Shows Like Doctor Who

Frequently asked about Doctor Who

Common questions people search for, with answers written by us at MoviesPack.

• Why does the Doctor regenerate instead of dying?▾

  Time Lords possess a biological ability called regeneration, which allows them to cheat death by transforming every cell in their body, producing an entirely new physical form and somewhat altered personality. The process was introduced in 1966 to allow the show to continue after William Hartnell's departure, and later formalised in the lore as a trait unique to Time Lords from Gallifrey. A Time Lord can regenerate up to twelve times, giving them thirteen incarnations in total, though the Doctor has been granted additional regeneration cycles more than once.

• Who or what is the Master, and why does he keep opposing the Doctor?▾

  The Master is a renegade Time Lord and the Doctor's oldest friend-turned-nemesis, having known the Doctor since childhood on Gallifrey. His obsession with power and conquest directly conflicts with the Doctor's protective attitude toward the universe, but their history also means the rivalry is deeply personal rather than purely ideological. In the revived series it is revealed that as a child the Master stared into the Untempered Schism — a gap in the fabric of reality — and was driven partially mad, hearing a rhythmic drumbeat in his head that the Time Lords had implanted as part of a contingency plan.

• What happened to Gallifrey and the other Time Lords?▾

  During the Last Great Time War, the Doctor used a weapon called the Moment to destroy both the Daleks and Gallifrey simultaneously, apparently killing all Time Lords to end the war — a decision that haunted him as the self-styled 'War Doctor.' The Tenth Doctor's era later revealed the Time Lords had planned to sacrifice all of reality to ascend beyond physical existence, justifying the Doctor's choice. In the Eleventh Doctor's era it was retconned that the Doctor, with help from all his incarnations, instead froze Gallifrey in a pocket universe rather than destroying it, though it remained inaccessible for a long time.

• What is the significance of 'Bad Wolf' in Series 1?▾

  Throughout Series 1 of the revived show, the phrase 'Bad Wolf' appears as a recurring message scattered across time and space — graffiti, broadcast names, alien words — that the Doctor and Rose keep encountering without understanding why. At the series finale Rose absorbs the entire time vortex from the heart of the TARDIS, briefly becoming the near-omnipotent entity known as Bad Wolf. In that state she scatters the words 'Bad Wolf' throughout history as a message to herself, a self-creating loop that ensures she will find the TARDIS and gain the power needed to save the Doctor from the Daleks.

• Why does the TARDIS look like a 1960s British police box?▾

  The TARDIS has a chameleon circuit that is supposed to disguise it as an ordinary object in whatever environment it lands. When the Doctor first arrived in 1960s London, the circuit malfunctioned and locked the exterior in the shape of a Metropolitan Police telephone box that was common on British streets at the time. The Doctor has never repaired the circuit, partly through neglect and partly because he has grown fond of the blue box appearance, making it an accidental but iconic part of the ship's identity.