The Doctors

Background
Within the fictional narrative, the Doctor is a Time Lord from the planet of Gallifrey who travels through time and space in his dimensionally transcendent—"bigger on the inside"—time machine, the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space) which took the exterior form of a 1963 police telephone call box and stayed that way since.[2] While his kind have dedicated themselves to overseeing all of time and space without interference, the Doctor chooses instead to leave his home by stealing an obsolete TARDIS model, as revealed in the 1969 serial The War Games and depicted in the 2013 episode "The Name of the Doctor". From there, the Doctor explores the universe with mostly human companions who serve as audience surrogate characters to ask questions which allow the Doctor to provide relevant exposition.

"The Doctor" is not the character's true name, which has been left unrevealed. He adopts it as an alias for reasons undisclosed in the series itself, although there is an implied danger and secrecy to his true name. Spin-off media offers the explanation that his true name is unpronounceable by humans. In "The Name of the Doctor", the Eleventh Doctor tells companion Clara Oswald that "the Doctor" is representative of a promise that he took. The contents of the promise are revealed in "The Day of the Doctor" to be "Never cruel nor cowardly. Never give up. Never give in."

The Doctor's earlier life and childhood on Gallifrey has been described very little. The classic series often refers to his time at the academy and that he belongs to the Prydonian chapter of Time Lords, who are notoriously devious. In "The Sound of Drums", the Doctor describes a Time Lord Academy initiation ceremony where, at the age of eight, Time Lord children are made to look into the Untempered Schism, a gap in space and time where they could view the Time Vortex. Some are inspired, some go mad (as he suggests happened to his nemesis, the Master), and some run away. When asked to which group he belonged, he replied, "Oh, the ones that ran away; I never stopped!" Fellow pupils at the Academy included the Master, a Time Lord who was the Doctor's childhood friend before becoming his enemy while he was in his third incarnation and antagonise him until his eventual redemption in The End of Time, the Tenth Doctor's final story. In The Time Monster, the Doctor says he grew up in a house on the side of a mountain, and talks about a hermit who lived under a tree behind the house and inspired the Doctor when he was depressed. He is later reunited with this former mentor, now on Earth posing as the abbot K’anpo Rinpoche, in Planet of the Spiders.

Initially, little was known about the Doctor's past. The Time Lords were introduced in the Second Doctor's final serial, The War Games, and Gallifrey's name was revealed in the Third Doctor serial The Time Warrior. Feeling that too much of the Doctor's backstory had been revealed by the time of Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor, writers Andrew Cartmel, Ben Aaronovitch and Marc Platt developed a plan to reintroduce a sense of mystery to the series – an idea the media dubbed the "Cartmel Masterplan". Cartmel wished to make the Doctor "once again more than a mere chump of a Time Lord".[3] Under Cartmel, the show made allusions to this concept; however, its 1989 cancellation meant that it was never realised onscreen. The proposed backstory was fully explored in Platt's 1997 novel Lungbarrow, where the Doctor is revealed as "the Other", a mysterious figure in Gallifreyan lore who co-founded Time Lord society with Rassilon and Omega. The novel states that Time Lords are no longer born but "woven" from biotechnological Looms; the Other's granddaughter Susan Foreman is Gallifrey's last natural child. To escape a civil war with Rassilon, the Other throws himself into the Loom system, where he is disintegrated and later woven into the Doctor.[4] [5]

Family background
References to the Doctor's family are rare in the series. During the first two seasons he travelled with his granddaughter, Susan Foreman, who has since been referenced occasionally, and returned in The Five Doctors. In "Smith and Jones", he referenced having a brother. During his second incarnation, when asked about his family, the Doctor says his memories of them are still alive when he wants them to be and otherwise they sleep in his mind (The Tomb of the Cybermen). In The Curse of Fenric, when asked if he has any family, the Seventh Doctor replies that he does not know, indirectly hinting that an unspecified fate may have befallen them. In the 1996 television movie, the Eighth Doctor remarks that he is half-human on his mother's side. This conflicts with the classic series, which explicitly presented the Doctor as a pure Time Lord. The revival ignores it and makes the Doctor fully Time Lord again. Throughout the revival, the Doctor routinely attempts to change the topic when questioned about being a parent or his family life, as in "Fear Her", "The Beast Below" and "A Good Man Goes to War". In "The Empty Child", Dr. Constantine says to him, "Before this war began, I was a father and a grandfather. Now I'm neither. But I'm still a doctor." The Ninth Doctor's reply is, "Yeah. I know the feeling." The implication is that the Doctor's family were killed in the Time War, which took place between the movie and the first episode of series one, "Rose".

