Doctor Who

Doctor Who is in the Guiness World Records as the longest running science fiction television show in the world and plays a large part in british culture.

The show depicts the adventures of a Time Traveller known as The Doctor as he travels in his space and time ship the "TARDIS" (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) which appears from the outside to be a 1950's police box. This has been explained in the past as being a fault in it's chameleon matrix, and as such the TARDIS is stuck in that shape.

The Doctor is from a planet called Gallifrey and a race known as the Time Lords. Time Lords have the ability to regenerate their body when near death and in this way we have seen Eleven different Doctors, with an latest series currently being played on BBC1.

The Doctors

The TV show was originally created in 1963 and ran to 1989 before being cancelled. Then in 1996 a television film was created featuring the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) in an attempt to revive the show, which unfortunately did not succeed.

Then in 2005 the show was successfully relaunched with the 9th Doctor (Christopher Eccles) and then from series 2 (2006) The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant). This relaunch has been a huge success with great special effects, excellent story lines and fantastic acting.

The Books

There have been a good number of novels written about the adventures of the first ten Doctors, but the publishing of these has been a little sporadic, the first novels began in 1965 and up to 1991 these were generally adaptions of episodes shown on TV. Then in 1991 an extensive line of original stories was written and published by Virgin Publishing (The New Adventures and The Missing Adventures) and are collectively known as the Past Doctor Adventures. These book series ran until 1997 after which the BBC did not renew Virgins Publishing licence.

Instead the BBC decided to publish their own novels. These again featured stories from the first eight doctors and was called the Eighth Doctor series. This series of novels ran up to 2005 when the new series began.

Since this new series has started the BBC has published novels mainly featuring the 9th and 10th Doctors and have named the series "The New Series Adventures" There are also a number of novels that feature the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond.