Doctor Who's greatest sporting triumphs
As the Olympics get under way in Rio, we count down the Time Lord’s top 10 sporting highlights
Not too many Doctor Who fans will be offended if we suggest that, as a species, they tend not to be major jocks. Yet, if the Olympic Committee decided to add running down corridors as an event, you'd see more than a few Whovians in Rio this summer...
Actually, sport – and not least the Olympics – have featured more heavily in Doctor Who than you might immediately think. Cricket was a favourite of the Fifth Doctor (bowling skills were also used to great effect by Ten). And Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor turned out to have quite a knack for football.
The Doctor once entered the Olympics too, and has even carried the torch – both in the show and in real life.
And, of course, let's not forget Rose Tyler's bronze medal for gymnastics...
10. It’s just not cricket (The Daleks’ Master Plan, 1965)
The Doctor’s first brush with a major sporting occasion doesn't exactly cover him in glory, as he manages to land the TARDIS right in the middle of The Oval cricket ground – just as England are battling against the clock for a win. Cricket buffs being what they are, the match commentators hastily check Wisden to see if a police box has ever materialised out of thin air in the middle of an international fixture before. (No, is the answer.) The Doctor, meanwhile, doesn't appear to understand the rules of the game at all. But then, let’s be honest, who does?
FYI In 1976, Douglas Adams submitted a Doctor Who storyline to the BBC entitled The Krikkitmen, in which invaders from the planet Krikkit stole the Ashes during a Test Match at Lords. The idea was rejected but, true to form, Adams later recycled the idea into one of his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books.
9. Star player (Four to Doomsday, 1982)
By the time of his fifth incarnation, the Doctor was such an aficionado of the ‘gentleman’s game’ he chose to dress as an Edwardian cricketer (albeit an Edwardian cricketer who’s still half in his pyjamas). When aliens capture him aboard their spaceship and confiscate his cricket ball, our hero protests: “It’s a memento. I used to bowl a very good Chinaman. I took five wickets once for New South Wales.”
Later, the Doctor is floating in space trying to reach his drifting TARDIS. He throws his cricket ball at the aliens’ spaceship and uses the momentum of the rebound catch to push himself towards the police box, thus proving that, even in the depths of space, the Doctor is an Englishman at hearts.
FYI For the spacewalk sequence, Peter Davison was pushed around the studio on an office chair. (They edited the chair out, obviously.)
8. Bowled over (Human Nature, 2007)
Despite having altered his DNA to turn him into human schoolmaster John Smith, the Tenth Doctor has clearly retained some muscle memory of his cricketing prowess. While out walking with his lady love Joan in Farringham village, Smith sees a piano about to fall on a baby’s pram. Almost without thinking, he grabs a cricket ball from a young boy, throws it at some scaffolding, which collapses and hits a plank that sends a brick flying through the air, knocking down a milk churn which stops mother and baby in their tracks, moments before the piano smashes to the ground in front of them. Owzat!
FYI The teenage David Tennant was such a big fan of Peter Davison’s Doctor, his granny knitted him his own Time Lord cricketing jumper. Tennant is now married to Davison’s daughter – but hey, doesn’t everyone go to school dressed as their wife’s dad at some point?
7. It’s not getting it up… (The Power of Three, 2012)
Bored with waiting for the “slow invasion” by millions of mysterious black cubes that have appeared across the Earth, the Doctor fills the time by creosoting Amy and Rory’s fence, doing the hoovering, mowing the lawn and doing keepy-uppy with a football. Five MILLION keepy-uppies, to be precise. Who says science geeks aren’t good at sport?
FYI Matt Smith didn’t need to fake those ball skills: a former youth player with Northampton Town, Nottingham Forest and Leicester City, he was all set for a professional career until a back injury put paid to his lifelong dream. But at least football’s loss was Doctor Who’s gain.
6. Hai! karate (Inferno, 1970, and many more)
The Third Doctor was a bit of an action man, and never more so than when practicing his beloved Venusian aikido. As the name suggests, this martial art originated on Venus, and worked best if you had five arms and legs. Nevertheless, for a biped, the Doctor was pretty handy at it, often using his skills to immobilise his enemies via pressure points and a combination of joint locks, throws and kicks – usually accompanied by his trademark cry of “Hai!”. On occasions when it didn’t work, he wasn’t beyond having a go at Martian karate instead.