In The End of Time, a mysterious individual, referred to only in the credits as "The Woman", appears unexpectedly to Wilfred Mott throughout both episodes. She is later revealed to be a dissident Time Lady, who opposed the Time Lord High Council's plan to escape the Time War. When she reveals her face to the Doctor, his reaction indicates that he recognises her. Julie Gardner, in the episode's commentary, states that while some have speculated that the Time Lady is the Doctor's mother, neither she nor Russell T. Davies are willing to comment on her identity. When later asked by Wilfred who she was, the Doctor evades answering the question, making their connection unclear. In Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale – The Final Chapter, Russell T Davies states that he created the character to be the Doctor's mother and this is what actress Claire Bloom was told when she was cast.

In spin-off media, several individuals related to the Doctor have made appearances which don't appear in the television series, such as his grandchildren John and Gillian, who appeared alongside the First and Second Doctors in comics and annuals. Two different, conflicting accounts exist on the descendants of Susan after leaving the Doctor. In the audio play "An Earthly Child", it is revealed that Susan has had a child, Alex Campbell, the Doctor's great-grandson. Alternatively, in the novel Legacy of the Daleks, Susan and her husband David adopt three children whom they name David Campbell Jr, Ian and Barbara; named after David himself, Ian Chesterton, and Barbara Wright respectively. Irving Braxiatel, a character first introduced in the novel Theatre of War, was initially hinted at, and later confirmed to be, the Doctor's biological older brother. He has since become a recurring character, especially within the Big Finish spin-off audio series Gallifrey and Bernice Summerfield. In the novel Father Time, the Eighth Doctor, during his hundred-year-long exile on Earth, found an orphaned Time Lord girl named Miranda whom he adopted and raised till she was 16. Later she returned to the Doctor along with her daughter Zezanne in the novel Sometime Never.... She was also the central character in a three-issue comic book series published by Comeuppance Comics in 2003. Author Lance Parkin, who devised the character of Miranda, has hinted that her real father is actually a future incarnation of the Doctor which, if so, would make Zezanne the Doctor's biological granddaughter as well. The Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow presents an alternative take on the Doctor's origins, suggesting that Time Lords are "loomed" in large batches of "cousins", and not produced via sexual reproduction.[citation needed] Lungbarrow portrays the Doctor as being one of 45 cousins grown from his house's genetic loom as an adult. By contrast, the TV series has shown Time Lords as children, and stated that Time Lords can have sexual relationships.

The Doctor is assumed to be or to have been married to Susan's grandmother, including by head writer Steven Moffat. In "The Wedding of River Song", he married recurring companion and love interest River Song. This took place in an aborted timeline, so it was doubtful as to whether the two were married in the 'real' timeline. Comments by both River and the Doctor in the seventh series, particularly in "The Angels Take Manhattan", confirmed that they were married, although by the time of "The Name of the Doctor" the Doctor, an unspecified amount of time having passed between certain episodes from his perspective, describes River as "an ex". The End of Time references the Tenth Doctor marrying Queen Elizabeth I and implies that the two had sexual intercourse, the Doctor stating: "her nickname [the Virgin Queen] is no longer...". The joke is continued in "The Beast Below", featuring future British monarch Queen Elizabeth X or Liz Ten and the marriage is finally shown in "The Day of the Doctor" during an adventure with Zygons. In the 2010 Christmas special, "A Christmas Carol", the Eleventh Doctor accidentally married Marilyn Monroe but later questioned the authenticity of the chapel in which they were wedded. Steven Moffat did not consider the marriages to Elizabeth I and Marylin Monroe to count when questioned on how many wives the Doctor had had, remarking that he was married to Susan's grandmother and River Song.

