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Doctor Who is a long-running British science fiction television programme (and 1996 television movie) produced by the BBC about the adventures of a mysterious time-traveller known as "the Doctor", who explores time and space with his companions, solving problems and righting wrongs. The programme is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running science fiction television series in the world[1] and is also a significant part of British popular culture.[2][3] It has been recognised for its imaginative stories, creative low-budget special effects during its original run and pioneering use of electronic music (originally produced by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop). In Britain and elsewhere, the show has become a cult television favourite and has influenced generations of British television professionals, many of whom grew up watching the series. It has received recognition from critics and the public as one of the finest British television programmes, including a BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series in 2006.
The relaunch of the programme has seen Christmas Day special episodes broadcast between series, the most recent being The Runaway Bride. Series 3 of the relaunched programme, starring David Tennant as the Doctor and Freema Agyeman as his companion Martha Jones, started on 31 March 2007 at 7pm on BBC One.[4] A fourth series has been commissioned, to air in 2008.[5]
HistoryImage:Doctor Who colorful diamond logo.png A multicoloured variant of the familiar Doctor Who "diamond" logo which was used in the show's titles from Series 11 to 17. This version was widely used on merchandise for years afterwards. Doctor Who first appeared on BBC television at 5.15 pm (GMT) on 23 November 1963[6] following discussions and plans that had been going on for a year. The Head of Drama, Sydney Newman was mainly responsible for developing it, with contributions by the Head of the Script Department (later Head of Serials), Donald Wilson, staff writer C. E. 'Bunny' Webber, writer Anthony Coburn, story editor David Whitaker and initial producer, Verity Lambert.[7][8] The series' title theme was composed by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.[9] The programme was originally intended to appeal to both children and adults.[10] The BBC drama department's Serials division produced the programme for twenty-six series, broadcast on BBC One. Viewing numbers that had fallen (though comparably increased at some points), a decline in the public perception of the show and a less prominent transmission slot saw production suspended in 1989 by Jonathan Powell, Controller of BBC One.[11] Although it was for all intents and purposes cancelled (as series co-star Sophie Aldred reported in the documentary Doctor Who: More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS), the BBC maintained the series was merely "on hiatus" and insisted the show would return.
Licensed media such as novels and audio plays provided new stories, but as a television programme Doctor Who remained dormant until 2003. In September of that year, BBC Television announced the in-house production of a new series after several years of unsuccessful attempts by BBC Worldwide to find backing for a feature film version. The new incarnation of the series is executively-produced by writer Russell T. Davies and BBC Wales Head of Drama / BBC Television Controller of Drama Commissioning Julie Gardner. The new series debuted with the episode Rose on BBC One on 26 March 2005 and the show has since been sold to many other countries (see Viewership). The BBC subsequently commissioned two more series and Christmas specials. The Christmas specials aired in 2005 and 2006, and Series 3 commenced in the UK at 7pm on 31 March 2007.[4] A fourth series has been commissioned as well as a Christmas 2007 episode.[4][12] Public consciousnessThe programme rapidly became a national institution, the subject of countless jokes, newspaper mentions and other popular culture references.[13][14] Many renowned actors asked for or were offered and accepted guest starring roles in various stories. However, with popularity came controversy over the show's suitability for children. The moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse made a series of complaints to the BBC in the 1970s over its sometimes frightening or gory content. Ironically, her actions made the programme even more popular, especially with children. John Nathan-Turner, who produced the series during the 1980s, was heard to say that he looked forward to Whitehouse's comments, as the show's ratings would increase soon after she had made them. During the 1970s, the Radio Times, the BBC's listings magazine, announced that a child's mother said the theme music terrified her son. The Radio Times was apologetic, but the theme music remained. There were more complaints about the programme's content than its music. During Jon Pertwee's second season as the Doctor, in the serial Terror of the Autons (1971), images of murderous plastic dolls, daffodils killing unsuspecting victims and blank-featured android policemen marked the apex of the show's ability to frighten children. Other notable moments in that decade included the Doctor apparently being drowned by Chancellor Goth in The Deadly Assassin (1976), and the allegedly negative portrayal