Timeline

Delia Ann Derbyshire (5 May 1937 – 3 July 2001) was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She worked with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including an electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. She has been referred to as "the unsung heroine of British electronic music", having influenced musicians including Aphex Twin, the Chemical Brothers and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital.

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series, created by Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber and Donald Wilson, follows the adventures of the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being from a humanoid species known as Time Lords. The Doctor travels through space and time using a time travelling spaceship called the TARDIS, which has an exterior that resembles a British police box. The Doctor encounters various civilisations, which he seeks to protect by outwitting foes and solving crises. The Doctor usually travels with a companion.

The TARDIS (; acronym for "Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space") is a fictional hybrid of a time machine and spacecraft that has, since 1963, appeared in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its various spin-offs. While a TARDIS is capable of disguising itself, the exterior appearance of the Doctor's TARDIS typically mimics a police box, an obsolete type of telephone kiosk that was once commonly seen on streets in Britain in the 1940s and 50s. Its interior is shown as being much larger than its exterior, commonly described as being "bigger on the inside". Due to the significance of Doctor Who in popular British culture, the shape of the police box is now more strongly associated with the TARDIS than its real-world inspiration. The name and design of the TARDIS is a registered trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), although the design was originally created by the Metropolitan Police Service.

The Doctor, sometimes known as Doctor Who, is the protagonist of the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. An extraterrestrial Time Lord, the Doctor travels the universe in a time travelling spaceship called the TARDIS, often with companions. Since the show's inception in 1963, the character has been portrayed by fourteen lead actors. The transition to each succeeding actor is explained within the show's narrative through the plot device of regeneration, a biological function of Time Lords that allows a change of cellular structure and appearance with recovery following a mortal injury.

The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race who appear in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. They first appeared in the 1963 Doctor Who serial The Daleks. The Daleks are a highly xenophobic militant race who seek to destroy all non-Dalek life in the universe. They serve as the archenemies of the series' protagonist, the Doctor, who often comes into conflict with the Daleks throughout the show.

UNIT is a fictional military organisation from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its spin-offs Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and The War Between the Land and the Sea. Operating under the auspices of the United Nations and initially led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, its purpose is to investigate and combat paranormal and extraterrestrial threats to Earth. Several UNIT personnel played a major role in the original Doctor Who series, and it was a regular feature from The Invasion (1968) until The Seeds of Doom (1976). The organization returned in the revived series, and has been led by Kate Lethbridge-Stewart since 2012.

Rassilon is a fictional character from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. In the backstory of the programme, he was the founder of Time Lord society on the planet Gallifrey and its first leader. Rassilon was first mentioned in the 1976 serial The Deadly Assassin, where he was retconned into being a major establishing figure in Time Lord society, filling the role previously fulfilled by the character Omega. Despite his impact on Time Lord society, he was implied to be a cruel leader. He would later appear in the 1983 episode "The Five Doctors" in a physical appearance. In the show's revival, he appears as an antagonist in the 2009–2010 episodes "The End of Time" and the 2015 episode "Hell Bent". Rassilon has also appeared in a large amount of spin-off media associated with the show.

The first series of the 2005 revival of the British science fiction programme Doctor Who, and the twenty-seventh season overall, began on 26 March 2005 with the episode "Rose". This marked the end of the programme's 16-year absence from episodic television following its cancellation in 1989, and the first new televised Doctor Who story since the broadcast of the television movie starring Paul McGann in 1996. The finale episode, "The Parting of the Ways", was broadcast on 18 June 2005. The show was revived by longtime Doctor Who fan Russell T Davies, who had been lobbying the BBC since the late 1990s to bring the show back. The first series comprised thirteen episodes, eight of which Davies wrote. Davies, Julie Gardner, and Mal Young served as executive producers, Phil Collinson as producer.

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television series, produced and broadcast by the BBC on the BBC TV channel from 1963 to 1964, and on BBC1 from 1964 to 1989 and 2005 to 2025. A one-off television film, co-produced with Universal Pictures, was broadcast on the Fox network in the United States in 1996.

Doctor Who, also referred to as Doctor Who: The Movie or as Doctor Who: The Television Movie or Dr Who in the US, is a 1996 television film continuing the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Developed as a co-production between Universal Studios and BBC Worldwide, it premiered on 12 May 1996 on the Canadian television station CITV in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 15 days before its first showing in the United Kingdom on BBC One and two days before being broadcast in the United States on Fox. It was theatrically released in some countries.

"Blink" is the tenth episode of the third series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on 9 June 2007 on BBC One. The episode was directed by Hettie MacDonald and written by Steven Moffat. The episode is based on a previous short story written by Moffat for the 2006 Doctor Who Annual, titled "'What I Did on My Christmas Holidays' By Sally Sparrow".

The Weeping Angels are a race of fictional predatory alien creatures from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The Weeping Angels look like stone statues to an observer since they only can move when unobserved. Weeping Angels feast by touching a victim; the victim is sent back in time, and the Angel feeds on the resulting time energy from the time travel caused. The Weeping Angels were introduced in the 2007 episode "Blink" and became recurring characters across a variety of Doctor Who media. These later episodes expand the Angels' list of abilities, which include the ability for an image of an Angel to become another Weeping Angel, the ability to turn other statues into Weeping Angels, and the ability to kill others by touching them twice.

The fifth series of the British science-fiction television programme Doctor Who was originally broadcast on BBC One in 2010. The series began on 3 April 2010 with "The Eleventh Hour", and ended with "The Big Bang" on 26 June 2010. The series is the first to be led by Steven Moffat, who took over as head writer and executive producer when Russell T Davies ended his involvement in the show after "The End of Time". The series has 13 episodes, six of which were written by Moffat. Piers Wenger and Beth Willis were co-executive producers, and Tracie Simpson and Peter Bennett were producers. Although it is the fifth series since the show's revival in 2005, the series' production code numbers were reset.

The War Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. He was portrayed by the English actor John Hurt. Although he precedes Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor in the show's fictional chronology, his first onscreen appearance came eight years after Eccleston's; the War Doctor was retroactively created by showrunner Steven Moffat for productions celebrating the show's 50th anniversary. Hurt reprised the role in the 2015 audio drama series The War Doctor until his death in 2017, with actor Jonathon Carley taking over the role from 2020 onward in the prequel series The War Doctor Begins.

The First Doctor is the original incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by actor William Hartnell in the first three series from 1963 to 1966 and the tenth anniversary story The Three Doctors from 1972 to 1973. The character occasionally appeared in the series after Hartnell's death, played by Richard Hurndall in the 1983 special "The Five Doctors" and by David Bradley in 2017 and 2022. To date, the First Doctor is the sole incarnation of the Doctor to have been recast for later televised appearances.

The Tenth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He is played by David Tennant in three series and nine specials. As with previous incarnations of the Doctor, the character has also appeared in other Doctor Who spin-offs both during and after the character's televised appearances. In 2023, Tennant returned to the role, this time as the fourteenth incarnation of the Doctor.