Early Story Titles

It's difficult to say for certain, but my hunch is that things began to standardise sometime in the 1980s. For nearly half the show's history, it wasn't uncommon for those serials to be referred to by a multitude of names. Often by the name ascribed to the official paperwork or the first episode's title. The Daleks, for instance, could be known as either The Dead Planet or The Mutants depending on your chosen source. What changed all that seems to have been the Target novelisations. They were typically the clincher for what names have stuck and which have since been discarded. Those novelisations helped standardise a lot of the little details we use today. Like the widely accepted spelling of TARDIS, rather than Tardis as it appeared early on.

Marco Polo was one story that existed for a time as A Journey to Cathay (with The Roof of the World as an accepted alternative). However, when Target released John Lucarotti's novelisation in 1985, Marco Polo became the official name and carried on from there. I think the idea of standardising all the names really started to take root in the 1990s. During the Wilderness Years, when reference books were really in full swing and BBC and its affiliated parties were pushing reprints, home media releases and other content that all needed to be easily cross-referenced. Many story titles look as though they followed that practice with some exceptions here and there like The Web Planet (taken from the first episode) or The Daleks' Master Plan (taken from the working title as the novelisation included the prelude: "Mission to the Unknown").

There might have been a few edicts here and there, but for the most part, it looks as though a lot of it happened organically.

Using the "first episode of the serial" title scheme gives some great evocative titles - Strangers in Space is a lovely title when compared with The Sensorites, Four Hundred Dawns is 7000% more evocative than the flat Galaxy 4 and War of God sounds like a metal album, which is always a good sign.

Plus, keeping the word "Dalek" away from any titles is a good thing in my books - this naming scheme gives us The Dead Planet, World's End and The Executioners.

And if you were to ask me how to handle The Daleks' Master Plan, I'd go with The Nightmare Begins for six episodes, The Feast of Steven for one, and The Destruction of Time (the episode 12 title) for the rest. Similarly, you can split The Ark into a pair of two-parters: The Steel Sky and The Return!

But alas, we're stuck with a big pile of "The _______" titles.