Outpost Gallifrey

Main site

Outpost Gallifrey began as a fan-run website for Doctor Who, launched on 11 December 1995 and managed by Shaun Lyon from the United States. It was originally built to promote the annual Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles. The site claimed a daily readership of over 25,000, which could climb to 50,000 during major events like a series premiere or finale. It featured an episode guide with cast, crew, and story details, along with articles and reviews, and Lyon accepted submissions from readers and members.

On 9 October 2006, Lyon said he would stop updating the news pages because he no longer felt invested in constant news collection and editing. He initially planned to archive most of the site, keeping only the forum and Gallifrey One pages active. But on 2 November 2006, he announced the news page would return in a new format, with him as editor-in-chief and a team of reporters from the US, UK, and elsewhere. It relaunched on 1 December, alongside the Web Guide to Doctor Who, a manually curated list of Doctor Who sites that had previously been a separate project edited by Paul Harman for over ten years. On 21 January 2007, the site partnered with the Doctor Who podcast Podshock.

On 27 August 2007, Lyon announced that most of the site would stop being updated, with its active parts splitting into four separate websites. The news page became the Doctor Who News Page at doctorwhonews.com, the forum became the Doctor Who Forum at doctorwhoforum.com, the gallifreyone.com address was kept for the Gallifrey One convention, and the web guide moved to doctorwhowebguide.com. The front page became a simple links page on 1 December 2007, formally ending Outpost Gallifrey as a single destination. The component sites were still referred to by the old name as of 2008. On 2 June 2009, Lyon announced the news page and forum would close entirely on 31 July 2009, leaving only the Gallifrey One portal. io9’s Charlie Jane Anders noted the closure, calling Outpost Gallifrey the best Doctor Who fansite.

Discussion forum

As of 2009, the site's discussion forum had over 40,000 registered members, of whom over 15,000 were considered "active". (During the UK broadcasts of the 2008 series of Doctor Who, there were over 31,000 active members). The forum was actively moderated. The forum had close contacts with the production team and writers associated with the series, several of whom had been known to post on the forums.

In April 2005, when the news of Christopher Eccleston's departure from Doctor Who broke, discussion on the forum became so heated that Lyon shut the section down for two days; the closure was reported in The Daily Mirror. The British news media regularly used the site to garner examples of fan reactions to Doctor Who. Doctor Who lead actor David Tennant admitted in a 2005 interview with Doctor Who Magazine that he had visited the Outpost Gallifrey forum shortly after his casting had been announced, to gauge fan reaction.

"Well, when it was announced, I admit, I did go on Outpost Gallifrey to have a quick look, because I just couldn't help myself, and everyone was encouraging me to go on and see what the fans were saying about me," he told the magazine. The fan discussions in the forum were sometimes critical of aspects of Doctor Who production. In a 2007 email recorded in the behind-the-scenes book Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale, executive producer and lead writer Russell T Davies wrote, "I've been browsing Outpost Gallifrey to read how crap I am."

Davies also mentioned that writer Helen Raynor and composer Murray Gold had visited the site to see fan reactions to their work, and had experienced a "loss of faith" in their own abilities afterwards. The forum's popularity and reputation for debate over Doctor Who-related matters were even acknowledged in the programme itself. In 2004, when the first photographs of the new series' TARDIS prop were revealed, there was a vigorous discussion of the prop's historical accuracy on the Outpost Gallifrey Doctor Who discussion forum, an example being that the prop's windows were too big compared to real-life police boxes.

In the episode "Blink" one character tells another that the TARDIS is not a real police box and mentions that the windows are the wrong size as evidence. Episode writer Steven Moffat confirmed in 2007 that this line was an in-joke aimed at the Outpost Gallifrey forum. In early 2008, the Outpost Gallifrey Forum was rebranded as "The Doctor Who Forum". The British press continued to use the forum as a gauge of Doctor Who fan opinion.

The forum was closed along with the rest of the site on 31 July 2009; its successor, Gallifrey Base, is run by most of the Forum's support staff. Gallifrey Base officially opened on 13 June 2009.