20 Things Doctor Who Wants You To Forget
2. Doctor Who??????
Before Steven Moffat made it the thematic arc for the whole of series 7 there really wasn’t anything that mysterious about not knowing the Doctor’s real name. It was just accepted that this was one secret that he would take with him to his grave, just like Inspector Morse’s first name.
One thing’s for sure, his name is not literally Doctor Who. Well, not unless you’re a giant supercomputer called Wotan (The War Machines), or the Doctor’s robot dog K9 (K9 and Company). The Doctor however, quite mischievously loves to play on it, almost as if he knows that there’s a television show about him called Doctor Who.
In The Gunfighters the First Doctor calls himself Doctor Caligari, but when somebody asks him “Doctor who?” he replies “yes, quite right.” And the Second Doctor does more or less the same when he introduces himself as Doctor Von Wer (The Highlanders). Again, he is asked “Doctor who?” This time he replies “that’s what I said,” in what could be the earliest example of the classic ‘knock-knock’ joke.