Doctor Who for Beginners: Movies, Plays, Novels & Audio Dramas

In Part One of my series on the Doctor Who for beginners, I covered the history of the original BBC television program from its debut in 1963 until its final first-run broadcast in 1989. In Part Two, I shall cover many appearances of Doctor Who in other media. These will include stage plays, two cinema films, novels and full cast audio dramas. I will also include the Doctor Who movie made for television in 1996. And I will examine where-or if-these adaptations fit into the Doctor Who canon.

AARU Films adapted Doctor Who for the big screen during the 1960's in the form of two films, Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks-Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., both produced by Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky. The movies were essentially retellings of existing stories from the TV series adapted for the big screen. In the DW television series, the Doctor was portrayed as a stranger from another world who travels in space and time in a stolen TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space), a space-time vehicle designed by his people. In these films, actor Peter Cushing played Dr. Who, an eccentric human scientist who travels in space and time with his two granddaughters in "Tardis," a time machine which he invented, and combats the Daleks, the popular archenemies from the Doctor Who television series.

While William Hartnell's portrayal of the Doctor on television was that of a crotchety, irascible old man, Cushing character is more of a gentle figure who is quite grandfatherly. While the movies do follow the general storylines of the TV show's first two Dalek adventures, they are generally not regarded as part of the Doctor Who canon. A third Dalek film was planned, but never filmed.

Doctor Who has also been brought to the stage several times. In 1974, Trevor Martin played the Time Lord in Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday. The Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, is seen briefly in TV footage. Wendy Padbury, who had played Zoe Heriot on television, during the Second Doctor era, was once again one of the Doctor's companions as Jenny. As this play was written and produced before Tom Baker had succeeded Pertwee as the Doctor, it is generally not accepted as part of the Doctor Who continuity.

In 1989, DW producer John Nathan-Turner backed a stage production titled Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure in which Jon Pertwee returned as the Third Doctor. David Banks, who had played a CyberLeader in various Cybermen stories on TV during the 1980's, filled in as the Doctor for two performances while Pertwee was ill. Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor, took over the role in May 1989 for the remainder of the play's run. This production is accepted as part of the continuity of the television series by many observers due to the play's references to events that had occurred in the TV program.

Doctor Who writer and Dalek creator Terry Nation wrote a Dalek play without the Doctor. The Curse of the Daleks was produced during the late 1960's. The play itself is considered non-canonical, but elements of the plot were later reworked in scripts for future Dalek stories.

In 1996, nearly seven years after the original Doctor Who the Doctor returned to the small screen in a made for television movie. Doctor Who: The Movie (also referred to by some as The Enemy Within) was a joint production of the BBC and Universal, broadcast by the BBC in the UK and by Fox in the United States. Paul McGann starred as the Eighth Doctor, joined by Daphne Ashbrook as Dr. Grace Holloway with Eric Roberts as the Doctor's archenemy Master. Sylvester McCoy is shown briefly at the beginning of the movie as the Seventh Doctor before regenerating into McGann's Time Lord. John Debney, who composed the music score for the TV movie, has also scored many big screen movies including The Scorpion King, The Passion of the Christ, and Bruce Almighty among others.

Co-executive producer Philip David Segal had intended to pitch Doctor Who: The Movie as a pilot for a possible new series to be broadcast in both the UK and North America. While the movie drew strong ratings in Great Britain, it did not fare so well in the United States, and the Doctor would not return to television until the relaunch of the series in 2005 (to be covered in Part Three of this series). The TV movie is accepted as part of the continuity of Doctor Who, bridging the classic series to the BBC's 2005 relaunch of the program.

Countless Doctor Who novels have been published since the 1960's when Frederick Mueller Ltd. released novelizations of several televised stories from the William Hartnell era. In 1973, Target Books began adapting Doctor Who television serials as novels. With Target's permission, Pinnacle Books released several novels of the Third and Fourth Doctors' adventures to the U.S. market during the 1980's. By 1991, Target had novelized all but a few serials from the original series. They also adapted several novels from scripts that had originally been written for the show's twenty-third season but were scrapped during the eighteen-month hiatus of 1985-86.

During the late 80's Virgin Publishing took over Target and began releasing original Doctor Who novels in 1991 through the Virgin brand. The books picked up after the end of the original TV series following the Seventh Doctor. The New Adventures series included 60 Seventh Doctor books and one novel, The Dying Days (published in 1997), with the Eighth Doctor from the 1996 TV movie. Shortly after the broadcast of the TV movie, however, the BBC decided not to renew Virgin's license for Doctor Who books, opting to begin publishing their own series of original DW adventures. Virgin did continue the New Adventures series with twenty-three novels featuring Bernice Summerfield, an original companion created to travel with the Seventh Doctor in the New Adventures series.

