Doctor Who was a television show that ran on the BBC (and later BBC1) from 1963 until 1989. It was subsequently resurrected in 2005. Among its many contributions to culture are long multicolor scarfs, an irrational fear of salt-shakers, and the knowledge of what they call French fries in France.
The show was conceived by Winston Churchill, a suspected Time Lord, in 1941 as a way of showing just how bad the world would be if the Nazis won. However production could not begin yet because no budget could be allocated to anything not essential to winning the war effort. Terry Nation's Nazi script was put on hold until the war ended.
Once the war was over, Churchill was thrown out of power. In a drunken rage, he burned Nation's draft scripts, thus setting precedent that everything associated with the show would be burnt. Fortunately, because he was drunk, he forgot to burn one of the scripts and instead locked it away in an attic somewhere.
In 1962 a man named Alice Frick, whose parents obviously hated him, discovered these scripts and proposed the creation of a television show around them. Nation's script was now unsuitable as an opening story. The production team decided that instead of Nazis, the main threat had to be nuclear war. A thirteen-episode series was commissioned: one episode to introduce the main characters, three episodes set in a nuclear wasteland, seven episodes dealing with future Nazis, and two episodes of putting all the clues together and figuring out who Doctor Who was.
Unfortunately, the scripts had to be rushed out in a hurry, because the script editor, David Whitaker, was literally on a different planet. After turning down scripts from Gene Roddenberry, because they were too optimistic, and Douglas Adams, because he was eleven at the time, Whitaker took two shots of vodka and a noseful of cocaine, sat down with his notes, and banged out some nonsense about cavemen. Then he banged out more nonsense about Doctor Who's time machine and how it was alive. Then he banged out more nonsense about the French Revolution, the Crusades, the Norman Invasion, the Battle of Culloden, Atlantis, space pirates, cave-monsters, Atlantis again, the EEC, Atlantis yet again, giant spiders, giant robots, and giant mice. He also sounded out Terry Nation about recycling The Lord of the Rings in space. Then he died of a heart attack, leaving quite a mess behind him.
The BBC realized that, while Whitaker had laid out an interesting plan, fully implementing it would take about fourteen years. With Nation's new scripts coming in, they had no choice but to go ahead and grant the show a full season. Then the show somehow became a hit with the fans, who demanded subsequent seasons. This caused some consternation among the cast, who became increasingly upset about having to spend so much time in the company of giant saltshakers. One by one, they all quit. As they did so, they were replaced with younger and sexier actors and actresses, because the writing team was slowly forgetting how to write decent scripts. "More saltshakers!" was the constant cry from higher up. The last cast member to quit was the original Doctor Who, William Hartnell. He went on to time-travel into the future and audition for the role of Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, but the homophobic actor pulled out when he learned of the character's sexual orientation. He went back to 1973 to make sure the show was going along all right without him, mumbled something about coming back one day, and then blasted off for the 22nd century. The BBC, incensed that they'd hired a real Time Lord who no doubt could have saved them a bunch of money in effects, burned much of his last season.
Meanwhile, back in 1966, the producers agreed to hire one of the Beatles, Patrick Troughton, to carry on in the role of Doctor Who. Troughton was initially hesitant, and for the rest of his life would bemoan the fact that "A Day in the Life" did not have an epic recorder solo.
The Beatles were forced to hire a replacement, thus leading to the famous "Pat is Dead" theory, even though he was obviously alive and well and playing Doctor Who. He ultimately left the show in 1969, rejoined the Beatles, and turned Abbey Road from another example of White Album and Let it Be-era self-indulgence into the masterpiece it is. Shortly afterwards, Troughton became a priest. It did not end well. The BBC, incensed at his decision to leave the show to make music and spread the Gospel, burned most of his episodes.
Also in the year 1969, International Man of Mystery Austin Powers was cryogenically frozen so that one day he could face his nemesis, Doctor Evil, again. The producers of Doctor Who decided to make the next incarnation of Doctor Who an homage to Powers. They cast Jon Pertwee, who happily obliged his paymasters with an impromptu nude scene in his second episode. He was later informed that by "homage Austin Powers," the BBC had meant "copy his outfit and nothing else. Not his teeth, not his glasses, and certainly not his habit of shagging anything in sight." By this point it was 1974, and the star had gotten rather tired of partying it up every night.
He was replaced by Tom Baker, alias Rasputin. Perhaps the most famous Doctor Who of them all, Tom stayed in the role for longer than should be legal. It's actually possible that he was going to be sacked after his third year, but then the producer was sacked instead. (For more on the sacking of this particular producer, please see The Stupidest Things Ever.) During the seven years he was on the show, he married each and every one of his female co-stars. In Tom's final episode, he was strangled by his own scarf, and then he was shot, poisoned, possessed by a zombie, decapitated, subjected to vast quantities of entropy, and finally thrown off the BBC's transmission tower in an effort to get him off the show. However he survived all of this and regenerated with the help of Rupert Giles.
Realizing that once again they had a real Time Lord on their hands, the producers allowed the "new" Doctor Who, "Peter Davison," to stick around for three more years. By this time the show had gone to hell anyway, thanks to the producership of Jonathan Turner Classic Movies. He demanded that the next Doctor Who wear an obscene multicolor suit. The only taker for the job was Colin Baker. Public reaction to his suit was to put the show on hiatus. Baker's reaction to the hiatus was to gain a lot of weight. Ultimately he was fired; nobody knows the reasons why because all of the paperwork was burnt.
The last Doctor Who of the original run was Sylvester McCoy. His attempt at proving that the show wasn't a tired old mule was to play Doctor Who in almost the exact same style as Patrick Troughton. To be fair, this is what almost every Doctor Who since Troughton did, but this time the audience caught on. The show was cancelled and Jonathan Turner Classic Movies was burnt.
There were some movies in the mid-60s starring Grand Moff Tarkin, but those don't count. There was also a movie in 1996 starring an actor known only as "I," thus making him the most appropriately-named Doctor Who to date. Whether this counts or not is a matter of debate and has been the cause of a surprising number of saltshaker-related injuries.
In 1999, American filmmaker George Lucass enquired about making "Special Editions" of classic Doctor Who serials, such as The Talons of Eng-China, Genesis of the Dales, and The Caves of Andreana. Nobody has heard anything from Mr. Lucass ever again. According to Tom Baker, history was really lucky there.
In 2005, the show was revived. The ninth Doctor Who was played by Christopher Eccleston, who had to quit after one season because of an allergic reaction to his leather jacket. He was replaced by David Tennant, probably the most controversial Doctor Who since Tom Baker. Either you like this enthusiastic gentleman with his unyielding optimism, or you can't stand this skinny idiot who gets upset when anyone else gets to play the hero.
Eventually, Tennant was replaced by Matthew Smith, best known for playing Young Voldemort on the cutting room floor. His female co-star has legs. This is all anyone currently watching the show knows about either of them. Mostly because of his female co-star's legs.
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