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What's that, Doctor Who? The man who never would? Ha.
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00:00The Doctor is a far more complex and expansive character than many people realise.
00:04Now, we've already covered some misconceptions that both casual viewers and hardcore fans might
00:09have about Doctor Who in general, but what about the Doctor themselves? Well, let's take a look
00:14at some, shall we? I'm Ellie with WhoCulture, here with 10 things everyone always gets wrong
00:19about the Doctor. Number 10, William Hartnell was ancient when he took the role. Issue 10
00:26of Doctor Who Adventures, released in 2006, featured an image of William Hartnell as the
00:31Doctor next to the caption, Meet the very first Doctor. Yikes, he's ancient. Now, this may have
00:37seemed the case to younger fans upon seeing Hartnell's face, and the more grandfatherly
00:42portrayal of the first Doctor, plus the long white wig, would likely do nothing to dissuade them of
00:47this notion. Part of this misconception is also likely down to the actor's ailing health and
00:52untimely death in 1975. However, William Hartnell wasn't actually as old as everyone thinks he was
00:58when he played the Doctor. At the age of 55, Hartnell was actually 20 years younger than David Bradley
01:04was when he filmed his first scene as the first Doctor in The Doctor Falls. Meanwhile, Peter Capaldi
01:09was merely a few months younger than William Hartnell when he began his tenure as the 12th Doctor.
01:14More surprisingly still, 14th Doctor David Tennant is now 51, only four years younger than Hartnell was.
01:20It would seem that actors clearly just look after themselves a bit better these days.
01:25Or, you know, we put them in costumes that don't make them look old, like a white wig.
01:29Number 9. The Doctor always regenerates in the TARDIS
01:33Jodie Whittaker's regeneration wasn't just a big deal because of who she regenerated into,
01:38it also marked the first time in the modern era that the Doctor regenerated outside the TARDIS.
01:44This idea of the Doctor always regenerating in the TARDIS took hold during the Russell T.
01:48Davis years, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that there was a precedent in the classic series.
01:53However, it's only the first, fifth, and sixth Doctors who actually regenerate inside the TARDIS,
01:59and with much less damage to their surroundings, might we add.
02:01So it's odd that this notion has stuck with the show since it returned in 2005,
02:06especially given how unsafe it is to regenerate inside the TARDIS.
02:09The sixth Doctor is under attack when he regenerates,
02:12and the TARDIS appears to operate itself in the tenth planet.
02:14In the modern series, everything explodes, and a slightly frazzled Doctor momentarily forgets what the hell is going on.
02:21So it's no wonder, really, that the TARDIS eventually ejected the 13th Doctor out the doors at the end of Twice Upon a Time.
02:27She's clearly learned her lesson, and hopefully the show has too.
02:31Number 8. The Doctor always travels with a young female companion
02:35Comedy sketches about Doctor Who have existed for almost as long as the show itself.
02:40Hell, the first known parody was broadcast just over a month after An Unearthly Child,
02:45when the TV show It's a Square World featured a sketch with Dad's Army actor Clive Dunn as William Hartnell.
02:51Since then, there have been many more,
02:53and most of them are based on some well-worn and inaccurate interpretations of what Doctor Who actually is.
02:59One of the most common of these is that the Doctor always travels with a young female companion
03:03that they want to get jiggy with.
03:05This is one of the gags in Lenny Henry's Doctor Who sketch from 1985.
03:08The main gag in a sketch from A Kick Up the 80s in 1982,
03:12and Stephen Moffat went there because, of course he did, in The Curse of Fatal Death.
03:17David Tennant even dressed up as a sexy Doctor Who companion to face off against Alan Carr on the Friday Night Project.
03:23However, the history of Doctor Who's weird and wonderful companions
03:26is a far richer vein for comedy than these sketches suggest.
03:30A clapped-out, shape-shifting android? An overgrown schoolboy? A robot dog?
03:35Then again, perhaps those were deemed to be beyond parody.
03:38Number 7. The classic Doctors were all posh.
03:42Christopher Eccleston spoke of wanting to have a northern accent
03:44because a posh voice would imply that only upper-class people could be hyper-intelligent like the Doctor.
