Doctor Who (Series 1)
From Iwe
| Doctor Who series 1 | |||
| DVD box | |||
| Country of origin | United Kingdom | ||
| No. of episodes | 13 | ||
| Broadcast | |||
| Original channel | BBC One | ||
| Original run | 26 March 2005 – 18 June 2005 | ||
| Home video release | |||
| DVD release | |||
| Region 1 | 4 July 2006 | ||
| Region 2 | 21 November 2005 | ||
| Region 4 | 8 December 2005 | ||
| Blu-ray Disc release | |||
| Region 1 | 4 July 2006 | ||
| Region B | 4 November 2013 (Region 2) 4 December 2013 (Region 4) | ||
| Season chronology | |||
| ← Previous Season 26 (series) Doctor Who (special) | Next → Series 2 | ||
| List of Doctor Who serials | |||
The new first series of British science fiction series Doctor Who began on 26 March 2005 with the episode "Rose", which marked the end of the programme's 16-year absence from episodic television following its cancellation in 1989, and the first new televised Doctor Who story since the broadcast of the TV movie starring Paul McGann in 1996. The finale episode, "The Parting of the Ways", was broadcast on 18 June 2005. The show was revived by long time Doctor Who fan Russell T Davies, who had been lobbying the BBC since the late 90s to bring the show back. The first series comprised 13 episodes, eight of which Davies wrote. Davies, Julie Gardner and Mal Young served as executive producers, Phil Collinson as producer.
The show depicts the adventures of a mysterious and eccentric Time Lord known as the Doctor, who travels through time and space in his time machine, the TARDIS, which normally appears from the exterior to be a blue 1950s British police box. With his companions, he explores time and space, faces a variety of foes and saves civilizations, helping people and righting wrongs. The first series features Christopher Eccleston as the ninth incarnation of the Doctor, his only series as the Doctor, accompanied by Billie Piper, as his first and main companion Rose Tyler, whom he plucks from obscurity on planet Earth, and to whom he grows increasingly attached. He also travels briefly with unruly boy-genius Adam Mitchell, played by Bruno Langley, and with 51st-century con man and former 'Time Agent' Captain Jack Harkness, portrayed by John Barrowman. Episodes in series one form a loose story arc, based upon the recurring phrase "Bad Wolf", the significance of which goes unexplained until the two-part series finale.
The series premiere was watched by 10.81 million viewers, and four days after the premiere aired, Doctor Who was renewed for a Christmas Special, as well as a second series. Series 1 was well received by both critics and fans, winning for the first time in Doctor Who's history a prestigious BAFTA Award. Most surprising was the approval from Michael Grade, who had previously forced an 18-month hiatus on the show in 1985, and had postponed Doctor Who out of personal dislike on several occasions. The show's popularity ultimately led to a resurgence in family-oriented Saturday night drama.
Contents |
List of episodes
Unlike the previous incarnation of the series that ended in 1989, the plan with the new series was to have each episode as a standalone story, with no "serials". Of the thirteen episodes in Series 1, seven of them followed this format; the remaining six were grouped together into three 2-part stories. Also, for the first time since The Gunfighters in Season 3, each episode was given an individual title, which was the case with the standalone and two-part stories.
| Story No. | Episode | Title | Directed by | Written by | UK viewers (million) | AI (%) | Original air date | Production code |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 157 | 1 | "Rose" | Keith Boak | Russell T Davies | 10.81 | 81 | 26 March 2005 | 1.1 |
| In the basement of the shop where she works, plastic mannequins begin to attack Rose Tyler. A mysterious man known as "the Doctor" rescues her and they flee the building, which he blows up. The next day Rose and her boyfriend, Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke) visit the man named Clive (Mark Benton) who runs a conspiracy theory website about a man fitting the Doctor's description who has appeared throughout history. While Rose is talking to Clive, Mickey is kidnapped and replaced by a plastic duplicate. Rose meets the Doctor again where he reveals Mickey to be an Auton and he and Rose locate the Nestene Consciousness which controls the Autons: the London Eye. At this point, Autons come alive everywhere (mainly mannequins), and start killing other people. Rose saves the Doctor and many others the Autons had been killing and she decides to travel with the Doctor through time and space in his TARDIS. | ||||||||
| 158 | 2 | "The End of the World" | Euros Lyn | Russell T Davies | 7.97 | 79 | 2 April 2005 | 1.2 |
| The Doctor takes Rose to the year 5 billion where they land on a space station (Platform 1) which is orbiting the Earth and observing its destruction by the expanding Sun. Among the elite alien guests assembled to watch the phenomenon is Lady Cassandra (Zoë Wanamaker), who takes pride in being the last pure human, though she has received many operations that have altered her image. It is discovered that Cassandra, to receive money for her many operations, plans to let the guests die and then profit from the stock increases of their competitors. She releases discreet robotic spiders all over Platform 1, and they start interfering with the systems. She departs via teleportation and the spiders bring down the shields, causing harmful direct solar radiation to penetrate the station. The Doctor manages to reactivate the system and save Rose, after which he brings Cassandra back and she ruptures from the intense solar heat. | ||||||||
| 159 | 3 | "The Unquiet Dead" | Euros Lyn | Mark Gatiss | 8.86 | 80 | 9 April 2005 | 1.3 |
