THE DOCTOR’S PHYSIOLOGY

Binary Vascular System (two hearts to you and me).

Normal pulse rate: 170 beats per minute.

Body temperature: 60 degrees.

Left and right sides of the brain work in unison via a specialised neural super-ganglia. The reflex link, which allowed him to ‘tune himself’ into the thousand super-brains of the Time Lord intelligentsia was cut off when the Doctor was exiled by his people.

Short-sighted in his right eye (in his fifth body at least).

Vulnerable to certain gases in the Praxis range of the spectrum.

Can travel through time thanks to the Rassilon Imprimatur, a form of symbiotic print.

Aspirin intolerant. Thanks to his metabolism the common drug would probably kill him.

Has size 10 feet in his eleventh body. They are also quite wide.

CAPACIOUS POCKETS

The Doctor’s pockets are bigger on the inside. They’d have to be. Look at some of the stuff he’s pulled out of them:

A pen light (An Unearthly Child, The Edge of Destruction, The Monster of Peladon)

Contracts (The Highlanders)

Conkers (The Highlanders)

Magnifying glass (The Highlanders, Genesis of the Daleks)

Lemon sherbets (The Wheel in Space)

Pins (The Space Pirates)

Marbles (The Space Pirates)

A tuning fork (The Space Pirates)

Sample jars (Colony in Space)

Freedom of the city of Skaro (Robot)

Pilot’s licence for the Mars-Venus Rocket Run (Robot)

Honorary membership card for the Alpha Centauri Table Tennis Club (Robot)

Cricket ball (The Ark in Space)

Yo-yo (The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks)

Handcuffs (Genesis of the Daleks)

Rocks (Genesis of the Daleks)

Etheric beam locator (Genesis of the Daleks)

French picklock given to him by Marie Antoinette (Pyramids of Mars)

Expanding cane (The Hand of Fear)

Clockwork egg timer (The Face of Evil)

Telescopic breathing tube (The Robots of Death)

Stuffed mouse (The Talons of Weng-Chiang)

Toy Batmobile (The Talons of Weng-Chiang)

Hammer (The Power of Kroll)

Golden star stickers (The Horns of Nimon)

Safety pin (The Visitation)

Firework (Galactic Glitter) (The Five Doctors)

Alien coins (Planet of Fire, Battlefield)

Conjuror’s flowers (The Trial of a Time Lord: Terror of the Vervoids)

Electronic picklock (The Trial of a Time Lord: Terror of the Vervoids)

Catapult (Battlefield, The Hungry Earth)

Robot Santa remote control (The Runaway Bride)

Christmas decorations (The Runaway Bride)

Toothbrush – containing Venusian toothpaste (The Shakespeare Code)

Ultraviolet lamp (The Vampires of Venice)

Not pockets, but the Doctor has sometimes kept the TARDIS key in one of his shoes (Spearhead from Space, Robot) and the Seventh Doctor kept the UNIT passes belonging to his third incarnation and Liz Shaw in his hat. (Battlefield)

THE FINEST SWORDSMAN IN ALL OF GALLIFREY

The Doctor claimed to have learned the art of sword fighting from a captain of Cleopatra’s guard. In which stories has he swashed his buckle?

REASONS FOR REGENERATION

‘We can live for ever, barring accidents.’

The Doctor, The War Games

What doesn’t kill you…

First regeneration – Old age (The Tenth Planet)

Second regeneration – Forcibly regenerated by the Time Lords prior to his exile on Earth (The War Games)

Third regeneration – Exposure to Metebelis III crystal radiation in the cave of the Great One (Planet of the Spiders)

Fourth regeneration – Fall from a great height, specifically the Pharos Project radio telescope (Logopolis)

Fifth regeneration – Fatal contraction of Spectrox Toxaemia after handling raw spectrox (The Caves of Androzani)

SYMPTOMS OF SPECTROX TOXAEMIA

Rash

Cramp

Spasms

Slow paralysis of the thoracic spinal nerve

Thermal death

ONLY KNOWN CURES OF SPECTROX TOXAEMIA

The milk of a queen bat

Regeneration

Sixth regeneration – TARDIS shot down by the Rani, who then tried to confuse and control the Doctor in his befuddled post-regenerative state (Time and the Rani)

Seventh regeneration – Shot by local gang and operated upon by Grace Holloway, who accidentally administered a lethal anaesthetic (Doctor Who)

Eighth regeneration – Unknown. So far…

Ninth regeneration – Absorbing the Time Vortex to save Rose Tyler, and nobody’s meant to do that (The Parting of the Ways)

Tenth regeneration – Radiation poisoning (The End of Time, Part Two)

EQUIPMENT TO AID REGENERATIVE CRISIS

TARDIS Zero Room

Metamorphic Symbiosis Regenerator

Flask of tea

THREE

THE DOCTOR’S BEST FRIENDS

COMPANIONS AND OTHER ALLIES

COMPANIONS BY NUMBERS

Companions come and go, but which have made the most appearances? Overleaf is a rundown on the Doctor’s travelling companions based on the number of regular stories they appeared in. Where there’s a tie, we use the number of episodes as a tiebreaker – the Doctor Who equivalent of goal difference.

If we were ordering companions by episode number alone the top ten would be:

Jamie Macrimmon

Sarah Jane Smith

Ian Chesterton

Barbara Wright

Jo Grant

Tegan Jovanka

K-9 Mark II

Susan Foreman

Zoe Heriot

Nyssa

BOYS AND GIRLS COME OUT TO PLAY

The percentage of girls, boys and mechanical companions over the years.

COMPANION ROLL CALL: THE 1960s

played by WILLIAM RUSSELL

First regular Doctor Who appearance: An Unearthly Child Episode 1 (1963)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The Chase Episode 6 (1965)

Thanks to his starring role in Sir Lancelot, William Russell Enoch was a familiar face on British television by the time he was cast as Ian Chesterton. With a career spanning six decades, Russell has worked extensively in the theatre and on TV, appearing as Ted Sullivan in Coronation Street in the 1990s.