In the beginning
The episode title screen of the first episode of Doctor Who, broadcast 23 November 1963.The character of the Doctor was created by the BBC's Head of Drama Sydney Newman.[6] The first format document for the series that was to become Doctor Who – then provisionally titled The Troubleshooters – was written up in March 1963 by C. E. Webber, a BBC staff writer who had been brought in to help develop the project. Webber's document contained a main character described as "The maturer man, 35–40, with some 'character twist.'" However, Newman was not keen on this idea and – along with several other changes to Webber's initial format – created an alternative lead character named Dr Who, a crotchety older man piloting a stolen time machine, on the run from his own far future world.[6] No written record of Newman's conveyance of these ideas – believed to have taken place in April 1963 – exists, and the character of Dr Who first begins appearing in existing documentation from May of that year.[6]

The character was first portrayed by William Hartnell in 1963. At the programme's beginning, nothing at all is known of the Doctor: not even his name, the actual form of which remains a mystery. In the first serial, An Unearthly Child, two teachers from Coal Hill School in London, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, become intrigued by one of their pupils, Susan Foreman, who exhibits high intelligence and unusually advanced knowledge. Trailing her to a junk yard at 76 Totter's Lane, they encounter a strange old man and hear Susan's voice coming from inside what appears to be a police box. Pushing their way inside, the two find that the exterior is actually camouflage for the dimensionally transcendental interior of the TARDIS. The old man, whom Susan calls "Grandfather", subsequently kidnaps Barbara and Ian to prevent them from telling anyone about the existence of the ship, taking them on an adventure in time and space. The first Doctor, says cultural scholar John Paul Green, "explicitly positioned the Doctor as grandfather to his companion Susan."[7] He wore a long white wig and Edwardian costume, reflecting, Green says, a "definite sense of Englishness".[7]

When, after three years, Hartnell left the series due to ill health, the role was handed over to character actor Patrick Troughton. To date, official television productions have depicted twelve distinct incarnations of the Doctor, with ten leading the show at some point. Following Hartnell's death in 1975, actor Richard Hurndall substituted in his role as the First Doctor in 1983's 20th anniversary special, The Five Doctors. Of those, the longest-lasting on-screen incarnation is the Fourth Doctor, as played by Tom Baker for seven years.[8] Within the narrative, these changes were explained as regeneration, initially referred to as "renewal", a biological process which heals a Time Lord when their incarnation is about to die. Consequently, the Time Lord is given a wholly new body. In The Deadly Assassin, the concept of a regeneration limit is introduced, giving Time Lords a fixed number of twelve regenerations, meaning that including the original, every Time Lord had a total of thirteen incarnations. As of 25 December 2013, thirteen distinct incarnations of the Doctor have been introduced, including the War Doctor who follows Paul McGann's "Eighth Doctor" and precedes Christopher Eccleston's "Ninth Doctor" within the show's internal chronology, but was not acknowledged until the 50th anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor", and who has not himself been assigned a number. The Eleventh Doctor (played by Matt Smith) believed himself to be the final incarnation, owing to the existence of said War Doctor, and additionally the Tenth Doctor aborting a regeneration in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End". The plot of "The Time of the Doctor" involved the Doctor receiving a new cycle of regenerations from the Time Lords before his expected demise, triggering the regeneration into the incumbent Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi.

The origins of the show were explored in the docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of Doctor Who, which starred David Bradley as William Hartnell.

Becoming "involved"
An adventurous scientist with a strong moral sense, the Doctor usually solves problems with his wits rather than with force. With the exception of his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor uses weapons only as a last resort. According to the alien villain Chedaki in the episode The Android Invasion, "his entire history is one of opposition to conquest."