of Chinese people in The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977). It has been said that watching Doctor Who from a position of safety "behind the sofa" (as the Doctor Who exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in London was titled) and peering cautiously out to see if the frightening part was over is one of the great shared experiences of British childhood. The phrase has become commonly used in association with the programme and occasionally elsewhere. A BBC audience research survey conducted in 1972 found that by their own definition of "any act(s) which may cause physical and / or psychological injury, hurt or death to persons, animals or property, whether intentional or accidental," Doctor Who was the most violent of all the drama programmes the corporation then produced.[15] The same report found that 3% of the surveyed audience regarded the show as "very unsuitable" for family viewing.[16] However, responding to the findings of the survey in The Times newspaper, journalist Philip Howard maintained that: "to compare the violence of Dr Who, sired by a horse-laugh out of a nightmare, with the more realistic violence of other television series, where actors who look like human beings bleed paint that looks like blood, is like comparing Monopoly with the property market in London: both are fantasies, but one is meant to be taken seriously."[15] The image of the TARDIS has become firmly linked to the show in the public's consciousness. In 1996, the BBC applied for a trademark to use the TARDIS' blue police box design in merchandising associated with Doctor Who. [17] In 1998, the Metropolitan Police filed an objection to the trademark claim; in 2002 the Patent Office ruled in favour of the BBC,[18][19] indicating that the police box image was more associated with Doctor Who than with the police.[20] The 21st-century revival of the programme has become the centrepiece of BBC One's Saturday schedule, and has "defined the channel".[21] FormatDoctor Who originally ran for 26 seasons on BBC1, from 23 November, 1963 until 6 December, 1989. During the original run, each weekly episode formed part of a story (or "serial") — usually of four to six parts in earlier years and three to four in later years. Three notable exceptions were the epic The Daleks' Master Plan, which aired in 12 episodes (plus an earlier one-episode teaser, "Mission to the Unknown", featuring none of the regular cast); [22][23] the 10-episode serial The War Games [24] and The Trial of a Time Lord which ran for 14 episodes (containing four stories often referred to by individual titles, and connected by framing sequences) during Season 23. [25] Occasionally serials were loosely connected by a storyline, such as Season 16's quest for the Key to Time. The programme was intended to be educational and for family viewing on the early Saturday evening schedule. Initially, it alternated stories set in the past, which would teach younger audience members about history, with stories set either in the future or in outer space to teach them about science. This was also reflected in the Doctor's original companions, one of whom was a science teacher and another a history teacher. However, science fiction stories came to dominate the programme and the "historicals", which were not popular with the production team, were dropped after The Highlanders (1967). While the show continued to use historical settings, they were generally used as a backdrop for science fiction tales, with one exception: Black Orchid set in 1920s Britain. [26] The early stories were more serial-like in nature, with the narrative of one story flowing into the next, and each episode having its own title, although produced as distinct stories with their own production codes. Following The Gunfighters (1966), however, each serial was given its own title, with the individual parts simply being assigned episode numbers. What to name these earlier stories is often a subject of fan debate. Writers during the original run included Terry Nation, Henry Lincoln, Douglas Adams, Robert Holmes, Terrance Dicks, Dennis Spooner, Eric Saward, Malcolm Hulke, Christopher H. Bidmead, Stephen Gallagher, Brian Hayles, Chris Boucher, Marc Platt and Ben Aaronovitch. The serial format changed for the 2005 revival, with each series consisting of thirteen 45-minute, self-contained episodes (60 minutes with adverts on commercial channels overseas). This includes three two-parters and a loose story arc per season whose elements are brought together in the season finale. Like the original serial format, two-part episodes have separate titles. 