The Doctor Who Phenomenon - Exploring the Philosophical Concepts of the Iconic Sci-Fi Series

Fakultät für Humanwissenschaften
Institut für fremdsprachliche Philologien
Masterarbeit
The Doctor Who Phenomenon - A Philosophical
Approach to the Series' Concept
Erstgutachter: apl. Prof. Dr. Hans-Werner Breunig
Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Susanne Peters
Eingereicht von:
KATHARINA BARTH
Matrikelnummer: 185600
K_Barth1988@hotmail.com
am:
02.09.2013

Table of Contents
1. Introduction........................................................................................................................1
2. Doctor WHO?.....................................................................................................................6
2.1 The Doctor and his Companions...............................................................................13
2.1.1 The 7 Faces of the Doctor..................................................................................15
2.1.2 The Doctor's Companions..................................................................................22
2.1.3 On Personal Identity..........................................................................................27
2.2 Adventures in Space and Time..................................................................................32
2.2.1 Wanderers in the Fourth Dimension..................................................................33
2.2.2 The Concept of Time and Space Travel.............................................................35
2.3 The Evil on Doctor Who............................................................................................44
2.3.1 The Daleks.........................................................................................................46
2.3.2 The Master.........................................................................................................49
2.3.3 The Cybermen....................................................................................................51
2.3.4 The Concept of Evil...........................................................................................52
3. Conclusion........................................................................................................................60
4 Bibliography......................................................................................................................63
5 Appendix...............................................................................................................................
6 ERKLÄRUNG des Studierenden..........................................................................................

1. Introduction
'It all started out as a mild curiosity in the junkyard, and now
it's turned out to be quite a great spirit of adventure.'
~ The First Doctor (The Sensorites)
This statement equally applies to the original characters as well as the audience of
the longest-running science-fiction series in the world1
. This is how it all started. The
talk is of Doctor Who, the British television programme that aired from 1963 to 1989
and became a British TV institution.2
The Doctor has since become one of the great
British folk heroes, alongside Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood and James Bond. 'Each
of these characters return again and again, in new forms and in new media, telling
new, but always relevant, stories. Just like them, Doctor Who will keep returning,
forever.'3
Although Doctor Who was cancelled by the BBC in 1989, mostly due to BBC
budget cuts and not because of a lack of public interest4
, the show lived on in
numerous comic- and audio books, novelizations, a made-for-television film (1996)
and of course the minds of the many fans who, for years, requested the return of the
programme to their screens. When Doctor Who was off the air, it began receiving a
large amount of belated critical acclaim. In 1996, the programme was voted the All-
Time Favourite BBC Programme in a survey for the 60th
anniversary celebrations of
the BBC and even beat popular shows such as EastEnders and Casualty.5
In 2000,
the programme ranked third in the list of the 100 Greatest British Television
Programmes of all time.6
The fans request was ultimately granted when producer and screenwriter Russell
T Davis revived the series in 2005, this time in cooperation with BBC Wales,
generating a new burst of enthusiasm. Davies and now new script-writer Steven
Moffat, as well as David Tennant, the Tenth Doctor, are self-proclaimed and active
fans of the original series. The new programme has since won a large amount of
awards, ranging from the BAFTAs to the National Television Awards, and the British
Science-Fiction award, the Hugos.7
The programme has become the BBCs 'most
1 ''Longest running science fiction TV series.'' Guinness World Records.
2 Newman, p. 1.
3 Robb, p. 15.
4 Pless, p. 358.
5 Robb, p. 14.
6 Pless, p. 358.
7 Robb, p. 14.
1

eccentric saga, at once cosily familiar and cosmically terrifying.'8
It is regarded as
'one of [the BBC's] flagship productions in the world-wide market place.'9
At this point, everyone who is not acquainted with this programme will ask
themselves: What is this programme actually about and how did it manage to
fascinate generations over such a long period of time? The series' greatest strength is
in the flexibility of the basic concept. Peter Haining says that 'only human
imagination […] places any limitations on Doctor Who.'10
Doctor Who thrives on
change, and the continuous change of the lead actor who plays the Doctor, as well as
of the companions, gave the programme the possibility to constantly reinvent itself
and adapt to the changing tastes of the audience over time.11
However much the programme does change over time, there are certain aspects
that have remained unaltered and make up the basic concept of the series. Put simply,
Doctor Who is about a renegade alien, the Doctor, who is travelling through and
exploring all of space and time with his various (mostly) human companions in the
TARDIS12
, and is ever-so-often fighting off evil creatures. If he comes close to
death, the Doctor has the ability to regenerate, which leads to a new body and
ultimately a new personality. Doctor Who can span from 'knockabout farce (The
Romans) to gothic horror (The Brain of Morbius), to deep-space adventure (Planet of
Evil) or an internal drama within someone's mind (The Edge of Destruction).
Adventures can be galaxy-spanning, (time-spanning) or take place within a virtual
fantasy environment like the Matrix (first featured in Doctor Who in 1976), or even
somewhere as mundane as Tooting Bec.'13
While the show has been successfully renewed and the Doctor's adventures
continue on British television screens to this date, this paper is only concerned with
the Classic series (1963-1989), excluding the made-for-television film from 1996 and
the new Doctor Who (2005-present), as well as all the other media, such as novels,
audio books and comics, for that would vastly exceed the scope of this paper. This
paper also does not intend to give a deep analysis or plot description of every single
episode of Classic Who, which is not possible for at least two reasons. First, because
106 episodes are missing due to a BBC policy in the 1960s which required that all of
8 Newman, p. 3.
9 Haining (1988), p. 10.
10 Ibid., p. 14.
11 Clark.
12 Time And Relative Dimension In Space.
13 Robb, p. 9.
2

the videotape masters were wiped to make room for new material, and second,
because this would also vastly exceed the scope of this paper, for there are 703
episodes of classic Doctor Who (approx. 287 hours).
In order to limit the scope of this paper, I had to come up with a reasonable
research question and finally committed myself to researching why this programme
was and still is so attractive to such a wide variety of audiences and why it is being
considered a British television phenomenon. The Radio Times from 23 November
1963 first announced this programme as 'a series of adventures in space and time'14
,
arousing the curiosity of many viewers. Curiosity is an essential human trait and
means to have 'a strong desire to know or learn something.'15
Contemplating this term
helped limit the research question and therefore the scope of this paper even further
by committing myself to solely examining the aspects that make up the basic concept
of the series with a philosophical approach, for philosophy is, very simply put, 'the
study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence,'16
and complies
with the term curiosity. Both terms will be discussed in more detail at a later point in
this paper.
The main section of this paper, following the introduction, is divided into three
main chapters of research which include the essential aspects, to my mind, of Doctor
Who: the Doctor and his companions, time and space travel, and the evil in Doctor
Who. The main section will start with an introduction to the production history of
Doctor Who, ranging from the initial idea and reason for the development of the
programme to the production of the first serial An Unearthly Child.17
The first main chapter will be concerned with the Doctor and his companions
and explore the concept of personal identity. The primary focus lies on the Doctor
and the changes his various incarnations have gone through, and how this change of
his personality with every regeneration can be conceived in philosophy by exploring
the concept of personal identity. Additionally, I will introduce the process of
regeneration. The first sub-chapter is concerned with the various personalities of the
Doctor himself and what this entails for his identity. First, I will analyse what is
known about his personal background, general characteristics and features that do
not change with each regeneration. Second, I will describe the features of each of the
14 '''Radio Times' article from 23 November 1963.'' The Genesis of Doctor Who. BBC Archive.
15 ''Curiosity.'' Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press.
16 ''Philosophy.'' Ibid.
17 Also known as 100,000 BC.
3

seven incarnations of the Doctor in classic Doctor Who. The second sub-chapter will
focus on the various companions who the Doctor has taken along on his adventures.
The following questions will be answered: Who are these companions and how did
the Doctor come across them? What is the function of the companions? The third
sub-chapter will then discuss the topic of the Doctor's identity in a philosophical
manner, with a primary but not exclusive focus on John Locke and Thomas Reid.
Therefore, the following questions will be answered: What does identity mean? What
is the difference between a person and personality? What is the difference between
personality and identity? How can the process of regeneration be comprehended in a
philosophical matter? The ultimate question being of course: Is the Doctor still the
Doctor after he has regenerated and has not only a new body but also a different
personality?
The second main chapter will deal with the Doctor's adventures in time and
space. The first sub-chapter will briefly explore the Doctor's travels through space
and time. In the second sub-chapter, I will provide an overview about what has been
said about time and space travel in the field of philosophy (and science) and answer a
series of questions: What is time? What does travel mean when we talk about time
travel? Is time travel possible? What are paradoxes? How are space and time travel
interconnected? What has been said about the idea of infinity and infinite space?
Important philosophers that will be addressed in this context are David Hume and
John Locke, as well as others.
The third main chapter will focus on the concept of evil and attempt to find out
why people are fascinated by the evil, despite being frightened. The first sub-chapter
will analyse the evil on Doctor Who, focusing on the three main adversaries of the
Doctor, the Daleks, the Cybermen and The Master, who are not only the most popular
but also the most commonly recurring villains throughout Classic Who. I will explore
their origin, characteristics, as well as goals and achievements. The Daleks, which
have been introduced to the programme in the second serial, The Daleks, have since
become as equal a cult figure as the Doctor himself and have, along with the term
TARDIS, entered the Oxford English Dictionary18/19
. They have created a real
Dalekmania (derived from the term Beatlemania)20
and conquered the playgrounds
where children were running around shouting the battle cry 'EX-TER-MIN-ATE',
18 ''Dalek.'' Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press.
19 ''TARDIS.'' Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press.
20 Leach, p. 21.
4