As a time traveller, the Doctor has been present at, or directly involved in, countless major historical events on the planet Earth and elsewhere – sometimes more than once. In the 2005 series premiere, "Rose", it is revealed that the Ninth Doctor was instrumental in preventing a family from boarding the Titanic prior to her fateful voyage. In "The End of the World", the Doctor recalls having been on board and surviving the Titanic's sinking to find himself "clinging to an iceberg". The Fourth Doctor also mentioned this event in Robot and The Invasion of Time, where he insists that the sinking was not his fault; the Seventh Doctor became involved in the sinking when tracking an alien entity in the novel The Left-Handed Hummingbird.

Many historical figures on Earth have also encountered the Doctor. In City of Death it is revealed that the Doctor has met Leonardo da Vinci and William Shakespeare (whom he met again, later from his perspective but earlier from Shakespeare's, in "The Shakespeare Code" as well a younger Shakespeare who he saved in his Eighth incarnation in "The Time of the Daleks"), and that the first folio of the latter's Hamlet was transcribed by the Doctor himself (City of Death). He has also met a young H. G. Wells (Timelash), Albert Einstein (Time and the Rani), Mao Tse Tung (Referenced in The Mind of Evil), Richard the Lionheart (The Crusade), Wyatt Earp (The Gunfighters), and Marco Polo (Marco Polo). More recently, the Doctor has shared adventures with Charles Dickens ("The Unquiet Dead"), Benjamin Franklin (Referenced to in "Smith and Jones"), Agatha Christie ("The Unicorn and the Wasp"), Queen Victoria ("Tooth and Claw"), Elizabeth I ("The Shakespeare Code" and "The Day of the Doctor"), Madame de Pompadour ("The Girl in the Fireplace"), Winston Churchill ("Victory of the Daleks", also appeared in the novels Players and The Shadow in the Glass, Shadow also seeing the Doctor meeting Adolf Hitler) and Vincent van Gogh ("Vincent and the Doctor"). A photograph seen in the 2005 series shows that the Ninth Doctor witnessed the death of US president John F. Kennedy. The Fourth Doctor explains in "The Ark in Space" that his signature scarf was knitted for him by Madame Nostradamus, while the Tenth Doctor in "Gridlock" says that Janis Joplin gave him his brown overcoat and in "Smith and Jones" he tells Martha Jones that the Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst stole his laser spanner when they met. The Eleventh Doctor mentions in "The Time of Angels" that he is on Virginia Woolf's bowling team.

It is this penchant for becoming "involved" with the universe – in direct violation of official Time Lord policy – that has caused the Doctor to be labelled a renegade by the Time Lords as stated in The War Games. Most of the time, however, the Doctor's actions are tolerated as he saved Gallifrey and the universe several times over. The Time Lords are also partial to sending him on missions when deniability or expendability is needed, implied to have begun after his capture during The War Games and being witnessed further in later stories, the Time Lords directing the Doctor and/or the TARDIS to specific locations in Colony in Space, The Curse of Peladon, The Mutants, Genesis of the Daleks, The Brain of Morbius, and Attack of the Cybermen. The Doctor's standing in Time Lord society has waxed and waned over the years, from being a hunted man who was eventually punished with a forced regeneration and an exile sentence on Earth, to being appointed Lord President of the High Council. He does not assume the office for very long, fleeing Gallifrey after his appointment rather than accepting the limitations on his freedom that the role would place on him (The Five Doctors), and is eventually deposed in his absence (The Trial of a Time Lord).

