Ion Barbu High School

Nabucului Street,no.18
Sector 5,Bucharest
Tel/ Fax: +021-410.23.32

Coordonating teacher: Mihail Adriana

Student : Botea Alexandra

May
~2012~

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction : Synopsis..........................................................................................page 3
Chapter I : Why choose Doctor Who as a symbol of the British
culture?..........................................................................................................................page 4
Chapter II : How Doctor Who made a difference in the SF
genre...............................................................................................................................page 8
Chapter III : The theme song.................................................................................page 9
Chapter IV : The companions..............................................................................page 10
Chapter V : The villains..........................................................................................page 12
Conclusion : ................................................................................................................page 14
Bibliography :.............................................................................................................page 15

INTRODUCTION
Synopsis

First of all, just what is Doctor Who? It is a cult science fiction television show
created by the BBC.
This program portrays the voyages of a mysterious hero,a humanoid alien who calls
himself The Doctor.He is a Time Lord,from the planet Gallifrey.
He travels the Universe in a machine called TARDIS(short for Time And Relative
Dimensions In Space) that flies through time and space and from the outside looks
like a blue police box from 1963s London , when the series was first broadcasted .
Alongside his (usually) female companions, he faces all sorts of enemies while
seeking to save civilisations, help people and,basically, save the day.
Whenever the lead actor quits, The Doctor can regenerate(die and reborn like a
Phoenix) into a new actor . So far, in the TV series, 11 actors have played The
Doctor,the latest being Matt Smith.
This means The Doctor has changed ten distinct times. In the above picture are the
eleven faces of the Doctor. From left to right the actors are: William Hartnell, Patrick
Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker,Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy,
Paul McGann,Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant and Matt Smith.

Chapter I
WHY CHOOSE DOCTOR WHO AS A SYMBOL OF THE BRITISH CULTURE?

In the UK , it is an institution regarded with awe. It originally ran for 26 years (from
1963 to 1989) and returned in 2005, so it comes to no wonder that it is listed in the
Guinness World Records as the longest-running science fiction television series in
the world(it has more than 700 episodes), and as the most successful science fiction
series of all time,winning this former title at the BAFTA Awards (the British
Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards) in 2006.
It has been applauded for its creative stories, very beautiful special effects,and
ground breaking use of electronic music which has been produced by the BBC
RadiophonicWorkshop.
This is the show that inspired TV experts, who grew up watching Doctor Who.
Now,just how big is this show in Britain? Its in the papers. Its a huge, popular
show that managed to round up the dazzling number of roughly 42 million people!
Which is very impressive considering that in the United Kingdom there are almost
63 million people.

Another outstanding thing this show managed to accomplish is that it introduced at

least three more words to the English language,not to mention catchphrases.Very few
shows have managed this.
Dalek(The Doctor has many foes,but the Daleks,which are cyborgs from the
planet Skaro pose the biggest threat to him.They are pictured below.) was the first
word inserted in the Oxford English Dictionary as a type of robot appearing in
Doctor Who . Not only had I created a monster, I had created a word. What writer
could ask for more? said their creator, Terry Nation.

The phrase "Hiding behind the sofa whenever the Daleks appear" is mentioned as
part of the UKs cultural identity .They were even printed on a stamp celebrating
popular culture.

Even the Doctors distinctive machine, the Tardis, also was introduced into the
OED. Though its a machine able to move through time and space, it entered the
language for one of its even more extraordinary abilities: as it occupies two different
dimensions, its bigger on the inside than the outside . So any room that seems
more larger on the inside is a Tardis.

This is how the Tardis looks like from the

outside.

The interior.
Its bigger on the
inside!- the very first
thing every companion
of The Doctor says
when stepping into it.

Nevertheless, the series biggest contribution to the English language was the
word cyber, which defined everything that is computerized. The term cybernetic
first appeared in 1948, but it took the Doctor Who villains, the Cybermen, to make
cyber known. Many science fiction authors used this word afterwards.
In terms of merchandise, Doctor Who produces hundreds of goods related to
the show including comics, books, toys, games, cards and stamps.
Many games have been released that feature the Cybermen, including
Cybermen and Daleks computer games.

