Ninth Doctor
The Ninth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He is portrayed by Christopher Eccleston during the first series of the show's revival in 2005. As with previous incarnations of the Doctor, the character has also appeared in other Doctor Who spin-offs both during and after the character's televised appearances.
Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old alien Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels in time and space in the TARDIS, frequently with companions. At the end of his life, the Doctor regenerates into a new version of himself, with a changed physical appearance and personality. Eccleston's incarnation of the Doctor is a war-torn loner who is more pragmatic and less eccentric than his previous selves, fiercely determined to protect the innocent at all costs, and prone to using humour to mask the trauma he suffers from as a result of the Time War. Preceded in regeneration by the Eighth Doctor and the War Doctor, he is followed by the Tenth Doctor.
To fit in with a 21st-century audience, the Doctor was given the primary companion Rose Tyler, who was designed to be just as independent and courageous as the Doctor. The Doctor and Rose also briefly travel with Adam Mitchell and are later joined by Captain Jack Harkness, a reformed con man from the 51st century. The Doctor, Rose, and Jack form a close team but are separated in the series finale in which each character has to make difficult choices and face sacrifice.
Appearances
Television
The Ninth Doctor first appears in the episode "Rose" where he rescues 19-year-old shop worker Rose Tyler from an Auton attack in the department store where she works. After Rose helps the Doctor defeat the Nestene Consciousness, he invites her to travel with him in the TARDIS. On their first trip in "The End of the World", the Doctor takes Rose to witness the destruction of planet Earth in the year five billion. It is revealed that the Doctor's own species, the Time Lords, have been destroyed and the Doctor is the last of his kind. Following from this, they visit Cardiff in 1869 in "The Unquiet Dead", where they encounter author Charles Dickens, of whom the Doctor claims to be a big fan. When faced with a near-death situation, the Doctor tells Rose that he was glad to have met her. In "Aliens of London", when taking Rose home, the Doctor accidentally returns to Earth 12 months after they left. Because of his actions, he is treated like an Internet predator by Rose's mother Jackie and Rose's boyfriend Mickey has become Rose's murder suspect. After Mickey helps the Doctor and Rose defeat the Slitheen by firing a missile at their base at 10 Downing Street in "World War Three", the Doctor offers Mickey a place in the TARDIS with them but he refuses. In the episode "Dalek", the Doctor encounters a Dalek, though he had believed the race to be extinct as the Time War between the Time Lords and Daleks concluded with the mutual annihilation of both races—an event for which the Doctor himself was responsible. The Doctor tortures the surviving Dalek and at the end of the episode prepares to kill it in cold blood. He refrains once Rose calls him out on this.Adam Mitchell joins the Doctor and Rose as companion at the end of "Dalek". However, when he tries to smuggle future knowledge from Satellite Five in the year 200,000 back to his own time in "The Long Game", the Doctor expels him from the TARDIS. The Doctor is angry at Rose after he takes her to the event of father Pete Tyler's death and she saves his life, causing a paradox in "Father's Day". However, when Pete dies to restore the timeline he shows compassion and encourages her to sit by his side as he passes away. In "The Empty Child", after encountering Captain Jack Harkness in 1941, the Doctor realises Jack had caused a deadly nanotechnological plague to sweep through the human race, turning humans into gas-mask zombies. Following the resolution of the situation, Jack prepares to sacrifice himself in "The Doctor Dances", but the Doctor saves him and invites him on board the TARDIS. In "Boom Town", when the Doctor encounters Blon, the only Slitheen to survive the Downing Street explosion, in present-day Cardiff he has doubts over whether or not to send her home to be executed. During this episode, the Doctor first notices that he and Rose had kept coming across the words "Bad Wolf". In "Bad Wolf", the Doctor, Rose and Jack find themselves at the mercy of the Bad Wolf Corporation based on Satellite Five. However, the true enemy is revealed to be the Daleks, as the Dalek Emperor had also survived the Time War and had rebuilt the Dalek race. In "The Parting of the Ways", the Doctor sends Rose back to the 21st century to protect her before attempting to destroy the Dalek army. When he realises that doing this would destroy most of planet Earth he is unable to do so, proclaiming he would rather be a coward than a killer. Having absorbed the energies of the time vortex, Rose is able to return to the Doctor and destroy the Daleks. To save Rose from being killed by harbouring the time vortex, the Doctor removes the harmful effects by kissing her. However, the damage to his cells causes him to regenerate and the Tenth Doctor takes his place.
