Doctor Who

Bernard Lodge's original, made by pointing a camera at its own monitor and filming the feedback — a technique called howlaround. No face, no ship, nothing but the pattern and Delia Derbyshire's realisation of Ron Grainer's theme, built by splicing tape rather than playing an instrument.

Patrick Troughton's face is added — the first time a Doctor appears in the titles at all. The howlaround stays, the logo is redrawn, and electronic spangles are mixed over the theme. The change lands partway through season four, in March 1967.

Colour arrives, and the howlaround comes with it — red and green flame instead of grey. Pertwee's face replaces Troughton's and a stutter is added to the front of the bassline.

Lodge abandons howlaround for slit-scan, photographing light through moving slots to build a tunnel, after seeing what 2001 did with it. The diamond logo arrives at the same time.

The same tunnel rebuilt around Tom Baker, whose face and scarf swim out of the vortex ahead of the TARDIS. Six seasons on one sequence — the longest any version of these titles ever lasted.

John Nathan-Turner replaces Lodge with Sid Sutton, and the journey stops being through time and becomes through space: a starfield, with Baker's face assembling itself out of stars. Peter Howell's synthesiser retires Derbyshire's tape after seventeen years, and the diamond becomes a neon sign.

Same starfield, new Doctor — Peter Davison's face wipes in behind a venetian-blind pattern rather than forming out of the stars.

Colin Baker's face animates from a frown into a grin, and the neon logo is zoomed and tinted purple. The sequence actually arrives a story early, at the very end of season twenty-one.

The Trial of a Time Lord season. Dominic Glynn's arrangement replaces Peter Howell's for these fourteen episodes and is never used again, which makes it the shortest-lived version of the theme ever broadcast.

The first computer-generated titles the programme ever had — the TARDIS tumbling inside a bubble, Sylvester McCoy winking at the audience, and Keff McCulloch's arrangement.