10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About Doctor Who

2. Michael Grade Cancelled Doctor Who

Former BBC One controller Michael Grade
BBC Studios

There are some who believe that the Daleks or the Cybermen are the Doctor's greatest villain. To others, it's the Master, or even the Weeping Angels. But to fans who were watching the show in the mid-to-late '80s... it's probably Michael Grade.

Grade was the controller of BBC One around that time, and was responsible for putting Doctor Who on hiatus in 1985, as well as firing Sixth Doctor Colin Baker the year after. He infamously hated the show, even going so far as to call it "garbage". Clearly, he wasn't the type of fella to have a TARDIS mug in his cupboard.

Because of Grade's well-documented hatred of the show, a lot of fans also associate him with its cancellation in 1989, which is an understandable connection to make.

But in reality, Grade wasn't even at the BBC when that decision was made. He was succeeded as BBC One's controller by Jonathan Powell in 1987, and it was he who was responsible for Doctor Who disappearing from our screens. Sharing in that responsibility was Head of Series Peter Cregeen, who even called himself "the person who cancelled Doctor Who" in the 2007 documentary Doctor Who: Endgame.

Grade's lack of faith in the show can't have helped matters though - so he does shoulder some of the blame.

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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!