One hears that the first actor approached to play "the Doctor" asked, "Doctor Who?", and the title was born.
Originally the Doctor was the human grandfather of a young woman with a very short skirt. That was a movie I saw, wherein the Daleks couldn't roll on an electrically non-conductive floor.
The first actor in a Dr Who series I saw was John Pertwee, with puffy white hair, velvet smoking jackets, and Venusian aikido (he was the only two-armed creature ever to master Venusian aikido). By this time he was a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who'd been exiled and circumscribed on Earth, for his sins. He was accompanied by Elizabeth Sladen, as the journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who must have been the most useless travelling companion anybody ever had. "Must kill the Dawkktaw". Mind you, anyone turned to the dark side as early and often as she must have been a cheap and easy date.
Pertwee regenerated into Tom Baker, still the man to beat, though at first I thought he wasn't venerable enough. Baker had to leave Sarah Jane on Earth and respond to an emergency on Gallifrey. Eventually he hooked up with Leela, the jungle warrior huntress, who obviously wore a low-cut mini-dress, for freedom of movement. She was a great foil, being all instinctual and visceral, against Baker's intellectualism. Leela was replaceed by two generations of a lady Time Lord named Romana.
Anyway, Baker regenerated into Peter Davison, who couldn't have lasted long because everyone hated him for playing Tristan Farnan in
All the Long-Leggity Beasties on
Masterpiece, and he travelled with children instead of women.
I almost didn't watch the revival starring Chris Ecklestone, but I thought, give it a chance, and they were very good for quite a while.
Seems I have almost as much
Dr Who in my head as
Monty Python.
Oo, ee oo, wuh uh duh dee oo, dee oo.