The Ninth Doctor's origins were not explored during Eccleston's tenure in 2005, but were given in the show's 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor" in 2013. This episode also revealed that the Ninth Doctor was actually the Doctor's tenth incarnation; as explained in the short episode "The Night of the Doctor", a companion episode to "The Day of the Doctor", the Eighth Doctor accepted aid from the Sisterhood of Karn after a spaceship crash to ensure that he would regenerate into an incarnation suited to fight in the war. This incarnation would have been the Ninth Doctor, but instead took on the moniker of the War Doctor because his involvement in the war made him feel unworthy of his usual numbered title. In the aftermath of the Time War, the War Doctor succumbs to old age. The regeneration scene is cut short just before a CGI rendition of Eccleston's likeness can be fully seen, as he declined to return for the episode and showrunner Steven Moffat wished to honour his decision. Eccleston does, however, appear in stock footage and stills alongside the first eight Doctors in promotional material for the special.
Literature
In the essay "Flood Barriers" in the 2007 Panini Books reprint collection of Eighth Doctor comic strips from Doctor Who Magazine strip editor Clayton Hickman reveals that Russell T Davies had authorised the comic strip to depict the Eighth Doctor's regeneration into the Ninth at the end of the story arc, The Flood. The regeneration would have been witnessed by the Eighth Doctor's companion, Destrii, and Hickman writes that the intent was to continue with a Ninth Doctor: Year One story arc with the Ninth Doctor and Destrii. However, when this arc was vetoed by both Russell T Davies and series producer Julie Gardner the creative team felt unable to regenerate the Doctor without Destrii's presence and the decision was made not to depict the regeneration in the comic strip. The reprint collection includes a specially-drawn panel showing how the Ninth Doctor might have looked in the comic strip immediately after his regeneration, wearing the Eighth Doctor's costume and being tended to by Destrii.The Ninth Doctor appears in the first six of the Doctor Who hardback New Series Adventures novels which tie in with the first series of the revamped show. The first three of these novels— The Clockwise Man, The Monsters Inside and Winner Takes All—were published on 19 May 2005 and feature solely the Doctor and Rose. The Monsters Inside depicts the Doctor taking Rose to her first alien planet, Justicia. Rose mentions the visit to Justicia in the first series episode "Boom Town" which aired 4 June 2005 in an example of the television series referencing the novels. The second batch of Ninth Doctor novels —comprising The Deviant Strain, Only Human and The Stealers of Dreams—were released 8 September 2005 and feature the Doctor, Rose and later companion Captain Jack. All of the Ninth Doctor novels except Only Human make reference to the "Bad Wolf" story arc of the first series although in keeping with the TV series, the Doctor does not acknowledge these as significant. The Ninth Doctor appeared in the Penguin Fiftieth Anniversary eBook novella The Beast of Babylon by Charlie Higson. Here it is shown that he had adventures between dematerialising near the end of "Rose" and re-materializing to tell Rose the TARDIS travels in time.
The character featured in comic strips in Doctor Who Magazine between 2005 and 2006 as well as in several short stories in the Doctor Who Annual 2006. In Steven Moffat's Ninth Doctor short story "'What I Did on My Christmas Holidays' by Sally Sparrow" the Doctor and the TARDIS are inadvertently separated twenty years in time by a fault in the time machine and the Doctor is able to instruct Sally how to bring it back to him in the past. This short story later became the basis of the third series episode "Blink". The Ninth Doctor has appeared in IDW Comics Doctor Who: The Forgotten and Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time.
Audio
The Ninth Doctor made his first official, original audio story appearance in Big Finish/AudioGo's Destiny of the Doctor: Night of the Whisper, released in September 2013 for 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. He is joined by companions Rose and Captain Jack, and Nicholas Briggs reads the story and provides his voice. Briggs reprised the role for The Ninth Doctor Chronicles, released in May 2017. In 2019, Nicholas Briggs narrated a short trip from the Ninth Doctor era titled Battle Scars.Released on the 7 October 2021, "The Ashes of Eternity" was an exclusive-to-audio story from BBC Audio in collaboration with Penguin Books featuring the Ninth Doctor and Rose. It was written by Niel Bushnell and read by Adjoa Andoh.