The Time War
In the first series of the 2005 revival, writer Russell T Davies introduced the concept of the Time War to streamline the Doctor's backstory for new viewers of the show in 2005. It was a war across all of time and space that resulted in the destruction of his own people, the Time Lords, and their enemies, the Daleks, at the hands of the Doctor. The Doctor's remorse of his actions in his Ninth and Tenth incarnations is a key part of his characterisation throughout the series. The Time War happened between the 1996 television movie and 2005 opening episode "Rose" according to the show's internal chronology, although the events of past serials such as Genesis of the Daleks have been retroactively attributed to the Time War. It was never shown on-screen until The End of Time, which was both Davies' last story as head writer and producer and David Tennant's last regular story as the Tenth Doctor. This episode featured brief views of Gallifrey and the Time Lords on the last day of the Time War. The 2013 mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor", released as a prelude to the 50th anniversary special, featured Paul McGann reprising his role as the Eighth Doctor and was set during the Time War, albeit much earlier than during The End of Time. Until that point, McGann's Doctor was widely presumed to have fought in the Time War. The mini-episode instead presented him as a conscientious objector to the war who regenerated under controlled circumstances into the War Doctor (John Hurt), a previously unseen incarnation retroactively created by Davies' successor as head writer, Steven Moffat, for the 50th anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor". He was a numberless "mayfly" Doctor so as not to disrupt the accepted numbering of the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. "The Day of the Doctor" revisited the last day of the Time War after The End of Time and revealed that the interference of the future Doctors and future companion Clara Oswald caused the War Doctor to change his plan at the last moment. Ultimately, Gallifrey was hidden in a parallel dimension and the Daleks destroyed themselves in the ensuing crossfire; to all observers, it appeared as though the two races had been annihalted together. This was done so that the Doctor can move on after eight years and find his destiny.

Personality
Throughout his regenerations, the Doctor's personality has retained a number of consistent traits.[1] Its most notable aspect is an unpredictable, affable, clownish exterior concealing a well of great age, wisdom, seriousness and even darkness. At times he has been described as "fire and ice and rage, he's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun, he's ancient and forever, he burns at the centre of time..."[26] and "the man who can turn an army around at the mention of his name".[27] While the Doctor can appear childlike and jocular, when the stakes rise, as, for example, in Pyramids of Mars, he will often become cold, driven and callous. Another aspect of the Doctor's persona, which, though always present, has been emphasised or downplayed from incarnation to incarnation, is compassion. The Doctor is a fervent pacifist and is dedicated to the preservation of sentient life, human or otherwise, over violence and war,[28] even going so far as to doubt the morality of destroying his worst enemies, the Daleks, when he has the chance to do so in Genesis of the Daleks, and again in Evolution of the Daleks. He also, in The Time Monster, begs Kronos to spare the Master torment or death, unintentionally winning the evil Time Lord's freedom, which he tells Jo Grant was preferable anyway, and forgives the Master for his actions in The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords, vowing to take responsibility for his former friend.

Nonetheless, the Doctor will kill when given no other option and occasionally in self-defence;[28] examples of this can be seen in The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Dominators, The Invasion, The Krotons, Spearhead from Space, The Sea Devils, The Three Doctors, The Brain of Morbius, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Invasion of Time, Earthshock, Arc of Infinity, Vengeance on Varos, The Two Doctors, Silver Nemesis, "World War Three", "The Christmas Invasion", "Tooth and Claw", "The Age of Steel", "The Runaway Bride", "Smith and Jones" and most notably in Remembrance of the Daleks when he arranges for the planet Skaro to be destroyed; it has also been stated numerous times in the series, beginning in 2005, that he was responsible for destroying both the Dalek and Time Lord races in order to end the Time War. Another example of the Doctor purposely taking a life is The Sontaran Experiment, where he tells his companion Harry Sullivan to remove a device from the Sontaran ship, which causes the death of the Sontaran, something the Doctor knew would happen but Harry did not. In the 2005 episode "The End of the World", the Doctor teleports Cassandra back onto the ship and does nothing to prevent her death, even ignoring her cries for help and pity. Similarly, in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", he strands Solomon on a spacecraft with a homing device to which several missiles have locked on, effectively consigning him to death. In situations where fixed points in history must be preserved, the Doctor is sometimes faced with hard choices resulting in the deaths of many; In The Visitation he started the Great Fire of London, and in "The Fires of Pompeii" (2008) he caused the volcano above Pompeii to erupt, which killed everyone in the city (but saved the rest of the world). On other occasions he is seen to be critical of others who use deadly force, such as his companions Leela in The Face of Evil and Talons of Weng-Chiang, or Jack Harkness in "Utopia" (2006). In the episode "The Lodger" (2011), a member of the Doctor's football team offhandedly mentions annihilating the team they will play next week. The Doctor looks very angry and says "No violence, not while I'm around, not today, not ever. I'm the Doctor, the oncoming storm... and you basically meant beat them in a football match, didn't you?"

