Celebrate 50 Years of Doctor Who!

November 23rd marked the 50th anniversary of the British TV show, Doctor Who. A special anniversary episode, "The Day of the Doctor", was aired on that date and was watched by 12.8 million people, including showings in 834 cinemas around the world. "The Day of the Doctor" now holds the record for the largest worldwide TV drama simulcast.

Some of you may have been following Doctor Who since its reboot in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, through David Tennant as the Tenth and Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctors - you probably know there will soon be a regeneration into the Twelfth Doctor, Peter Capaldi.  Many people who grew up in the '70s and '80s remember Tom Baker's tenure as the Fourth Doctor (curly hair, long colorful scarf, fond of Jelly Babies), shown for a time on affiliates of PBS in the United States. Some of you might even have seen more of the show than that!  But, some of you might be wondering what the heck all this Doctor Who business is about, anyway...

Fans can skip to the list below of the the latest Doctor Who items in the library catalog, but for newbies we offer a little back story: the Doctor is a 900 year old Time Lord, a traveler through time and space. His vehicle, called the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension In Space), appears as a blue police box, famously "bigger on the inside" and with a degree of sentience. Since 1963, the eleven incarnations of the Doctor - a Time Lord doesn't die but instead regenerates with a new persona - have traveled together with companions ranging from a mechanical dog named K-9 and a Time Lady named Romana to Rose Tyler, a London teenager, and Captain Jack Harkness, a con man from the 51st century (who later got his own spinoff, Torchwood). These intrepid travelers fight adversaries such as the Daleks (who want to exterminate all non-Daleks),  Cybermen (who want to cybernetically augment all humanoids), and The Master (a renegade Time Lord), and have science fiction adventures, sometimes set within a historical context (Pompeii, meeting Queen Victoria) and sometimes set in an imagined future that includes Satellite 5, where reporters are connected to the computer via a special port installed directly into the brain, and the resort planet Midnight, where the Tenth Doctor and then-companion Donna Noble have one of their creepiest adventures.

Since the popularity of Doctor Who in the United States has skyrocketed recently, you can find many more related items in the library catalog, including fiction, non-fiction, downloadables, and now seasons of the TV series!  Here are some of ABC Library's latest offerings for Whovians:

Fiction

Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter

Doctor Who: Shada - The Lost Adventure by Douglas Adams by Gareth Roberts


Non-Fiction 

 Who-ology: Doctor Who - The Official Miscellany by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright

The Essential Guide to Fifty Years of Doctor Who

Doctor Who: The Vault - Treasures From the First Fifty Years by Marcus Hearn

Doctor Who Encyclopedia by Gary Russell


Children & Young Adult

When's the Doctor? illustrations by Jorge Santillan

Heart of Stone: Death Riders by Trevor Baxendale  [eBook]

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Anthology: 11 Doctors, 11 Stories by Neil Gaiman, [et al]... [YA]

 
Downloadables

Doctor Who: Plague of the Cybermen by Justin Richards [eBook]

Destiny of the Doctor: Vengeance of the Stones by Andrew Smith [eAudiobook]

Adventures With the Wife in Space: Life with Doctor Who by Neil Perryman [eBook]

Who is The Doctor: The Unofficial Guide to Doctor Who - The New Series by Graeme Burk & Robert Smith  [eBook]


DVDs

Doctor Who (TV show)
First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Series