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Doctor Who actors in order - in production and chronological order

Who has played The Doctor in Doctor Who?

Doctor Who: Doctors Assemble

BBC

Published: Thursday, 21 November 2024 at 2:40 pm

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Ncuti Gatwa is well and truly into his stride as the Fifteenth Doctor in Doctor Who, with his second season set to air next year and the Christmas special on the way!

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But, before him, many iconic faces have graced our TV screens since the series started in 1963, reinventing the show little by little and paving the way for the version of it we see today.

Incredibly, William Hartnell, who played the first Doctor, once predicted the impact this would have on the show, according to Carole Ann Ford, who played the first companion, Susan Foreman.

She told RadioTimes.com: "Bill used to say in the very beginning that it could go on forever. Because there's no reason for it not to, because the Doctors can regenerate again and again and again, and they can go anywhere and do anything so it wouldn't get stale."

He certainly wasn't wrong! Here, we look back at every actor to have played the Doctor.

It should be noted that we are only including the iterations where actors who play The Doctor are in the canon of the BBC series in this list.

This means that we are not including actors such as Peter Cushing, who portrayed the character Dr Who in the non-canon films Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966).

So, where do they all fall in the timeline of the series – in real life and in the story?

Doctor Who actors in production order

William Hartnell as The Doctor in Doctor Who

William Hartnell as The Doctor in Doctor Who. BBC

The following actors have portrayed incarnations of The Doctor across the entire life of Doctor Who, here presented in the order in which they played the character in the real-life production.

We're sure there will be many more twists and turns in the series in future that mean more actors shall be added in due course.

Doctor Who actors in chronological order by story

Ncuti Gatwa in Doctor Who in the TARDIS, resting on a console and looking skyward

Ncuti Gatwa in Doctor Who. BBC Studios

The following actors have portrayed The Doctor in the canon of the BBC series and these are in chronological order by the show's own timeline.

However, the timeline has all the more complicated after the bigeneration in 60th anniversary special The Giggle, which saw the Doctor split into two, rather than the new Doctor replacing the old Doctor.

The impact of this on the Whoniverse could be huge – it effectively means that each previous regeneration was impacted by the bigeneration, with every 'old' Doctor now surviving his demise in a splinter timeline.

Showrunner Russell T Davies explained: "I think all of the Doctors came back to life with their individual TARDISes, the gift of the Toymaker, and they're all out there travelling round in what I'm calling a Doctor-verse.

Doctor Who's bigeneration

Doctor Who's bigeneration. BBC

"Sylvester McCoy woke up in a drawer, in a morgue, in San Francisco… and Jon Pertwee woke up on the floor of the laboratory," he says.

These revelations follow a reference in spin-off series Tales of the TARDIS, which saw Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor provide an explanation to Sophie Aldred's Ace as to his appearance, saying: "Time streams are funny things. In some, I regenerate. In others, I don't. It's all a matter of perspective."
So, it seems as if all the old Doctors are out there in the universe and could potentially run into each other. Who knows which Doctors past, present and future will appear in upcoming episodes?

Doctor Who is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

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Authors

Black and white cut-out portrait headshot of Lewis Knight, smiling against a lime green background.

Lewis KnightNews and Trends Editor

Lewis is the News and Trends Editor at Radio Times and leads our approach to news, reactive content, and serving audience demands and interests. An obsessive fan of television and film, Lewis is a Nicole Kidman fanatic with a side of passion for science-fiction, art-house cinema and the latest HBO drama. Lewis has a degree in Psychology and a Masters in Film Studies. After working in advertising, Lewis worked at The Mirror for three years in community management and SEO, showbiz, film and television reporting.

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