The Selection Box #1 - Doctor Who

Over the course of the foreseeable future I'll be selecting my favourite shows from the box, whether they be past or present, and blogging about them here at 'The Pink Banana Hypothesis'...

As Matt Smith embarked on his first adventure as the Eleventh Doctor this weekend, it seemed only apt that Doctor Who would be my selection for the first edition of 'The Selection Box'...

Doctor Who is a well known institution at this stage and anyone who doesn't know about it has probably spent the last several decades curled up in a cave...

Eleven have officially played the role of the Doctor over the course of time and I'm sure there'll be more to come in the future... William Hartnell was the first to step out of the TARDIS and onto our screens way back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth... He was followed by Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davidson, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy before the BBC cancelled the series in 1989 after over a quarter of a century on the box... In 1996 the Doctor returned for a TV movie, this time in the guise of Paul McGann, who many fans, myself included try to forget about as often as possible - hence my refusal to include him in the above pictures... Almost a decade later in 2005, the series returned to the BBC with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and a much bigger budget for the show... Eccleston dropped out after only 13 episodes and was replaced by David Tennant, who had a successful 4 year run until he was succeeded by Matt Smith this year... While many fans argue over who portrayed the Doctor best, the two names that come to the forefront the most are Tom Baker and David Tennant, who coincidentally are the two Doctors who have clocked up the most screentime in the course of the series...

The Doctor rarely travels alone through time and is ofter accompanied by several companions at once, whom he constantly has to rescue from dangerous aliens...

While the cast continuosly changes on the show, the one constant is the exterior of the TARDIS, which has always been a blue 1950's Police Box, while the interior of the TARDIS has undergone several changes...

So, what makes the show so great? It's about an alien being who travels through time and space in a police box, who regenerates into a new body every time he dies... It's the perfect mixture of adventure, comedy, drama and sci-fi... What more do you want?