724 Doctor Who instalments have been televised since 1963, ranging from 25-minute episodes (the most common format), to 45-minute episodes (for a single season in 1985 and the revival), to two feature-length productions (1983's The Five Doctors and the 1996 television movie), to the two 60-minute Christmas specials produced for the revival. Doctor Who, having already completed 724 episodes, will surpass the number of individual instalments of the Star Trek franchise (726 episodes over five programmes) by the third episode of the 2007 series. The current series is filmed in 576i25 DigiBeta widescreen format and then filmised to give a 25p image in post-production using a Snell and Wilcox Alchemist Platinum. Missing episodesImage:10thplanet.jpg The First Doctor (William Hartnell) collapses prior to his regeneration. (From the surviving clip of The Tenth Planet, episode 4.) Between about 1967 and 1978, large amounts of older material stored in the BBC's video tape and film libraries were destroyed or wiped. This included many old episodes of Doctor Who, mostly stories featuring the first two Doctors — William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. Archives are complete from the programme's move to colour television (starting from Jon Pertwee's time as the Doctor), although a few Pertwee episodes have required substantial restoration; a handful have only been recovered in black and white and several only survive as NTSC copies recovered from North America. In all, 108 of 253 episodes produced during the first six years of the programme are not held in the BBC's archives. It has been reported that in 1972 all episodes then made were known to exist at the BBC[citation needed], whilst by 1978 the practice of wiping tapes had ended[citation needed]. Some episodes have been returned to the BBC from the archives of other countries who bought copies for broadcast, or by private individuals who got them by various means. Early colour videotape recordings made off-air by fans have also been retrieved, as well as excerpts filmed off the television screen onto 8 mm cine film and clips that were shown on other programmes. Audio versions of all of the lost episodes exist from home viewers who made tape recordings of the show. In addition to these, there are photographs made by photographer John Cura, who was hired by the BBC to document the filming of many of their most popular programmes during the 1950s and 1960s, including Doctor Who. These have been used in fan reconstructions of the serials. These amateur reconstructions have been tolerated by the BBC, provided they are not sold for profit and are distributed as low quality VHS copies. One of the most sought-after lost episodes is Part Four of the last William Hartnell serial, The Tenth Planet (1966), which ends with the First Doctor transforming into the Second. The only portion of this in existence, barring a few poor quality silent 8 mm clips, is the few seconds of the regeneration scene, thanks to it having been shown on the children's magazine show Blue Peter. With the approval of the BBC, efforts are now under way to restore as many of the episodes as possible from the extant material. Starting in the early 1990s, the BBC began to release audio recordings of missing serials on cassette and compact disc, with linking narration provided by former series actors. "Official" reconstructions have also been released by the BBC on VHS, on MP3 CD-ROM and as a special feature on a DVD. The BBC, in conjunction with animation studio Cosgrove Hall has reconstructed the missing Episodes 1 and 4 of The Invasion (1968) in animated form, using remastered audio tracks and the comprehensive stage notes for the original filming, for the serial's DVD release in November 2006. Although no similar reconstructions have been announced as of early 2007, Cosgrove Hall has expressed an interest in animating more lost episodes in the future.[27] In April 2006, Blue Peter launched a challenge to find these missing episodes with the promise of a full scale Dalek model.[28]
CharactersThe DoctorImage:10dr19.jpg The ten faces of the Doctor. Clockwise from top-left: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant The character of the Doctor was initially shrouded in mystery. All that was known about him in the programme's early days was that he was an eccentric alien traveller of great intelligence who battled injustice while exploring time and space in an unreliable old time machine called the TARDIS. The TARDIS is much larger on the inside than on the outside and, due to a chronic malfunction, stuck in the shape of a 1950s-style British police box. However, not only did the initially irascible and slightly sinister Doctor quickly mellow into a more compassionate figure, it was eventually revealed that he had been "on the run" from his own people, the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey. Like all Time Lords, the Doctor has the ability to "regenerate" his body when near death, allowing for the convenient recasting of the lead actor. A Time Lord can regenerate twelve times, for a total of thirteen incarnations. The Doctor has gone through this process and its resulting after-effects on nine occasions, with each of his incarnations having his own quirks and abilities:
Other actors have also played the Doctor, though rarely more than once (see the list of actors who have played the Doctor for details). Despite these shifts in personality, the Doctor has always remained an intensely curious and highly moral adventurer, who would rather solve problems with his wits than through violence. Throughout the programme's long history certain controversial revelations about the Doctor have been made. For example, in The Brain of Morbius (1976), it was hinted that the First Doctor may not have been the Doctor's first incarnation (although the other faces depicted may have been incarnations of the Time Lord Morbius); throughout the Seventh Doctor's era it was hinted that the Doctor was more than just an ordinary Time Lord, and in the 1996 television movie it was revealed that the Doctor is actually half-human on his mother's side. The very first episode, An Unearthly Child, revealed