Cast: David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Freema Agyeman, Billie Piper, John Barrowman, Christopher Eccleston, Elisabeth Sladen, Adjoa Andoh, Noel Clarke, Camille Coduri, John Simm
- Airs: 7pm Saturdays
- Air Dates: March 2005 - Still Running...
Premise:
The longest running science fiction series of all time, the original "Doctor Who" began back in 1963 and ran for 36 years through til 1989. After an aborted attempt at a restart with a 1996 US TV movie, the BBC finally began production on a whole new series which began airing in 2005. Unlike the multi-part half-hour stories of the previous years, the production has been given a better budget and ran in the form of 13 one-hour episodes plus a Christmas special for each of its first four seasons. After that the series will alternate between that format and a series of specials every other year.
The reinvented series kicked off with the ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and his new companion , a young but clueless shopgirl named Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) as they travel in the TARDIS across time to take on all sorts of monsters and threats to history from gaseous aliens in Victorian-era Wales, lizard-like Slitheen in Downing Street, and zombie-fied children during the London Blitz of WW2. Along the way it was slowly revealed that he is the last of the Time Lords, the rest were lost in a great war with the Daleks. A few of the metal monsters survived and tried to manipulate Earth's history before launching an invasion. The Doctor, Rose and adventurer Capt. Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) managed to stop them but only at the cost of The Doctor's life.
Regenerated into his tenth incarnation (David Tennant), Rose got used to dealing with the Doctor's whole new personality traits as they continued their adventures through time and space, this time protecting Queen Victoria from a werewolf, falling in love with Madame Du Pompadour, re-visiting his old companion Sarah Jane Smith, and discovering a creature of pure evil at the edge of a black hole. Unbeknownest to both, another of the Doctor's old enemies was out there. An army of metal monsters quite different to the Daleks, but one with far colder and more determined plans for the fate of mankind and the universe - the Cybermen. The battle came to Earth as the Cybermen, and a few remaining Daleks, went to war with humanity caught in the middle. Eventually stopped and thrown back into a void between dimensions, Rose and her family became stranded on a parallel Earth with no way of getting back.
Not soon after, The Doctor encounters a young medical student named Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) who finds her hospital one day suddenly transported to the Moon. Offered the opportunity to travel time and space, she soon joins The Doctor on his journey which includes helping William Shakespeare stop an alien invasion, destroy The Daleks plans for genetically altering humanity in 1930's Manhattan, rescuing a ship from falling into a star, and protecting The Doctor who makes himself a human school teacher in 1913 to hide out from an aggressive alien family. The return of Captain Jack throws the trio to the end of the universe where they witness the frightening return of The Doctor's nemesis - The Master. The unstable Time Lord has taken on a new form, one which has been manipulating events and members of Jones family for his own sinister purpose - to conquer the Earth and rebuild the Time Lord empire under his rule. He's stopped and his damage reversed, but Martha chooses to walk away and stay with her family as the cost of traveling with the Doctor is too high.
The Doctor once again encounters Donna Noble, a jilted bride whom he met a year before and was being used in a scheme by an alien spider, only this time she came along for the ride. The outspoken former temp wasn't afraid to talk back to the Doctor on his level and together they traveled to Pompeii during the eruption, discovered how the Ood race was being abused, solved the mystery of Agatha Christie's disappearance, and dealt with a genetically cloned 'daughter' of The Doctor. The pair are reunited with Martha, now working for U.N.I.T., as an old enemy - the cloned armies of the Sontarans - tried to establish a foothold on Earth. The pair also met a new face, space archaeologist River Song who will one day become the Doctor's single most trusted companion. Throughout their time together, planets began disappearing from the cosmos and Rose Tyler manages to break through the dimensional barriers to warn the Doctor. A new Dalek empire is on the rise, one lead by their mad scientist creator Davros determined to destroy all of creation, and only the re-teaming of all his most recent companions was able to stop it. The final battle though came at a price and left the Doctor once again alone in his travels.
