The two Doctors

The fifth Doctor Who will be meeting the tenth Doctor Who in "Time Crash", Steve Moffat's special little Droo episode for the forthcoming Children in Need. Needless to say, all across the Interweb there are squees and woots and rejoicing.

Peter Davison was sort of where I came in with the Doctors Who. I'd watched Tom Baker's last year as the Doctor avidly, and on 15 March 1981 he fell off a thingie and turned into someone else. I had to borrow my big brother's Doctor Who Monster Book to find out what it meant. That told me about (hushed whisper) Other Doctors, and about paperback books in which they featured...

For all there's been talk of the New Show making the Doctors younger, handsomer and more regional, Davison remains the youngest person to have played Proper Doctor Who. Born on 13 April 1951, he was just 29 years-old when Tom Baker fell off that thingie.

Except for Davison, each Doctor has been younger than the last one (even if the seventh Doctor is just 73 days younger than the sixth). They've since come back to play older-sounding Doctors on audio, and people like David Warner have also have a go. But the oldest person to play a Proper Doctor on the telly was, of course, the first one. When William Hartnell (born 8 January 1908) first blustered into the TARDIS as a cross and cantakerous old man, he was 55.

Peter Davison is now 56.

I find myself staring at the pictures of him larking about with Tennant thinking, "Surely but that can't be right..."