imitating the Daleks' mechanic voice.21
The second sub-chapter will then discuss the
concept of evil in the field of philosophy. Noteworthy philosophers for this chapter
are, amongst others Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, and Richard Rorty. I will
attempt to answer the following questions: What is evil? What is the difference
between good and evil? Where does the fascination with the evil come from?
There are many other topics or issues that could be addressed or written about
concerning Doctor Who, such as politics, religion, mythology, science, gender, and
aesthetics, or even other aspects of philosophy with the focus on specific episodes,
but this paper will only focus on those constant, unaltered aspects that made this
programme such a success.
In the introduction to their book, Lewis and Smithka (2010) claim that 'the sense
of excitement, joy, wonder, and love that are part of one's Doctor Who-experience are
the same features that motivate and inspire people to study philosophy and lead a life
of reflection and inquiry.'22
By nature, philosophy requires of people to reflect on
their lives and beliefs, and on how they interact with and treat others. Courtland
Lewis states that 'Doctor Who challenges people to reflect on deep philosophical
issues and grow not only as individuals but also as humans in relation to others and
the wider universe'23
.
'Doctor Who piques our curiosity, our interest, and especially our sense of adventure, and
before the audience knows it, they have been abducted as well.'24
One aspect that I have mentioned before and which connects philosophers and
the audience of Doctor Who is curiosity. The literature used for the following brief
excursion into the theory of curiosity is the essay Curiosity and Exploration by Susan
Edelman from 1997. Curiosity is defined as 'a need, thirst or desire for knowledge',
and its concept is central to motivation. It can be used as both, the description of a
specific behaviour and its reason, for curiosity can be regarded as a motivational
prerequisite for exploratory behaviour. Edelman states that 'exploration refers to all
activities concerned with gathering information about the environment,' which in the
case of Doctor Who, can refer to curiosity about outer-space, extra-terrestrial
lifeforms and the concept of infinity in connection with the universe. According to
Ronald Langevin (1971), a Canadian forensic psychologist, curiosity can be
21 Leach, p. 21.
22 Lewis/Smithka, p. xii.
23 Lewis (2010), p. 373.
24 Lewis/Smithka, p. xii.
5

separated into two categories. First, 'curiosity is viewed as a motivational state and
measured with behavioural indices,' and second 'as a personality trait that is assessed
by personality measures.' For Harry Fowler (1965), boredom is one prerequisite or
motivation for curiosity. The most basic problem for curiosity researchers and
theorists, however, is the underlying cause of curiosity. It is still uncertain whether
curiosity is a primary drive (innate), or a secondary drive (learnt). If it were a
secondary drive, the next question would be what the original or basic drive would
be. What researchers and theorists do agree on is that curiosity 'produces an
unpleasant sensation (usually labelled arousal) that is reduced by exploratory
behaviour.'25
The term curiosity describes very well why people watch Doctor Who.
Because they are curious about his next adventures. Because he takes the audience
on a journey through space and time. But how did Doctor Who come into being?
Which creative heads are responsible for the series and how did they develop a
concept that is so appealing to a wide variety of viewers? This question will be
answered in the opening of the following chapter.
2. Doctor WHO?
'Although time-travel is only a speculative concept, Doctor Who brings to it a fantastic
reality. Conjecture or pure fantasy, the series touches the imagination and the dreamer
inside all of us. The Doctor is a positive extreme: a blatant non-conforming individualist
with solid principles, a brilliant mind, a sparkling sense of humour, a child-like
curiosity and a machine bigger on the inside than out that can take him
somewhere he'd probably want to go to explore anyway.'
~ Starlog, June 197926
For centuries, hero figures have become symbols for their nations, often inspiring the
people when their life was overshadowed by dark times. In America, a trend can be
witnessed by the continuous popularization of superheroes, just like Batman,
Superman, Spiderman, Captain America or the Avengers. In Great Britain, though,
the national hero figure can be found in the Doctor from Doctor Who.27
Richard
Hanley states that if someone grew up British in the 1960s, they basically grew up
with Doctor Who, and not being into Doctor Who was comparable to not being into
cricket.28
The show has 'captured the imagination and affection of the entire nation.'29
25 Edelman (1997).
26 Haining (1984), p. 5.
27 Pless, p. 351.
28 Hanley, p. 27.
29 Robb, p. 45.
6

The programme came 'in the guise of a family adventure series'30
and was
broadcast at 5:15pm on BBC1, in the tea-time slot, for the majority of its run. It was
aimed at children, aged eleven to fourteen, but a report soon stated that sixty per cent
of the viewers were actually adults31
, and often times, it attracted 'whole families of
viewers, united in a blend of apprehension and fascination.'32
In an earlier book about
Doctor Who, Peter Haining (1983) claimed that ''Who viewers ranged from the five
year-olds who watch from behind the sofa (so the monsters won't see them) through
school children, university students (the viewing rooms in every university in the
country are packed when Who is on) through all the ages of adults and up to and
including the old.'33
John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado (1983), described Doctor
Who as a programme that has 'an audience crossing all classes in Britain' and that it
was equally watched by males and females34
, which is interesting, as science-fiction
is believed to be a genre that appeals more to men than women.
Science-fiction was seen as less important than the BBC's output in more
respectable genres, an attitude that led to severe budgetary constraints on Doctor
Who as well as to the destruction of many early episodes, especially of the Second
Doctor era. As long as the programme appealed to children, the BBC would tolerate
it, but the low standing of its genre and the lingering resentment about its origins
(more science-fiction) meant that its position within the BBC was always shaky.35
The series is, however, not merely a science-fiction programme, but generically all-
encompassing. Science-fiction has long had a negative connotation as being merely
an escapist fantasy, but has, over the years, been recognized as a form of social
commentary, a way to criticise society metaphorically.36
The development of the concept and the early stages of the production of Doctor
Who is a very interesting one. The main reference for the following 'production
history' is Brian J. Robb (2009), if not stated otherwise. Donald Baverstock, BBC
Controller of Programmes, hired Canadian Sydney Newman, who had previously
worked for the BBC's rival broadcaster ITV, in March of 1963, in order to produce a
show that would fill an early evening gap between the afternoon sport's programme
Grandstand, and the music review programme Jukebox Jury.
30 Robb, p. 10.
31 Levy, p. 76.
32 Haining (1988), p. 32.
33 Haining (1983), p. 152.
34 Tulloch/Alvarado, p. 3; ps. 316-317.
35 Leach, p. 5.
36 Pless, p. 357.
7

While Newman worked at ABC, a branch of ITV, he had commissioned the
science-fiction drama series Out of this World, as well as, in part, the serial
Pathfinders to Space and its two sequels Pathfinders to Mars and Pathfinders to
Venus. Elements from those shows combined became central in Doctor Who.
Since early 1962, the BBC had researched the possibility of transforming
popular literary science-fiction into a new television programme. Donald Bull and
Alice Frick had read and evaluated a great amount of then-current science-fiction
novels and short stories and identified various possible sub-genre, from simple
thriller, to technology driven stories, as well as cosmic threats to mankind and
cosmic disasters. In a report from 25 July 1962, John Braybon and Alice Frick
devised some rules for a prospective science-fiction drama series that included: '1.
They do not include Bug-Eyed Monsters. 2. The central characters are never Tin
Robots [...] 3. They do not require large and elaborate science fiction type settings
since, in our considered opinion, the presentation of the interior of a space-ship, or
the surface of another planet, gives rise to exactly the same psychological blockage
as the above-mentioned Robots and B.E.Ms. [...] 4. They do provide an opportunity
for genuine characterisation and in most cases, they ask the audience to suspend
disbelief scientifically and technologically on one fact only, after which all
developments follow a logical pattern.'37
Ironically, it was those tin-robots and bug-
eyed monsters that made Doctor Who such a success.
Both, Braybon and Frick, were certain that stories that had to do with telepaths
or time travelling would be most appealing to a wide audience and most suitable to
adapt to the television format. The stories that were amongst the most suitable for
adapting were the time-travel adventure Guardian of Time by Poul Anderson, Three
to Conquer by Eric Frank Russell, Eternity Lost by Clifford Simak, Pictures Don't
Lie by Catherine McLean, No Woman Born by CL Moore, The Cerebrative
Psittacoid by H Nearing Jr, and The Ruum by Arthur Forges.
The initial meeting of the creative heads, who would subsequently develop the
long-lasting concept of Doctor Who, was on 26 March 1963 between Donald Wilson,
John Braybon, Alice Frick and Cecil Edwin (CE) Webber. According to Frick's notes,
Donald Wilson suggested that the series should be based around a time-travelling
machine and the people who use it. He added that the machine could not only move
back and forth in time, but also into space and 'sideways' into matter itself. Alice
37 ''Science Fiction – Follow-Up Report.'' The Genesis of Doctor Who. BBC Archive.
8

Frick, however, preferred the idea of a 'flying saucer' vehicle compared to a Wellsian
time machine which would only give enough space to one traveller at a time, but it
was clear that the series would feature an ensemble cast and it was decided that each
character would have the chance to come to prominence in different serials with the
others slightly dropping in the background. While after the meeting the roots were
laid for Doctor Who, the specifics were still lacking.
Three days after the first meeting, CE Webber sent a note to Donald Wilson with
a few more specifics for the series. Webber's subsequent character notes mentioned 'a
handsome young man hero', a 'handsome welldressed heroine aged about 30' and a
'maturer man, 35-40, with some ''character'' twist.' A handwritten comment from
Sydney Newman on the note read: 'Need a kid to get into trouble, make mistakes.'38
Newman also severely criticised Webber's character description of the old man and
suggested that he be older than 35-40, a frail, grumpy old man who has stolen the
time-space machine from his own people. Perhaps he could come from an advanced
civilisation on a faraway planet, and this character would be called 'Doctor Who'.
Later in 1963, Webber sent a report with an approach for the new series to Sydney
Newman who annotated the document. It included a list with a brief description of
each of the characters. The first character to be mentioned on the list was Bridget
(Biddy), a 'girl of 15, reaching the end of her Secondary School career, eager for life,
lower-than-middle class.' The second character on the list was a Miss Lola
McGovern, '24. Mistress at Biddy's school. Timid but capable of sudden rabbit
courage. Modest, with plenty of normal desires. Although she tends to be the one
who gets into trouble, she is not to be guyed: she also is a loyalty character.' The third
character on the list was Cliff, '27 or 28. Master at the same school. Might be classed
as ancient by teenagers except that he is physically perfect, strong and courageous, a
gorgeous dish. Oddly, when brains are required, he can even be brainy, in a diffident
sort of way.' Those three characters would be the ones to sympathise with, ordinary
people to whom extraordinary things happen.
In the character list by CE Webber, the Doctor was first described as '[a] frail old
man lost in space and time. They give him this name because they don't know who
he is. He seems not to remember where he has come from; he is suspicious and
capable of sudden malignance; he seems to have some undefined enemy; he is
searching for something as well as fleeing from something. He has a "machine"
38 ''Concept Notes for New SF Drama.'' The Genesis of Doctor Who. BBC Archive.
9