In the revived series, the Doctor has displayed a ruthless streak at times. When his companion or innocent people are harmed, his indignation drives him to seek the antagonist with a vengeance. The Ninth Doctor intentionally electrocuted the Dalek he encountered in "Dalek" despite its pleas for him to have pity, coldly stating "you never did". The Tenth Doctor notably had a "one chance only" policy when dealing with aliens invading the Earth, leading to his companion Donna Noble commenting that he needs "someone" to keep his temperament in check. In "The Family of Blood", the alien the Doctor defeats noted retrospectively that "he never raised his voice – that was the worst thing, the fury of a Time Lord". The Eleventh Doctor was the only Doctor to undergo three significant personality changes, becoming even more ruthless when alone in his travels, when Amy Pond and Rory Williams were absent, then fell into a depression beyond his other incarnations when the couple were lost to him, becoming the first Doctor to retire voluntarily, before finally being overjoyed at the prospect that Clara Oswin Oswald was still alive.

The Doctor has an extreme dislike for weapons such as firearms or rayguns and will often decline to use them even when they are convenient. The Tenth Doctor was especially put off by guns, going out of his way to make his feelings known. In "Doomsday" (2006) the Daleks declare the Doctor is unarmed, to which he replies "That's me. Always." In "The Doctor's Daughter" (2008) he is enraged at the death of Jenny and points a gun at the head of the man who shot her before throwing it away and yelling "I never would!". He has proven capable of using weapons effectively when necessary, as seen in Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks. In The End of Time he hit a small diamond with a single shot to destroy a machine and prevent the destruction of time itself. He will occasionally use a firearm as a convenient way to bluff his way through a situation, hoping that his foe will not suspect that he does not intend to shoot. He will also occasionally present non-threatening items as weapons so as to fool his enemies and buy himself time. In two concurrent episodes in 2012 however, the Eleventh Doctor resorts to real violence. He directs missiles to kill a man in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", and in "A Town Called Mercy", he throws Kahler-Jex out of the town where he knows the Gunslinger will find and kill him, and aims a pistol at him to keep him out.

The Doctor has a deep sense of right and wrong, and a conviction that it is right to intervene when injustice occurs, which sets him apart from his own people, the Time Lords, and their strict ethic of non-intervention.

While the Doctor remains essentially the same person throughout his regenerations, each actor has purposely imbued his incarnation of the character with distinct quirks and characteristics, and the production teams dictate new personality traits for each actor to portray.

Accent
Different actors have used different regional accents in the role. The first six Doctors spoke in Received Pronunciation or "BBC English", as was standard on British television at the time. Sylvester McCoy used a very mild version of his own Scottish accent in the role, and Paul McGann spoke with a faint Liverpudlian lilt. Only rarely is this even addressed in the series. In the case of the Eighth Doctor, who is identified by American characters as "British," he seems only slightly conscious of the way he sounds, responding with "Yes, I suppose I am." When the Ninth Doctor's accent is clearly described as "Northern," he responds with the line "Lots of planets have a North."

Another example is in The Tomb of the Cybermen when the Doctor is identified as "English" and, dissembling, plays along. Though David Tennant speaks with a natural Scottish accent, he played the Tenth Doctor with an Estuary accent (apart from when, in the Highlands-set episode "Tooth and Claw" the character is pretending to be a local). According to producer Russell T Davies, this was intended as a consequence of spending so much time with Rose. "The Christmas Invasion" would have alluded to this, but the line was cut.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-accent_30-0">[29] Davies also said that after Eccleston's accent, he did not want Tennant "touring the regions" with a Scottish one,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-31">[note 2] and so asked Tennant to affect the same accent he used for the earlier BBC period drama Casanova.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-touring_32-0">[30] In contrast, Peter Capaldi was explicitly allowed to continue using his native Scottish accent as the Twelfth Doctor.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-33">[31]

In the Big Finish audio adventure The Sirens of Time the captain aboard a German U-boat assumes he is English because of the way he pronounces his words: "So, you speak German, ... but you speak it like an English gentleman."

