D is for Doctor Who

Today is the fourth day of the A-Z Blogging Challenge! The aim is to write a post for every day of the month except for Sundays, with each post representing a different letter of the alphabet. This year I'm doing an A-Z of Great Britain, covering as much as I can about British music, literature, TV and film, food, wildlife and culture.

For the letter 'D' I have chosen Doctor Who. The science fiction series is a significant part of British popular culture and has become a cult favourite in the US and elsewhere. You can tell a lot about a person from which Doctor is their favourite. Mine is Tom Baker. What does that say about me? That I have exceptional taste in scarves of course.

I've no real direction for this post (what can I say about Doctor Who that hasn't been said already?) so I've decided to  provide a collection of random links and facts associated with this great series.

Some fun Doctor Who Links:

• The TARDIS has become an iconic symbol. You can even make a statement by incorporating it into your home décor. I love the TARDIS bookshelf below, made by Morgan. Check out her tutorial if you fancy making one for yourself.

TARDIS bookshelf by Morgan.

• Professor Brian Cox did a TV show called The Science of Doctor Who explaining how the technology that features in Doctor Who (sonic screwdrivers, time travel etc.) might actually work. You can watch some clips here.  
• How well do you know the series? Test your knowledge with The World's Toughest Doctor Who Quiz.
• What can you get the Doctor Who fan who has everything? How about Dining with the Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook! 
• Which Doctor are you? Take this test and find out!

Some Interesting Doctor Who Facts:

• Doctor Who is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running science fiction TV show in the world-it first aired in 1963 so will be 51 years old this year!
• Tom Baker's long scarf was supposedly created by accident. Legend has it that the costume designer, James Acheson, gave several balls of yarn to a knitter who was supposed to choose one she liked for the scarf of the Doctor. Instead she misunderstood and knitted it into one huge scarf, which Acheson loved.
• Matt Smith is the youngest Doctor ever at 27 years old. William Hartnell and Peter Capaldi are joint oldest, both being 55 when they took on the role.
• 'TARDIS' stands for 'Time and Relative Dimensions in Space'.
• 103 episodes of the series were destroyed by the BBC in the 1960s and 1970s-some by accident and some to save space. The BBC and fans keep requesting copies to be returned so they can complete the archives.
Bill Nighy and Benedict Cumberbatch both turned down the role of The Doctor.
• Doctor Who employed the BBC's first ever female producer, Verity Lambert.
• Stephen Fry once wrote a script for the series but it was never used because it was too complicated to film. 
• In the early days, the sound of the TARDIS taking off was created by jangling a bunch of keys!  
• The Doctor really is a doctor. He earned his degree in Glasgow in 1888!
• The spin-off series Torchwood, is an anagram of Doctor Who. Russell T. Davies used it as a code name to label the series tapes so that no one would find them and leak spoilers to the press.
• The words 'Dalek' and 'TARDIS' now feature in the Oxford English Dictionary. The latter is used to describe anything that is bigger on the outside than the inside.  
• The latest actor to play the Doctor, Peter Capaldi, applied to be the head of the Doctor Who fan club as a teenager.
• Original 1963 Daleks are now collector's editions and worth over £20,400 each.
• Michael Jackson was considered for the role of the Doctor in a film by Paramount Pictures!
• Georgia Moffett, the daughter of Peter Davidson (who played the 5th Doctor), played the timelord's daughter alongside David Tennant and later married him!
• Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a Doctor Who writer in the '70s.

Sources

BBC-Doctor Who Facts

The Telegraph-'50 Things You Didn't Know About Doctor Who'

'18 Suprising Facts You Probably Didn't Know About Doctor Who'

Are you a fan of Doctor Who or never really got into it? What do you think of recent episodes compared to retro ones? Who is your favourite Doctor and why?