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Picture Shows - Billie Piper as Rose Tyler and Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor.

Doctor Who returned to television on 26 March 2005. For dedicated fans of the show – deprived of new episodes for 16 years - this was a moment of great excitement. But the excitement was shared by the wider audience and Doctor Who’s return was a triumph. Over 10 million people watched Christopher Eccleston debut as the Ninth Doctor, starting a run of programmes which is still going.

The first episode – Rose – was written by Russell T Davies, who was responsible for the revival. He managed to refresh Doctor Who while keeping it familiar. So Eccleston’s Doctor wore a leather jacket and spoke with a northern accent, but was recognisably the Doctor, travelling in the TARDIS, which still looked like an old police box from the outside. New companion Rose – played by Billie Piper – shared the viewers’ amazement when she discovered the TARDIS was much bigger on the inside, though she would have been unaware of its redesign for the new show.

The cross-generational appeal of Doctor Who is made clear by the spin-off shows made for different age groups, from Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures to Class. The unique nature of the Doctor means he continues to regenerate and when Eccleston left he was replaced, first by David Tennant, then Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi. The current Doctor is Jodie Whittaker, the Thirteenth Doctor and the first woman to play the iconic alien.