which enables them to travel together through time, through space, and through
matter.'39
The fact that the Doctor's human companions were two schoolteachers and
a pupil was no accident, for Newman wanted the new series to be educational to
match the BBC's Charter 'to inform, educate and entertain,' by using the Doctor's
adventures through space and time as a sort of interactive classroom, disguised as
entertainment. Unfortunately, this educational aspect of the series only survived the
first two Doctor's and was almost entirely dropped for the succeeding incarnations of
the Doctor. It was later decided that the male companion, Cliff, was a science
teacher, and the female companion, Lola, was a history teacher. Hence, they
encompassed the two disciplines that would be important for the travels through
space and time. The two teachers would be the ones to mediate the knowledge about
different aspects in science and history. Because of concerns about 'the possible
sexual connotations of a young schoolgirl travelling alone with an old man,'40
Biddy
was changed from being a normal human pupil to the Doctor's granddaughter and
thus received an otherworldly characteristic. She would be the identification figure
for the younger audience and always ask questions. These three characters would
provide templates for the majority of the Doctor's travelling companions across the
next fifty years with regard to their roles and functions within this drama series.
Webber further suggested that due to the Doctor's apparent memory loss about
his origin, he also does not know how to fully operate that machine and this lack of
control makes the adventures very unpredictable, they never know where, or when,
they arrive. Much of the time travel concept comes from H.G. Wells' The Time
Machine, but a more immediate and more important inspiration came from
Quatermass and the Pit (1958-1959), an enormously popular science-fiction serial
written by Nigel Kneale. The idea for the interior of the machine came from the
classic British children's literature The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe (1950) by CS Lewis. With this idea of the 'magic door', Webber
wanted to give the machine a 'shape of nothingness'41
into which the Doctor and his
companions could pass to enter. Once again, Newman criticised Webber's idea and
stated that they 'need [a] tangible symbol'42
for the machine. Webber also suggested
that wherever the Doctor and his companions went, the machine would find 'some
contemporary disguise,' in order to remain undiscovered.
39 ''Background Notes for 'Dr. Who'.'' The Genesis of Doctor Who. BBC Archive.
40 Howe/Stammers/Walker, p. 200.
41 ''Background Notes for 'Doctor Who'.'' The Genesis of Doctor Who. BBC Archive.
42 Ibid.
10

The development of the machine was a stroke of genius; CS Lewis' concept of
the 'magic door' combined with H.G. Wells' time machine would greatly contribute to
the success and longevity of the programme. The idea for the exterior appearance for
the time-space machine apparently came from Anthony Coburn who was charged
with developing more ideas for the series by Donald Wilson. It has been said that
while on a stroll near his office, Coburn passed a police box and suggested it to
Webber. Police boxes were a familiar sight in Great Britain at that time and could be
often located on street corners and would be recognised by families from their own
familiar surroundings. It also contributed to Doctor Who's unique sense of
Britishness. By adding Newman's suggestion that the machine could also go into
space, as well as Webber and Newman's description of the characters, the basic
concept of the series was devised.
Although the aspects of regeneration and the use of evil throughout the series
had not been established in the original drafting of the basic concept, they have been
introduced to the show very early on and can be regarded as basic elements without
which the Doctor Who-experience would not be the same.
By June of 1963, Sydney Newman had selected 28 year-old Verity Lambert, with
whom he had briefly worked with at ITV, as producer for the programme, and by the
end of June the production team was complete with the arrival of script editor David
Whitaker. Anthony Coburn's first script contained some important changes for the
characters. The male teacher was now called, Ian Chesterton, the female teacher
Barbara Wright, and the Doctor's granddaughter was now called Susan Foreman.
William Hartnell was cast as the Doctor, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright, William
Russell as Ian Chesterton, and Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foremen.
The first episode, An Unearthly Child, was shot twice because the original was
deemed as not suitable to be broadcast and is now widely known as the 'Pilot'. The
script and acting was revised, and in the second version some of the dialogue, which
pinned down the Doctor's and Susan's origin to 'the forty-ninth century', was
rewritten to the more vague 'wanderers in the fourth dimension.'
While the show was off to a shaky start within the BBC itself, the opening
episode successfully bridged the gap from the ordinary and everyday lives of a pair
of London schoolteachers to the adventures in time and space that the series would
pursue for the next fifty years.
11

The first episode aired on 23 November 1963, one day after the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy, wherefore the BBC assumed that they may have lost a lot
of viewers, due to the extensive news coverage about the attack, but according to
BBC record, 4.4 million viewers were still watching An Unearthly Child that
afternoon at 5:15pm. Concerned about the possible loss of viewers during the first
broadcast of Doctor Who, the BBC repeated the episode the following week before
the new episode The Cave of Skulls, and that night, 6.4 million viewers were
watching the programme.43
The name of the show was justified and explained in a conversation between the
Doctor and the two teachers during the second episode, The Cave of Skulls. First, Ian
attempts to address the Doctor as Doctor Foreman, to which he does not answer, and
later on, Barbara similarly refers to him as Doctor Foreman, to which Ian, who has
since paid close attention, says, ''That's not his name. Who is he? Doctor who?
Perhaps if we knew his name we might have a clue to all this?' Although the title
lacks a question mark, it is meant to be a question, the greatest question of all, 'who'
is the Doctor? However, the missing question mark in the title later dots the costume
of the Seventh Doctor, which certainly makes up for the grammatical omission.44
Verity Lambert later told Doctor Who Magazine #234: 'Although our people
could go back in time and observe, they could never change the course of history. It
was a wonderful way of teaching, and certainly we had a lot of letters from teachers
who said they'd asked their classes to watch those particular episodes.'45
The series is
frequently derived from mythology and popular literature, such as H.G. Wells' The
Time Machine (the time travel concept), Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's
New Clothes (The Romans), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (The Brain of Morbius),
minotaurs (The Horns of Nimon), Jason and the Golden Fleece (Underworld),
Egyptian pyramids (Pyramids of Mars), the Loch Ness monster (Terror of the
Zygons), Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (Vengeance on Varos), and
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (Black Orchid).
While the programme was regarded as essential children's-viewing in the 1960s,
it seemed to have grown up with the audience in the 1970s and became more
ambitious, dramatically and in terms of production.46
43 Robb, ps. 19-41.
44 Newman, p. 10.
45 Robb, p. 49.
46 Newman, p. 5.
12

2.1 The Doctor and his Companions
From the beginning, the Doctor was conceived as an unconventional, anti-patriarchal
figure and this has only slightly changed during the course of the series' twenty-six
year run. Verity Lambert, the first producer of the programme, had always intended
for the Doctor to be completely anti-establishment and to be more like a child that
points a finger at society for their ridiculous behaviour.47
Just like some British
people reject the imperial system, but espouse their British identity, the Doctor
abhors some of the actions of the Time Lords but at the same time espouses his
identity as one of them.48
During the first episode of the series, An Unearthly Child, the first companions
of the Doctor, former teachers of his granddaughter Susan at Coal Hill Secondary
School, Ian and Barbara, request to know who he is, to which the Doctor replies that
Susan and him are 'wanderers in the fourth dimension […] exiles .[…] cut off from
our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day, we shall get back.' This
information, and that he calls himself 'the Doctor', is all the viewers learn about this
mysterious man. For the next six years, little is revealed about his identity and origin
until The War Games.49
At the end of The Tenth Planet, after fighting the Cybermen on the planet
Mondas, the Doctor collapses and tells his then companions Ben and Polly that 'this
old body of mine is wearing a bit thin'. Shortly after, he regenerates. When the
second Doctor regains consciousness in The Power of the Daleks, he tells his puzzled
companions, 'I've been renewed … it's part of the TARDIS. Without it I couldn't
survive' (The Power of the Daleks). But what is regeneration in the context of the
show and how was the idea established?
When William Hartnell decided to leave the series in 1966, due to his continuing
infirmity, the production team was presented with a problem that endangered the
survival of the programme, but was solved by a stroke of genius. They would keep
the show running, with a different actor in the lead role, justified through the process
that became known as 'regeneration' in Planet of the Spiders.50
This daring
manoeuvre, initiated as a desperate attempt to prolong a programme that 'proved
47 Pless, p. 352.
48 Lewis/Smithka, p. xvii.
49 Newman, p. 58.
50 Clark.
13

enormously popular'51
amongst the audience has remained a constant function
throughout the run of the series. Regeneration means, 'to acquire, in times of major
physiological trauma, a new body.'52
This can occur up to twelve times giving each
Time Lord a total of thirteen different incarnations, as declared in the episode The
Deadly Assassin. Regenerating, however, does not only mean to get a new body, but
'a complete physical renewal, restored energy and vigour.'53
K'anpo Rinpoche,
another Time Lord, who resided on Earth and was discovered in Planet of the
Spiders, explains the process of regeneration to the Brigadier and Sarah Jane like
this: 'Of course, he will look quite different… and it will shake up his brain cells a
little. You may find his behaviour somewhat … erratic…' According to K'anpo, each
time the Doctor regenerates his cells are replaced and his brain structure rearranged.
Consequently, each Doctor has been quite unique (Planet of the Spiders).
The process of regeneration itself is a dramatically powerful one and the key to
the enduring survival of the programme, as it gives the opportunity for a significant
rethinking of the direction of the series. With a new Doctor, the show changed
emphasis. After the change from the First to the Second Doctor, stories set in the past
had already shifted back from broadly educational serials about people and situations
that could be found on the O-Level syllabus (The Massacre) to pure swashbuckling
matinée entertainment (The Smugglers).54
When the first three Doctor's meet in a
special episode called The Three Doctor's the first Doctor condescendingly calls
them his 'replacement' and 'a dandy and a clown'. The number of regenerations was
supposedly picked at random, because, at the time, twelve seemed like a safely
distant number. And by the time the show was cancelled, in 1989, twenty-six years
after it has been first broadcast, the Doctor was only in his seventh incarnation.
The idea of regeneration is significantly interesting to philosophers, in the least
because it raises the 'question of the logical possibility of life after death.'55
However,
there is not much support from any of the episodes, as none of the Doctors really
died but had near-death encounters. In that case, regeneration is merely interesting to
philosophers as 'one of several illustrations of the difference between identity and
personality […].'56
The Doctor is not the only Time Lord who has regenerated on the
51 Levy, p. 76.
52 Stokes, p. 3.
53 Ibid., p. 4.
54 Newman, p. 54.
55 Hand, p. 214.
56 Ibid., p. 218.
14

