In 1963, the BBC needed to fill the Saturday afternoon slot between the sports show, Grandstand, and the pop music programme, Juke Box Jury. Newman later recalled, “We required a new programme that would bridge the state of mind of sports fans, and the teenage pop music audience, while attracting and holding the children's audience accustomed to their Saturday afternoon serial."


The programme would be aimed principally at children, and Newman wanted it to be educational. He had the idea of using time travel to teach children about different historical periods. Newman said, “I dreamed up this old man of 760 years of age who fled from a distant planet in a time-space machine. Being so old, he is somewhat senile and doesn’t know how to operate his machine.”

This character would be called "the Doctor" (never "Doctor Who", which is only the title of the programme). 

Inventing the TARDIS

Newman gave the project to BBC producer, Verity Lambert, to develop. It was Lambert who came up with the idea of the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension(s) in Space), the Doctor’s time/space machine, whose interior is much larger than its exterior. The TARDIS has a "chameleon circuit" which allows it to change shape to blend in with its surroundings. Antony Coburn, who wrote the first episode, suggested making it resemble a blue police box, used by policemen on the beat to phone their stations. This idea came to Coburn while walking near his office and seeing a real police box. To save costs of continually rebuilding the machine, it was decided to make the chameleon circuit malfunction. As a result, ever since 1963, the Doctor has been travelling through time and space in a police box.

Find out more about the TARDIS and police boxes in the TARDIS LIBRARY

To create a sound effect for the TARDIS’s dematerialisation sequences, Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radiophonic Workship dragged a house key over the bass strings of an old piano, and treated the sound with echo and reverb.

From the mid-1960s, policemen were equipped with radios, and blue police boxes were gradually discontinued. As a result, when we now see a police box, we immediately think of the Doctor’s TARDIS. In 1996, the BBC even registered the image as a trademark, in order to sell merchandise. The Metropolitan Police challenged the BBC claim but lost the case, and had to pay court costs.

The Unearthly Child

The first Doctor Who programme was broadcast on November 23, 1963, the day after President Kennedy’s assassination. Titled The Unearthly Child, it featured the 55-year-old actor William Hartnell as the Doctor, who is shown living in the London of 1963 with his granddaughter, Susan. Two of Susan's teachers, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, follow her home from school, and stumble into the TARDIS where they meet the Doctor. He then takes them all back to the Stone Age, where they encounter a tribe trying to find the secret of making fire. Barbara and Ian's role was to represent the television audience, baffled at the mysteries of time travel - the Doctor has to explain to them what is going on. They would be the first of many human companions of the Doctor.

Enter the Daleks

Sidney Newman had given Verity Lambert a free hand making the programme, yet he was taken aback by the second series, The Daleks, broadcast in December 1963-February 1964. Newman later said, "My only firm order to her was 'On no account will I permit BEM's -bug eyed monsters of cheap-jack fiction. They're out.' Weeks later, a timid Miss Lambert came and told me about the Daleks. I exploded."

In the series, written by Terry Nation, the Doctor has to combat the Daleks, evil mutants, encased in metal radiation suits, whose sole purpose is to "exterminate" all other life forms. These were exactly the type of bug-eyed monsters that Newman did not want in his programme!

Yet the Daleks proved an instant hit with the public and, all over the country, children in playgrounds were soon running around with their arms outstretched, crying "Ex-tir-min-ate!" at each other. When ratings passed eight million viewers, Newman said to Lambert, "You obviously understand this series far better than I do."

Time Lord from Gallifrey

With each series, the audience was given new information about the mysterious Doctor. We learned that he belongs to a race called the Time Lords, who live on the distant planet Gallifrey. The Doctor is a renegade Time Lord who has stolen a TARDIS in order to escape from his own people. He is driven by curiosity to travel across the universe in time and space. Yet his favourite planet is Earth, where he returns again and again.

Regeneration

William Hartnell played the Doctor until 1966, when ill health forced him to retire. Sydney Newman and his new producer, Innes Lloyd, made the brave decision to recast the role. This was justified because, as an alien, the Doctor has the ability to regenerate, or grow a new body. So on October 29, 1966, in the closing minutes of The Tenth Planet, viewers were amazed to see William Hartnell transform into the actor Patrick Troughton. It soon became clear that the new Doctor had also undergone a dramatic change of personality, becoming a much warmer and more eccentric character.

Regeneration allowed the series continually to renew itself. After Troughton left the series in 1969, eight more actors would play the role on television. Find out about the Doctor's various incarnations here