The answer to the oldest question in the universe was certainly hidden in plain sight when in the 1965 adventure The War Machines, the computer Wotan and others too called the Doctor, Doctor Who. But if that's the case, why the big secrecy? On the many occasions on which the words Doctor Who have been uttered in irony, not once has the Doctor followed the lead of the knock, knock joke and replied "yes, that's right." There have been various attempts to explain this away, e.g. as the computer's default name for the unknown Doctor, as an assumption based on a lie propagated by the Doctor. Thank goodness authorial intention can be easily dismissed in the post-modern world, because Ian Stuart Black certainly never intended it to mean anything other than the Doctor's true name. As for his actual name. Well, that careless tongued Steven Moffat has given that one away too. In reply to a reader's question in the official Doctor Who Magazine last year he said: "No-one can know the Doctor's name, except each successive showrunner. We're taken into a special room far beneath the BBC and given the ancient and special runes that spell his true and awful name. We're commanded never to reveal what we have learned, because then the show would have to be renamed Mildred. Oh bugger."
Paul Driscoll is a freelance writer and author across a range of subjects from Cult TV to religion and social policy. He is a passionate Doctor Who fan and January 2017 will see the publication of his first extended study of the series (based on Toby Whithouse's series six episode, The God Complex) in the critically acclaimed Black Archive range by Obverse Books. He is a regular writer for the fan site Doctor Who Worldwide and has contributed several essays to Watching Books' You and Who range. Recently he has branched out into fiction writing, with two short stories in the charity Doctor Who anthology Seasons of War (Chinbeard Books). Paul's work will also feature in the forthcoming Iris Wildthyme collection (A Clockwork Iris, Obverse Books) and Chinbeard Books' collection of drabbles, A Time Lord for Change.
