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Tales from /lost+found 21: Choose Your Own Wikipedia

Archived from the Tardis Data Core Wiki. Oh, you should have heard the complaints from rec.arts.drwho when they changed up the logo.

Transcript below the fold.

Doctor Who Logo Wiki Article
Click to embiggen

1996-2002
As seen in US Seasons 1-4
The Last Time Lord – The Return of Varnax, Part 1 (US Seasons 1-6)

This logo was created for the American Telemovie Doctor Who: The Last Time Lord, with Hugh Laurie as the Ninth Doctor. Its lettering and proportions are similar to the 1963 logo, but with considerably greater spacing between the characters. Distinctive to this logo are the box around the “D” character and the underlining of the letters O, C, T, O and R. In Its initial appearance, it is presented as a solid three-dimensional object in space (echoing the 1987 logo). For US Season 1, this effect was removed and the colouring was changed from a metallic texture to the more familiar “nebula” pattern. During the TV Movie’s credits, the logo is briefly viewed from the rear.

On merchandise and publications, a variation of this logo is often used which features the head of the sonic screwdriver illuminating the final “O”. This variation appears on on the Region 1 DVD releases of seasons 2-6. Other variations include changing the color of the pattern and the addition of a prominent drop-shadow to increase legibility on lighter backgrounds.

Although this logo was replaced for the seventh season of the US series, a variation of this logo returned to advertising and merchandise in 2003 as the official 40th anniversary logo. The anniversary version of the logo replaced the “H” in “WHO” with a “4”, creating “W40”, the latter characters rendered in a red version of the “nebula” effect. This was used, for example, on the Australian DVD release of Season 7.

Due to the licensing arrangements between the BBC and FOX (later NBC/Universal and The Sci-Fi Channel), this logo could not be used on classic series merchandise released by the BBC until 2012, when it replaced the non-diamond variant of the 1973 logo as the official logo of the franchise.

2002-2008
As seen in US Seasons 7 and 8.
The Return of Varnax, Part 2 – Doctor Who: The Fall of Arcadia (US Season 7 to 2004-2008 Direct-to-DVD Movies)This logo was used for Rowan Atkinson’s tenure as the Tenth Doctor, and featured with Hugh Laurie and David Hasselhoff in the Direct-to-DVD Arcadia Movie Trilogy.

This logo was introduced along with a new title sequence for The Return of Varnax, Part 2. For the first time the two words of the title are presented horizontally rather than vertically, a decision intended to produce a more aesthetically pleasing screen composition in the 16:9 format used by the series since 2000[1]. This version of the logo retains the box-and-underline effect from the previous logo, now duplicated to the word “WHO”. The version used on-screen is considerably brighter than the previous logo and features a subtle beveled effect at its edges.

This logo was used for the last time on television for The Terrible Zodin, broadcast on 12 March 2004. The logo appears in a variation with a brushed metal texture on promotional materials and the DVD covers for the Arcadia Movie Trilogy (Except in Region 4, which uses the original colours), but no logo appears on-screen due to the “theatrical” style of their opening sequences.

This logo was used on all officially licensed Doctor Who merchandise produced in the US until 2012, when the rights to the US series were sold to the BBC, which elected to use the 1996 version of the logo instead.

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