Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a British science-fiction television programme produced by the BBC from 1963 to the present day. The programme depicts the adventures of the Doctor, a Time Lord—a space and time-travelling humanoid alien. He explores the universe in his TARDIS, a sentient time-travelling space ship. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Accompanied by companions, the Doctor combats a variety of foes, while working to save civilisations and help people in need.

The show is a significant part of British popular culture, and elsewhere it has become a cult television favourite. The show has influenced generations of British television professionals, many of whom grew up watching the series. The programme originally ran from 1963 to 1989. There was an unsuccessful attempt to revive regular production in 1996 with a backdoor pilot, in the form of a television film. The programme was relaunched in 2005 by Russell T Davies, who was showrunner and head writer for the first five years of its revival, produced in-house by BBC Wales in Cardiff. The first series of the 21st century featured Christopher Eccleston in the title role and was produced by the BBC. Series two and three had some development money contributed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which was credited as a co-producer.Doctor Who also spawned spin-offs in multiple media, including Torchwood (2006–2011) and The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–2011), both created by Russell T Davies; K-9 (2009–2010); and a single pilot episode of K-9 and Company (1981). There also have been many spoofs and cultural references to the character in other media.

Doctor

Doctor or The Doctor may refer to:

Personal titles

Fictional characters

Film and television

Matt Smith

Matt or Matthew Smith is the name of:

Artists

Entertainers

Hot News

Hot News (1928) is a silent film comedy produced and distributed by Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation, an amalgamation of Famous Players-Lasky and Paramount Pictures. Clarence Badger directed and Bebe Daniels starred.

Cast

Preservation status

The film is now considered lost.

References

External links

ELIZA

ELIZA is a computer program and an early example of primitive natural language processing. ELIZA operated by processing users' responses to scripts, the most famous of which was DOCTOR, a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Using almost no information about human thought or emotion, DOCTOR sometimes provided a startlingly human-like interaction. ELIZA was written at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1966.

When the "patient" exceeded the very small knowledge base, DOCTOR might provide a generic response, for example, responding to "My head hurts" with "Why do you say your head hurts?" A possible response to "My mother hates me" would be "Who else in your family hates you?" ELIZA was implemented using simple pattern matching techniques, but was taken seriously by several of its users, even after Weizenbaum explained to them how it worked. It was one of the first chatterbots.

Overview

Weizenbaum said that ELIZA, running the DOCTOR script, provided a "parody" of "the responses of a nondirectional psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview." He chose the context of psychotherapy to "sidestep the problem of giving the program a data base of real-world knowledge," the therapeutic situation being one of the few real human situations in which a human being can reply to a statement with a question that indicates very little specific knowledge of the topic under discussion. For example, it is a context in which the question "Who is your favorite composer?" can be answered acceptably with responses such as "What about your own favorite composer?" or "Does that question interest you?"