10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About Doctor Who

4. Doctor Who Aired On The Same Night As The Kennedy Assassination

Doctor Who An Unearthly Child
BBC Studios

It can't be overstated how insane it is that Doctor Who has been on the air for 59 years. Most TV shows are lucky to get four or five, and yet, here we are, about to celebrate the Doctor's 60th anniversary - and let's hope there's another 60 to come.

Because 59 years is such a long time, those early days of the show are almost mythic at this point, and certain factoids about them have become twisted. There's the one about Ridley Scott being the designer of the Daleks (he wasn't), and it's often forgotten that Ron Grainer wasn't the sole creator of that iconic theme tune - Delia Derbyshire also shares in that credit, having provided the unforgettable sounds that formed its basis.

Another prominent misconception involves the date on which the first-ever Doctor Who episode was beamed into British homes. With An Unearthly Child famously airing on the exact same weekend as the Kennedy assassination in November 1963, you'll often find people saying that both of these events also happened on the exact same day. In reality though, the assassination happened on 22 November, while the world was introduced to William Hartnell's First Doctor on the following day.

Of course, this unfortunate timing meant that Doctor Who was greatly overshadowed (the death of a U.S. President dominated the public consciousness more so than the debut of a quaint British sci-fi show) but there was nonetheless an entire day separating these events.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!