As a Gallifreyan the Doctor looks like a human on the surface, but there are differences. One well-known difference is that he has two hearts. As a Time Lord the Doctor can also "regenerate", if his body is badly hurt and he dies. During the "regeneration", the body is healed and renewed, which includes a different appearance and personality. The regenerated person is the same person, with the same memories and basic personality traits; but the person also looks different and a changed personality. Because of this the Doctor could be played by different actors. This made it possible for the series to be filmed over a time of nearly fifty years without having to actually "change" the character.
Up until now, the Doctor has regenerated twelve times, and each "incarnation" was played by a different actor.
The Doctor has been played by other actors in other media, in theatre plays, parodies, etc. But these are not officially part of the "Doctor Who" storyline. Notable among them are:
Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College.
He is renowned for his work in Astrophysics with Stephen Hawking, in particular his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He is also a recreational mathematician and philosopher.
Roger Penrose is the brother of mathematician Oliver Penrose and chess grandmaster Jonathan Penrose. He was born in Colchester, Essex, England. He is awarded the Copley Medal in 2008.
In 2020, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics alongside Reinhard Genzel and Andrea M. Ghez.
Arthur (TV series)
Arthur is a Canadian-American animated series airing on PBS Kids in the United States. The main age range for this series is 3 to 9. It is based on the "Arthur" book series that is written and illustrated by Marc Brown. The series has 250 episodes (including specials) made between September 1996 and January 2020, in twenty-three seasons so far. A 25th season is currently in production. The show is focused on the life of Arthur, and deals with normal childhood problems.
It has won four Emmy Awards.
The first Arthur video games were made in the 1990s.
The first Arthur book was made in 1976. Arthur books made before October 7, 1996 had their book cover changed.
Langur
The Gray langur or Hanuman langur (Semnopithecus) is a genus of colobine monkey. They are found in southeast Asia. The word "langur" means 'having a long tail'. It is commonly called the leaf monkey. They usually live in small groups of between 2 and 10 individuals. They mainly eat leaves, as well as some fruit. Langur spend most of their time in trees. They have white fur and black faces. They are considered sacred animals therefore the "National social mammal of India".
WWE Raw
WWE Raw is the Monday night professional wrestling television program, made by WWE in 1993. "WWE Raw" is usually seen as WWE's flagship program over its sister programs, "WWE SmackDown", "WWE NXT" and WWE Main Event, due to its longer history and the way it is promoted.
Starting as "WWF Monday Night Raw", the program first started on January 11, 1993 on the USA Network for one hour. The original "Raw" broke new ground in televised professional wrestling. Traditionally, wrestling shows were taped on sound stages with small viewers or at big arena shows. The "Raw" formula was very different than that of its predecessor, "Prime Time Wrestling". Instead of taped matches, with studio voice overs and taped chat, "Raw" was a show shot to a live viewers, with angles as they happened. The first episode had Yokozuna winning against Koko B. Ware, The Steiner Brothers winning against The Executioners, WWF Intercontinental Champion Shawn Michaels winning against Max Moon and The Undertaker winning against Damien Demento. The show also featured an interview with Razor Ramon.
"Raw" came from the Grand Ballroom at Manhattan Center Studios, a small New York City theater and played live each week. The combination of an intimate venue and live action proved highly successful. However, the weekly live schedule proved to be a financial drain on the WWF, and taped shows began airing every other week. From early 1994 to September 1999, "Raw" was shown live on one Monday and then the next day (Tuesday) next Monday's "Raw" was taped. This meant that "Raw" was live one week and taped the next.
The storylines and characters during the early years of "Raw" still had a healthy dose of the old Federation "gimmick-heavy" style. For example, there were moments such as Irwin R. Schyster tearing up Tatanka's headdress, the different "Undertaker sightings" (during the Undertaker vs. Undertaker storyline, leading up to SummerSlam 1994); and characters like Duke "The Dumpster" Droese, Doink the Clown, or Thurman "Sparky" Plugg.
"Raw" was also one of a kind, in which they covered the unexpected, exciting moments, a prelude to the "Attitude Era", in which it coined "Raw" as "Uncut, Uncensored, Uncooked." Some of those moments are Razor Ramon losing a match unexpectedly to Sean "The 1-2-3 Kid" Waltman, who was later known as X-Pac, Marty Jannetty beating Shawn Michaels to win the WWF Intercontinental Championship, and "Raw" was the first WWF television program of any kind to show footage of Lex Luger bodyslamming Yokozuna at the "USS Intrepid".
The first hosts of "Raw" were Vince McMahon, Rob Bartlett and "Macho Man" Randy Savage. Sean Mooney conducted the interviews and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan also helped contribute. In March 1993, Rob Bartlett was dropped from the broadcasting team and was replaced by Bobby Heenan. Then on December 6, 1993, Gorilla Monsoon kicked Bobby Heenan out of the WWF forever. In reality, this was a storyline between Monsoon and his close friend Heenan, who decided to leave the World Wrestling Federation in order to lighten his travel schedule and because he did not want to take a 50% paycut. After about a year, "Raw" moved out of the Manhattan Center and traveled to various regular Federation venues in the United States.
In 1995, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) began showing its new wrestling show, "Monday Nitro", live each week on TNT. "Raw" and "Nitro" went head-to-head for the first time on September 11, 1995. Due to "Raw"'s taping schedule on several occasions, WCW Vice President Eric Bischoff, who was also an on-air personality, would often give away the results of WWF's taped "Raw" shows on the live WCW show. Some fans also looked at "Raw" taping results on the steadily-growing Internet; as a result, this caused the ratings of the taped "Raw" episodes to be lower.
"WWF Raw" had a live broadcast every other week to save costs, until September 1999, when ratings and pay-per-view buy rates had grow, allowing them to justify doing a weekly live show.
At the start of the ratings war in 1995 through to mid-1996, "Raw" and "Nitro" exchanged victories over each over in a closely contested rivalry. Beginning in mid-1996, however, thanks primarily to the nWo angle, "Monday Nitro" started a ratings win-streak that lasted for eighty-three continuous weeks, ending on April 13, 1998.
On February 3, 1997, "Monday Night Raw" went to a two hour format, as the Attitude Era was starting to come in full stream in the WWF. In an attempt to break the momentum of what had turned into ratings domination by WCW's competing "Monday Nitro", Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) was brought in as Jerry Lawler "challenged" ECW on February 17, 1997. In an episode where "Raw" returned to the Manhattan Center, the "challenge" answered on the following week's show with Taz, Mikey Whipwreck, Sabu, Tommy Dreamer, D-Von Dudley, and the Sandman. ECW owner Paul Heyman did a call-in interview on "Raw" the week after that.