View source for Doctor Who is No. 1

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| publication = TV Guide
| file = http://cuttingsarchive.org/images/9/9c/2012-12-10_TV_Guide_p14.pdf
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| date = 2012-12-10
| author = Aubry D'Arminio
| pages = 14
| language = English
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HORDES OF WHOVIANS, as they're called, voted for the British sci-fi series to win our third Fan Favorites cover poll—galvanizing support through countless blog posts, message-board comments and tweets. The consensus was it's about time Doctor Who (beloved back home in the U.K.) got the props it deserves in the States. And that the fans love Matt Smith, who currently plays the show's titular time and space traveler known only as the Doctor ("Doctor who?" Get it?). "That's amazing!" Smith shouts on the road to a shoot in Wales, before turning serious. "Thank you to everyone who voted, because this is a huge, huge accolade. Fans mustn't underestimate their role in the emergence of the show in America." He's not kidding. Who's had a long, strange trip on the way to the exciting place it's in now.

Let's go back in time, shall we?

Doctor Who debuted in Britain on November 23, 1963, the day after the Kennedy assassination. The First Doctor, played by wizened William Hartnell with Einstein-esque hair and a frock coat, barked pedantically at his three companions (two schoolteachers and his granddaughter) while holding his lapels.

Together they traversed the universe battling baddies in the Doctor's signature ride, the TARDIS, which could theoretically change shape to blend into its surroundings but was stuck as a 1950s-era British police call box. Five episodes in, the Doctor faced the Daleks, who would become his most long-standing foes, extraterrestrials resembling big metal pepper pots with one plunger-like hand and a goal that doubled as their favorite word: "Exterminate!"

When Hartnell's declining health forced him off the series, Who's writers introduced their concept of "regeneration," which allowed the Doctor, a member of a human-looking alien race called the Time Lords, to transform into a different being. So in 1966, Hartnell's Doctor collapsed and woke up a newer, younger man, portrayed by mop-topped Patrick Troughton. "I remember realizing that somebody else was playing the Doctor and complaining to my dad that that wasn't the Doctor," recalls current executive producer Steven Moffat, who'd been watching the series since it began—when he was just 2 years old. "It was seeing that show that made me want to know what went on behind the scenes."

Troughton turned into the dashing Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee, the first to appear in color), who in turn became the utterly bananas Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker, in an impossibly long striped scarf) and so on. The one constant besides the TARDIS and the inevitable traveling companions: The Doctor was open-minded and tolerant. And crackers. "Essentially the show is about a madman fighting aliens with a plunger, a toaster and some orangutan fur who saves the world by default or mistake and [is] cleverer than everyone else," Smith says. "That's got a universal appeal, I suppose."

Time-Life Television counted on that when they began syndicating the Pertwee years Stateside in 1972, though the show didn't find a more permanent American home until PBS picked up Baker's episodes in 1978—where it played as a cult series. By 1985, Who was shedding much of its


"It's sort of scientifically impossible to get bored with him," says showrunner Steven Moffat. "He gets a real shake-up every few years. We've had 11 Doctors in the time they've had, what, six James Bonds?"
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