Doctor Who
Rebuilt for almost every Doctor, and each rebuild invented its own technique — a camera filming its own monitor, light photographed through moving slots, and finally the first computer-generated titles on British television.
Doctor Who rebuilt its titles: ten distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1–26, running between 37 and 61 seconds.
It arrived on BBC One in 1963, when Grandstand, This Is Your Life and The Sooty Show were also on the network.
Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; Doctor Who did so nine times.
All 10 opening title sequences
Seasons 1–3
49sBernard 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.
Seasons 4–6
45sPatrick 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.
Seasons 7–10
49sColour 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.
Season 11
37sLodge 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.
Seasons 12–17
47sThe 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.
Season 18
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.
Seasons 19–21
44sSame starfield, new Doctor — Peter Davison's face wipes in behind a venetian-blind pattern rather than forming out of the stars.
Season 22
45sColin 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.
Season 23
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.
Seasons 24–26
61sThe 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.
More sci-fi opening titles from the 1960s
2 sequences
Star Trek
The one that set the shape of every space-opera opening since: a ship crossing the frame, a captain narrating a mission statement, and a melody built to be hummed. Alexander Courage wrote it as a fanfare and a lounge tune at the same time.
- Season 1
- Seasons 2–3
1 sequence
The Prisoner
Thunder, a Lotus Seven driven hard past Parliament, a resignation letter slammed onto a desk, and then gas under the door of a man's own flat. Two minutes that explain the entire premise without a narrator, and end with the only line the show ever needed: I am not a number.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThunderbirds
Five, four, three, two, one — the countdown, the launch bays, and Barry Gray's march. Probably the most quoted title sequence Britain has produced.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLost in Space
John Williams, decades before anyone was calling him that, writing a fanfare for a family stranded in a jelly-mould spaceship.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Outer Limits
The control-voice narration that takes over your television set — a premise so effective that the sequence is better remembered than most of the episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Invaders
A Quinn Martin series about one man who knows and cannot prove it, narrated in the second person.
- Season 1