03:50The notion of a posh Doctor certainly influences a lot of the parody versions,
03:55particularly American spoofs like the Inspector Spacetime gag in Community,
03:59but those types of characters aren't really reflected in the casting of the Doctor.
04:02While it's certainly true that the first and third Doctors had what could be classed as establishment voices,
04:08that doesn't tell the full story.
04:10William Hartnell grew up in London slums without ever knowing his father.
04:14Tom Baker was working on a building site when he was cast as the Doctor.
04:17In his youth, Peter Davison's father was a greengrocer,
04:21and after leaving school, Davison was briefly an odd-jobs man who once worked as a mortuary attendant.
04:26Ultimately, the Doctor is a time lord,
04:28and that may have affected the performances of the previous actors.
04:32However, even with that in mind, the Doctor's voice is very rarely posh or snooty,
04:37and the character certainly doesn't hold themselves in such a manner.
04:406. Never cruel or cowardly originated in New Who
04:45Nowadays, the line,
04:46Never be cruel, never be cowardly,
04:48is inextricably linked with Peter Capaldi's pre-regeneration speech in Twice Upon a Time.
04:54However, this is merely a reference to a description of the Doctor's character that has existed for decades.
04:59Although never properly stated on screen until the day of the Doctor,
05:03it first featured in a 70s book by Doctor Who legends Terrence Dix and Malcolm Hulk called The Making of Doctor Who.
05:10The book features this description of the Doctor, one that would define the character for decades to come.
05:15The Doctor believes in good and fights evil.
05:18Though often caught up in violent situations, he is a man of peace.
05:21He is never cruel or cowardly.
05:23It would take another 40 years for this description to be mentioned on screen,
05:27but it comes at exactly the right moment,
05:30when the 10th and 11th Doctors join forces to avert the War Doctors' Gallifreyan genocide.
05:355. Their name is Doctor Who
05:38Doctor Who is the name of the show,
05:40the Doctor is the name of the character.
05:43Is to Doctor Who fans what Frankenstein is the name of the scientist is to horror fans.
05:48But is that really true?
05:49From 1963 to 1981, the character was credited as both Doctor Who, as in DR,
05:55and Doctor Who, as in D-O-C-T-O-R.
05:58In The War Machines, the super-intelligent computer,
06:00Votan, states that Doctor Who is required,
06:03while the second Doctor refers to himself as Doctor Who,
06:06albeit in German, in The Highlanders.
06:08Doctor Who and the Silurians is the literal name for the John Pertwee serial,
06:13while a large number of Target novelisations refer to the character as Doctor Who as well.
06:17When the show returned in 2005, Christopher Eccleston was credited as Doctor Who.
06:22But when David Tennant was cast, he insisted on being credited as the Doctor,
06:26because he's a massive fanboy.
06:28Although he was also a massive fanboy,
06:30Capaldi didn't insist on reverting his credit,
06:33but wonderfully referred to the character as Doctor Who in press interviews.
06:37However, arguably the clearest answer to this debate came in the name of the Doctor,
06:41which asserted that the Doctor is the name that was chosen.
06:45Not that that will stop people continuing to call the Doctor Doctor Who in years to come.
06:49Number 4. Jelly Babies originated with Tom Baker.
06:53Jelly Babies are synonymous with Tom Baker.
06:55There's no argument there, and most appearances of The Delicious Confection
06:58are, of course, nods to the iconic fourth Doctor.
07:02Jelly Babies are found on the seventh Doctor's person when he's shot in San Francisco,
07:06while the ganger Doctor offers Jelly Babies to the real eleventh Doctor,
07:09in the voice of Tom Baker, no less.
07:11However, the Doctor's love for Jelly Babies didn't actually originate with Baker's Doctor,
07:16and it goes back much further than the 1970s.
07:19The first reference to a Jelly Baby in Doctor Who actually dates back to 1968's second Doctor serial,
07:25The Dominators.
07:26Here, the second Doctor munches on some Jelly Babies while waiting inside one of the travel capsules.
07:31When Troughton returns to the show for the three Doctors,
07:33the second Doctor offers the Brigadier a Jelly Baby in the TARDIS.
