What's that, Doctor Who? The man who never would? Ha.
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00:00 The Doctor is a far more complex and expansive character than many people realise.
00:04 Now, we've already covered some misconceptions that both casual viewers and hardcore fans
00:09 might have about Doctor Who in general, but what about the Doctor themselves?
00:13 Well, let's take a look at some, shall we?
00:15 I'm Ellie with WhoCulture, here with 10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About The Doctor.
00:21 Number 10.
00:22 William Hartnell was ancient when he took the role.
00:25 Issue 10 of Doctor Who Adventures, released in 2006, featured an image of William Hartnell
00:30 as the First Doctor, next to the caption "Meet the very first Doctor. Yikes, he's ancient."
00:36 Now, this may have seemed the case to younger fans upon seeing Hartnell's face,
00:40 and the more grandfatherly portrayal of the First Doctor, plus the long white wig,
00:45 would likely do nothing to dissuade them of this notion.
00:48 Part of this misconception is also likely down to the actor's ailing health and untimely death
00:53 in 1975. However, William Hartnell wasn't actually as old as everyone thinks he was
00:58 when he played the Doctor. At the age of 55, Hartnell was actually 20 years younger than
01:03 David Bradley was when he filmed his first scene as the First Doctor in The Doctor Falls.
01:08 Meanwhile, Peter Capaldi was merely a few months younger than William Hartnell when
01:12 he began his tenure as the Twelfth Doctor. More surprisingly still,
01:15 Fourteenth Doctor David Tennant is now 51, only four years younger than Hartnell was.
01:20 It would seem that actors clearly just look after themselves a bit better these days.
01:25 Or, you know, we put them in costumes that don't make them look old, like a white wig.
01:29 Number 9. The Doctor Always Regenerates in The TARDIS
01:33 Jodie Whittaker's regeneration wasn't just a big deal because of who she regenerated into,
01:38 it also marked the first time in the modern era that the Doctor regenerated outside the TARDIS.
01:44 This idea of the Doctor always regenerating in the TARDIS took hold during the Russell T.
01:48 Davis years, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that there was a precedent in the classic series.
01:53 However, it's only the First, Fifth and Sixth Doctors who actually regenerate inside the TARDIS,
01:58 and with much less damage to their surroundings, might we add.
02:01 So it's odd that this notion has stuck with the show since it returned in 2005,
02:06 especially given how unsafe it is to regenerate inside the TARDIS. The Sixth Doctor is under
02:10 attack when he regenerates, and the TARDIS appears to operate itself in the Tenth Planet.
02:15 In the modern series, everything explodes and a slightly frazzled Doctor momentarily
02:19 forgets what the hell is going on. So it's no wonder, really, that the TARDIS eventually
02:23 ejected the Thirteenth Doctor out the doors at the end of Twice Upon a Time.
02:27 She's clearly learned her lesson, and hopefully the show has too.
02:30 Number 8. The Doctor Always Travels with a Young Female Companion
02:35 Comedy sketches about Doctor Who have existed for almost as long as the show itself. Hell,
02:40 the first known parody was broadcast just over a month after An Unearthly Child, when a TV show
02:45 It's a Square World featured a sketch with Dad's Army actor Clive Dunn as William Hartnell.
02:50 Since then, there have been many more, and most of them are based on some well-worn and
02:55 inaccurate interpretations of what Doctor Who actually is. One of the most common of these
03:00 is that the Doctor always travels with a young female companion that they want to get jiggy with.
03:04 This is one of the gags in Lenny Henry's Doctor Who sketch from 1985, the main gag in a sketch
03:10 from A Kick Up the 80s in 1982, and Stephen Moffat went there because, of course he did,
03:15 in The Curse of Fatal Death. David Tennant even dressed up as a sexy Doctor Who companion to
03:20 face off against Alan Carr on the Friday Night Project. However, the history of Doctor Who's
03:25 weird and wonderful companions is a far richer vein for comedy than these sketches suggest.
03:30 A clapped-out, shapeshifting android? An overgrown schoolboy? A robot dog?
03:35 Then again, perhaps those were deemed to be beyond parody.
