Doctor Who: The Main Inspiration Behind Each Doctor's Costume

5. The Ninth Doctor

Doctor Who The Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston
BBC

The Ninth Doctor's costume marked a stark departure from every previous Doctor.

All that flamboyancy and colour? Gone. That Victorian-Edwardian fashion sense? Gone. As played by Christopher Eccleston, Nine was a much more grounded and accessible Doctor, perfect for a modern reboot of the show.

Even though he dresses nothing like his previous incarnations, the Ninth Doctor's costume was - in an odd way - still inspired by them. But instead of the inspiration being to mimic them, the inspiration was to not mimic them.

Showrunner Russell T Davies (and Eccleston himself) wanted to move away from that Classic Doctor foppishness, with costume designer Lucinda Wright noting that the Ninth Doctor had to look like he could "disappear into the crowd."

And so, his more down-to-earth, everyday costume was created. For that now-iconic coat, hundreds of alternatives were tested, before Wright stumbled upon a tatty World War II German naval jacket that was deemed perfect for the job.

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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!