As someone with the ability to travel anywhere in time and space, it is only fitting that the Doctor would choose to hang with famous historical people, many of whom are regarded as friends. Doctor Who puts its own spin on real-life situations involving historical figures, maintaining the tradition established by the classic Doctor Who series to be both educational and family-friendly.
Sure, liberties have been taken, but that’s to be expected in a world populated by alien monsters and involving time travel. For many Whovians, it’s far better to believe that Shakespeare’s lost work was the result of alien witches or that Queen Victoria established the Torchwood Institute after a werewolf attack than to believe that any of these things never actually happened.
William Shakespeare – "The Shakespeare Code"
When William Shakespeare (Dean Lennox Kelly) was writing the sequel to his comedic play Love’s Labour’s Lost in 1599, little did he know he was under the malign influence of a trio of witchy aliens – the Carrionites – who were seeking to escape from their forced exile to the Deep Darkness through The Bard’s words.
Shakespeare was considered by Doctor Ten (David Tennant) to be “the most human human there’s ever been.” With the help of Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), the Doctor intervened to prevent the Carrionite’s release, banishing the alien presence along with Shakespeare's sequel. Which explains why we never got to read Shakespeare’s (lost) play, “Love’s Labors Won.”
Queen Elizabeth I – "The Shakespeare Code" and "The Day of the Doctor"
Queen Elizabeth I appeared a couple of times in the Doctor Who reboot. First, in the episode “The Shakespeare Code” alongside Doctor Ten (Tennant) and then in the 50th-anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor” with Doctors Ten, Eleven (Matt Smith), and the War Doctor (John Hurt).
The two appearances occur at different times in the monarch’s life. In “The Shakespeare Code,” the Queen (Angela Pleasance) barges into the Globe Theater calling for the Doctor's head, annoyed that the Time Lord had married her in 1562 before hastily departing to fight the Time War. A younger Elizabeth (Joanna Page) appears in the anniversary special, where the Doctors face off against the shape-shifting Zygons who’ve morphed into a doppelgänger of the Queen.
Vincent van Gogh – "Vincent and the Doctor" and "The Pandorica Opens"
While perusing the Musée d’Orsay in the present day, Doctor Eleven (Smith) spots a strange creature in Vincent van Gogh’s (Tony Curran) work, "The Church at Auvers." He and Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) travel to 1890 to speak to van Gogh about it, determining that it was a Krafayis, an alien only the painter can see. To shake van Gogh out of his deep depression, the Doctor takes him to the present to show him how popular he is as an artist.
Van Gogh reappears in “The Pandorica Opens.” Still deeply depressed, the artist has created a work that features an exploding TARDIS and hidden coordinates that lead them to the Pandorica, an ancient prison box that houses the most powerful, feared creature in the universe. The Doctor needs to know how van Gogh knew about the Pandorica’s existence and goes on a trek around various locations and timelines to find out.
Agatha Christie – "The Unicorn and the Wasp"
The episode “The Unicorn and the Wasp” covers the period in mystery writer Agatha Christie’s (Fenella Woolgar) life when she went missing and was found in a hotel, staying under an assumed name with no memory of the past ten days.
Doctor Ten (Tennant) and his plucky sidekick Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) arrive on the day of Christie’s disappearance and, after investigating a series of murders during a dinner party, ascertain that it was all the work of a giant shape-shifting alien wasp called a Vespiform. In true whodunnit style, the destruction of the Firestone – a necklace that created a telepathic link between Christie and the Vespiform – was the cause of Christie’s amnesia. Mystery solved.
Queen Victoria – "Tooth and Claw"
During her sixty-three-year reign, Queen Victoria (Pauline Collins) established the Torchwood Institute, an organization to investigate alien threats against the British Empire. At least, that’s what happened in the Whoniverse.
Doctor Ten (Tennant) and Rose Tyler (Billy Piper) travel to 1879 and meet the Queen while she is en route to Balmoral Castle. On their travels, they stay at Torchwood House where they are attacked by a werewolf. After killing the beast, the Doctor and Rose are knighted as a reward (before being exiled for blasphemy) and the Torchwood Institute is founded.
Charles Dickens – "The Unquiet Dead" and "The Wedding of River Song"
It’s Christmas Eve in Cardiff, Wales and 19th-century British novelist Charles Dickens’ (Simon Callow) reading of A Christmas Carol is interrupted by a reanimated corpse controlled by the Gelth, a species of disembodied aliens. Enter Doctor Nine (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose (Piper) to investigate by way of séance – something that the scientifically-minded Dickens views with suspicion. However, his mind is changed by the experience and Dickens decides to include it in his unfinished last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Dickens’ follow-up appearance is in a heavily altered alternate universe created by River Song’s (Alex Kingston) refusal to kill Doctor Eleven (Smith). In this timeline, pterodactyls fly around London and Winston Churchill is the Holy Roman Emperor. Sticking with the bizarre theme, Dickens appears in a television interview to discuss his upcoming Christmas special.