03:38 Number 7 - The Classic Doctors Were All Posh
03:41 Christopher Eccleston spoke of wanting to have a Northern accent because a posh voice would imply
03:46 that only upper-class people could be hyper-intelligent like the Doctor. The notion
03:51 of a posh Doctor certainly influences a lot of the parody versions, particularly American spoofs like
03:56 the Inspector Spacetime gag in Community, but those types of characters aren't really reflected in the
04:01 casting of the Doctor. While it's certainly true that the First and Third Doctors had what could
04:06 be classed as establishment voices, that doesn't tell the full story. William Hartnell grew up in
04:12 London slums without ever knowing his father. Tom Baker was working on a building site when he was
04:16 cast as the Doctor. In his youth, Peter Davison's father was a greengrocer and after leaving school,
04:22 Davison was briefly an odd jobs man who once worked as a mortuary attendant. Ultimately,
04:26 the Doctor is a time Lord, and that may have affected the performances of the previous actors.
04:32 However, even with that in mind, the Doctor's voice is very rarely posh or snooty, and the
04:37 character certainly doesn't hold themselves in such a manner.
04:40 6. Never Cruel or Cowardly, Originated in New Who
04:45 Nowadays, the line "Never be cruel, never be cowardly" is inextricably linked with Peter
04:50 Capaldi's pre-regeneration speech in Twice Upon a Time. However, this is merely a reference to
04:56 a description of the Doctor's character that has existed for decades. Although never properly
05:00 stated on screen until the day of the Doctor, it first featured in a 70s book by Doctor Who
05:06 legends Terrence Dix and Malcolm Hulk called The Making of Doctor Who. The book features this
05:11 description of the Doctor, one that would define the character for decades to come.
05:15 The Doctor believes in good and fights evil. Though often caught up in violent situations,
05:20 he is a man of peace. He is never cruel or cowardly. It would take another 40 years for
05:25 this description to be mentioned on screen, but it comes at exactly the right moment,
05:30 when the 10th and 11th Doctors join forces to avert the War Doctor's Gallifreyan genocide.
05:35 5. Their Name is Doctor Who
05:38 Doctor Who is the name of the show. The Doctor is the name of the character.
05:43 Is to Doctor Who fans what Frankenstein is the name of the scientist is to horror fans.
05:47 But is that really true? From 1963 to 1981, the character was credited as both
05:53 Doctor Who as in D-R and Doctor Who as in D-O-C-T-O-R. In The War Machines, the super
05:59 intelligent computer Votan states that Doctor Who is required, while the second Doctor refers
06:04 to himself as Doctor Who, albeit in German, in The Highlanders. Doctor Who and the Silurians
06:10 is the literal name for the John Pertwee serial, while a large number of Target novelisations
06:15 refer to the character as Doctor Who as well. When the show returned in 2005,
06:19 Christopher Eccleston was credited as Doctor Who, but when David Tennant was cast, he insisted on
06:24 being credited as The Doctor because he's a massive fanboy. Although he was also a massive
06:30 fanboy, Capaldi didn't insist on reverting his credit, but wonderfully referred to the character
06:35 as Doctor Who in press interviews. However, arguably the clearest answer to this debate
06:40 came in The Name of the Doctor, which asserted that The Doctor is the name that was chosen.
06:45 Not that that will stop people continuing to call the Doctor Doctor Who in years to come.
06:48 4. Jelly Babies Originated With Tom Baker
06:52 Jelly Babies are synonymous with Tom Baker. There's no argument there,
06:56 and most appearances of The Delicious Confection are, of course, nods to the iconic fourth Doctor.
07:01 Jelly Babies are found on the seventh Doctor's person when he's shot in San Francisco,
07:05 while the Ganga Doctor offers Jelly Babies to the real eleventh Doctor in the voice of Tom
07:10 Baker, no less. However, the Doctor's love for Jelly Babies didn't actually originate with
07:15 Baker's Doctor, and it goes back much further than the 1970s. The first reference to a Jelly
07:20 Baby in Doctor Who actually dates back to 1968's second Doctor serial, The Dominators.
