Doctor Who story title debate

Some fans of the BBC television series "Doctor Who" disagree about the titles of some episodes. The debate includes several episodes; most contentious are the stories involving William Hartnell.

"Doctor Who and..."

Throughout the history of the series many stories were referred to in production paperwork, the "Radio Times", novelisations and other media as "Doctor Who and...", as a form of combining the story title with the series title. However this variant was often used inconsistently. Production paperwork generally stopped using the term following an incident in late 1969 when the opening credits for a story went out to the captioning department as "Doctor Who and the Silurians" rather than "The Silurians". [cite web |url=http://www.gallifreyone.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2622036&postcount=348 |title=Re: The Doctor Who Serial Titles Debate| author=Andrew Pixley |work=Outpost Gallifrey (registration required) |date=2006-06-30 |accessdate=2006-12-19] However, it was common for novelisations to continue to be titled "Doctor Who and..." until the early 1980s. In the early 1990s Target reprinted many of the novelisations and took the opportunity to remove this form.

There were a few other exceptions. A later 1971 compilation repeat of the story "The Dæmons" had the title as "Doctor Who and the Dæmons", whilst the 1996 radio serial "The Ghosts of N-Space" was referred to in the opening credits as "Doctor Who and the Ghosts of N-Space".

The controversy is fuelled by the fact that the main character of the series is almost invariably referred to not as "Doctor Who", but simply "The Doctor", although there is nothing in the series itself that explicitly says "Doctor Who" is not the character's name. "See Doctor (Doctor Who)#"Doctor who?"."

The William Hartnell stories

When the series began in 1963, each episode had an individual title and no overall story title appeared onscreen. The production office would variously refer to the stories by either a production code (for example the very first story was "Serial A") or a title. During the course of a story's production the titles in use could change and even revert. Complicating matters further, not all BBC departments would necessarily pick up on changes in the title and the production office would use additional titles after transmission of the story to refer to previous stories.

Some titles were made known to the public through either the BBC listings magazine "Radio Times" or the Royal National Institute for the Blind's "Synopses For The Deaf" and these sources often, but not always, reflected the production office's thinking. In 1966 the decision was taken to abandon the individual episode titles, instead giving all stories an overall on-screen title, starting with "The Savages".

When in the 1970s the first programme guides and organised fan lists started to be produced there was much confusion as to what the stories should be called. In 1973 the "Radio Times" published a special to celebrate the series' 10th anniversary and for all of the stories prior to "The Savages" the title of the first episode was given as the story title. Meanwhile the early fan clubs were making use of lists supplied to them by either the production office or the overseas sales division, BBC Enterprises. A key document was the 1974 "A Quick Guide to Doctor Who" which Enterprises used to list all the stories to date, giving titles.

Several fanzines used the various lists, combined with titles discovered in old editions of the "Radio Times" or national media, and by the time of the publication of the 1976 edition of "The Making of Doctor Who" there was sufficient information available to compile a full list, though in places the titles of the first episodes were adopted when no others were available.

Over subsequent years further research into the story titles yielded more information and a clearer picture of the titles at the time of transmission emerged. Often the newly discovered information would be absorbed into new reference works, but several major discoveries at the end of the 1980s sparked controversy, with different reference works using different sets of titles and many fans fiercely debating which was the "correct" title to use. While the debate continues the majority of fans commonly use the titles featured on the BBC video and DVD releases.Fact|date=July 2008

The Jon Pertwee stories

Although all "Doctor Who" stories in the early 1970s used overall titles, two still generate controversy:

*The second Pertwee story. Many stories were referred to in production documentation as "Doctor Who and..." but this prefix was usually dropped for transmission. Due to reasons that are not entirely clear, the serial was transmitted with the onscreen title of "Doctor Who and the Silurians" instead (see "Doctor Who and the Silurians" - Alternative titles for more information). Several subsequent reference works have opted to give the title as merely "The Silurians" in line with the standard format for titles.
*The dinosaur story. One of the last Pertwee stories sought to hide the presence of dinosaurs by shortening the title given on the first episode to "Invasion". The other episodes gave the title as "Invasion of the Dinosaurs". However, a 1968 story featuring Patrick Troughton was already titled "The Invasion", so it is rare to see the "Invasion" title used to refer to the Pertwee serial.