Chapter II
HOW DOCTOR WHO MADE A DIFFERENCE IN THE SF GENRE

At the beginning of the series, British producers did not have enough funds to
create impressive special effects(especially because the television was black and
white) or sets, so they focused on smart written scripts and on discovering other ways
to do great effects and to build alien planets with very few money. Despite this
potential drawback, the show was an instant hit with the public.
This was the television series that inspired all the other BBC sci-fi and drama
productions. Only thanks to the success of Doctor Who, sci-fi shows like Blakes
Seven, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Life on Mars exist.
The series of Doctor Who that started in 2005 has a bigger budget and higher
production standards, but the emphasis is still on the quality of the story and the
actors. Many actors grew up with Doctor Who, so they want to be part of the show
today. The first writer of the new series, Stephen Russell Davies, was a devoted
Doctor Who fan. So was David Tennant (the actor who played the 10th Doctor) and
most of the directors. Although it originally was intended to be a kids show, it
influenced many of Britains finest people and became a show for the entire family to
enjoy.

Chapter III
THE THEME SONG

Many television series have outstanding theme songs, but few were as inventive as
the spine-chilling Doctor Who theme. It was composed by Ron Grainer and mixed by
Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
The Workshop lead the way in electronic music, and Derbyshires mix, using
unconventional instruments, was something no one has ever heard before.
Recording it was a tricky and long process, but it paid off in 1971, when the Queen
was acquainted with the director of the Workshop. The Radiophonic? Ah yes
Doctor Who! exclaimed Her Majesty.

Chapter IV
The companions

When Doctor Who was created, the structure of the shows cast was different
from the hero and his sidekick pattern that appeared later. At first, the character of
the Doctor was almost an antihero, with uncertain motives and abilities and who
travelled mostly alone, the only notable exception being his granddaughter, Susan.
However, when Susan left, he eventually met during his third incarnation a woman
named Jo who wanted to travel the stars. They immediately became a team. That
was the moment the Doctor with a single companion became a pattern from which
Doctor Who rarely deviated.
Companions have a wide range of roles in Doctor Who: passengers, assistants,
someone to whom the Doctor is a mentor to, friends, and adventurers. Present-day
companions tend to help the Doctor when he is in life or death situations. For example,
the Doctor thanks both Rose Tyler and Martha Jones for saving his life.
The Doctor frequently gets new companions and says goodbye to the old ones,
sometimes because they go back home, or have reasons to stay on the worlds they
have explored and some companions also died during the course of the show.

The

most recent companion of the 11th

incarnation of the Doctor is Amy Pond, played by
Karen Gillan.

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Above is a picture of the entire cast of Doctors companions from his granddaughter
Susan to Astrid Peth (played by Kylie Minogue), the last companion of the 10 th
Doctor.

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Chapter V
The villains

The creators of the show did not want to continue with the formula of the "bugeyed monster" from the science fiction genre, yet monsters were an essential element
of Doctor Who from the start and were popular with the public.
The most important adversaries of the Doctor are the Cybermen, the Daleks, and
most notably, The Master.
The Daleks are mutants in
tank-like armor from the planet
Skaro. Their main goal is, as
they often shout in their
immediately recognizable (and
hysteric) metallic voices, is to
"Exterminate!" all life forms
inferior to themselves, in short,
being intergalactic Nazis.

The Cybermen were at first

an organic species of aliens
coming the planet Mondas that
started to implant more and
more metalic parts into their
bodies,until they were fully
robotic. Theyre goal is to
transform organic life forms
into robots.

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The Master is a renegade Time Lord with a desire for universal conquest and
will stop at nothing to achieve his dream of becoming The king of the wasteland that
shall be this Universe after Im finished with it! (the producers confirmed the fact
that he is insane.) .
Being a Time Lord, he can also regenerate and be a constant threat to The
Doctor.
The last actor who played The Master was John Simm.

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Conclusion
This show is one of the most loved productions of the BBC, not only in Britain,
but also in Canada, America and Australia, and for good reasons, as far as I am
concerned.
Its clever stories, fantastic special effects and music and, most importantly,
lovable characters made me adore this show, a show in which good people always find
a way to prevail and in which intellect and romance triumphs over brute force and
cynicism as said by Craig Ferguson, the American talk show host of The Late Late
Show.
In conclusion, I have decided to write about Doctor Who as a way to homage
an entertaining and enduring television production, which I find, as The Doctor would
say in a cheerful manner, brilliant!

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

WIKIPEDIA :

HTTP:// EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/DOCTOR_WHO.

INFORAPID:HTTP://EN.INFORAPID.ORG/INDEX.PHP?SEARCH=I%20AM%20A%20
DALEK.

HTTP:// WWW.SCRIBD .COM/DOC/85532019/D OCTOR-WHO-G UIDE-2007-EDITION.

AND

FOR

THE

PICTURES :

WWW.DEVIANTART .COM/

AND

HTTP://WWW.BING.COM/?SCOPE=IMAGES&NR=1&FORM=NOFORM .

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