This is some research I did on the 10 actors who have played The Doctor on the TV show “Doctor Who” in regards to ‘length of service’. I needed a place to put this, so my blog is it.

Note: Since David Tennant is the current doctor, these stats cover the 2007 series that is scheduled to air between March and June this summer.

I was then asked if I would do the same information for the companions, so I whipped up the following chart. The companions are a trickier lot, several exceptions had to be made due to the oddities of cameos, story issues, etc. Here’s some notes on my companions chart.

• This does not take into effect situations during the first two doctor’s runs where actors were away on vacation, and the character did not appear on screen. If the story happened during their “run”, then I counted it. Having the actors away on vacation was fairly common during the first six years of the series, as they made on average between 44-46 episodes a year then.
• I’m not counting 1993’s Dimensions in Time, as it’s canonicity is in doubt.
• I am not counting the UNIT folks as companions. I’ve seen some lists of companions list them as such, but UNIT characters while important to Doctor #3’s run, were never formally listed as show companions.
• I am not counting the official repeat of Evil of the Daleks inside the show’s own storyline.
• I am counting the Five Doctors as one episode, as that is how it was originally made, despite being broadcast mostly since in four 25 minute parts. Also, I do not count Romana II’s appearance in the Five Doctors as a story, as it was recycled Shada material, and I already counted that appearance in her episode count as Shada. Likewise I am counting cameos in this story as an appearance.
• I am counting 1986’s Trial of a Time Lord as 4 stories, not one, as they were made in four production blocks and then sequenced together into “one story”. Officially it’s classified as one 14 part story, but that’s a production thing, almost everyone else classifies it as four stories (4-4-4-2)
• For 25 of the 26 years of the classic series, episodes were 25 minutes in length. During the 1985 (22nd overall) plus the 2005 series onwards, episodes are 45 minutes in length. I have not compensated for that in the episode count, although it made me think about doing a third column, “adjusted episodes”, or “screen time”, but that might be too complicated.
• K9 was also left out of several stories during his run due to technical problems with the actual K9 machine. I feel it would be too much work to go back and look at the plots of all the stories he appeared in to figure out which ones he was not included in, so if it happened during K9’s original companion run, I counted it. I also did not make a distiction between the four different K9 models that have appeared in the series.
• I did not count K9 & Company, as that was officially a spinoff.
• While Shada was not formally transmitted, bits of it were made, and as such I counted it.
• I am not counting “A Fix with Sontarans”, as that is officially an episode of another series (“Jim’ll Fix it”).
• Resurrection of the Daleks was made as a four episode story, and then edited into two longer episodes due to the Olympics at the time. I am counting it as four episodes.
• Paul McGann’s lone story was one 90 minute movie, so I’m counting it as one episode.
• The Children in Need mini episode inbetween Series 27 & 28 I counted as an episode.
• Three episodes in the series run had no companions at all, and as such were not counted: Mission to the Unknown (1966), The Deadly Assassain (1976), & Attack of the Graske (2006)

Doc 1: 10 companions (3 male, 7 female)
Doc 2: 5 companions (2 male, 3 female)
Doc 3: 3 companions (all female)
Doc 4: 8 companions (2 male, 5 female, 1 robot)
Doc 5: 6 companions (2 male, 4 female, 1 robot)
Doc 6: 2 companions (both female)
Doc 7: 2 companions (both female)
Doc 8: 2 companions (1 male, 1 female)
Doc 9: 1 companion (female)
Doc 10: 2 companions (both female)

The overlapping companions were counted more than once, so this won’t match up exactly with the number of companions listed above. I’m still torn on what to do with the 2005/2006 extra characters like Mickey, Jackie, Capt Jack, etc… For now I’m not listing them, since most places do not refer to ’em as companions, but I’ve included ones from the past with more spurious connections. Arrgh!