Changing fashions
The Fourth Doctor's impractically long scarf became an iconic image of the character.The Doctor's clothing has been equally distinctive, from the distinguished Edwardian suits of the First Doctor to the Second Doctor's rumpled, clownlike Chaplinesque attire to the dandy-esque frills and velvet of the Third Doctor's era. The Fourth Doctor's long frock coat, loose fitting trousers, occasionally worn wide-brimmed hat and trailing, multistriped scarf added to his somewhat shambolic and bohemian image; the Fifth's Edwardian cricketer's outfit suited his youthful, aristocratic air as well as his love of the sport (with a stick of celery on the lapel for an eccentric touch though in The Caves of Androzani it is revealed to turn purple when exposed to gases the Doctor is allergic to); and the Sixth's multicoloured jacket, with its cat-shaped lapel pins, reflected the excesses of 1980s fashion. The Seventh Doctor's outfit – a straw hat, a coat with two scarves, a tie, checked trousers and brogues/wingtips – was more subdued and suggestive of a showman, reflecting his whimsical approach to life. In later seasons, as his personality grew more mysterious, his jacket, tie, and hatband all grew darker.

Throughout the 1980s, question marks formed a constant motif, usually on the shirt collars or, in the case of the Seventh Doctor, on his sleeveless jumper and the handle to his umbrella. The idea was grounded in branding considerations, as was the movement starting in Tom Baker's final season toward an unchanging costume for each Doctor, rather than the variants on a theme employed over the first seventeen years of the programme. When the Eighth Doctor regenerated, he clad himself in a 19th-century frock coat and shirt based around a Wild Bill Hickok costume, reminiscent of the out-of-time quality of earlier Doctors and emphasising the Eighth Doctor's more Romantic persona<sup class="Template-Fact" style="white-space: nowrap;">[citation needed].

In contrast to the more flamboyant outfits of his predecessors, the Ninth Doctor wore a nondescript, worn black leather jacket, V-neck jumper and dark trousers. Eccleston stated that he felt that such definitive "costumes" were passé and that the character's trademark eccentricities should show through their actions and clever dialogue, not through gimmicky costumes. Despite this, there is a running joke about his character that the only piece of clothing he changes is his jumper, even when trying to "blend into" a historical era. The one exception, a photograph of him taken in 1912, wearing period gentleman's clothing, resembles the style of the Eighth Doctor.

The Tenth Doctor sports either a brown or a blue pinstripe suit – usually worn with ties – a tan ankle-length coat and Converse trainers, the latter recalling the plimsolls worn by his fifth incarnation. Also like that incarnation (and his first one), he occasionally wears spectacles: a pair with black, thick-rimmed frames. In the 2007 Children in Need special he states that he doesn't actually need glasses to see, but rather wears them to "look a bit clever." On some occasions he wears a black tuxedo with matching black trainers. In interviews, Tennant has referred to his Doctor's attire as geek chic. According to Tennant he had always wanted to wear the trainers. The overall costume, however, was influenced by an outfit worn by Jamie Oliver in a TV interview on the talk show Parkinson.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-34">[32]

The Tenth Doctor says in "The Runaway Bride" that, like the TARDIS, his pockets are bigger on the inside. The Second, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Doctors routinely carried numerous items in their coats without this being conspicuous.

The Eleventh Doctor's appearance has been described as appearing like "an Oxford professor", with a tweed jacket, red or blue striped shirt, red or blue bow tie, black or grey trousers with red or blue braces, and black boots.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-35">[33] He maintains "Bow ties are cool" even when his companions do not agree, and is delighted to meet Dr Black, the first man who agrees with him, in the episode "Vincent and the Doctor". As a running gag, he exhibits attraction to unusual hats, like a fez, a pirate hat, and a stetson, often only to have them destroyed by River Song shortly afterwards.

Starting in the second half of Series 7, the Eleventh Doctor has reverted to wearing a frock coat like the ones his early predecessors wore, along with a waistcoat and black trousers, black braces, an off-white shirt, with brown boots. The bow tie is still present. He has also added round-rimmed glasses that belonged to former companion Amy Pond.

