Bonus QuestionDoctor Who 50th Anniversary Quiz

If you think this meme is -1 old
just travel back in time to a
point when it wasn't.

I hope you're all recovering from last night's Doctor Who 50th Anniversary excitement. The doctor and I (that is to say, Doctor Karran, not the Doctor) were asked to run a Doctor Who themed quiz for an event here in Montreal, and so I thought I may as well put it up here so more people could test themselves against it.

One thing I'll note is that we were catering to a (French) Canadian audience. This shows both in the content and style of some of the questions. In particular, as a number of attendees were predominantly French speakers there are rather more 'straight' (factual recall) questions and fewer of the more convoluted kind I like to write to keep things a bit more varied. Nevertheless, it was fun to put together and run, not least because of the inevitable difficulty of identifying official canon in such a complex universe.

The quiz is split up into five rounds (plus an optional music round at the end). I've provided the answers round-by-round so you can either do the quiz all in one go or check how you're doing as you go along. Written before yesterday's special, it's spoiler-free, but those who have seen it may be amused by the questions whose answers cropped up during the show

Round 1: 50 years ago...
1) Which actor played the Doctor first?
2) What relation was the Doctor's first companion, Susan, to the Doctor?
3) What is the name of the first Doctor Who story?
4) Who was President of the USA when the first episode of Doctor Who aired?
5) Who was Prime Minister of Canada when the first episode of Doctor Who aired?

The answers

1) William Hartnell
2) Grand-daughter [Susan was actually an alias, her birth name was Arkytior]
3) An Unearthly Child
4) Lyndon B Johnson [JFK, of course, was assassinated the day before]
5) Lester B Pearson

Round 2: The Doctor(s)
1) Which of the still living Doctor actors is the oldest?
2) Sylvester McCoy plays the wizard Radagast the Brown in which trilogy of films, the last installment of which will be released next year?
3) The Doctor once admitted that at some point he'd disagreed so much with the TARDIS' instruction manual that he'd thrown it into what?
4) Which actor played the Great Intelligence in the episode The Bells of Saint John? He also voiced a version of the Doctor in a BBC animated webcast and appeared alongside eighth Doctor Paul McGann in the movie Withnail and I?
5) Christopher Eccleston supports which English football team?
6) Was David Tennant born in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland?
7) What was the last sentence spoken by David Tennant as the tenth Doctor?
8) When David Tennant regenerates into Matt Smith, he expresses disappointment at his hair still not being what colour?
9) A 2008 episode set in which ancient city featured appearances from Karen Gillan and Peter Capaldi, who would later be given starring roles as Amy Pond and the 12th Doctor?
10) What is the name of Peter Capaldi's character in The Thick of It?

The answers

1) Tom Baker (b. 1934)
2) The Hobbit
3) A supernova
4) Richard E Grant
5) Manchester United [I originally planned to ask about Matt Smith, who supports Blackburn Rovers, but decided that would be more than unfair for a Canadian audience]
6) Scotland [Again, catering to a Canadian audience who probably aren't as used to seeing him speak in his own accent on Virgin Media adverts]
7) I don't want to go
8) Ginger
9) Pompeii
10) Malcolm Tucker

Round 3: Friends
1) In the Matt Smith episode The Doctor's Wife, the Doctor meets a humanoid woman who was used as a host for the consciousness of the TARDIS. The woman reveals that the Doctor gave the TARDIS what four letter name?
2) What animal lends its name to the component of the TARDIS that (used to) change its outer shell so that it would blend into its surroundings?
3) Though normally known by her alias River Song, what is the real name of the wife of the eleventh Doctor?
4) Guarding Amy Pond for over two thousand years, Rory Williams became known as the last... what?
5) The character Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is more commonly referred to by what military rank?
6) The officer mentioned in the previous question was one of the founders of UNIT, an international organization that defends Earth from alien threats. What does UNIT stand for? There are two acceptable answers: its original name and its current name.
7) Immediately after knighting the Doctor as "Sir Doctor of TARDIS", which monarch banished him from the Empire and ordered the creation of the original Torchwood institute?
8) The David Tennant episode Girl in the Fireplace features which character, the mistress of King Louis XV of France?
9) Along with Donald Wilson and Cecil Webber, which Canadian is credited with creating Doctor Who?
10) Hosted on wikia.com, what is the three-word name of the Doctor Who Wiki?

