List of Doctor Who episodes (1963–1989)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. As of 25 December 2023,[update] 875 episodes of Doctor Who have aired. This includes one television movie and multiple specials, and encompasses 304 stories over 39 seasons, starting in 1963. Additionally, four charity specials and two animated serials have also been aired. The programme's high episode count has resulted in Doctor Who holding the world record for the highest number of episodes of a science-fiction programme.[1]
Doctor Who ceased production in 1989 after 695 episodes. A one-off TV movie was produced in the US in 1996, before the series resumed in 2005. The original series (1963–1989), generally consists of multi-episode serials; in the early seasons, and occasionally through its run, serials tend to link together, one story leading directly into the next. The 2005 revival trades the earlier serial format for a run of self-contained episodes, interspersed with occasional multi-part stories and structured into loose story arcs.
For the first two seasons of Doctor Who and most of the third (1963–1966), each episode carries its own title; the show displays no titles for overarching serials until The Savages, at which point the episodic titles cease. The titles below, for these early serials, are those in most common circulation, used for commercial releases and in resources such as the Doctor Who Reference Guide and the BBC's classic episode guide. With the show's revival in 2005, the programme returned to individual episode titles.
Due to the BBC's 1970s junking policy, 97 episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s are no longer known to exist. As a result, 26 serials are currently incomplete, with one or more episodes represented only by audio, which in many cases is in addition to clips or still frames. For commercial release, some episodes have been reconstructed using off-air audio recordings, paired to surviving visuals or newly commissioned animation.
The story numbers below are meant as a guide to placement in the overall context of the programme.[2] There is some dispute, for instance, about whether to count season 23's The Trial of a Time Lord as one or as four serials,[3] and whether the unfinished serial Shada should be included.[4] The numbering scheme in this list follows the official website's episode guide.[2] Other sources, such as the Region 1 classic Doctor Who DVD releases, use different numbering schemes, which diverge after the 108th story, The Horns of Nimon (1979–1980).