that the Doctor has a granddaughter, Susan Foreman, and in Fear Her (2006), he said he was once a father. The 2005 series revealed that the Ninth Doctor had become the last known surviving Time Lord, and that his home planet had been destroyed. Asked in Smith and Jones (2007) whether he had a brother, the Doctor replied, "Not any more." CompanionsImage:Marthajones.jpg Freema Agyeman appears as the Doctor's newest companion, Martha Jones. The Doctor almost always shares his adventures with up to three companions and since 1964 more than 35 actors and actresses have featured in these roles. The First Doctor's original companions were his granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford) and school teachers Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterton (William Russell). The current companion of the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) is Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman). The only exception in the original series was The Deadly Assassin, in which the Doctor travels alone. One can also make an argument that the Doctor was companionless during Season Seven, as Liz Shaw never travelled in the TARDIS. This puts her in the same category as Sgt. Benton and the Brigadier (a UNIT regular). Officially, however, she is considered a companion. The purpose of the companion is to provide a surrogate with whom the audience can identify and to further the story by asking questions and getting into trouble. The Doctor regularly gains new companions and loses old ones; sometimes they return home or find new causes — or loves — on worlds they have visited. Some have even died during the course of the series. "Companion" is more generally used as a technical term in fandom; the press normally refers to them either as companions or assistants. The series does not apply the term consistently to those travelling with the Doctor, with him just as often introducing them simply as his friends. In the 2005 series, the Ninth Doctor states he "employed Rose [Tyler] as his companion" and then was promptly asked if it was sexual. Despite the fact that the majority of the Doctor's companions are young, attractive females, the production team for the 1963–1989 series maintained a long-standing taboo against any overt romantic involvement in the TARDIS. The taboo was controversially broken in the 1996 television movie when the Eighth Doctor was shown kissing companion Grace Holloway. The 2005 series played with this idea by having various characters think that the Ninth Doctor and Rose (played by Billie Piper) were a couple, which they vehemently denied although the contrary was suggested by the finale of series one (2005) and in numerous episodes following the Tenth Doctor's regeneration (see also "The Doctor and romance"). The subject was expanded upon further in Smith and Jones, when the Tenth Doctor kisses his new companion Martha Jones, although he claims it was purely for the purpose of 'genetic transfer'. Previous companions have reappeared in the series, usually for anniversary specials. One former companion, Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen), together with the robotic dog K-9, appeared in an episode of the 2006 series more than twenty years after their last appearances in the 20th Anniversary story The Five Doctors (1983). Sarah Jane Smith will soon be featured in a dedicated series, named The Sarah Jane Adventures.[1] Beginning in the 2007 episode Smith and Jones, Freema Agyeman plays Martha Jones, the Doctor's newest companion.[29] She is a 23-year-old medical student and, as with Rose, her family members are depicted in the series. AdversariesImage:Daleknew.jpg The Daleks are perhaps the best-known adversaries faced by the Doctor. When Sydney Newman commissioned the series, he specifically did not want to perpetuate the cliché of the "bug-eyed monster" of science fiction. However, monsters were a staple of Doctor Who almost from the beginning and were popular with audiences. Notable adversaries of the Doctor include the Autons, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Sea Devils, the Ice Warriors, the Yeti, the Silurians, the Slitheen and the Master, a rival Time Lord with a thirst for universal conquest. Of all the monsters and villains, the ones that most secured the series' place in the public's imagination were the Daleks. The Daleks are mutants in tank-like mechanical armour from the planet Skaro. Their chief role in the great scheme of things, as they frequently remark in their instantly recognisable metallic voices, is to "Exterminate!", even destroying the Time Lords in the often referenced but never shown Time War. Davros, the Daleks' creator, also became a recurring villain after he was introduced in Genesis of the Daleks, where the Time Lords send the Doctor back to either destroy the Daleks, avert their creation or tamper with their genetic structure to make them less war-like. The Daleks were created by writer Terry Nation (who intended them as an allegory of the Nazis) and BBC designer Raymond Cusick. The Daleks' début in the programme's second serial, The Daleks (1963–64), caused a tremendous reaction in the viewing figures and the public, putting Doctor Who on the cultural map. A Dalek even appeared on a postage stamp celebrating British popular culture in 1999, photographed by Lord Snowdon. MusicTheme musicAudio sample composed by Ron Grainer:
The original 1963 radiophonic arrangement of the Doctor Who theme is widely regarded as a significant and innovative piece of electronic music, and Doctor Who was the first television series in the world to have a theme entirely realised through electronic means. The original theme was composed by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, with assistance from Dick Mills. The various parts were built up by creating tape loops of an individually struck piano string and individual test oscillators and filters. The Derbyshire arrangement served, with minor edits, as the theme tune up to the end of Season 17 (1979–80). A more modern and dynamic arrangement was composed by Peter Howell for Season 18 (1980), which was in turn replaced by Dominic Glynn's arrangement for Season 23's The Trial of a Time Lord (1986). Keff McCulloch provided the new arrangement for the Seventh Doctor's era which lasted from Season 24 (1987) until the series' suspension in 1989. For the new series in 2005, Murray Gold provided a new arrangement which featured samples from the 1963 original with further elements added; in the 2005 Christmas episode The Christmas Invasion, Gold introduced a modified closing credits arrangement that has been used ever since. In the early 1970s, Jon Pertwee, who had played the Third Doctor, recorded a version of the Doctor Who theme with spoken lyrics, titled, "Who Is The Doctor". In 1988 the band The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (later known as The KLF) released the single "Doctorin' the Tardis" under the name The Timelords, which reached No. 1 in the UK. Others who have covered or reinterpreted the theme include Orbital, the Australian string ensemble Fourplay, The Pogues, Pink Floyd (incorporated into the middle section of "One of these days", when played live) and the comedians Bill Bailey and Mitch Benn, and satirised on The Chaser's War on Everything. A reggae/ska version of the Dr Who theme tune was released on the Explosion label in 1969 by Bongo Herman and Les. The theme tune has also appeared on many compilation CDs and has made its way into mobile phone ring tones. Fans have also produced and distributed their own remixes of the theme. Incidental musicMost of the innovative incidental music for Doctor Who has been specially commissioned from freelance composers, although in the early years some episodes also used stock music, as well as occasional excerpts from original recordings or cover versions of songs by popular music acts such as The Beatles and The Beach Boys. The incidental music for the first Doctor Who adventure, An Unearthly Child, was written by Norman Kay. Many of the stories of the William Hartnell period were scored by electronic music pioneer Tristram Cary, whose Doctor Who credits include The Daleks, Marco Polo (Doctor Who), The Daleks' Master Plan, The Gunfighters and The Mutants. Other composers in this early period were included Richard Rodney Bennett, Carey Blyton and Geoffrey Burgon. The most frequent musical contributor during the first fifteen years was Dudley Simpson, who is also well known for his theme and incidental music for Blake's 7. Simpson's first Doctor Who score was Planet of Giants (1964) and he went on to write music for many adventures of the Sixties and Seventies, including most of the stories of the Jon Pertwee / Tom Baker periods, ending with The Horns of Nimon (1979). He also made a cameo appearance in The Talons of Weng-Chiang (as a music-hall conductor). After The Leisure Hive (1980), the task of creating incidental music was assigned to the Radiophonic Workshop. Paddy Kingsland and Peter Howell contributed many scores in this period and other contributors included Roger Limb, Malcolm Clarke and Jonathan Gibbs. The Radiophonic Workshop was dropped after the Trial of a Time Lord season, and Keff McCulloch took over as the series' main composer, with Dominic Glynn and Mark Ayres also contributing scores. All the incidental music for both the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant series has been composed by Murray Gold. Both series have featured occasional use of excerpts of pop music from the Eighties, Nineties and early 2000s. A soundtrack CD of Gold's music for the new series was released on 4 December 2006 by Silva Screen Records.[30][31]. "Special sound"Doctor Who's science-fiction themes and settings meant that many sound effects had to be specially created for the series, although some common sound effects (such as crowds, horses and jungle noises) were sourced from stock recordings. Because Doctor Who began several years before the advent of the first mass-produced synthesisers, much of the equipment used to create electronic sound effects in the early days was custom-built by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and until the early 1970s audio effects were realised using a combination of electronic and radiophonic techniques. Almost all of the original sound effects and audio backgrounds during the 1960s were realised by the Radiophonic Workshop's Brian Hodgson, who worked on Doctor Who from its inception until the middle of Jon Pertwee's tenure in the early 1970s, when he was succeeded by Dick Mills. Hodgson created hundreds of pieces of "special sound" ranging from ray-gun blasts to dinosaurs, but without doubt his best known sound effects are the sound of the TARDIS as it de-materialises and re-appears, and