screen, but so have his long-time arch-nemesis the Master, and one of his
companions, the Time Lady Romana. When Romana regenerated in Destiny of the
Daleks, she deliberately took on the form of the Princess Astra of Atrios who had
been featured in the serial The Armageddon Factor.
It was not only the actors who played the Doctor who were coming and going,
but also the companions came and went on a regular basis. Kim Newman (2009) said
that '[t]he Doctor's tendency to lose relationships and companions is a given, a
melancholy element of the hero's make-up.'57
Companions could be male or female
(mostly female), from the past, present or future, and humanoid or alien (mostly
human).58
The few companions that were not human are: Susan Foreman (Time
Lord), Romana I & II (Time Lord), Adric (Alzarian), Nyssa (Trakenite), and
Turlough (Trion). This means that only 5 out of 26 companions were non-human,
which proves that the Doctor had a preference for human companions. The question
is why? This question will be adressed in the chapter The Doctor's Companions.
2.1.1 The 7 Faces of the Doctor
'So you are my replacements – a dandy and a clown!'
~ First Doctor to the Second and Third (The Three Doctors)
The Doctor's incarnations are each very different from one another, unique even.
They differ not only in height, weight, age and appearance, but also very much in
personality. Despite those variations of the Doctor's personality, the audience has no
difficulty in accepting that the attributes all belong to the same person, the Doctor.59
However, the audience may have a little difficulty, at first, adapting to the new
incarnation's personality and every viewer has their favourite Doctor with whom they
can simply identify or feel most comfortable with going on an adventure through
space and time. For many people it is the first Doctor they have encountered and who
helped them fall in love with the programme, for others it is the original Doctor,
portrayed by William Hartnell. While the Doctor's personality has changed, his
identity remains the same, which suggests that personality and identity are distinct
from one another. This issue will be discussed in detail in the chapter On Personal
Identity. The question now is, if the Doctor's incarnations differ so much in
personality, what do they have in common that constitutes the identity of the Doctor?
57 Newman, p. 45.
58 Leach, p. 58.
59 Hand, p. 214.
15

It is not until the end of the Second Doctor's tenure that the audience begins to
learn more about the Doctor's mysterious origin. In The War Games, it is finally
revealed that the Doctor is a renegade alien called a Time Lord from the planet
Gallifrey. The Time Lords are an ancient race from the beginning of time with a
greatly advanced knowledge of science, history and technological engineering. While
they have the technology to travel through time and space, they have made it their
prime directive not to interfere and simply observe. The Doctor, bored with just
observing, steals an old TARDIS from the Gallifreyan museum and runs off with his
granddaughter Susan. Although he looks perfectly human, his physiology is
definitely alien: His age is unknown and he seems to have lost track of it himself, but
he is at least 450 years old. He has 'two hearts, a temperature of only sixty degrees
Fahrenheit, and [a] breathing rate [of] four breaths to the minute compared with [the
human rate of] twelve to sixteen.'60
Even though his appearance and personality vary greatly, all seven incarnations
share two important traits. First, the scientific curiosity – time after time, the Doctor's
adventures are initiated by his obsessive interest in the unknown. The second trait
that even dominates the first is altruism, which means that he has 'unselfish regard
for or devotion to the welfare of others.'61
Wherever the Doctor goes, he involves
himself in the problems of others, helps where he can, or is allowed to if it would
concern meddling with time, rarely thinking about his own safety. Although he is not
human, his beliefs seem essentially humanistic and democratic and he opposes
ethnocentrism. Another trait shared by all the incarnations is that he 'is being an
absolutist of a very British, upper crust sort.'62
Furthermore, the Doctor encompass 'a
reliance on intellectual agility rather than physical force or weapons to solve
problems, [insists] that the end never justifies the means, and [refuses] to take
himself seriously.'63
The series leaves no doubt that the Doctor could defeat all his foes if he would
use the same methods as they do, but he prefers to play fair, which often gets him
into more trouble. He is opposing all kinds of violence and deadly weapons, and
prefers to use his brain instead.64
Along with his altruistic personality goes his total
disinterest in personal power and complete loyalty towards his companions and
60 Levy, p. 76.
61 ''Altruism.'' Dictionary. Merriam Webster.
62 Levy, ps. 76-77.
63 Leach, p. 34.
64 Pless, p. 355.
16

moral principles. Despite his advanced knowledge in science and technology, the
Doctor's use of them is almost always minimal and mostly used to fix something. For
that matter he uses a small hand-held tool called the sonic screwdriver. If he does
have to fight, he prefers non-lethal objects such as his long scarf (Fourth Doctor), or
defending himself with Venusian karate moves (Third Doctor).65
Most importantly, however, his spirit of adventure is driven by curiosity about
the wonders the cosmos has to offer, whether it be distant planets and galaxies or
meeting other cultures and societies. His favourite race, nevertheless, is undoubtedly
the human race, which may also be one of his greatest weaknesses.
'One day I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxiety.
Just go forward in all of your beliefs, and prove that I am not mistaken in mine.'
~ First Doctor (The Daleks Invasion of Earth)
The First Doctor is often described as a crotchety old man, a grandfather figure.
Yet, he is much more. He is warm-hearted, despite it being hidden in a hard shell at
first, very protective of his granddaughter Susan, mischievous and incredibly curious.
Michael Hand even called the First Doctor 'benevolent and avuncular'66
. He has long
white hair and wears a kind of Edwardian outfit. He was cantankerous at times,
stubborn and stern, and often grew impatient with the questions of his companions
Ian and Barbara. A typical feature of the First Doctor was the tapping of his chin with
the index finger when deep in thought and then suddenly looking up when he has
been hit by an idea how to get out of adverse situations. He had a hard time, at first,
getting along with his companions Ian and Barbara but soon grew very fond of them
and even continued travelling with them after Susan had remained on Earth. After
they left he often took on young female companions who reminded him of Susan.
In The Edge of Destruction, the third serial of the first season, the Doctor and his
three companions are catapulted back in time to the creation of the solar system due
to the TARDIS malfunctioning. Being trapped in the TARDIS, the travellers are
growing increasingly paranoid and going through various stages of emotions and
anxieties. They express their feelings of distrust which they have withheld during
their last two adventures but ultimately solve the cause of their adverse state, which
results in a clearing of the air for their future travels as a team. This story also
allowed for the Doctor to reveal his true nature, 'which had evolved throughout the
65 Levy, p. 77-78.
66 Hand, p. 218.
17

first 13 episodes from that of a self-interested but curious and reluctant traveller to an
adventurer, willing to investigate situations and make moral judgements, taking sides
in conflicts and energising the oppressed – the Doctor had become a crusader for
freedom in all its forms.'67
However, during his last adventures, the First Doctor
became more and more irritable as his body grew weaker and weaker, which required
him to 'renew' it at the end of The Tenth Planet.
'Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority.'
~ Second Doctor (The Wheel in Space)
The tall, thin and white-haired First Doctor regenerated into a smaller, younger
man with dark brown hair. Where the First Doctor was stubborn and stern, the
Second Doctor was childish, playful, and eccentric and loved to play his recorder. He
wore clothes that were too big and had an odd taste in hats. He is often described as
'a clown' or 'cosmic hobo'. His enemies often mistook him for a fool, only to be
proven wrong when the he turned out to be a genius. Michael Hand calls him:
'pukish, merciful, and cunning'68
. Patrick Troughton, who played the Second Doctor
once stated that he had based his Doctor on Charlie Chaplin's 'little tramp'.69
While
the First Doctor's tenure was plastered with historical adventures, the Second Doctor
encountered more monsters than ever before, fighting them until he cannot anymore
in The War Games and calls the Time Lords for help, which the companions and
viewers find out to be the Doctors own race, and Gallifrey his home planet. It is also
revealed that he is not an exile, as the First Doctor claimed in An Unearthly Child,
but a renegade. He is put on trial for stealing the TARDIS and meddling with time,
which violated the law of non-interference. As a punishment he is exiled to Earth,
forced to regenerate and left bereft of his memories of how to control the TARDIS.
'Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know.
It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.'
~ Third Doctor (Planet of the Daleks)
Stumbling out of the TARDIS, the now Third incarnation of the Doctor is rushed
to a nearby hospital and thoroughly examined. It is revealed that he has, in fact, two
hearts and an alien blood-type (Spearhead from Space). The Third Doctor seems a
little older again, much taller than his predecessor, athletic, and has short white hair.
He is a very dashing and flamboyant figure, a kind of uncle and likes to hear how
67 Robb, p. 45.
68 Hand, p. 218.
69 Haining (1983), p. 43.
18

brilliant he is. Michael Hand described him as 'commanding and aristocratic, a
daredevil and a dandy.'70
While his former two incarnations have predominantly used
their brains to escape dangerous situations, that Third Doctor is eager to engage his
adversaries physically with his prominent Venusian karate style. Unlike his former
incarnations, who wore predominantly black, he wore colourful velvet smoking
jackets over a frilled shirt, and a cloak. He was much more concerned with his dress
than the other two.
Confined to Earth, he was often frustrated with the technological limitations this
time period set. He worked as an unpaid scientific advisor for UNIT71
. However,
while the Second Doctor had a weakness for hats, this incarnation had a passion for
gadgets. He loved driving around in his souped-up vintage roadster, which he
nicknamed Bessie and served as a replacement for the TARDIS. The Third Doctor
was a much more serious person and also appeared more human than his
predecessors. He regenerated after he was being exposed to high levels of radiation
on Metebelis 3 in Planet of the Spiders.
'There's no point in being grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes.'
~ Fourth Doctor (Robot)
The Fourth Doctor is a complete scatterbrain, while being brilliant at the same
time. After trying on several different clothes, ranging from Viking to Renaissance
nobleman, he finally figures out his own style: a frock coat, fedora hat and an
impractically long scarf in rainbow colours that was always dragging behind on the
floor. He always carried with him a bag of never-ending jelly-babies, which he
offered to everyone, no matter how severe the situation, and a yo-yo besides many
other things he would occasionally find in his coat pockets. He was charming,
confident and mischievous, unmatched by his predecessors and successors. He was 'a
long-haired bohemian who wore a ridiculously long scarf and saw the potential for
humour in even the most serious situations'72
, greeting even his enemies with an
irresistible smile.
This incarnation was less physical and his alien nature became much more
obvious again and was stressed upon in nearly every story. While the Third Doctor
was more serious, the Fourth was witty and sarcastic. In The Ark in Space the Fourth
70 Hand, p. 218.
71 United Nations Intelligence Taskforce.
72 Leach, p. 40.
19

Doctor calls the humans 'quite my favourite species.' The relationship with his
companions can be regarded as more of a deep friendship, whereas the Third Doctor
was more of a protective uncle, and the First a protective grandfather figure. The
Fourth Doctor is nearly killed by the Master in Logopolis and regenerates by going
through a kind of chrysalis stage.
'Well, it wouldn't be cricket.'
~ Fifth Doctor (Black Orchid)
The Fifth Doctor was the youngest incarnation thus far and probably also the
most characteristically British. His appearance changed drastically from the tall
Fourth Doctor with long brown curls and toothy grin, to a smaller short-haired
blonde with a charming smile. He is wearing a Victorian cricketing outfit, 'was a
little naïve in his kindness, managed to get his sonic screwdriver destroyed, and wore
a piece of celery on his lapel. Nevertheless, he had enough charm to defeat his
enemies like the Master, the Daleks, and Cybermen on numerous occasions'73
. Unlike
the others, he also seems the least eccentric in his mannerisms and behaviour and
was not ashamed to show his every emotion. When he was not fighting his enemies,
he enjoyed playing cricket. According to a Radio Times article, he was the 'dishiest'
Doctor thus far.74
He had a close and warm relationship with his companions but
hardened after Adric was killed and Tegan left him. When he met Peri, his last
companion, he became snappier and less diplomatic and did not bother anymore
about antagonising potential enemies. When he was poisoned with spectrox
toxaemia, he had to regenerate into the Sixth Doctor in The Caves of Androzani.
'Small though it is, the human brain can be quite effective when used properly.'
~ Sixth Doctor (The Two Doctors)
Unconventionally, the Sixth Doctor was introduced in the end of the twenty-first
season instead of in the beginning of the new season. 'What made this especially
unfortunate was that they also decided to stir up interest by making it difficult to
identify with the new Doctor. If some viewers felt the fifth Doctor was ''bland'', this
term could never be applied to his successor, aptly described by Colin Baker as ''a
galactic buccaneer''.'75
The Sixth Doctor looked like a clown, whose outfit resembled
a circus tent; his suit was a patchwork of bright colours. However, he was
73 Lewis/Smithka, p. x.
74 Tulloch/Alvarado, p. 193.
75 Leach, p. 65.
20

unpredictable, very egocentric and showed no regard for the feelings of his
companion. He even accused Peri of being evil, but this behaviour soon vanished and
it became clear that it was a result of everything that he had experienced, everything
that had built up inside of him, all the losses he had suffered as his former
incarnations. Their relationship eventually improved and they started to trust each
other again continuing to explore the cosmos and fight enemies, old and new, like the
Rani, another rebel Time Lord.
The Sixth Doctor was put on trial again for his apparent crimes of interfering
with time. During the trial, Peri is apparently killed. Two interesting facts were
revealed during this trial. First, the Master sent Mel and another person to support the
Doctor, and then arrived to defend his long-time enemy himself. Second, the
prosecutor was someone called the Valeyard, who, as it turned out, was a split
personality of the Doctor, his evil side, from somewhere between the Twelfth and
Thirteenth incarnation. The trial was cut short, for even under Time Lord law, the
same person cannot be prosecutor and defendant at the same time (The Trial of a
Time Lord). Mel and the Sixth Doctor leave in the TARDIS and arrive on an alien
planet where the Rani is waiting for them to use the Doctor for her evil schemes. He
gets critically injured and regenerates in the beginning of Time and the Rani.
'Pull a trigger. End a life. Simple isn't it? Makes sense doesn't it? A life killing a life...
Why don't you do it then? Look me in the eye. Pull the trigger. End my life.'
~ Seventh Doctor (The Happiness Patrol)
The Seventh Doctor was an inquisitive explorer who was intrigued by the
unknown. While he may have seemed like a scatterbrain, often underestimated by his
enemies, he had a very sharp and brilliant mind. He was a father-figure and teacher
for Ace, his new companion, and had a dress style very different from his
predecessor. His sweater vest was covered with question marks and he always carried
around an umbrella whose handle was a big red question mark. Although he had a
predominantly jolly and warm-hearted personality, it also darkened at times, for
instance when he made Ace confront her past which she tried to reject. There was
also a somewhat melancholy side to him, which was probably also the result of the
losses his previous incarnations had suffered. Another instance where his dark side
won over his benevolent nature, and opposed his former high morals of defeating his
enemies without using violence, was when he lured both the Cybermen and the
Daleks into a deadly trap (Silver Nemesis; Remembrance of the Daleks).
21

2.1.2 The Doctor's Companions
'Have you met Ms. Smith? She is my best friend.'
~ Fourth Doctor (The Seeds of Doom)
Anthony Clark claims that an integral element of Doctor Who was the use of
travelling companions. They would be ordinary people who would be caught up in
the Doctor's adventures and would ask questions on behalf of the audience.76
The
Doctor's first companion was Susan, his granddaughter and a fellow Time Lord.
Together they left their home planet, Gallifrey, and settled in early 1960s London
where 15 year old Susan went to school. The Doctor and Susan were soon joined by
Susan's inquisitive teachers, Ian, a science teacher, and Barbara, a history teacher in
An Unearthly Child. Together they formed the perfect ensemble for the first
adventures through space and time, assuring that there would be a lot of educational
conversations amongst the companions, which would cover the educational
requirements of the programme. Susan possessed a great knowledge of science and
history, but struggled with matters of everyday life on Earth. One instance was that
she did not know how many shillings made a pound, because she forgot that the
decimal system had not started yet in the UK, which caught the attention of her two
teachers. While Susan appeared to be a typical teenager, Ian and Barbara gave a more
adult perspective on things. Together the four would travel through time and space
until Susan decided to remain on Earth in The Dalek Invasion of Earth where she
later married a freedom fighter. Kim Newman proposes that Susan's main function
was 'to lead Barbara and Ian into the TARDIS and once this is completed she is
merely used as a nuisance to string out a peril.'77
After Susan left, the only personal tie the Doctor has had was gone and would
have left him all by himself if it were not for Barbara and Ian, which might explain
why the Doctor carried on 'to haul his departed relative's not always-congenial
teachers about time and space with him.'78
The Doctor soon took on another young
companion called Vicki in The Rescue. She was a shipwrecked orphan from a distant
point in Earth's history and is believed to have served as a 'surrogate child' for the
Doctor and a new pupil who would ask new questions on behalf of the viewers. It is
further believed that all companions served as 'a substitute for the lost Susan'79
,
76 Clark.
77 Newman, p. 13.
78 Ibid., p. 44.
79 Ibid.
22

which would explain the preference of the Doctor to take along young females,
instead of a possible sexual attraction to them, which the Doctor is not supposed to
experience anyhow. Colin Baker who played the Sixth Doctor explained it like this:
'love is a human emotion and the Doctor is not human.'80
Ian and Barbara leave the Doctor at the end of The Chase to presumably return to
their life on Earth, but the Doctor quickly finds a replacement for them in Steven,
another shipwrecked human. While Steven was responsible for the fist-fights, Vicky
would stereotypically be the screamer of the group, a function that was formerly
assigned to Susan and Barbara. This constellation composed of the Doctor plus a
male and a female companion with the same functions would be used repeatedly:
Second Doctor with Ben and Polly; Second Doctor with Jamie and Victoria or Zoe;
Third Doctor with the men from UNIT and Jo; Fourth Doctor with Harry and Sarah
Jane.
Vicky left the Doctor and Steven in The Myth Makers to marry Troilus and
become a historical figure only to be immediately replaced by Katarina in the same
story who, however, was already killed off again in the next story The Dalek's
Master Plan. Another short-time companion is Sara, who is introduced in The
Dalek's Master Plan and dies in the same story helping the First Doctor and Steven
to defeat the Daleks. A new companion came in the form of Dodo in The Massacre
of St Bartholomew's Eve. The Doctor immediately took to her because, so he says,
she reminds him of his granddaughter Susan. Steven finally left the TARDIS in The
Savages, which left Dodo as the sole companion for a short time. She met Ben and
Polly in The War Machines and let the Doctor know through Polly that she would no
longer travel with him. Ben and Polly were the first companions to witness the
Doctor's regeneration, then still known as simply a 'renewal' of the body, from the
First to the Second Doctor in The Tenth Planet and stayed with him for a while. They
were soon joined by Jamie, a Scot from the eighteenth century. The four travelled
together for a while until Ben and Polly left the TARDIS and the adventures in space
and time behind them in The Faceless Ones. Jamie and the Second Doctor travelled
alone for a short time until they were joined first by Victoria and then by Zoe. Jamie
stayed with the Doctor until the end of this incarnation when he was put on trial by
the Time Lords in The War Games for 'meddling with time' and forced to regenerate
into the Third Doctor. While the Doctor was confined to Earth, Jamie was sent back
80 Leach, p. 17.
23