FYI Off screen, Jon Pertwee was an avid sportsman, with a particular passion for water-skiing. As a teenager, he’d even been a Wall of Death rider.
5. Going for gold (The Bells of Saint John, 2013, and others)
The Eleventh Doctor rode an anti-gravity motorbike in the 2074 Anti-Grav Olympics. He came last.
In Destiny of the Daleks (1979), the Fourth Doctor tells Davros that, while he’s been in suspended animation, Arcturus won the Galactic Olympics, with Betelgeuse coming second. Davros appears indifferent to this news, at best.
According to The Waters of Mars (2009), the 2044 Olympics will be held in Havana, with Tirak Ital winning a gold for Pakistan. The 2048 games will be staged in Paris. Tickets go on sale Friday.
FYI A montage of the first 11 Doctors was set to feature in the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony, but had to be cut for timing reasons. A small snatch of the TARDIS dematerialisation sound is all that made the final show.
4. Pitch perfect (Black Orchid, 1982)
More cricket. We already know the Fifth Doctor is a cricket nut, so he’s in his element when, arriving in the small village of Cranleigh in 1925, he is co-opted into the cricket team through a case of mistaken identity. He proceeds to turn their ailing fortunes around, resulting in a resounding victory that gets him and his companions invited to the local squire’s fancy dress ball. Where, naturally, they all end up in mortal danger.
FYI Peter Davison was delighted when he was caught on camera bowling the batsman out for real.
3. Swing when you’re winning (Rose, 2005)
When Rose Tyler met a mysterious man from the stars called the Doctor, she was stuck in a rut: “No A Levels, no job, no future...
“But I tell you what I have got,” she added, gritting her teeth. “Jericho Street Junior School under-7s gymnastic team. I got the bronze!”
And with that, she takes a chain from the wall, swings across a catwalk and knocks two killer Autons into a vat of angry plastic, saving both the Doctor and the world in the process. That’s got to be worth more than a bronze, surely?
FYI Billie Piper’s first TV appearance was in a kids’ Spice Girls tribute band. But she played Posh, not Sporty. Sorry.
2. A game of two hearts (The Lodger, 2010)
While temporarily lodging with call centre worker Craig Owens (James Corden) in Colchester for… reasons, the Eleventh Doctor is asked to stand in for a missing member of Craig’s pub league football team. “Football. Yes, blokes play football,” says the Doctor, who thinks it will help him blend in with the locals. “Football’s the one with the sticks, isn’t it?”
Despite being a total novice, the Time Lord proves a natural on the pitch, leading The King’s Head to a thumping victory over The Rising Sun. Go on, my son!
FYI The Doctor’s footballing prowess was certainly a more impressive display than England put in on the day this episode was broadcast – they could only manage a 1-1 draw in their World Cup game against the USA.
1. Flame on! (Fear Her, 2006)
London 2012. Thousands are gathered for the Olympic Opening Ceremony when, in the blink of an eye, everyone in the stadium suddenly vanishes. “My God, what’s going on here?” asks normally unflappable BBC news anchor Huw Edwards. “The crowd has vanished! Everyone has gone! Right in front of my eyes! It’s impossible! Bob, can we join you in the box? Bob? Not you too, Bob?”
Yes, Bob too. He’s one of thousands of people taken by alien life form the Isolus to be its surrogate family.
“It’s a terrible, terrible turn of events,” laments Huw. But he doesn’t entirely despair – there’s still the Olympic Torch. “I suppose it’s much more than a torch now,” he reasons. “It’s a beacon. A beacon of hope and fortitude and courage. It’s a beacon of love!”
When Rose throws the Isolus’ space pod into this beacon of love, all the spectators and athletes suddenly reappear, much to Huw’s delight. Then, as he’s passing Dame Kelly Holmes Close, the torch-bearer stumbles in the road, only for the Doctor to take up the torch, run into the stadium and light the Olympic Cauldron himself. The big show-off.
“It’s more than a flame now,” says Huw, now on something of a roll. “It’s more than heat and light. It’s hope and it’s courage. And it’s love!”
Yeah, beat THAT, Danny Boyle.
FYI Six years after David Tennant’s Doctor did the honours on TV, Matt Smith was chosen as one of the official Olympic Torch-bearers, carrying the flame through Cardiff Bay.
