Today In DOCTOR WHO History: March 1st

Peter, Sarah & Janet are happy as they've just left that morning's table read for the next story and discovered Adric's getting killed off! Matthew, having overslept and just arrived on set, can't understand the festivities, but not wanting to feel left out joins in the dancing.

Welcome to our daily round-up of the Doctor Who episodes which received their premiere broadcast on this day throughout the show's long history, along with anything else of note that may have taken place. You can click on any red text to read our full retrospectives/reviews for that episode, and note that all viewing figures listed are for UK broadcasts (unless otherwise stated).

March 1st
Let's begin this bumper day in Doctor Who history back in 1969 with episode six of the Second Doctor adventure The Seeds Of Death which had 7.7 million viewers tuning in to watch. An impressive number but small change compared to the mighty 10.5 million pairs of eyes watching the screen this day in 1975 for the second and final part of the Fourth Doctor adventure The Sontaran Experiment.

One can only imagine what's going through Peter Davison's mind in that picture above. "And I signed up for three years of this????", perhaps? Or could it be as we've suggested above that they've just read the last page of the script for Adric's next story? (spoilers!) Or perhaps it's just because 15 years after the last pure historical story (The Highlanders) Doctor Who finally returned to the genre for the Fifth Doctor 2-part adventure Black Orchid. Part one was broadcast Monday March 1st 1982 and was watched by 9.9 million viewers.

The following year the Fifth Doctor began another new adventure with part one of Enlightenment drawing an audience of 6.6 million. Then in his third and final year 7.4 million viewers joined the Doctor on a trip to Sarn (which looked remarkably like Lanzarote) for Planet of Fire.

Finally for this day, episode wise, it would be fair to say the series twelve finale proved to be something of a divisive adventure for the Thirteenth Doctor. Just 3.78 million watched The Timeless Children live on Sunday March 1st 2020. That number rose to 4.69 million after seven days of consolidated viewing, even so it remains one of the lowest watched episodes since Doctor Who's return in 2005, which, regardless of your feelings on it, given that it was a something of an explosive series finale is quite surprising.

And in Who-related birthday news - on this day in 1918 Roger Delgado, the original Master, was born. He was sadly killed in a car crash in 1973 and never got to film his proposed swansong on Doctor Who, The Final Game but what a legacy he left us all with, eh?

Join us again tomorrow for another round-up of the episodes broadcast, the spin-offs aired, the special events, the birthday's celebrated and anything else of note that went down on this day in Doctor Who history.