The Trial of a Time Lord

The twenty-third season of the series in 1986 saw a single, fourteen-part adventure with the overall title "The Trial of a Time Lord". However the production was broken into three separate production slots and the season was regarded by many on the production team, and subsequently by both the novelisation writers and some fans, as constituting four separate stories.

The first two segments had the clear final working titles of "The Mysterious Planet" and "Mindwarp" respectively on the final recording scripts and both were adopted by the novelisations and fandom. However the remaining episodes carried no individual titles on the scripts. The third segment was commissioned as "The Ultimate Foe" and the fourth as "Time Incorporated" but confusingly the latter was novelised as "The Ultimate Foe" whilst the former was novelised as "Terror of the Vervoids". The authors of the third story and some other production team members have consistently referred to it as "The Vervoids" in subsequent interviews but this title is not known to exist in any contemporary paperwork.

Matters are further confused by fierce debate as to whether the whole Trial should be regarded as one story or four, with many who adopt the former stance merely referring to the whole thing as "The Trial of a Time Lord". The BBC Video release of the season was as a boxed set of three VHS tapes with the "Trial" overall title for the tapes, but labelled on the bottom of the tin as "The Mysterious Planet", "Mindwarp", and "Terror of the Vervoids"/"The Ultimate Foe", respectively.

The Paul McGann television movie

The 1996 television movie starring Paul McGann carried no onscreen title and in production was never referred to as anything other than "Doctor Who". Many fans felt that this was too confusing and sought a better way to refer to the story. At one point the executive producer suggested that they could refer to it as "Enemy Within" [cite web | last = Sullivan | first = Shannon Patrick | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = Doctor Who (1996) | work = Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel) | publisher = | date = | url = http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/tvm.html | format = | doi = | accessdate = 2007-09-05 ] , but most fans appearFact|date=August 2007 to have taken to referring to it as simply "the TV movie" or "the TVM". The DVD release was titled "Doctor Who: The Movie".

In a documentary series "Planet of the Doctor", which was webcast on the CBC Doctor Who website in 2005, a fan who was interviewed in the segment "The Nine Doctors" (who was attributed by the CBC as a representative of the Doctor Who Information Network but had no formal association with the club) referred to the film by the title "Out of the Ashes" — the header used by Shannon Patrick Sullivan for the section on the television movie at his "Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time (Travel)" production history website. [ [http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/8doc.html#Ashes A Brief History Of Time (Travel): The Eighth Doctor ] ]

EDA and NA author Lance Parkin mentioned in Doctor Who Magazine that he always referred to the film when discussing it as 'Grace: 1999', a title which is both a pun on the title of "" and a reflection of the tendency of "Doctor Who" story titles to refer to the most important plot aspects (for example "The Dalek Invasion of Earth"). This title has gained some currencyFact|date=August 2007 as a useful description of the episode although it has no basis in the production team's intentions.

Doctor Who: Children in Need

The that aired for Children in Need in late 2005 was shown without an official title, and to date none has been announced in retrospect. Although the fan community immediately set to work in finding a title for the serial, series producer Russell T. Davies soon suggested, in "Doctor Who Magazine", the title "Pudsey Cutaway", in reference both to the URL embedded in the upper portion of the broadcast, which directed viewers to the Children in Need website, and to the alternate "Dalek Cutaway" title for the story usually known as "Mission to the Unknown". Although Davies offered the title in jest, the fans soon picked up on it as, if nothing else, an affectionate nickname for the episode.

The 2006 "Doctor Who Magazine" special "Series Two Companion" revealed that on production papers, the episode was designated "Doctor Who: Children in Need". The next Children in Need special episode produced for "Doctor Who" in 2007 carried a definitive on-screen title, however: "Time Crash".

Revived series

Since 2005, the series has reverted to having separate episode titles, there is no other official way of referring to two- or three-part stories than by mentioning the separate episode titles. So far these are:

* Aliens of London/World War Three
* The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
* Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways
* Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel
* The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
* Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
* Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
* Human Nature/The Family of Blood
* Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
* The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
* Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
* The Stolen Earth/Journey's End

External links

* [http://homepages.bw.edu/~jcurtis/Pixley_3.htm By Any Other Name] - Article by Andrew Pixley detailing the problems of early "Doctor Who" story titles.

References