to his own time and his memories of the Doctor, besides their first meeting, were
erased.
When the Third Doctor started working as a scientist for UNIT in Spearhead
from Space, he met Liz, a brilliant scientist who assisted him for four stories. She
was unsatisfied working for him and told the Brigadier in Terror of the Autons that all
the Doctor needs is 'someone to pass him his test tubes and tell him how brilliant he
is,' and returned to her own research at Cambridge University. With Liz gone, the
Brigadier immediately assigned Jo as the new assistant of the Doctor, who stayed
with him for a total of fifteen stories, most of the tenure of the Third incarnation, and
accompanied him during his exile on Earth and soon even into space when the
Doctor regained his memory of how to control the TARDIS. When the Doctor went
on a journey without her, she went to a Welsh village where she met scientist Cliff
Jones with whom she soon fell in love. She left the Doctor in The Green Death to get
married to Cliff Jones, who was devastated by her departure. Nevertheless, the
Doctor did not stay alone for long. He met the inquisitive young reporter Sarah Jane
Smith at the UNIT headquarters who followed him into the TARDIS and ended up as
a stowaway, only to find herself in thirteenth century England. She did not
immediately trust the Doctor but soon took a liking to him and developed an
affectionate relationship with him. Sarah Jane was the second companion, after Ben
and Polly, to witness the Doctor's regeneration in Planet of the Spiders. Their
affection for one another was shown when Sarah shed tears over the Doctor who
seemed to be dying after being poisoned. Sarah Jane continued to stay with the
Fourth Doctor for quite a while and was accompanied by Harry for the first couple of
stories. While the relationship between Sarah Jane and the Third Doctor was more
like an 'uncle and niece' relationship, she developed a deep friendship with the Fourth
Doctor who, in The Seeds of Doom, spoke of her as his 'best friend'. When the Doctor
was summoned back to Gallifrey at the end of The Hand of Fear, he dropped Sarah
Jane back on Earth in her time, for no humans were allowed on Gallifrey. The
following story, The Deadly Assassin, is the only televised serial that does not feature
a companion. Tom Baker, who played the Fourth Doctor, had told producer Phillip
Hinchcliff that he could carry the show on without a new companion, but it was
quickly decided that a companion was a necessary element of the programme.81
81 ''The Deadly Assassin.'' TARDIS Data Core. Wikia.
24

The two companions that followed were different from their predecessors; they
were more independent and, for once, not from Earth. Leela, who joined the Doctor
in The Face of Evil, was from the far future in human history but raised in a primitive
society on a different planet. She was a warrior who fought her own fights, even
against Daleks. She stayed with the Doctor for some time and even lived with him on
Gallifrey for a while. She left him when she decided to stay on Gallifrey to live with
another Time Lord in The Invasion of Time. On Gallifrey, the Doctor met the Time
Lady Romana who was the first companion to equal the Doctor's knowledge as they
were both Time Lords. Together they went on a quest for a mysterious object called
the 'Key to Time'. Romana even regenerated, voluntarily, in Destiny of the Daleks
after she had been captured and tortured in The Armageddon Factor and took the
shape of the princess Astra who helped her and the Doctor escape. The Doctor did
not like her taking on another living beings appearance but soon grew fond of it.
Romana left the Doctor in The Warriors Gate to stay in a different universe called E-
Space and help a group of slaves to free themselves. During their last adventures, the
Doctor and Romana were joined by Adric in the TARDIS, a teenager from Alzarius a
planet in E-Space, in Full Circle.
With Leela and Romana gone, the Doctor went back to taking on mostly female
human companions who, again, were the stereotypical screamers, like his first
companions. The Doctor and Adric were soon accompanied by Nyssa, Princess of
Traken in The Keeper of Traken and by Tegan, an Australian Air Hostess in
Logopolis. Logopolis was also the last story of the Fourth Doctor who is nearly killed
by the Master. He dramatically regenerated by going through a kind of chrysalis
stage, witnessed by his companions. All three stayed with the Fifth Doctor for a
while until Adric killed himself in Earthshock to save the Earth by staying on a time-
travelling ship which was supposed to crash into contemporary Earth. Instead, it
crashed into pre-historic Earth which is said to be the reason for the extinction of the
dinosaurs. They take on Turlough, a schoolboy from Trion, who was exiled to Earth,
shortly after in Mawdryn Undead. He travels with the Doctor and the two women,
although his loyalty is always in doubt, until Nyssa decides to stay behind on a leper
colony to help find a cure in Terminus. The next to leave was Tegan who wanted to
return home at the end of Resurrection of the Daleks, leaving the Doctor and
Turlough behind. Turlough left the TARDIS to return to his home planet Trion in
Planet of Fire after rescuing Peri who would become the Doctor's new companion.
25

Starting with Peri, the Doctor continues to only take one companion at a time
with him until the programme was cancelled in 1989. Having been poisoned with
spectrox toxaemia, the Doctor had to regenerate again. Peri stayed with the Sixth
Doctor throughout his tenure until he was put on trial, again, in The Trial of a Time
Lord by the Time Lords, where she apparently dies. Mel arrived at the Trial in a
travel pod, sent by someone unknown, later revealed to be the Master, to aid in
defending the Doctor. Mel and the Doctor had a complex relationship as their time
lines seem to have gone in different directions, which means they met in the wrong
order. Although she was present during his regeneration to the Seventh Doctor, she
did not witness it as she was unconscious. Her tenure as a companion was not very
long and she soon left the TARDIS again in Dragonfire where the Doctor met the
teenager Ace, who is his last travel companion before Doctor Who was cancelled.
Ace enjoyed action and blowing things up with the 'nitro' she always seemed to
carry around and used her advanced knowledge of chemistry on multiple occasions.
The relationship between Ace and the Doctor turned into a teacher student one, not
always to the liking of Ace. As it turned out, her meeting the Doctor was not an
accident but planned by one of his foes, called Fenric. Ace was the descendant of a
Viking who was marked with genetic instructions by Fenric to free him from his
prison. After this scheme was altered and Fenric defeated, Ace continued to travel
with the Doctor until the last episode, Survival.
Lewis and Smithka (2010) write in their introduction that although Ian and
Barbara where literally abducted by the First Doctor at the end of the first episode of
An Unearthly Child, once they recovered from the initial shock, loved travelling with
the Doctor, and even 'the ones who ''willingly'' join the Doctor have their hearts and
minds abducted by the wonder and majesty of what lies beyond the blue box. It's an
honour for the Doctor to ask you to join him. It's a sign that he thinks you're capable
of considering the abstract, being adventurous, daring, as well as understanding and
compassionate towards strange aliens.'82
Without the companions, the Doctor might have been in trouble defeating his
foes all on his own or would not have gotten into some of the trouble they had
experienced. In any case, he would have been alone, and what good is it to explore
the wonders and majesty of the cosmos alone. He started this journey with a
companion, Susan, and ended it with one, Ace, while on the way he made many great
82 Lewis/Smithka, p. xi.
26

friends but also suffered many losses. And without a companion, the viewers would
only have had the Doctor to sympathise with, which, despite his multiple
regenerations, would have been difficult and shortened the lifetime of Doctor Who.
2.1.3 On Personal Identity
'My last incarnation... Oh I was never happy with that one.
It had a sort of feckless 'charm' which simply wasn't me.'
~ Sixth Doctor (The Twin Dilemma)
Whenever the Doctor regenerates, he not only gets a renewed body with a
completely new appearance, but his personality changes as well, as presented in the
chapter The 7 Faces of the Doctor. The Doctor seems like a completely different
person after every regeneration. Yet, the characters on Doctor Who and the viewers
have no doubt that he is the same person before and after the process of regeneration,
he is still the Doctor. While his appearance and personality change, his general
attitude and morals, as well as his memories of the previous incarnations, remain.
But is this enough to constitute a personal identity? What does identity mean? What
constitutes a person? The case of the Doctor clearly states that a personality and a
person are not the same, and a change in personality does not mean change of person.
This provides us with a conundrum about which philosophers have argued for
centuries and still do to this day. In the following, I will present a few theories by
classic and contemporary philosophers and discuss how these apply to the Doctor on
Doctor Who.
Since John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), the
conundrum of personal identity has driven many philosophers to the point of despair.
Before Locke, the default assumption in Christendom was that the 'soul' was the
bearer of identity. First defended by Plato (429-347 B.C.E., Phaedo) and later by
Descartes (1596-1650, Meditations on First Philosophy), the 'soul' is the immaterial
part of a person. It is not comprised of atoms and has no spatial location, but it is
where decisions are made, emotions and sensations are felt, memories are stored and
recalled, reasoning occurs, the personality is housed, and religious experience is
generated.83
Locke, however, is agnostic about the immateriality of the soul, as well
as the soul being the bearer of personal identity. He proposes that personal identity is
embedded in a general account of identity, and this account of general identity is
83 Stokes, p. 5.
27

divided into identity of atoms and the identity of living beings.84
Locke argues that an
individual atom is the same at any time and does not change. If different atoms are
joined, they create a mass or body, and that mass or body remains the same no matter
how much the atoms are jumbled as long as it consists of the same atoms. However,
by the time one of these atoms is taken away or another one added, it will no longer
be the same mass or body. Yet, he states that this is not the case for living beings, as
their identity does not change with the alteration of a substance or body. Locke
explains his statement with the example of an oak tree. An acorn germinates and
becomes a little plant. This plant then grows into a great tree which is later lopped;
throughout it remains the same oak. Clearly, to him, identity does not lie in sameness
of the body.85
He further states that the identity of 'man' consists 'in nothing but a
participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in
succession vitally united to the same organized body.'86
Locke also argues that, in order to find out wherein personal identity lies, we
need to figure out what a person is. To him, a person is 'a thinking intelligent being,
that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking
thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which
is inseparable from thinking.'87
Since consciousness is always connected to thinking
and remembering, everyone constitutes something he calls the 'self' and thus
distinguishes himself from others. This means, personal identity lies in consciousness
of the 'self' through the memories he has made. The only problem, according to
Locke, with the consciousness constituting personal identity is forgetfulness, as no
one remembers all his past actions at all times, as well as the gaps in consciousness
during sound sleep, which raises doubts about whether we are the same 'self'
throughout our lives. Locke continues to argue that if it would be possible to transfer
a consciousness from one thinking substance to another, it would be possible that two
thinking substances make one person, because personal identity would be preserved
in both substances. In his opinion, personal identity can only consist in consciousness
of the 'self'.88
Locke implies that very many things 'change bodies’ constantly, as they gain and
lose particles, and thus regeneration is nothing more than what every human
84 Uzgalis.
85 Locke (a).
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid.
88 Ibid.
28

