Doctorin’ The Tardis

This past November the British television program Doctor Who celebrated its 50th anniversary with a special episode titled “The Day of the Doctor.”  Meanwhile, this week marks another anniversary for the show, as exactly 25 years ago the song “Doctorin’ the Tardis” by the Timelords reached its peak position of number 66 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart.  The song builds from a base of the theme music from the show and the central riff from Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2.”  While the song did not garner Top 40 success in the United States, it did very well in the U.K., where it hit number 1 for one week in 1988.

The Timelords are better known as The KLF, and they had more success under that name both in the U.K. and in the U.S.  In terms of their U.S. success on the Hot 100, in September 1991 The KLF hit number 5 with “3 A.M. Eternal,” and in March 1992 they hit number 11 with “Justified and Ancient.”  In the U.K., those two songs constituted the two ends of a string of six straight Top 10 singles for the band, with “3 A.M. Eternal” hitting number 1 and “Justified and Ancient” peaking at number 2.