In many ways, you\u2019d be right. But just as the Time Lord from Gallifrey has two beating hearts, so too does the show itself.<\/p>\n
When the BBC commissioned Doctor Who<\/em>, the first episode of which was broadcast on 23 November 1963, it was a science fiction show that sat within the remit of family programming \u2013 and that meant it had to be educational.<\/p>\n Sydney Newman, the producer who created Doctor Who<\/em>, famously decreed that the show should not include any bug-eyed monsters. As he saw it, sci-fi was about more than outer space. \u201cI love [sci-fi novels] because they\u2019re a marvellous way\u2014and a\u00a0safe\u00a0way, I might add\u2014of saying nasty things about our own society,\u201d Newman said.<\/p>\n That was something many episodes of classic Doctor Who<\/em> \u2013 those that ran from 1963 until the show was \u2018rested\u2019 in 1989 \u2013 did spectacularly well. These \u2018pure historicals\u2019, as they came to be known, featured no alien interference whatsoever, and instead saw the Doctor navigating more human machinations.<\/p>\n The very first serial took the First Doctor to the Stone Age. Later he would trade barbs with Richard the Lionheart<\/a> on the Third Crusade, rub shoulders with the Aztecs ,and sup with Roman emperor Nero.<\/p>\n When the show returned in 2005, with a new Doctor and new production values, so too did the historical episodes, though in its latest iteration they tend to be tinged with the supernatural and otherworldly.<\/p>\n Here are six of the best from the modern era, and the real history from which they draw their inspiration\u2026<\/p>\n Season 4, 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n Who<\/em> says:<\/strong> It\u2019s volcano day in Roman city of Pompeii, but the volcano in question shows little sign of erupting. When the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) discovers that Mount Vesuvius is inhabited by magma-loving aliens bent on taking over Earth, he discovers that the historic eruption is no natural disaster at all; he has to be the one to cause the catastrophe that destroys Pompeii.<\/p>\n The real history:<\/strong> Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the nearby towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79 \u2013 precisely when is a matter of debate, and our best testimony comes from letters written by Pliny the Younger 25 years after the fact.<\/p>\n What we do know is that eruption was cataclysmic, producing a cloud so thick as to blot out the sun. Within 24 hours, Pompeii and those who remained in the city were buried under three metres of ash and debris<\/a>; on the second day of the eruption, Herculaneum was swallowed by pyroclastic flows.<\/p>\n Pompeii remained buried for some 1,500 years<\/a>. Today, it provides a remarkable window into ancient Roman life<\/a>.<\/p>\n There\u2019s another very small piece of real history in the form of the sculptor Caecilius (played by future Doctor Peter Capaldi). He is based on a very real Roman who perished in Pompeii \u2013 and star of the Cambridge Latin Course, a figure familiar to anyone who learned high school Latin in the UK \u2013 the banker Lucius Caecilius Iucundus.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Season 4, 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n Who<\/em> says:<\/strong> It\u2019s 1926, and the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) invites himself to a dinner party in a country manor, where the guest of honour is none other than Agatha Christie<\/a>. But when one of the guests turns up dead in classic Cluedofashion \u2013 offed with the lead pipe in the library, in case you were wondering \u2013 they find themselves investigating a whodunit with the queen of crime herself.<\/p>\n This being Who, the culprit is not of this Earth, but a giant shape-shifting wasp (perish the thought). In the denouement, Christie develops amnesia; the Doctor drops her off in Harrogate some ten days later, as history demands.<\/p>\n The real history:<\/strong> The Unicorn and the Wasp is Doctor\u2019s Who\u2019s answer to the mystery of Agatha Christie\u2019s disappearance<\/a> in 1926 \u2013 though she didn\u2019t vanish from a dinner party. On 3 December, she kissed her child goodnight, got into her car, and drove into the darkness.<\/p>\n What followed was \u201cone of the largest manhunts ever mounted,\u201d writes Giles Milton, and the furore only grew after Christie\u2019s car was discovered abandoned. Thousands of policemen were assigned to the case. The Home Secretary took a special interest. Fellow crime writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even tried to use his self-claimed supernatural powers<\/a> to try and locate her.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the perfect tabloid story, with all the elements of an Agatha Christie whodunnit,\u201d says Milton, though perhaps it lacks the satisfying conclusion of a Poirot.