Doctor Who: What Happened To Each Doctor After They Left The Show?

9. Tom Baker

Doctor Who The Day of the Doctor Tom Baker the Curator
BBC Studios

Last Regular Episode: Logopolis

Tom Baker played the Doctor for longer than any other actor, controlling the TARDIS for seven years between 1974 and 1981. Leaving the show at the age of 47, Baker had many more years of acting left in him, and because of his enormous fame, his career hit a massive upwards trajectory at this stage.

In his post-Doctor Who days, Baker appeared in some of the most well-known TV shows of all time, including Blackadder, Have I Got News For You, Agatha Christie's Marple, and Remington Steele. He even played another legendary British character, Sherlock Holmes, in the 1982 BBC adaptation of The Hound Of The Baskervilles.

But weirdly, quite possibly his biggest role outside Doctor Who was in comedy series Little Britain, where he played the narrator. He even reprised this role in Little Britain USA, as well as the universally-maligned Little Britain: The Video Game.

Baker also returned to the Doctor Who universe in The Five Doctors (via footage from one of his unfinished serials), and again in 2013, where he played The Curator in 50th anniversary special The Day Of The Doctor.

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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!