Even before the revived series began broadcasting in March 2005, some fans decreed that this was not a continuation of the show which had run from 1963 to 1989, with a brief comeback in 1996 (and some - like a fictional character created by Russell T Davies - even discounted that as canon).
These fans believed that the new series was a reboot, or a totally different series simply based on elements of the old BBC series.
The BBC, and RTD, had to tread carefully. Doctor Who had a dodgy reputation. It was that childish TV series with the wobbly sets, washing-up bottle spaceships, usually filmed in a quarry. After many years of popularity and success, it had ultimately outstayed its welcome - becoming a parody of its former self.
In short, it was a failure. Why should anyone want to go out of their way to watch such a thing - especially as there were now dozens of TV channels to choose from, and families no longer sat down together to watch the same programme at the same time.
You could judge the attitude of the press to the revival when they began to mention the likely stars of this new series - light entertainment personalities like Paul Daniels, or Ronnie Corbett. It was all a bit of a joke.
The other big issue RTD and the BBC had to overcome was the level of continuity they would allow to pass. If this was the same series, then it had to look and sound like it - and the only way to do this in the early 21st Century was for there to be references which confirmed this continuation. But too many and it would alienate new viewers.
The series returned bigger and better than it had been for a long time, comparatively.
RTD claimed in interviews that Eccleston was playing the Ninth Doctor - but not on screen.
In Rose, the Doctor looks in a mirror and he clearly speaks as though he's seeing his face properly for the first time, or is at least not used to it yet. He's definitely not a new First Doctor - so no chance this is a total reboot. The opening story featured the Autons, which had featured twice in the classic iteration of the series. However, they are never actually called "Autons" in any dialogue - though their creator, the Nestene Consciousness, most definitely is named on screen. However, look at the end credits and there is the acknowledgement that the shop window dummies were indeed Autons, and were created by Robert Holmes. (He and model maestro Mike Tucker are the only names associated with the original series to be seen in this episode).
Our next link to the past was in Dalek. Before we were reacquainted with the titular alien, the Doctor came across a disembodied Cyberman head in Van Statten's museum. It was one of the helmets from Revenge of the Cybermen (the ribbed handles give this away), but the museum label claimed it was found in a London sewer in 1977 - a reference to The Invasion and its supposedly near future dating.
Despite the appearance of the Dalek, there is only one oblique reference to their continuity with the original series - a mention about their creator, who is never named.
This, and all of the other Daleks which will feature at the end of the season, could just as easily be entirely new aliens. It is an entirely new Emperor from the one we saw in The Evil of the Daleks, and these Daleks aren't even of Kaled / Skaro origins.
If we are looking to Gallifrey and the Time Lords to provide comforting continuity, we're out of luck. The planet has been destroyed, its people all dead.
The Time War basically allows RTD and the other writers to pretty much rewrite canon - keeping what you like and discarding what you don't. If something new doesn't match what was claimed in an old story, just dismiss it as a side effect of the Time War. Steven Moffat will employ something similar with the crack in Amy's wall. The stories which don't quite fit his new series you can discard, the ones that you need to refer to are okay - they happened and weren't affected.
They are both very clever conceits - allowing this to be both a brand new Doctor Who and a continuation of the old one.
Any worries that this shiny new series was not proper Doctor Who were finally dispelled in April 2006.
RTD elected to bring back not one but two characters who were intrinsic to the original series. One had first appeared with the Third Doctor, continued with the Fourth for two and half seasons, returned in the first ever spin-off, and again in the 20th Anniversary special. The other was a hugely popular figure from the second half of the Fourth's era, appearing across four seasons - plus that spin-off and that 20th Anniversary story.
Poll after poll placed Sarah Jane Smith firmly as the favourite companion of all time. K-9 had a whole newspaper campaign run to save him from being axed from the series. Graham Williams had attempted to talk Lis Sladen into rejoining the series to accompany Tom Baker in Season 16 (the Key to Time season), but it was too soon after she had stepped down. JNT then tried again to help see out Tom's tenure and bridge the transition to Peter Davison. She declined once more, but did agree to fronting her own spin-off series - despite K-9 being the nominal "star" of this.
K-9 & Company: A Girl's Best Friend did inextricably link Sarah Jane and K-9 together. She was left K-9 Mark III by the Doctor. This pilot failed to lead to a full series, but if fans wanted to discount it then The Five Doctors knocked that for six.
Sarah is seen leaving her home one morning, and there's K-9 warning her of a threat. She could only own K-9 if she had been given it in the spin-off programme. So there.
In School Reunion, Sarah meets the Doctor and she has K-9 with her. The Doctor explains to Rose and Mickey that it hails from the year 5000AD, fitting in with its origins in The Invisible Enemy.
She also speaks about the events of the closing moments of The Hand of Fear. The TARDIS is seen to drop her off on a suburban street, which the Doctor tells her is South Croydon. It turns out he got it wrong and it was actually Aberdeen, at the opposite end of the country.
Their dialogue together is clearly meant to suggest that the two haven't seen each other since that occasion - which leaves us with a bit of a problem: what about The Five Doctors...?
It confirmed A Girl's Best Friend as canon, yet gets ignored in School Reunion.
It's not an insurmountable problem. Rassilon may well have erased the memories of all but the current Doctor and his companions when he sent them all home.
The main thing was, we now had an actual pair of characters from '63 - '89 appear in the revived series, establishing more than the odd prop or reference that this was indeed the same programme.
If Sarah Jane Smith said this was the same show, then who were we to argue?
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