Madame de Pompadour – "The Girl in the Fireplace"
Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, known officially as Madame de Pompadour and colloquially as Reinette, was a member of the 18th-century French court and the official mistress of King Louis XV of France. Doctor Ten (Tennant) first encountered Reinette (Sophia Myles) as a seven-year-old, after he climbed through a fireplace time window and destroyed a Clockwork Droid hiding under her bed.
They met again on Reinette’s (Jessica Atkins) thirty-seventh birthday and again the Doctor saved her from the Clockwork Droids. A romance quickly blossomed between her and the handsome Ten, culminating in Reinette planting a kiss on the shocked Time Lord’s lips. The Doctor invited the courtesan to join him in the TARDIS but, due to the time differential, she died before she could do so.
Winston Churchill – "The Beast Below," "Victory of the Daleks," "The Pandorica Opens," and "The Wedding of River Song"
Prime Minister of Britain during World War II and then again from 1951 to 1955, Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) was Doctor Eleven’s (Smith) ally during several of his Earth-based adventures. He even had a direct phone line to the TARDIS.
Early in Season 5, the Doctor and Amy (Gillan) respond to a call from Churchill and visit him during the London Blitz. The Doctor subsequently discovers that Churchill has inadvertently reanimated his longtime foes, the Daleks who – as always – are hellbent on destroying the Earth. With the Daleks' plan foiled, the Doctor next meets Churchill in the alternate universe created by River Song (Kingston) where he is the Holy Roman Emperor engaged in conversations with Cleopatra over social media.
Rosa Parks – "Rosa"
Despite the Doctor aiming for present-day Sheffield, the TARDIS had other ideas and instead took Doctor Thirteen (Jodie Whittaker) and her companions to Montgomery, Alabama. It was 1955, the year seamstress Rosa Parks (Vinette Robinson) refused to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus and galvanized the American civil rights movement.
Thirteen and her pals meet Parks just before that important bus ride but must contend with the time-traveling mass murderer, Krasko (Joshua Bowman) who is intent on derailing history (and the reason the TARDIS diverted them). The episode includes another influential historical figure and Parks’ friend, Martin Luther King, Jr. (Ray Sesay).
Queen Nefertiti – "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship"
Neferneferuaten Nefertiti was the wife of King Akhenaten and perhaps Egypt’s most famous Queen. An iconic beauty with more surviving engravings on monuments and other mediums than other Egyptian rulers, it is thought that Nefertiti reigned equally with her husband and ruled Egypt after his death. So, it’s fitting that in the Whoniverse she is portrayed with strength and tenacity.
After Doctor Eleven (Smith) rescues Nefertiti’s (Riann Steele) people from a swarm of giant locusts she follows him into the TARDIS. They soon discover that a 24th-century Silurian ark containing dinosaurs is hurtling toward Earth and intervene to stop it. At the end of the adventure, Nefertiti chose to stay in 20th-century Africa, explaining why Nefertiti’s tomb or mummy has never been discovered.
Nikola Tesla – "Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror"
Impecunious and living in a tiny New York City hotel room, the Serbian physicist, engineer, and inventor Nikola Tesla spent the last years of his life going over mathematical equations and scientific problems in his head.
While Tesla (Goran Višnjić) works into the night on his wireless power generator he is attacked by a cloaked figure. Doctor Thirteen (Whittaker) arrives to rescue him. Accompanying him to his New York lab, they find it surrounded by protestors who’ve been goaded into fearing the inventor by his competitor, Thomas Edison (Robert Glenister). It soon becomes apparent that the Queen of the Skithra is pursuing Tesla so he can repair her damaged ship. The Doctor uses the TARDIS to help power Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower, forcing the Skithra ship to leave Earth.
Mary Shelley – "The Haunting of Villa Diodati"
As the creator of one of literature’s enduring Gothic terrors, Frankenstein’s monster, it’s fitting that Mary Shelley (Lili Miller) was included in an episode of Doctor Who; doubly so given that she is credited with pioneering science fiction writing. This episode reflects actual events. When, in 1816, the 18-year-old Shelley, her husband the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Lewis Rainer), their poet friend Lord Byron (Jacob Collins-Levy), and Byron’s personal doctor John Polidori (Maxim Baldry) gathered at Villa Diodati in Switzerland they held a contest to see who could come up with the best ghost story.
Shelley’s story – based on a nightmare she’d had – was so frightening her friends convinced her to turn it into a novel. And so, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was born. Doctor Who puts its own spin on it, having Doctor Thirteen (Whittaker) battle a half-converted Cyberman (Patrick O’Kane) in search of the Cyberium, liquid metal containing the collective knowledge of all Cybermen.