During the 90's Virgin also published a series of novels called the Missing Adventures. These books (totaling 33 in all) featured the first six Doctors from the television series. In addition, Virgin released a series of short story anthologies called Decalog. The first three releases featured the seven Doctors from the TV program. After Virgin lost its license to use characters from the television show, they released two more Decalogs centering around original companions created for the New Adventures novels. The canonicity of the Virgin novels is unclear, and remains the subject of debate among fans.

In June of 1997, BBC Books began releasing two series of Doctor Who novels. The Past Doctor Adventures followed the exploits of the seven Doctors from the television series while the Eighth Doctor Adventures focused on Paul McGann's Time Lord from the TV movie. While the books in the PDA series were written as stand-alone stories, the EDA novels often contained story arcs that continued over several books. The two series seem to be independent of Virgin's New Adventures and Missing Adventures novels, many of the original characters are not present in the BBC's books, and the EDA and PDA novels have some original characters created specifically for those series.

After the relaunch of Doctor Who as a regular television series in 2005, BBC Books decided to discontinue the EDA and PDA series to focus on a new series of novels centering around the new series. The BBC did grant a license to Big Finish Productions to publish further adventures with the first eight Doctors (I'll have more about Big Finish later in this article).

The New Series Adventures has featured five original stories with the Ninth Doctor (played on television by Christopher Eccleston) and thirteen books so far with the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant). Three more novels are scheduled to be released in December, and the first three books of 2008 are due out in March. BBC Books has also released two new series novellas, I Am a Dalek and Made of Steel, with a third (Revenge of the Judoon) set for a March 2008 release.

The Doctor has also been featured in a number of audio productions over the last thirty-plus years. In 1976, Argo Records released Doctor Who and the Pescatons, an audio play on a vinyl LP. The production, written by Victor Pemberton and produced by Don Norman, starred Tom Baker as the Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith. In 1986, Colin Baker starred as the Sixth Doctor along with Nicola Bryant in the BBC radio play Slipback. Slipback helped fill in the void for Doctor Who fans while the TV program was off the air for eighteen months during the infamous hiatus of the mid-80's.

Production of Doctor Who as a regular television series ended in late 1989. BBC Radio attempted to revive the program as a radio drama during the 1990's, although only two radio dramas were ever produced. Jon Pertwee returned as the Third Doctor in The Paradise of Death (1993). Elisabeth Sladen also reprised her TV role as companion Sarah Jane Smith, as did Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. Pertwee, Sladen and Courtney reunited a year later for the radio play The Ghosts of N-Space. The program was finally broadcast in early 1996, just a few months before Pertwee's death. Both Third Doctor dramas were scripted by Barry Letts, who had produced the television series during Jon Pertwee's tenure as the Doctor.

In 1999, Big Finish Productions began releasing Doctor Who audio dramas on CD featuring the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors under a licensing agreement with the BBC. Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann have all reprised their roles as the Doctor. Many of the actors and actresses who played companions have also returned, and several original characters have been introduced as well, especially in the Seventh and Eighth Doctor adventures. Tom Baker has been invited on several occasions to return as the Fourth Doctor, but he has respectfully declined.

Big Finish has also produced several spin-off audio programs, including the Dalek Empire series featuring the Doctor's oldest enemies, Gallifrey, a series based on the Doctor's homeworld, Sarah Jane Smith, starring Elisabeth Sladen as the Doctor's most popular companion from the TV program, and a series focusing on Virgin's New Adventures companion Bernice Summerfield (played by Lisa Bowerman). The company also publishes Short Trips, a series of short story anthologies featuring the first eight Doctors and their companions as well as some of Big Finish's original characters. The canonicity of the Big Finish audio adventures and the Short Trips stories is debatable as the characters and storylines have often gone in directions contrary to the Virgin and BBC novels, and Big Finish's original characters have not been acknowledged by the BBC as part of the Doctor Who continuity.

All of the these novels, movies, plays and audio dramas have given Doctor Who fans several outlets with which to enjoy their favorite time traveler outside of the television program, as well as to debate with each other over their places in the continuity of the DW mythology. They have also helped to fill a void for many fans after the end of the original series until the BBC relaunched the show in 2005. In Part Three, I will focus on the new program as I conclude this series on the history of Doctor Who.