| The Doctor and Rose travel back to Cardiff in 1869, where a funeral parlour run by Gabriel Sneed (Alan David) with his clairvoyant servant girl Gwyneth (Eve Myles) contains corpses which have been animated by a mysterious blue vapour. Sneed and Gwyneth kidnap Rose and the Doctor teams up with Charles Dickens (Simon Callow) to track her down. In the funeral parlour the group is reunited and the Doctor determines that the blue vapour is the result of a being trying to cross a rift in spacetime the parlour is built on. They are revealed to be the Gelth, who animate bodies until they can build their own and are using Gwyneth as a bridge. As the Gelth respond negatively to gas, Gwyneth volunteers to ignite the gas which will kill all the Gelth, and the Doctor, Rose, and Dickens escape before the parlour is engulfed in flames. | ||||||||
| 160a | 4 | "Aliens of London" | Keith Boak | Russell T Davies | 7.63 | 81 | 16 April 2005 | 1.4 |
| The Doctor takes Rose back to her home, but they arrive a year after she left. Her mother Jackie (Camille Coduri) is furious with the Doctor, and Mickey has been suspected of murdering Rose. Rose and the Doctor witness a spaceship crash into Big Ben and fall into the River Thames. The Doctor suspects this is a trick and discovers that the ship was launched from earth and the pilot is a pig modified by alien technology. The Prime Minister cannot be located and is replaced by Joseph Green (David Verrey), while Margaret Blaine (Annette Badland) and Oliver Charles, other high-ranking members of the government, are also called. The group is revealed to be Slitheen, an alien family who have compressed themselves into human "suits". | ||||||||
| 160b | 5 | "World War Three" | Keith Boak | Russell T Davies | 7.98 | 82 | 23 April 2005 | 1.5 |
| The Doctor learns that the Slitheen are not invading Earth but rather raiding it for commercial gain. The Slitheeen claim there is a threat to national security and request that the United Nations release the nuclear activation code so they can strike down a dangerous ship hovering over London. The Doctor speculates they will fire at other countries and start World War III and sell the remaining radioactive weapons. The Doctor helps Mickey hack online to fire a non-nuclear missile at 10 Downing Street to destroy the Slitheen gathered there, and the Doctor, Rose, and MP Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton) manage to hide in a reinforced cabinet and survive. Meanwhile, the Doctor has earned Jackie's trust and she allows Rose to continue travelling with him. | ||||||||
| 161 | 6 | "Dalek" | Joe Ahearne | Robert Shearman | 8.63 | 84 | 30 April 2005 | 1.6 |
| The TARDIS is drawn off course by a signal and Rose and the Doctor end up near Salt Lake City, Utah in 2012, in an underground bunker owned by Henry van Statten (Corey Johnson), a rich collector of alien artefacts. The Doctor encounters his one living exhibit which the Doctor is horrified to discover is a Dalek that survived the Time War, the last survivor of a race of genetically manipulated mutants bound on purging the universe of all non-Dalek life and the Doctor's greatest enemy. One of van Statten's technicians Adam Mitchell (Bruno Langley) leads Rose to the Dalek, but she takes pity on it and touches it, allowing it to absorb her DNA and become active. The Dalek kills many soldiers before catching up with Rose, Adam and The Doctor. Rose becomes trapped with the Dalek, but it spares her life as it has gained sympathy from Rose's DNA and destroys itself. As the Doctor and Rose leave, Adam boards the TARDIS to avoid the closure of van Statten's Vault. | ||||||||
| 162 | 7 | "The Long Game" | Brian Grant | Russell T Davies | 8.01 | 81 | 7 May 2005 | 1.7 |
| The Doctor, Rose, and Adam travel to the year 200,000 and land on the space station Satellite 5, which controls journalism. Ever since the satellite began broadcasting, something has held the human race's attitude and technology back. The Editor (Simon Pegg) invites the Doctor and Rose to the elite Floor 500 where he holds them captive, explaining that he and a creature known as the Jagrafess have made through Satellite 5 the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire a place where the news has installed fear in the human race, keeping them in a closed society. Meanwhile, Adam has installed a port in his head and is transmitting all the knowledge on Satellite 5 to his parent's answering machine at home. Meanwhile, Cathica (Christine Adams) (another journalist with an info spike linked to Adam's) redirects the heat to Floor 500, allowing Rose and the Doctor to escape, while the Editor and the Jagrafess are destroyed by the heat. The Doctor is furious at Adam and returns him to his house, destroying the answering machine and banishing Adam from the TARDIS. | ||||||||
| 163 | 8 | "Father's Day" | Joe Ahearne | Paul Cornell | 8.06 | 83 | 14 May 2005 | 1.8 |
| Rose asks the Doctor to take her back to the day her father Pete Tyler (Shaun Dingwall) died in a hit and run accident, but when she saves him she creates a paradox. The TARDIS appears to be an ordinary police box and flying creatures known as Reapers appear and attempt to treat the wound in time and space by consuming everyone in it. Everyone hides in a church while the Doctor tries to summon the TARDIS. Jackie accuses Pete of having another daughter, and to prove that Rose is the same as the baby Rose, he puts the baby in the older Rose's arms, causing a bigger paradox, and the Doctor is taken by the reapers. Pete realises he must die for everything to be repaired, and throws himself in front of the car which has been appearing and reappearing around the corner of the church, causing the Doctor to return. | ||||||||
Cast
Main cast
Recurring and guest cast
Production
Development
Writing
Production blocks
Filming
Release
Promotion
Leak
Broadcast
DVD release
Reception
Ratings
Critical reception
Awards and nominations
Soundtrack
- Further information: Doctor Who: Original Television Soundtrack