07:26 Here, the second Doctor munches on some Jelly Babies while waiting inside one of the travel
07:30 capsules. When Troughton returns to the show for the three Doctors, the second Doctor offers the
07:35 Brigadier a Jelly Baby in the TARDIS. The second Doctor still has Jelly Babies to hand in the five
07:40 Doctors, so it's the Doctor's second incarnation who first got a taste for them, rather than the
07:45 fourth like most people think. Number 3. The Doctor often experiences
07:50 post-regenerative trauma. From Castrovalva onwards, every regeneration has been followed
07:55 by some degree of trauma. The fifth Doctor can barely keep it together for the majority of that
08:00 serial, and later the sixth Doctor is so disorientated by the process that he throttles
08:05 his companion. Then, in a post-regenerative funk, the seventh Doctor believes the Rani to be Mel,
08:10 and plays along with her scheme until he sees the error of his ways.
08:13 This tradition continued into the TV movie, and then the Christmas Invasion. Thankfully,
08:18 Stephen Moffat appeared to dispense with this tiresome trope when he introduced Matt Smith,
08:22 but when Matt Smith regenerated into Capaldi, it was back to the out-of-control,
08:26 unpredictable state of flux. It's hard to see where this trope originated from,
08:30 especially as the second Doctor's companions are more put out by his regeneration than he is.
08:35 His only concern is whether he can still call himself the Doctor, which he soon proves that
08:39 he can. It's likely the result of his forced regeneration into the third Doctor that set
08:43 the ball rolling, a process that has been seen to be fairly traumatic. Pertwee's amnesiac state
08:49 in Spearhead from Space is likely what set the tone for the Doctor's subsequent regenerations,
08:53 but thankfully the fourteenth Doctor knows exactly who he is. Or does he?
08:58 Number 2. The numbering matters. Doctor Who fans are pretty passionate about two things.
09:04 One is that the show needs reinvigorating to appeal to a modern audience, and two is that
09:08 the numbering of the Doctors is some hard and fast rule. Interestingly, these two things are
09:13 currently in direct conflict with each other. Promoting Shutee Gatwa as the fifteenth Doctor
09:17 implicitly suggests to audiences that they have to catch up on the previous fourteen.
09:22 New audiences just wouldn't bother, would they? There's even some debate as to whether Tennant
09:26 is actually the fourteenth Doctor, despite Russell T. Davis stating that as a fact.
09:30 The Timeless Child was a flawed attempt by Chris Chibnall to detonate the fandom's obsession with
09:35 the numbering of Doctors. After discovering that she's lived countless lives that she wasn't
09:39 previously aware of, the thirteenth Doctor ultimately decides that the only thing that's
09:43 important is who she is now. That's the real message of The Timeless Child, but it got buried
09:48 in all the controversy. Regardless, for the audience at home, the numbering of the Doctors
09:53 only really matters when they're at the local pub quiz. David Tennant may be the fourteenth
09:57 Doctor, but chances are there'll be riots in pubs across the UK when non-fans get a point
10:02 for saying it's Shutee Gatwa. Number 1. The Doctor is a pacifist.
10:06 Make the foundation of this society a man who never would. The tenth Doctor, the Doctor's
10:12 daughter. Except he would, and he has. The Doctor's history of pacifism and his distaste
10:17 towards guns and violence has largely defined the 21st century era of the show. However,
10:22 this history is very patchy indeed. In the Doctor's very first on-screen adventure into
10:27 the past, he almost brained a caveman with a rock. The Reign of Terror then sees the first
10:31 Doctor batter a man around the head with a shovel. Some might say that the first Doctor was a little
10:36 bit unfinished and softened with age, but just look at the evidence from other Doctors.
10:40 The fourth Doctor smashed through a skylight and twisted a guy's neck in the seeds of doom. The
10:44 fifth Doctor blasted a Cyberman to death in Earthshock and put a gun to Davros' head in
10:49 Resurrection of the Daleks. The sixth Doctor strangled his companion, threw some henchmen in
10:53 an acid bath, and gassed Shockeye to death. The eleventh Doctor left Solomon to die in
10:58 dinosaurs on a spaceship. The man who never would, yeah, if you say so.
11:02 And that concludes our list. If you think we missed something, then do let us know in the
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11:18 EllieLittleChild. Don't forget to look out for Sean Ferrick as well and DanTheMeegs too.
11:23 I've been Ellie with WhoCulture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye, sweeties.