undergoes from one second to the next. Hence, applying Locke's concept of personal
identity to the Doctor, it becomes clear that the Doctor is still the Doctor after each
regeneration, because he is still conscious of himself as himself despite having
undergone bodily changes. Paul Dawson compares the regeneration of the Doctor to
a phoenix who 'rises from its own ashes.’89
Just like the case of the phoenix, the
particles that make the Doctor do not change. The atoms that make his body are
merely reshuffled and not replaced. Michael Hand states that it is 'precisely this
bodily continuity that accounts for our readiness to see the seven Doctors as
successive incarnations of the same person.'90
The Doctor's every cells, even the brain
cells, are jumbled, which would explain the change in personality, but it also
generates the question: if the brain cells are mixed up but he retains his memories,
where are those memories stored? For the memory should otherwise be affected as
well.
Does this suggest that the memories are restored in the immaterial entity, the
soul, after all? Each Doctor remembers the actions and experiences of his
predecessors, and remembers them as his actions and experiences, which comprises
Locke's conception of consciousness of the 'self'. He remembers their knowledge and
beliefs, their skills and competences, and their attachments and loyalties. The Fifth
Doctor states in The Five Doctors: 'A man is the sum of his memories'. But even the
Doctor becomes a victim of memory loss, twice. The Second Doctor has some of his
memories removed when he is forced to regenerate into the Third Doctor in The War
Games, and the Fourth Doctor has his memory of his time as president of Gallifrey
wiped at the end of The Invasion of Time. According to Locke, the Doctor would still
be the Doctor after each regeneration, because he retains what Locke defines as
personal identity.
Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) opposes John Locke's
perspective. Part of Hume’s fame and importance is owed to his boldly sceptical
approach to a range of philosophical subjects, such as personal identity.91
He argued
in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740) that there is no such thing as a self where
the 'self' is the totality of a person's conscious life; hence, he does not believe in
personal identity. Hume states that whenever he attempts to be self-conscious and
concentrates only on himself, his self-consciousness is always influenced by a range
89 Dawson, p. 230.
90 Hand, p. 219.
91 Fieser.
29

of perceptions and he can never catch himself without any.92
He believes identity is
merely the totality of our perceptions. If there is no such thing as personal identity
but only an assemblage of perceptions, what does this mean for the Doctor and his
incarnations? This would eliminate the question 'is the Doctor still the Doctor after
each regeneration?', because the Doctor would only be an assemblage of different
impressions and perceptions that exists across time.
Another theory argues that personal identity is constituted by bodily identity,
which means that to be the same person means to have the same body.93
This theory
however, would apply to neither humans or the Doctor. With the exception of the
brain cells, our bodies are replaced with new cells several times in our lives, which
can be witnessed when we hurt ourselves, when we grow, get old or change our
metabolism by changing our diet, which can affect the appearance of our skin or hair.
Again others believe in a kind of psychological continuity that resembles
physical continuity and involves the continued existence of a purely mental entity or
thing instead of sameness of body.94
Some living beings continue to exist even
though their physical continuity involves great changes. For instance, a Camberwell
Beauty is first an egg, then a caterpillar, then a chrysalis and finally a butterfly. These
are four very different stages in the physically continuous existence of a single
organism.95
The Doctor's incarnations can equally be viewed as merely different
stages of his continuous existence.
The aspect that is missing but needs to be addressed in connection with the
Doctor in Doctor Who is that of the drastic change of his personality. According to
Paul Dawson, personality does not constitute a person, because it makes perfect
sense to suppose that a person’s personality might change, and change radically over
time. But how does he define a person? Clearly, he does not define a person as an
organism because he wouldn’t call a tree or a cat a person. A person isn’t a
personality either since a person can change their personality and yet remain the
same.96
Johnson offers this opinion: 'Think about yourself at age ten. You acted
differently, had a different world-view, a different personality, and different beliefs.
As you learned, your brain structure was rearranged. In fact, gradually, your body
92 Hume.
93 Littman (b), p. 16.
94 Parfit, ps. 204-205.
95 Ibid., p. 203.
96 Dawson, ps. 231-232.
30

completely replaced all of its cells using material and energy you ingested.'97
Humans
change over the years. They enter new episodes of their lives and they change (their
personality) to adapt to this new life. No one is the same person as an adult as when
they were a child. Our experiences and surroundings shape us and change us and this
can be equally true for the Doctor.
According to the Four Dimensionalist approach, there are 'person-stages’ which
exist at particular times, and persons only exist across time, as the sum of all the
person-stages.98
Applying the Four Dimensionalist approach to the Doctor, his
various incarnations can be viewed as various person-stages that all together make up
a person, namely the Doctor. This approach presents only one problem, namely that
if person-stages are temporal parts of a person, there are always two entities present:
a person-stage (e.g. the Fourth Doctor) and a person (the Doctor).99
A human life can
easily be categorized into several person-stages, for instance, such as childhood,
teenage years, adolescence, adult, married adult or widowed adult. Throughout every
stage, humans can develop new personalities, because they have made new
experiences and are surrounded by different influences.
A person's personality can also drastically change, for instance, after a traumatic
experience, such as a car accident or fire. This would result in the person
metaphorically becoming a new person without literally becoming a different person.
This seems like a contradiction but is not. This makes the person numerically
identical, while at the same time qualitatively different. For example, Leibnitz’s Law,
which tells us that if person A and person B are numerically identical, that is person
A being an infant while person B is the adult, it can’t be true that A has some
property that B lacks or vice versa. This law states that difference in properties
entails numerical distinctness. However, thinking of all the properties a person
changes over their life, such as size, strength, hair growth, all sorts of beliefs and
mannerisms that they didn’t have as a child, it becomes clear that his law is flawed.100
Saying that something is like something else and that they are numerically
identical means that they are one and the same, that they are one thing rather than
two, which is different from qualitative identity. Something is qualitatively identical
when they are exactly similar, such as identical twins, who may be impossible to tell
97 Johnson, p. 42.
98 Stokes, p. 11.
99 Ibid.
100 Hanley, p. 34.
31

apart, but who are not numerically identical, as there are two of them.101
In the case
of the Doctor, all his various incarnations may be qualitatively different, but are
numerically identical – as the various incarnations are consecutive – unless each
incarnation is taken out of their own appropriate time line, as was the case in The
Two Doctors, The Three Doctors, and The Five Doctor where two or more
incarnations met, which could create a paradox. This case, however, will be address
in the chapter The Concept of Time and Space Travel.
2.2 Adventures in Space and Time
'You can't rewrite history, not one line!'
~ First Doctor (The Aztecs)
Before the Doctor, or any other being or device, the TARDIS, the time-space
machine, is the only constant on screen that can be seen in every episode and has
never changed it's appearance, in contrast to the Doctor who has also been in every
episode but has changed his appearance several times. This is pretty ironic, however,
since the initial concept proposed that the TARDIS would change its appearance
wherever and whenever the Doctor went with his companions, but it was discovered
that the chameleon circuit that is responsible for the shape shifting was broken in An
Unearthly Child. One feature of the TARDIS is that it is telepathic and translates all
the different languages the travellers come across in time and space, which justified
why the cavemen from the first serial, the Daleks, the ancient Aztecs and all the other
beings they encountered spoke fluent English. This was first explained in detail
rather late in the Doctor Who history, in the season 14 serial The Masque of
Mandragora. Furthermore, the inside of the TARDIS was a kind of universe itself,
with infinite space – a key Time Lord technology of trans-dimensional engineering –
which explained the repeated exclamation by new companions, 'It's bigger on the
inside', once they entered the rather small looking blue police box for the first time. It
could take the Doctor and his companions anywhere in time and space, mostly not
where they wanted to go, but as it always turned out, where they needed to go.
Sydney Newman insisted on the programme's educational function, pointing out
that the device of time travel provided an opportunity for lessons in history as well as
science and technology. The majority of the historically focused stories were
broadcast during the First Doctor's tenure and gave the programme the educational
101 Olson (2010).
32

aspect, like Sydney Newman expected. It is believed that what the BBC really
expected from an educational programme like Doctor Who, were stories exactly like
Marco Polo where the plot content matched the textbooks in schools.102
Nevertheless,
there was one rule the Doctor pointed out to his companions and that was the rule of
non-interference. They were not allowed, under any circumstances, to interfere with
and alter history. Writer John Lucarotti, obviously aware of the shortcoming of action
and interaction by the Doctor and his companions, addressed this in his next script
(The Aztecs) as to what would happen if the Doctor or his companions did attempt to
alter history. In the case of The Aztecs, Barbara, who was mistaken for a goddess by
the Aztecs, attempted to abolish human sacrifices, which only encouraged them even
more to keep up that tradition.
Purely historical, and thus educational stories were: Marco Polo, The Aztecs, The
Romans, The Crusade, Black Orchid, An Unearthly Child (also known as 100.000
BC), The Gunfighters, The Highlanders, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, The
Myth Makers, The Reign of Terror, and The Smugglers. While those purely historical
and educational serials have been mostly abandoned with the regeneration of the
third Doctor, this did not completely eliminate the time travel aspect of the show, for
the Doctor and his companions still travelled through time, mostly the future than the
past but occasionally past adventures did happen (The Time Warrior). Although the
historical serials were mostly well-researched, which meant that the children could
actually have learnt something about different historical periods by watching Doctor
Who, 'many children maintained they found the historical stories ''boring'' in
comparison to the more exciting space adventures.'103
Hence, for the remainder of its
run, space travels made up the majority, including threatening monsters that were
either discovered on alien planets or who invaded and threatened Earth itself.
2.2.1 Wanderers in the Fourth Dimension
'Yes, that's right, you're going. You've been gone for ages. You're already gone.
You're still here. You've just arrived. I haven't even met you yet.
It all depends on who you are and how you look at it. Strange business, time.'
~ Seventh Doctor (Dragonfire)
With every materialisation of the TARDIS, the series would go back to the status
quo. The show could start all over again and go in any direction. The adventures
102 Newman, p. 37.
103 Robb, p. 50.
33

could cover 'tragedy' (The Aztecs, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve),
'swashbuckling adventure' (The Reign of Terror, The Smugglers), a 'sophisticated
farce' (The Romans), a 'genre pastiche' (The Gunfighters) or a historical 'studio epic'
(Marco Polo, The Crusade).104
In the first episode of An Unearthly Child, the First Doctor claims that he and
Susan are 'wanderers in the fourth dimension' but Barbara and Ian do not believe him
and Ian states that 'time doesn't go round and round in circles, you can't get on and
off whenever you like in the past or the future.' He believes that time is only linear.
This gives the Doctor enough reason to prove Ian wrong and take him and Barbara
on a journey back in time, to the Stone Age, where they discover a group of cavemen
who have lost the knowledge about how to make fire.
Marco Polo was seen as the ultimate educational time travel story and had been
written like a travelogue, taking the First Doctor and his companions on a journey
with Marco Polo to the court of Kublai Khan. The journey included political intrigue
and the stops along the way provided opportunities for lessons in history.105
An interesting case of interfering with history is the historical farce The Romans,
where the First Doctor is mistaken for a popular lyre player and thus invited to the
palace of the emperor Nero. Nero, whose idea to modernize the city of Rome was
denied by the Senate, showed his plans to the Doctor who accidentally set them on
fire. He, thus, gave Nero the idea to burn down the original city, which, historically,
became known as the Great Fire of Rome and led to the rebuilding of the city.
In the serial The Myth Makers, the First Doctor and his companions, at the time
Vicki and Steven, arrive in Asia Minor near the city of Troy. He is mistaken by
Achilles as the God Zeus and taken to the Greek camp where he meets Agamemnon
and Odysseus. With his cover blown that he is only a mortal, but a traveller in space
and time, he is requested to think of a plan to conquer the city of Troy. Knowing
about Earth's history, he gives the Greek the idea of the Trojan Horse, which, after
The Romans, is the second case in which the Doctor influenced history, which raises
the question about the precise origin of those ideas, since the Doctor knows about
them from history and hence creates a time loop. Another time loop is created in the
story The Invisible Enemy where Leela, a companion of the Fourth Doctor from the
far future, is providing her anti-bodies against a deadly virus to the humans who,
104 Newman, p. 22.
105 Robb, p. 50.
34

chronologically viewed, are from her past and thus saves the human race. Since
Leela is from the far future in human history, she only possessed those anti-bodies
because her ancestors had suffered from this virus, which again raises the question
about the origin of the anti-bodies.
In Pyramids of Mars, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane go back to 1911 where
they discover that the ancient Egyptian God Seth, is actually a Martian called Sutekh
the Destroyer who plans to destroy every living thing. Remembering the non-
interference rule, Sarah, being from the 1970s, concludes that there is no need to
interfere because she knows for a fact that the life on Earth did not end in 1911. The
Doctor proves her wrong by moving the TARDIS forward in time to the year 1980
where they find the Earth completely wasted, with a severe thunderstorm going on.
Now Sarah is convinced that they have to interfere or the world will end in 1911.
While the Doctor moved a lot in time, he also frequently moved into outer-space
visiting other planets and galaxies, and at times landed on a space ship in the far
future. Notable stories are: The Planet of Evil, The Ark in Space, Galaxy 4, The
Sensorites, The Space Museum, The Moonbase, Frontier in Space, and Colony in
Space. Those stories that took place in outer-space would stimulate the imagination
of the viewers about possible worlds and possible other lifeforms, both evil and
peaceful. Those stories that were set on Earth mostly dealt with alien invasions or
threats from, for instance, dinosaurs (Invasion of the Dinosaurs).
2.2.2 The Concept of Time and Space Travel
Works of fiction offer the unique possibility to make the impossible possible by
engaging in concepts that may seem mythical or utopian in the real world. Time and
space travel are such prominent concepts in works of fiction and appeal to the
imagination of a great many people. The first literary work on travel into space was
Jules Verne's novel From the Earth to the Moon (1865). Before H.G. Wells's popular
work The Time Machine (1896), works such as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
(1843) and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)
approached the idea of travelling through time.
The original creators of Doctor Who intended to create an educational
programme for the Saturday afternoon tea-time slot that would be based on literary
works of science-fiction and predominantly focus on the aspect of time travel, as
mentioned at the beginning of chapter two. It was further decided to include the
35

aspect of travelling into space, in order to eliminate any boundaries and allow for the
programme to go in any direction. The only boundary would be the human mind.
While travelling into space has generally become a reality in 1957106
, preceding
the first broadcast of Doctor Who, time travelling remains a technological
impossibility to this present day, but is a highly discussed topic among physicists and
philosophers. One aspect that has to be addressed when discussing travelling through
time is: What is time?
Time is an abstract concept that is used to place events into a sequenced order, to
compare how long an event lasts, and when the event occurs. These three key
features explain the use of time but not what time itself is. There have been a variety
of answers to this question, including that time is a substance and not a relationship
among events. However, a more prominent answer, post-Einstein, is that time is not a
substance but spacetime is and that time is a part of spacetime.107
The concept of 'spacetime' was developed by Einstein's teacher, Hermann
Minkowski, and introduced during a lecture on Relativity where he announced: 'The
views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of
experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth,
space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and
only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.' Time and space
need to be combined to accurately describe what we see, for a certain object is
always in a particular space at a specific time. Because space consists of three
dimensions, and time consists of one dimension, spacetime must be a four-
dimensional object.108
From very early on, philosophers have concerned themselves with the concept of
time. Philosophers such as Zeno (circa 490-430 B.C.E), Plato (circa 427-347 B.C.E),
Spinoza (1632-1677), and McTaggart (1866-1925) were of the opinion that time is
nothing because it simply does not exist. However, most philosophers agree that time
does exist but there is, yet, no agreement on what time is. Greek philosopher
Aristotle (384-324 B.C.E.), for instance, argued that time does not have a beginning,
for we can always imagine an earlier time, which suggests that past time is infinite.
In Medieval times, Italian philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) objected
106 Russian dog Laika was the first animal to travel into outer space, and Russian pilot Juri Gargarin
was the first human to journey into outer space in 1961.
107 Dowden.
108 Odenwald.
36

Aristotle's viewpoint and instead claimed that the past time is finite and begins with
God's creation of Earth. In late seventeenth century, Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1722)
supported Aristotle's viewpoint but further stated that future time is equally infinite.
In the eighteenth century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) claimed
that time is not an empirical matter but a matter of necessity. In the twentieth century,
Dutch philosopher Bas van Fraassen (1941-present), the pioneer of 'constructive
empiricism', described time as 'physical time' by saying that '[t]here would be no
time were there no beings capable of reason.'109
Generally, there appear to be three different kinds of time: physical time is the
time that clocks measure, biological time is indicated by a person's circadian rhythm
or body clock, and psychological time is private time, that which we are mostly self-
aware of. While physical time is necessary to comprehend shared experiences in the
world, psychological time is necessary to understand many human thought processes.
It is believed by most cognitive scientists and philosophers that our ability to imagine
other times, such as remembering an event in the past or visualising how one's future
might look, is a vital part for self-awareness and having a consciousness.110
The concept of time travel involves a discrepancy between time and time. While
any traveller starts his journey at one destination and arrives at another, the time that
has passed from departure to arrival is the duration of the journey. For the time
traveller, however, 'the separation in time between departure and arrival does not
equal the duration of his journey.'111
Before the twentieth century, scientists and
philosophers rarely investigated time travel, but now it is a much discussed topic.
The most attention is paid to time travels that can be explained with current physical
theories, such as Einstein's theory of General Relativity. As there are different models
of the cosmos and for the laws of nature in science, there are also different
possibilities for time travel, and theories about time travel in physics have changed
radically over the last few centuries, ranging from classical Newtonian conceptions
to modern conceptions of Relativity and quantum mechanics.112
Basically, most philosophers and scientists believe that time travel is physically
possible, which means that it would be possible abiding to the current established
laws of physics. Ned Markosian argues that humans often think about time travel
109 Dowden.
110 Ibid.
111 Lewis (1976), p. 145.
112 Hunter.
37

stories and the human mind cannot depict something that is entirely impossible, for it
is generally believed that there is always some truth to any story. Hence, if it were
completely impossible, people would not even be able to consider the idea. He
further states that philosophers who argue against time travel would have difficulty to
explain the origin of the idea.113
Nevertheless, the possibility to travel to the future is
the only concept that is well accepted, whereas travel to the past is deemed as
controversial. Travelling through time in order to change either the past or the future
is generally deemed impossible.
There appear to be several well-known philosophical arguments against the
possibility of travelling to the past, such as the notion that if there was the possibility
for travelling to the past, there would be many time travellers among us, yet, none
has been encountered thus far. Furthermore, if there was the possibility and a
traveller would go back in time to change the history, there must be observers of such
a conspiracy against the nature of time, but since no one has never witnessed
anything like that, time travel is not possible.
Another argument claims that travel to the past is not possible, for it would allow
the gaining of information in the past from the future. For instance, if a traveller goes
back in time and takes a manuscript of Shakespeare's Hamlet with him to give it to
Shakespeare before he has actually had the idea for the manuscript himself, but he
would take it and publish it as his idea, the question arises where the initial idea came
from? This would cause a spatial loop, hence, time travel to the past cannot be
possible.
Yet another argument against time travel to the past is explained with the idea of
taking two male and two female squirrels back to the time of the dinosaurs. While the
squirrels begin breeding, the dinosaurs die out and the species of the squirrels
survives into modern times. This would mean that the squirrels came into being
without going through the process of Darwinian evolution. All those arguments
demonstrate that travel to the past is not possible because it would contradict our
knowledge about logic.114
According to Newton, time is like an arrow, once fired it goes a straight,
undeviating line. He was also convinced that one second on Earth would be the same
as one second on Mars, that time is the same throughout the universe. According to
113 Markosian.
114 Dowden.
38

The Doctor Who Phenomenon - Exploring the Philosophical Concepts of the Iconic Sci-Fi Series

The Doctor Who Phenomenon - Exploring the Philosophical Concepts of the Iconic Sci-Fi Series

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