Sudbury Hall NT Blog

Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary

By: Rose
22nd November
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Tomorrow, 23rd November, is the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who!

See it online here:
http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/662362

First aired on BBC One at 5.15pm on Saturday 23rd November 1963, Doctor Who has been honoured by Guinness World Records as both the longest running and most successful science-fiction series in the world.

Created as an educational family show to fit between the football results and evening entertainment programmes, Doctor Who was the brainchild of Canadian TV producer and BBC Head of Drama, Sydney Newman.

After an initial run of 26 years, the series was rested. It returned for a one-off TV movie featuring the Eighth Doctor in 1996. Doctor Who was fully resurrected in 2005 and has gone from strength to strength ever since.

To celebrate this landmark anniversary, the 50th anniversary episode, The Day of the Doctor, is being shown in cinemas around the country (in 3D no less!), at the same time as being broadcast simultaneously in 84 countries around the world!

To mark the occasion in our own way, here at the Museum of Childhood, we have set up a display devoted to Doctor Who and his companions. This display contains models, toys, books and memorabilia spanning the (re)generations (sorry!) of Doctor Who, some donated to the museum, as well as artefacts on loan to us from private collectors.

For those of you who aren’t able to come and browse the display yourself, here are a few of the Doctor Who artefacts that we have in our museum collection.

The Doctor himself, as portrayed by Sylvester McCoy.