Did you know?

On this page you'll find a TARDIS-load of Doctor Who trivia. If you've got a fact to add to the list, you can submit it by sending us an email here with the subject 'Did you know?'.

The Ninth Doctor and Rose • Always prepared: When Christopher Eccleston was cast as the Ninth Doctor, he watched The Talons of Weng-Chiang, a 1977 story featuring Tom Baker, to prepare himself for the role.

• Not today: Executive producer and head writer Russell T Davies originally approached the BBC in 1999 with plans to relaunch the series, but he was turned down by Peter Salmon, the BBC One Controller at the time.

• A rotten leak: On Saturday 5th March 2005, just three weeks before its anticipated TV debut, Rose was leaked online by an anonymous employee of CBC in Canada. The episode was taken offline shortly after, and the person responsible had their employment immediately (ex)terminated.

• Doctor, Doctor: Russell T Davies put Christopher Eccleston at the top of his initial shortlist of potential Doctors, but has admitted that he never thought he would ever accept the role.

• Back for more: The BBC commissioned both the second and third series based solely on the strength of the viewing figures of Rose. (10.81million)

• Across the decades: Mike Tucker and director Graeme Harper are the only crew members to have worked on both the classic series and the new series.

• Anagrams: Ever wondered where the name Torchwood comes from? When the first series of Doctor Who was being filmed, television pirates were desperate to get their mitts on the preview tapes, so they were labelled with the anagram of Torchwood so nobody knew what they really were. Sneaky!

Georgia Moffett as Jenny • Keeping it in the family: Georgia Moffett, the daughter of Fifth Doctor Peter Davison, originally auditioned to be the Doctor's companion, Rose Tyler. She would later appear as Jenny in Series 4's The Doctor's Daughter.

• Defender of the Earth: When Billie Piper left Doctor Who in 2006, a spin-off entitled Rose Tyler: Earth Defence was planned. Scripts were written, and it even got as far as pre-production, but it was later cancelled after Russell T Davies deemed it as being "one spin-off too many."

• On top of the world: The sequence involving the camera panning towards Earth and zooming into London has so far been used in the episodes: Rose, The Christmas Invasion, Army of Ghosts and The Runaway Bride.

• Strictly speaking: Technically, Christopher Eccleston is the third actor to have portrayed the Ninth Doctor. In 1999, Rowan Atkinson played the character in a Comic Relief spoof entitled Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death (below), while in 2003, Richard E. Grant was the voice of the Ninth Doctor in a BBC web animation called Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka.

• Master of all: As of 2010, the Ninth Doctor is the only incarnation to have never encountered the Master.

• Time fry's: Stephen Fry originally wrote an episode for Series 2, however the episode was later pushed back to Series 3 for budget reasons, to be replaced with the cheaper story, Fear Her. Fry ultimately cancelled the script altogether when he found out that Rose Tyler wouldn't be in Series 3, as he didn't have enough time to rewrite all of her lines for the new companion.

• Lights, camera, action: The first four series of Doctor Who were recorded on single camera video, and were 'filmised' during post-production to make them look like they were recorded on film.

• 21st century Who: The 2009 Easter special, Planet of the Dead, was the first Doctor Who episode to be filmed and broadcast in High-definition.

• Sudden exit: On Thursday 31st March 2005, the BBC confirmed that Christopher Eccleston would be stepping down as the Doctor after just one series. The press release wasn't supposed to be released until after the first series had finished, and the crew had originally planned to keep his regeneration at the end of The Parting of the Ways a secret until its broadcast. However, the BBC were under pressure to confirm the news after various British tabloids wrongly claimed that a second series with Eccleston had been commissioned.

• More than just a name: At the end of the 2007 Christmas special Voyage of the Damned, Astrid Peth, played by Kylie Minogue, is killed, but the Doctor enables her to travel through time and space, just like the TARDIS. Interestingly, the name Astrid is an anagram of TARDIS.