Just to add to the confusion... the show says both!

According to the credits, Christopher Eccleston played a character called Doctor Who, but David Tennant plays a character called The Doctor.

Which obviously means the regeneration, and Tenth Doctor, was all an elaborate fake and the Ninth Doctor is still out there and will be seen confronting the imposter next series


* I still want another Ninth Doctor series*

Yes, I'd read about those attempts. Their failure was the basis of my opinion.


We also have to take into account when they were created. Compared to other props from that era (both Whovian and non-Whovian), they hold up pretty well. I do think the toilet plunger arm was something of a mistake though. Perhaps Skaro had really bad plumbing.

The basic design - man in a pepper-pot - was later used to overwhelming success in R2D2, and updating the construction materials and letting them fly has maintained the design as credible in new Who.

However Parting of the Ways credits Tennant as Doctor Who, not The Doctor, so the regeneration happened and he then changed his name by deed poll.

Not far from the truth, as the change back to "The Doctor" in the credits was done at Tennant's request.

The show's dialogue, all the way back to the first Hartnell series, has been overwhelming clear that the character's name is The Doctor, not Doctor Who. You'd think it might have occurred to them that naming the show Doctor Who was perhaps not the best way to make people clear on the character's name.

Personally I wouldn't mind at all if they changed the name of the show to "The Doctor."

Being called "the Doctor" doesn't mean that your name isn't Doctor Who. Asking to be called "just the Doctor" similarly doesn't mean that your name isn't Doctor Who.

Me? I think his name isn't Doctor Who because it's sort of stupid as a name. But I can't think of anything in-show that confirms it, and I can think of WOTAN and a million book titles suggesting otherwise.

EDIT: similar thing, Romana introduces herself to nearly everybody as Romana. That doesn't mean that her name isn't Romanadvoratrelundar (I looked it up, naturally).

The Dalek (or Dal) scientist Yarvelling claimed to have invented the "war machines". The new Daleks say he designed the machine but it was the bomb that made them, the radiation caused a great change, a mutation. Zolfian and Yarvelling rebuilt the war machine factory to provide more machines for the mutant Daleks. Yarvelling and Zolfian, the last of the old Daleks died from radiation poisoning shortly after completing the Emperor's machine.

The Earthling Terry Nation rewrote Dal/Dalek history in a fictional work called Genisis of the Daleks. In it he attributed the creation of the Daleks to a Kaled scientist called Davros, but his original translation of the Dalek chronicles had been recorded by David Whitaker in the Earth publication TV Century 21.

thanks



"Chuck the humourless ones a bone and stand back."

Or the Jon Pertwee story Dr Who And The Silurians.

I wonder if a small typograhical change in 1963 would have negated this debate.

The programme should have been "Dr Who?"

The again - perhaps not.

I think, in that Ann & Nick prog, all those years ago, the great Mr Pertwee came down on the side of Ray Cusick! It was quite a funny sequence, with him chucking the answers he disagreed with over his shoulder. (It's years since I've seen it so i could be misremembering, but it's bound to be on Youtube).

The queries about the Doctor being "Dr Who", "Doctor Who" or "The Doctor" are interesting. In The Fact Of Fiction articles in DWM, they always refer to him by whatever title the character is given in the credits for that episode. If memory serves, Tom Baker was Doctor Who til the end of season 17, and The Doctor from season 18 (under JNT's producership).

Well the Doctor refers to himself as, "The Doctor" and not "Doctor Who".

Also, you see them using the shows name in the first of series 1. When the Doctor tells Rose he's called the Doctor...she asks "Doctor Who ?". He replies with: "I'm the doctor, just, the doctor" or something like that.

Who Created the Daleks?

Well, when a Mummy Dalek and a Daddy Dalek love each other very, very much.

Actually it wasent Nation. I remember Jon Pertwee on Good Morning Britain years ago mentioning it was some production guy who sold the idea to nation for 50 pounds. Not sure where I saw the clip.

He didn't chuck the answers he "disagreed" with, they agreed that Terry Nation created the Daleks although Pertwee was also keen to point out that someone else designed the creature that appeared on screen.

No he didn't say that.

Pertwee said that "Terry wrote about it in a script but the creature was designed by a gentleman on the staff of the BBC, who got an ex gratia payment".

There is no evidence that anyone sold the idea to Terry Nation. Terry Nation wrote the first Dalek story. The Dalek creature that he wrote about needed to be "designed" by a designer, and that job went to the BBC designer Raymond Cusick.