07:37The second Doctor still has Jelly Babies to hand in the five Doctors,
07:41so it's the Doctor's second incarnation who first got a taste for them,
07:45rather than the fourth, like most people think.
07:48Number three, the Doctor often experiences post-regenerative trauma.
07:52From Castrovalva onwards, every regeneration has been followed by some degree of trauma.
07:57The fifth Doctor can barely keep it together for the majority of that serial,
08:01and later, the sixth Doctor is so disorientated by the process that he throttles his companion.
08:06Then, in a post-regenerative funk, the seventh Doctor believes the Rani to be Mel,
08:10and plays along with her scheme until he sees the error of his ways.
08:14This tradition continued into the TV movie, and then the Christmas Invasion.
08:18Thankfully, Stephen Moffat appeared to dispense with this tiresome trope when he introduced Matt Smith,
08:22but when Matt Smith regenerated into Capaldi,
08:24it was back to the out-of-control, unpredictable state of flux.
08:28It's hard to see where this trope originated from,
08:30especially as the second Doctor's companions are more put out by his regeneration than he is.
08:35His only concern is whether he can still call himself the Doctor, which he soon proves that he can.
08:39It's likely the result of his forced regeneration into the third Doctor that set the ball rolling,
08:44a process that has been seen to be fairly traumatic.
08:47Pertwee's amnesiac state in Spearhead from Space is likely what set the tone for the Doctor's subsequent regenerations,
08:53but thankfully, the 14th Doctor knows exactly who he is.
08:57Or does he?
08:58Number two, the numbering matters.
09:00Doctor Who fans are pretty passionate about two things.
09:04One is that the show needs reinvigorating to appeal to a modern audience.
09:07And two is that the numbering of the Doctors is some hard and fast rule.
09:11Interestingly, these two things are currently in direct conflict with each other.
09:15Promoting Shuti Gatwa as the 15th Doctor implicitly suggests to audiences that they have to catch up on the previous 14.
09:22New audiences just wouldn't bother, would they?
09:24There's even some debate as to whether Tennant is actually the 14th Doctor, despite Russell T. Davis stating that as a fact.
09:30The Timeless Child was a flawed attempt by Chris Chibnall to detonate the fandom's obsession with the numbering of Doctors.
09:37After discovering that she's lived countless lives that she wasn't previously aware of,
09:41the 13th Doctor ultimately decides that the only thing that's important is who she is now.
09:45That's the real message of The Timeless Child, but it got buried in all the controversy.
09:50Regardless, for the audience at home, the numbering of the Doctors only really matters when they're at the local pub quiz.
09:56David Tennant may be the 14th Doctor, but chances are there'll be riots in pubs across the UK
10:01where non-fans get a point for saying it's Shuti Gatwa.
10:04Number 1. The Doctor is a Pacifist
10:06Make the foundation of this society a man who never would.
10:11The 10th Doctor, the Doctor's daughter.
10:13Except he would and he has.
10:14The Doctor's history of pacifism and his distaste towards guns and violence has largely defined the 21st century era of the show.
10:22However, this history is very patchy indeed.
10:24In the Doctor's very first on-screen adventure into the past, he almost brained a caveman with a rock.
10:30The Reign of Terror then sees the First Doctor batter a man around the head with a shovel.
10:34Some might say that the First Doctor was a little bit unfinished and softened with age,
10:38but just look at the evidence from other Doctors.
10:40The Fourth Doctor smashed through a skylight and twisted a guy's neck in the Seeds of Doom.
10:44The Fifth Doctor blasted a Cyberman to death in Earthshock and put a gun to Davros' head in Resurrection of the Daleks.
10:50The Sixth Doctor strangled his companion, threw some henchmen in an acid bath, and gassed Shokai to death.
10:56The Eleventh Doctor left Solomon to die in dinosaurs on a spaceship.
10:59The man who never would?
11:00Yeah, if you say so.
11:02And that concludes our list.
11:03If you think we missed something, then do let us know in the comments below.
11:06And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe,
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11:12Also head over to Twitter and follow us there and Instagram as well,
11:15and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Little Child.
11:19Don't forget to look out for Sean Ferrick as well, and Dan the Meigs too.
11:23I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
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