Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a long-running (and we do mean long) British science-fiction television show. The Doctor, an immortal/regenerating alien that has been portrayed by a variety of actors since the show's inception, travels through space and time in a 1960s-era police box super-advanced, living spaceship called a TARDIS. Joined by a variety of companions (mostly female), he solves kinks in time and sees the wonders of the universe. It's also famous for the various monsters it created, most notably the Daleks (space Nazis) and the Cybermen (space Communists)...and especially, the Silence and Weeping Angels.
Don't blink!
Miniatures and Doctor Who
Miniatures based on Doctor Who have been around since the Eighties. In fact, one of Citadel's earliest plastic kits was a Dalek and a Cyberman, and a few Who-inspired models were also manufactured and sold by Games Workshop itself. FASA also made a few models.
The license got picked up by Harlequin in the Eighties, who made a few minis as well as some skirmish rules. The game was a skirmish combat affair that didn't really fit the show. Harlequin went bust decades ago and the official license lapsed at some point, but BlackTree Miniatures "own a huge stock" of unsold models (or they own the moulds and simply claim they have a huge stock. No one really cares).
Character Options produced a version of Heroclix called Doctor Who Microuniverse. It wasn't really a game, and the minis were pretty awful pre-painted, 28mm-scale minis. It is now out of print, thankfully.
At the moment, no one has the license for Doctor Who miniatures. Wargame companies Heresy, Hasslefree, and Crooked Dice all do models that look enough like Doctor Who to work in a game, albeit not quite so much that they risk prosecution.
The Doctor Who Minatures Game
In part thanks to so many terribly produced games and models in the past, small firm Crooked Dice wrote a scenario based action adventure miniatures game and called it The Doctor Who Minatures Game. Slick, clever, quick to play and simple to get in to, it went down very well amongst nerds.
Originally produced for fun, it found a great deal of popularity in the part of the UK wargames community who wore tweed and smoked pipes. Bouyed by this success, Crooked Dice approached the BBC for an official license. Auntie Beeb said it would cost ££££ for an official license, but they could continue to produce the game provided no direct profit was made.
Crooked Dice give the Doctor Who Miniatures Game away for free, and also produce a more generic action-adventure scenario based game called 7TV (Seventies TV, you see). So in a weird reversal of the way things are done, the generic rules cost money but the specific rules are free.
The RPGs
There have been three Doctor Who RPGs published to date. The first was produced by FASA, using the Star Trek RPG system . The FASA game was notable for its strange use Doctor Who continuity and official fluff. For example, it overused the Celestial Intervention Agency from the The Deadly Assassin episode. An odd choice.
The Time Lord RPG was closer to the series and sported a simpler system, along with mechanics that tried to emulate the show (macguffins, bench thumping etc). Published by Virgin and written by Ian Marsh and Peter Darvill-Evans, it can easily be found on the web.
A new game was made in 2010 (and remade in 2011) by Cubicle 7 Entertainment (SLA Industries, Victoriana, Starblazer Adventures), this time in conjunction with the BBC and based on the most recent series. It is rules lite, and biased against combat (much like the teevee show itself). For example: initiative depends on what you're doing, and goes in this order: Talkers, Movers, Doers and Fighters. It is a much better game than the last two, in the sense that it has modern mechanics and actually reflects the show.
External Links
- Doctor Who Minatures Game website with free downloads. Regularly updated.
- Time Lord RPG by Marsh Now out of print, you can download this game for free.
- Cubicle 7 RPG store (10th Doctor edition) Cubicle7 doesn't have any promo material of it's own about the game. Odd.