The original pilot episode was rediscovered in 1978 in a mislabeled film can. After an archive purge by the BBC between 1972 and 1978, the film survived by chance and was originally thought lost forever.
When the script called for him to recite coordinates to program the TARDIS, Tom Baker would sometimes rattle off a string of digits that was actually the telephone number to the "Doctor Who" production office; no one ever caught on.
The word "Dalek" became so familiar to British audiences that it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Asteroid 3325, a small main belt asteroid discovered in 1984, is named "TARDIS" after the Doctor's time/space machine.
The distinctive TARDIS sound effect is officially classified as a piece of music and was created in 1963 by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's Brian Hodgson rubbing the bass strings of a piano with a key and playing it back at 10% speed.