Changing Faces
See also: Regeneration (Doctor Who) See also: List of actors who have played the DoctorThe changing of actors playing the part of the Doctor is explained within the series by the Time Lords' ability to regenerate after suffering illness, mortal injury or old age. The process repairs all damage and rejuvenates his body, but as a side effect it changes his physical appearance and personality. This ability was not introduced until producers had to find a way to replace the ailing William Hartnell with Patrick Troughton and was not explicitly called "regeneration" until Jon Pertwee's transformation to Tom Baker at the climax of Planet of the Spiders (1974). On screen, the transformation from Hartnell to Troughton was called a "renewal" and from Troughton to Pertwee a "change of appearance".
The original concept of regeneration or renewal was that the Doctor's body would rebuild itself in a younger, healthier form. The Second Doctor was intended to be a literally younger version of the First; biological time would turn back, and several hundred years would get taken off the Doctor's age, rejuvenating him. In practice, however, after the Doctor stated his age in the Second Doctor serial The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), the Doctor's age has been recorded progressively, however many regenerations the Doctor goes through (but see below). In six out of ten transitions, the new actor was younger than his predecessor had been when he began the role. In the revived series the pattern is resumed with the transition of the Ninth to the Tenth and the Tenth to the Eleventh Doctor, although current showrunner Steven Moffat is on record stating the intention was to cast an actor in his mid 30s to 40s for the role of the Eleventh Doctor, despite casting Matt Smith who is the youngest actor to ever have played the role.
The actors who have played the Doctor in the series, and the dates of their first and last regular television appearances in the role, are:
Order | Actor | Start | End | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Date | Age | Date | Age | ||
First Doctor | William Hartnell | 23 November 1963 | 55 | 29 October 1966 | 58 |
Second Doctor | Patrick Troughton | 29 October 1966 | 46 | 21 June 1969 | 49 |
Third Doctor | Jon Pertwee | 3 January 1970 | 50 | 8 June 1974 | 54 |
Fourth Doctor | Tom Baker | 8 June 1974 | 40 | 21 March 1981 | 47 |
Fifth Doctor | Peter Davison | 21 March 1981 | 29 | 16 March 1984 | 32 |
Sixth Doctor | Colin Baker | 16 March 1984 | 40 | 6 December 1986 | 43 |
Seventh Doctor | Sylvester McCoy | 7 September 1987 | 44 | 27 May 1996 | 53 |
Eighth Doctor | Paul McGann | 27 May 1996 | 36 | 27 May 1996 | 36 |
Ninth Doctor | Christopher Eccleston | 26 March 2005 | 41 | 18 June 2005 | 41 |
Tenth Doctor | David Tennant | 18 June 2005 | 34 | 1 January 2010 | 38 |
Eleventh Doctor | Matt Smith | 1 January 2010 | 27 | current |
Read more about this topic: Doctor (Doctor Who)
Famous quotes containing the words changing and/or faces:
“By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”
—Edmund Burke (17291797)
“The senseless drowned
Have faces nobody would care to see,
But water loves those gradual erasures
Of flesh and shoreline, greenery and glass,”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)