<\/p>\n There would be no grand reveal: Christie was found in a Harrogate hotel 11 days later, under the name of her husband\u2019s mistress, with no explanation for her whereabouts \u2013 she simply didn\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Season 5, 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n Who<\/em> says:<\/strong> In an emotionally charged episode, the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) and Amy (Karen Gillan) head to 19th-century Auvers-sur-Oise in France to free tormented artist Vincent van Gogh from a very literal monster that haunts his life and art. Nonetheless, he remains tortured by his own personal demons, characterised here as depression.<\/p>\n In a bid to change his future \u2013 Van Gogh took his own life in 1890 \u2013 Amy convinces the Doctor to bring Vincent into the present to an exhibition of his own work, so he can see just how much he is loved. It\u2019s a touching and poignant scene, but one we quickly learn has no influence on the artist\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n The real history:<\/strong> Now revered as a titan of the art world, Vincent van Gogh<\/a>could barely sell a painting in his lifetime, and he was all but destitute at the time of his death. In Arles, the city of Provence, France, where he spent his final and most artistically prolific years, he was better known for his ill-health, most famously an incident in which he cut off his own ear.<\/p>\n \u201cEver since his death in 1890, Van Gogh\u2019s life has become a tragic tale in which fact and fiction have become blurred,\u201d writes art historian Bernadette Murphy. \u201cThis \u2018Vincent\u2019 \u2013 a half-starved, shabby figure, with no money nor friends, pushed his creativity to its limit \u2018under the burning heat of the southern sun\u2019 and so went mad. This is the legend, but little of it is true.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Season 11, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n Who<\/em> says:<\/strong> When a time-travelling criminal attempts to prevent the Montgomery Bus Boycott \u2013 a turning point in the US Civil Rights Movement, it falls to the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and her companions to make sure that Rosa Parks gets on her bus and refuses to give up her seat as history intended. The game of cat-and-mouse that follows of ensuring the bus runs, and has the right driver, and is full enough, culminates with a horrified Graham (Bradley Walsh) being the white passenger for whom Rosa refuses to stand.<\/p>\n The real history:<\/strong> The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a lynchpin moment in the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, after a long day\u2019s work, and took a seat directly behind those reserved for white passengers. When the bus filled up, a white man was left standing in the aisle, and the driver demanded that Rosa give up her seat. She decided to take a stand \u2013 by remaining seated.<\/p>\n \u201cIt led to a 13-month boycott of city buses in one of the longest mass mobilisations of a black population ever witnessed in the United States,\u201d writes John Kirk. \u201cMoreover, by thrusting 26-year-old Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr into the national spotlight, it provided a new leader for a new era of black activism.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Season 10, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n Who<\/em> says:<\/strong> After an armchair argument about what really happened to the Roman Ninth Legion \u2013 the one that vanished without a trace after being stationed in Roman Britain \u2013 the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi), Bill (Pearl Mackie) and Nardole (Matt Lucas) head to second century AD Scotland to find out.<\/p>\n They discover Legio IX Hispana all but massacred and its remnants in hiding; most of the beleaguered centurions have been devoured by an interdimensional creature that snacks on sunlight. To close the portal the fell beast came from \u2013 and prevent it from snuffing out all the stars of the universe \u2013 the remaining Romans ally with the local Picts, and enter the creature\u2019s dimension to give battle for the rest of time. And so ends the Ninth Legion.<\/p>\n\n
The best historical episodes of Doctor Who<\/em> \u2013 ranked!<\/h2>\n
The Fires of Pompeii<\/h3>\n
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The Unicorn and the Wasp<\/h2>\n
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Vincent and the Doctor<\/h3>\n
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Rosa<\/h3>\n
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The Eaters of Light<\/h3>\n
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