Doctor Who story title controversy

The bulk of the debate centres on the titles for most of the stories featuring William Hartnell as the first Doctor; however several later stories also generate a degree of debate as to how the stories should be referred to.

The William Hartnell stories

When the series began in 1963, each episode had an individual title and no overall story title appeared onscreen. The production office would variously refer to the stories by either a production code (for example the very first story was Serial A) or a title. During the course of a story's production the titles in use could change and even revert. Complicating matters further not all BBC departments would necessarily pick up on changes in the title, whilst there were times after transmission had finished when the production office would use further titles to refer to previous stories.

Some titles made it into the public domain through either the BBC listings magazine Radio Times or the Royal National Institute for the Blind's Synopses For The Deaf and these sources often, but not always, reflected the production office's thinking.

In 1966 the decision was taken to abandon the individual episode titles, instead giving all stories an overall onscreen title, starting with The Savages.

When in the 1970s the first programme guides and organised fan lists started to be produced there was much confusion as to what the stories should be called. In 1973 the Radio Times published a special to celebrate the series' 10th anniversary and for all the early stories the title of the first episode was given. Meanwhile the early fanclubs were making use of lists supplied to them by either the production office or the overseas sales division, BBC Enterprises. A key document was the 1974 "A Quick Guide to Doctor Who" which Enterprises used to list all the stories to date, giving titles.

Several fanzines used the various lists, combined with titles discovered in old editions of the Radio Times or national media, and by the time of the publication of the 1976 edition of The Making of Doctor Who there was sufficient information available to compile a full list, though in places the titles of the first episodes were adopted when no others were available.

Over subsequent years further research into the story titles yielded more information and a clearer picture of the titles at the time of transmission emerged. Often the newly discovered information would be absorbed into new reference works, but several major discoveries at the end of the 1980s sparked controversy, with different reference works using different sets of titles and many fans fiercely debating which was the "correct" title to use. The debate continues to this day.

The Jon Pertwee stories

Although all Doctor Who stories in the early 1970s used overall titles, a few still generated controversy:

• The second Pertwee story. This story was intended to go out with the onscreen title of The Silurians. However due to mistakes in the captioning department the title was instead given as Doctor Who and the Silurians. Several subsequent reference works opted to give the title as merely The Silurians.
• The dinosaur story. One of the last Pertwee stories sought to hide the presence of dinosaurs by shortening the title given on the first episode to Invasion. The other episodes gave the title as Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
  

  The Trial of a Time Lord

The first two segments had the clear final working titles of The Mysterious Planet and Mindwarp respectively on the final recording scripts and both were adopted by the novelisations and fandom. However the remaining episodes carried no individual titles on the scripts. The third segment was commissioned as The Ultimate Foe and the fourth as Time Incorporated but confusingly the latter was novelised as The Ultimate Foe whilst the former was novelised as Terror of the Vervoids. Matters are further confused by fierce debate as to whether the whole Trial should be regarded as one story or four, with many who adopt the former stance merely referring to the whole thing as The Trial of a Time Lord.

The Paul McGann television movie

The 1996 television movie starring Paul McGann carried no onscreen title and in production was never referred to as anything other than Doctor Who. Many fans felt that this was too confusing and sought a better way to refer to the story. At one point the executive producer suggested that they could refer to it as Enemy Within. Other constructions were used such as Doctor Who: The Movie which appeared on the sleeve of the DVD release.

References

• By Any Other Name - Article by Andrew Pixley detailing the problems of early Doctor Who story titles.