Regenerations
The Ninth Doctor regenerates into the Tenth Doctor (from "The Parting of the Ways").It was established in The Deadly Assassin (1976) that a Time Lord can regenerate twelve times before permanently dying – a total of thirteen incarnations. Both the 1996 television movie and the 2013 special "The Time of the Doctor" also confirm this with the latter showing that the Time Lords can circumvent the cap of 12 regenerations in total by giving a Time Lord another regeneration cycle. While many of the previous regeneration sequences were unique, the Doctor's regenerations of the revived series were similar with each transition being an explosion of energy in a particularly violent fashion. This can be seen from the Tenth Doctor's regeneration damaging the TARDIS, to the Eleventh Doctor's causing a shock wave that devastated the countryside while obliterating a Dalek mothership.

In "The Christmas Invasion" it was stated the regenerative cycle creates a large amount of residual regeneration energy that suffuses the Time Lord's body. As demonstrated by the Tenth Doctor for the first time in that story, in the first fifteen hours of regeneration this energy is enough to even rapidly regrow a severed hand. This is in keeping with earlier serials, such as Robot, where the newly regenerated Fourth Doctor splits a brick with his bare hand, and also in the 1996 television movie, where the Doctor is depicted battering down a heavy steel door in a hospital morgue.

In the case of the Doctor, his regenerations are usually a result of a previous incarnation sustaining mortal injury, though he can also regenerate from old age and was once forced to regenerate by the Time Lords. A common side effect the Doctor frequently experiences a period of instability and partial amnesia following regeneration. Some post-regeneration experiences have been more difficult than others. In particular, the Fifth Doctor began reverting to his previous personalities and required the healing powers of the TARDIS's "Zero Room" to recuperate (Castrovalva). The Sixth Doctor experienced extreme paranoia and flew into a murderous rage, nearly killing his companion (The Twin Dilemma). The Eighth Doctor experienced amnesia due to the anaesthetics affecting his physiology (1996 Doctor Who television movie). While his regeneration first appeared to be smooth ("The Parting of the Ways"), the Tenth Doctor began to experience spasms and became somewhat manic, frightening his companion as he pushed the TARDIS to dangerous extremes (Children in Need mini-episode). After crash-landing the TARDIS, the Doctor collapsed and remained unconscious for most of the next fifteen hours ("The Christmas Invasion"). The experience was traumatic enough to cause one of his hearts to temporarily stop beating.

The TARDIS also appears to aid in the regenerative process, with only occasions where the Doctor regenerates outside of it, three are initiated by Time Lords: one forced on him before banishment to Earth (The War Games), one requiring a Time Lord to give the Doctor's cells a "little push" to start the process (Planet of the Spiders), and one needing the Watcher, which the Doctor's travelling companions believed to be some version of the Doctor himself (Logopolis). The Eighth Doctor apparently occurred a few hours after he had actually "died", leaving him with temporary amnesia due to his body's adverse reaction to earth medicines.

In "Journey's End", the Tenth Doctor manages to avert his own regeneration, using some of the energy to heal himself then channelling the remaining energy into his severed hand, thus retaining his appearance and personality. That regenerative energy was a key point in a "human-time lord biological metacrisis" inadvertently caused by Donna Noble that creates the Meta-Crisis Doctor while she obtains a Time Lord intellect. Though he claim to Clyde Langer that he could regenerate 507 times in Death of the Doctor, Eleventh Doctor revealed that his past incarnation's averted regeneration still counted as a regeneration and that he was in his last life. However, during "The Time of the Doctor", the Doctor is given a new cycle of regenerations by the Time Lords, allowing him to regenerate into the Twelfth Doctor.

In the BBC Series 4 FAQ, writer Russell T Davies made a joke that now the Time Lord social order has been destroyed, the Doctor may be able to regenerate indefinitely: "Now that his people are gone, who knows? Time Lords used to have 13 lives.".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-507joke_10-1">[10] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-37">[34]