The answers

1) Sexy
2) Chameleon
3) Melody Pond
4) Centurion
5) Brigadier
6) United Nations Intelligence Taskforce originally, now Unified Intelligence Taskforce
7) Queen Victoria [Canada was 'formed' in 1867, so this seemed fair]
8) Madame de Pompadour [Our one concession to being in Quebec]
9) Sydney Newman [That's right, along with basketball and Trivial Pursuit, Canada can now lay claim to Doctor Who as well]
10) TARDIS Data Core

Round 4: Enemies
1) In the original series they originated from Earth's twin planet Mondas, but which race were reintroduced in the modern series as having been created by business tycoon John Lumic?
2) What was the single-word title of the episode that first featured the Weeping Angels?
3) Which race of the planet Skaro were used by Davros in the creation of the Doctor's greatest enemies? Their name is an anagram of Daleks.
4) Larger and bulkier, and generally used as a weapon, what type of screwdriver was used by the Master in contrast to the Doctor's sonic one?
5) A member of which race is described in the fourth series by character Ross Jenkins as "a talking baked potato"?
6) Before her name is revealed in the episode A Good Man Goes to War, by which descriptive three word title was Madame Kovarian identified in the show's credits?
7) What is the first name of the so-called 'last human' who primarily appears as a stretched out piece of skin with eyes and a mouth, connected to a brain in a jar?
8) What is the name of the short white aliens made of body fat whose development on Earth was triggered by the use of a weight-loss pill?
9) What is the name of the Ood's home planet?
10) Which Doctor Who writer created the 1999 British series Queer As Folk? The show follows the lives of three men and their experiences of the Manchester gay scene. (Yes, not technically an enemy, but we're not fans of his...)

The answers

1) The Cybermen
2) Blink
3) Kaleds
4) Laser Screwdriver
5) Sontarans
6) Eye Patch Lady
7) Cassandra
8) Adipose
9) The (imaginatively named) Ood Sphere [My original Ood question was to ask people to identify this instrument, but that seemed a bit much]
10) Russell T Davies

Round 5: Pictures

Check out these rad pictures (click for big, or open in a new tab), questions below.

1) This special edition cover of the British TV guide Radio Times marked both the return of the Daleks as well as a British General Election. What year was this?
2) Which incredibly irritating character is this?
3) Which alien race's design was partially inspired by this Edvard Munch painting?
4) Controlled by the Nestene Consciousness, which utterly terrifying Doctor Who characters are these?
5) Which excellent character is this?

The answers

1) 2005
2) K-9
3) The Silence
4) Autons
5) Doctor Hooves (also Time Turner 'officially') [Rather excellently, someone at the quiz came up with 'Whorse']

And that's that! There were also five music questions which really aren't suited to the blog, but if you're particularly keen you can use the YouTube links below and either close your eyes (or open in a new tab without looking, or something). The clips are of Doctor Who actors singing. One point for each actor you can name, except for the first clip where there are two singers so it's half a point each. To make things not too evil, they're all actors who have played either Doctors or companions.

Round 6: Music

1) Name the actors (half a point each)
2) Name the (male) actor
3) Name the actor
4) Name the actor
5) Name the actor

The answers

1) David Tennant and Catherine Tate
2) Colin Baker
3) Billie Piper
4) Tom Baker
5) John Barrowman [Yes, that is a Whovian cover of a song from the musical Wicked]

So there you have it, a fun quiz to put together, so hopefully at least a moderate distraction to attempt. Winning score was 39.5/45 on the night, so anything near that is impressive. If you spotted any mistakes (which wouldn't surprise me as neither of us are particularly expert Whovians) corrections are always appreciated.

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