the fortified walls of the British government’s situation room—and just after they listened on the phone to Jackie Tyler (Rose’s mother) and Mickey Smith (Rose’s beau) blow up a Slitheen in the kitchen—the trio took a moment for a celebratory toast.
It was quite a familiar setting for the Doctor. Hours earlier, in the preceding episode, “Aliens of London,” number nine noted that a former Prime Minister drank him under the table. (Is the Doctor a lightweight?)
Once the Doctor and crew defeated the Slitheen, Jackie was eager to have over for tea the man who whisked her daughter across galaxies and millennia. Jackie noted that she had a bottle of Amaretto on hand and asked whether the Doctor was a drinker. Rose answered in the affirmative. I’m pretty sure the conference room wasn’t the first time she saw him imbibe.
We’ve even seen the Doctor drunk. In the episode with the tenth Doctor, “The Girl in the Fireplace,” the Time Lord staggers home from a soiree in eighteenth century Paris and claims to have accidentally invented the banana daiquiri hundreds of years too early. And this is why number ten remains my favorite.
A few years later, the eleventh Doctor gets a call from a nursing home, notifying him that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart has passed away. The character never made a proper reappearance on the revived series—his last on-screen appearance was in the 1989 story, “Battlefield”—though he did guest star on the Doctor Who spinoff, The Sarah Jane Adventures.
The nurse on the other end of the line told the Doctor that the Brigadier “always made us pour an extra brandy in case you came ‘round one of these days.” (His actor, Nicholas Courtney, was quite the bon vivant. In 2001, I interviewed him for my documentary, Chronotrip, and I made sure to include a shot of his handler bringing him a drink from the hotel bar once the interview was done).
We do learn in one of the Doctor’s much later incarnations—the unapologetically Scottish one—that the Time Lord hides a bottle or two of booze behind one of the “round things” in the TARDIS.
In Peter Capaldi’s final outing, “Twice Upon a Time,” we get one of the strangest multi-Doctor episodes to date. Number twelve, in the prolonged throes of regeneration, bumps into number one (William Hartnell), also in the throes of his own prolonged regeneration into Patrick Troughton. Wait, you say. Didn’t William Hartnell die in 1975? And didn’t Richard Hurndall, who stepped in for Hartnell for “The Five Doctors” in 1983, pass away less than a year after that?
Then-showrunner Steven Moffat’s solution to that conundrum was a genius move. He rehired David Bradley (best known as Argus Filch in the Harry Potter flicks and Walder Frey on Game of Thrones), who had played William Hartnell four years earlier in An Adventure in Time & Space, the docudrama that chronicled the creation and early years of Doctor Who. (So, I would argue that Bradley has an even greater claim to the role than Hurndall did).
There’s a scene when Doctors one and twelve are both inside the TARDIS (in this case, the twelfth Doctor’s TARDIS) with an English World War I army captain (Mark Gatiss, who, fun fact, actually wrote An Adventure in Time and Space). Naturally, any early-twentieth-century human is going to completely freak out when he encounters such a marvel of trans-dimensional engineering, so the captain started to feel a little faint and dizzy. Recognizing that the soldier was in shock, Doctor number one told number twelve to fetch the man some brandy. “Do you have any?” number one asks. “I had some…somewhere.” Aha! So you DO touch alcohol, number one. Quite the contradiction!
Hiding behind the panel was a bottle of Aldebaran brandy, a decanter and a couple of glasses. It’s not the first time this secret stash appeared. Exactly two years earlier (in Earth time), River Song revealed the little Aldebaran brandy bar when she boarded the TARDIS and didn’t yet recognize number twelve as the Doctor. I actually thought she was the one who had put it there until David Bradley’s number one acknowledged that he usually kept some around. I’m pretty sure River and number one never crossed paths, but who can be entirely sure? Spoilers!
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it’s appeared multiple times in science fiction, as well as science fact. And it often has something to do with booze (on the fiction side, that is). In Star Trek: The Next Generation, for instance, Guinan always had a stash of Aldebaran whiskey, and the green-hued spirit popped up on Deep Space Nine, as well. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fans—who, understandably, overlap a great deal with Whovians—will recognize it as the place where, according to Milliways (the restaurant at the end of the universe) emcee Max Quordlepleen, fine liqueurs are made.
Aldebaran folks obviously are quite prolific distillers, so how do we get there?
You’re in luck because Aldebaran, also known as Alpha Tau, is actually a real place. Aldebaran is a star about sixty-five light-years from our solar system. That means, all that you need to do to get there is board a vessel that travels at the speed of light and keep yourself entertained for six and a half decades until you get there. You’re probably going to want to stay there because that whole relativity thing means earth likely won’t even remotely resemble what it was before you embarked on the voyage.
Number Five’s G&T (Gin and TARDIS)
I generally am not that big a fan of brightly colored drinks, especially those that require certain unnatural additives to achieve their dayglow hues. However, that presents a bit of a conundrum when I want to make something that’s police-box blue to sip during episodes of Doctor Who. The easy solution is to start with a liqueur-like blue curaçao and reverse engineer it from there. But I don’t want easy solutions, nor am I usually in the mood for anything with blue curaçao. (Certain tiki drinks get a pass, since they’re rooted in kitsch.) Luckily, there’s been a small wave of tinted gins produced in recent years with colors that don’t detract from all of the botanical goodness in gin. And, with a series so inextricably linked with England, is there a more appropriate spirit than London No. 1 Blue Gin? It is an ideal choice for obvious reasons, as long as you’re okay with the fact that it’s a couple shades lighter than the broken-chameleon-circuit exterior of the TARDIS. That’s why you’re not going to want to go too heavy on the tonic. What makes this the “Number Five” is the celery—the fifth Doctor’s oddest fashion accessory.
•2 parts London No. 1 Blue Gin
•1 part tonic (don’t skimp. Try something good like Fever-Tree or Bermondsey Tonic. Both are from London, so they really sell the police box connection. To make the blue hue even deeper, use any of the new high-end tinted tonics coming on the market, like Fitch & Leedes Blue Tonic)
•Three splashes of Fee Brothers Celery Cocktail Bitters
•Celery (garnish)
Photo Credit: Craige Moore
•Fill a tall (preferably box-like) glass with ice. Pour in the gin and then the tonic. Splash in the celery bitters and stir well. Garnish with a stalk of celery. When finished, eat the celery. Don’t be tempted to attach it to your lapel.
TAR-tini
Okay maybe you’re more of a martini person. The blue gin lends itself to that. It just won’t be in a tall, TARDIS-like glass.
•3 ounces London No. 1 Blue Gin or Empress 1908 Indigo Gin
•½ ounce dry vermouth
•2–3 dashes of Fee Brothers Celery Cocktail Bitters
•Small celery stick (garnish)
Pour the first three ingredients into a cocktail shaker or mixing glass with plenty of ice. Stir well (DO. NOT. SHAKE.) and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a small celery stick. (Make sure it’s not too long, otherwise, things will get a little clumsy.)
Chapter 4