| abstract | - The Tardis Data Core has little to nothing pertinent to say on the topic of real live animals and the British science fiction programme Doctor Who and it’s advised that you not even bother consulting that frustraneous collection of poorly-researched nonsense for anything approaching the breadth and erudition of this august page of this highly esteemed wiki. An animal is a multi-cellular, eukaryotic organism of the kingdom Animalia (also called Metazoa) that can move about spontaneously and independently, like a total spaz, at least at some point before they discover Doctor Who or 4chan. In everyday non-scientific-fiction usage, the word usually excludes humans, referring only to non-human members of the kingdom Animalia. There’s more such scientifical stuff on Wikipedia but that’s enough for now. Animals are often used in fictional tales both ribald and timey-wimey, and so have on occasion even been roped into appearing on the programme Doctor Who itself. Not often enough of course, for real live animals are quite magical beings of great intelligence and wisdom that are your only true friends who’ll never judge you, but such qualities don’t come cheap, which is near an apt description for Doctor Who: it comes cheap (just like John Barrowman, if you believe the 4chan rumors). In fact, the number of times the programme has featured a real live animal are rare when compared to other (more popular) BBC programmes such as “Saturday Night Bear-Bating” (regional programming from Wales, and said to be a Moffat favorite), “Eastenders,” and the entirety of the BBC Parliament channel. A real live animal for the purposes of this wiki is “any living animal appearing on screen during a Doctor Who programme,” which therefore excludes all the myriad fictional and fantastical specii of alien puppets, wads of bubble-wrap and previous-gen CGI abominations the programme has embarrassingly featured. This definition would also exclude any animals, Terran or otherwise, described in words or artwork occuring in other media forms such as (ugh) comics, novels or aurally-produced trash; it’s quite easy to write “and suddenly, a ravenous tiger pounced upon Doctor Five and ate him!” as I often have, but lacking the photographs, the event likely didn’t actually transpire. When using real live animals, the programme Doctor Who does so for tawdry theatricality, simple set dressing, or even, uncommonly, as a metaphorical tool for advancing the story’s themes. Whether a real live frost-bitten bear (The Ice Warriors), a real live revolting rat (multiple appearances, sometimes unplanned, due to vermin problems in the old BBC Television Centre building), a real live torch-terrorized tiger (In The Forest Of The Night) or merely a crate of of real live Chenin Blanc chickens (The Visitation), any appearance of a real live animal on the programme is something to celebrate and savor like a fine eukaryotic wine. Disappointment inescapably arises when the real live animal isn’t actually present on set of course, such as when the real live lizard is being used as a back-projected lizard “monster,” or the real live bear was filmed elsewhere and clumsily inserted as b-roll footage, but nevertheless, the appearance of any real live animal brightens up even the most dreary and uninspired of Doctor Who stories, meaning most of them, if but for its few precious seconds of screen time. WC Fields, the renowned playwright and actor of great summed up working with real live animals best: “Anyone who hates children and [real live] animals can’t be all bad.” Wait, no, not that quote, this one: “Never work with children or [real live] animals.” Fields’ reasoning may have been that both children and real live animals are much harder to control than adult actors with no other career prospects than wearing a rubber monster costume on Doctor Who, or perhaps he was just acknowledging that when one of these less-than-human creatures (a child or a real live animal) is on screen, viewers are physically unable to look at anything else - they’re either too busy hating the child actor with an incandescent rage, justifiably, for being so irredeemably awful, while a real live animal mesmerizes the viewer's’ gaze with its majestic beauty. Either unfortunate outcome often causes the feckless Doctor Who viewer to miss some poorly-written plot development, leading to their posting crap on /who/ about how that last episode made no sense. Yes… those little rascals tend to be quite the scene-stealers, yes, that must be it dear boy, hm! “Animal magnetism” you might say! Eh-heh-heh-heh! They enthrall beyond the capacity for veracitional, eh, rational thought. Based upon the abilities of its performers and the quality of incidental stagecraft such as set design, costuming, etc., the producers of Doctor Who wisely surrender to this prohibition of marvelously edible creatures (if not often enough of child actors) rather than futilely fighting the real live animals on their own terms, for if the programme fights like animals, it’ll die like animals. While this prize-winning and profound wiki already features a few dedicated, separate entries for prominently recurring real live animals on Doctor Who (which is to be fair, a terrible programme, and I say that as a fan of the show), most real live animals encountered here shall be found flourishing in their natural habitat, roaming freely through the wilds of their particular enlivened story descriptions. So avail yourself of the search bar above, enter the name of your favorite real live animal and see where it has lived on Doctor Who! Happy hunting, real live animal and Doctor Who fan! Just try not to feel too badly when you realize that Classic Who was cancelled in 1989, twenty-six years ago as of 2015, meaning that every real live animal you’ll see is now a real dead animal.
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