10 False Doctor Who Facts You Probably Still Believe
5. Tom Baker Is The Longest Serving Doctor
Tom Baker was the Doctor between 1974 and 1981, making him the longest-serving Doctor of all time, right? Well... not quite.
While it's certainly true that Baker has the longest run of Doctor Who episodes (172), it gets a bit trickier if you start including actual calendar months. While some may scoff at this distinction, we'd like to point out that everyone counts Doctor Who from 1963 to now as one long run – the longest-running science-fiction TV show of all time!
We conveniently forget that it was off the air for most of the '90s.
So yes, Tom Baker was the Doctor for seven years. However, Sylvester McCoy was technically the Doctor between 1987 and 1996, clocking up nine years in the role.
Paul McGann may have played the role for one night only, but he was the incumbent Doctor between 1996 and 2005, another nine years. He didn't even regenerate until 2013, so doesn't that give us 17 years of the Eighth Doctor?
And yes, wile McCoy and McGann didn't have many onscreen adventures between 1989 and 2005, they were the faces of Doctor Who during that time, adorning the covers of books, Big Finish CDs, and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.
Sorry Tom!