is very much for the big picture rather than for individual lives at the moment, making him seem a bit callous and cruel at times. He can be enthusiastic, and exclaims that things are “Fantastic” quite a lot, but it sometimes seems a bit forced, which is understandable. His planet is, after all, burnt to cinders.
His biggest soft spot is for Rose, his nineteen-something shop-girl companion. She just up and left her mum and her boyfriend and we’ve seen a lot of the repercussions of that. Rose and the Doctor have great chemistry and do a lot of desperate hand-holding. (It's how the Doctor says 'I love you', really…No, wait, there was that time with… Right, where was I?)
This is also where we get introduced to Captain Jack Harkness. Who is just like the Doctor, only with 'dating and dancing'. We get some lovely OT3 action…er…that was only in my mind, wasn't it? You never know what happens behind closed TARDIS doors!
I need to focus here…anyway, this Doctor's theme is 'Bad Wolf'. Every episode contains a reference to it and, in the end, we get a big battle with the Daleks and learn that the Bad Wolf is actually Rose.
She sucked in the Time Vortex and basically became a goddess. She revives Jack (he got shot by a Dalek *sniffle*), wipes the Daleks from time and space and saves the universe. However, she's dying, so the Doctor gives up his life to save hers. And, yes, this Doctor really was fantastic…
The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant)
He's rude, he's cheeky and he's not ginger, but he's got a gift of gab that puts even the Fourth Doctor to shame. His trademark grin and pin-striped suit with a pair of ratty Chucks sets this Doctor apart as a bit of a geek. He travels with Rose for a year, meeting up with some old enemies (the Cybermen), old friends (Sarah Jane), alternate universes and generally having a jolly good time of things.
There's a meeting with the Devil and some face-sucking action (no, sadly not in that way) and even a trip to the Olympics. However, all things must end, and this heralds the end of Rose's journey with the Doctor. There's a big battle, there are Cybermen versus Daleks (every fanboy's ultimate dream and, of course, the Cybermen are pwned), and, finally, Rose gets flung into a different universe with no way back to this one. The Doctor goes on by himself and Rose is left to live her 'fantastic life' in another universe. They say it's impossible for them to ever meet again but, like any science fiction programme, anything is possible.
The Doctor meets up with a bride, fights spiders at Christmas and, now, he's met up with a new companion called Martha Jones. Only time will tell what adventures wait for them next…
End of Spoilerish Bits That concludes my introduction to the Doctor. For further information on the various popular bad-guys (The Master, Cybermen, Daleks, etc), I recommend that you visit the Wikipedia website and look up Doctor Who. There's a lot more information there than I covered. As well there should be, I've had over 43 years to cover after all
Oh, and if you're interested in fanfic, the best places to go are:
Teaspoon and an Open Mind – All eras, all Doctors, all companions, all genres.
Time And Chips : For Doctor/Rose (any Doctor, as long as Rose is there) fan fiction.
Better With 3 : For Doctor/Rose/Jack (Ninth or Tenth Doctor) fan fiction.
Who_Otp : For all other Doctor/whomever pairings.
Genfic can be found all over. Enjoy!