the voices of the Daleks. The basic audio source Hodgson used for the TARDIS effect was the sound of his house keys being scraped up and down along the strings of an old gutted piano. The famous Dalek voice effect was obtained by passing the actors' voices through a device called a ring modulator, and it was further enhanced by exploiting the distortion inherent in the microphones and amplifiers then in use. However, the precise sonic character of the Daleks' voices varied somewhat over time because the original frequency settings used on the ring modulator were never noted down. ViewershipImage:3doctardis.jpg The image of the TARDIS is iconic in British popular culture. Doctor Who has always appeared on the BBC's mainstream BBC One channel, drawing audiences of many millions of viewers. It was most popular in the late 1970s, with audiences frequently as high as 12 million. During the ITV network strike of 1979, viewership peaked at 16 million. No first-run episode of Doctor Who has ever drawn fewer than three million viewers on BBC One, although its late 1980s performance of three to five million viewers was seen as poor at the time, and was according to the BBC Board of Control, a leading cause of the programme's 1989 suspension. Some fans considered this disingenuous, since the programme was scheduled against the soap opera Coronation Street, the most popular show at the time. The BBC One broadcast of Rose, the first episode of the 2005 revival, drew an average audience of 10.81 million, third highest for BBC One that week and seventh across all channels. The 2005 series had an average audience of 7.95 million viewers, and the 2006 series achieved an average audience of about 7.71 million in the context of declining year-to-year viewership for all television channels. The episode Rise of the Cybermen managed sixth place in the charts across the week with 9.22 million viewers.[32] The all-time highest chart placing for an episode of Doctor Who is fifth, for episode two of The Ark in Space in 1975. The programme also gained a strong following in Australia, possibly as a result of the close connection between the BBC and Australia's major public broadcaster, the ABC. The latest repeat of the classic series in Australia ran from September 2003 to February 2006, and the revived series has also been shown on ABC and UK.TV. The series also has a fan base in the United States, where it was shown in syndication from the 1970s to the 1990s, particularly on PBS stations (see Doctor Who in America). New Zealand was the first country outside the UK to screen Doctor Who beginning in September 1964, and continued to screen the series for many years, including the new series from 2005. In Canada, the series debuted in January 1965, but the CBC only aired the first twenty-six episodes. TVOntario picked up the show in the 1976 beginning with The Three Doctors and aired it through to Season 24 in 1991. TVO's schedule ran several years behind the BBC's throughout this period. In the 1970s TVO airings were bookended by a host who would introduce the episode and then, after the episode concluded, try to place it in an educational context in keeping with TVO's status as an educational channel. The airing of The Talons of Weng Chiang resulted in controversy for TVOntario as a result of accusations that the story was racist. Consequently the story was not rebroadcast. CBC began showing the series again in 2005. Only four episodes have ever had their première showings on channels other than BBC One. The 1983 twentieth anniversary special The Five Doctors had its début on November 23 (the actual date of the anniversary) on the Chicago PBS station WTTW in the United States and various other PBS members two days prior to its BBC One broadcast. The 1988 story Silver Nemesis was broadcast with all three episodes edited together in compilation form on TVNZ in New Zealand in November, after the first episode had been shown in the UK but before the final two instalments had aired there. Finally, the 1996 television movie premiered on May 12 on CITV in Edmonton, Canada, fifteen days before the BBC One showing, and two days before it aired on Fox in the USA. A wide selection of serials is available from BBC Video on VHS and DVD, on sale in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States. Every fully extant serial has been released on VHS, and BBC Worldwide continues to regularly release serials on DVD. The 2005 series is also available in its entirety on UMD for the PlayStation Portable As of October 2006, the second series had been, or was currently, broadcast weekly in Australia (ABC), Belgium (één), Brazil (People+Arts), Canada (in English on CBC and in French on Ztélé), Denmark (Danmarks Radio), Finland (TV2), France (France 4), Hong Kong (ATV World), Hungary (RTL Klub-owned COOL TV), Israel (Yes Weekend), Italy (Jimmy), Japan (BS-2, a channel of NHK), Malaysia (Astro Network), the Netherlands (NED 3), New Zealand (Prime TV), Norway (NRK), Poland (TVP 1), Portugal (People+Arts), Russia (STS TV), Spain and Latin America (People+Arts), South Korea (KBS), the United States (Sci Fi Channel and BBC America), Greece (Skai TV), Style UK (part of Showtime Arabia) for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Levant territories. The series has also been sold to, but not yet shown in, Germany ( | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
