This essay was originally published on my (now-defunct) Substack newsletter on 23/11/23.

“You know when people want to exaggerate a number, they always have a favourite number… Russell always uses 57, always 57. I once eventually said to him, ‘Do you have a preference for Heinz products?’ – he didn’t even know what I was asking him – ‘Because it’s always 57! Even in scripts, if you’re exaggerating, you always say 57. That’s your go-to.’ So it’s floor 507 in tribute to Russell.”

– Steven Moffat, Doctor Who: The Fan Show

You know, as someone who likes to pay a lot of attention to numbers, I’d never clocked this until Steven Moffat pointed it out. Does Russell T Davies really like the number 57? I decided to go and investigate the only way I know how:

Doctor Whoogle!

Sure enough, there’s a mention in one of Russell’s scripts for Series One. Specifically, Boom Town:

JACK: Okay, plan of attack, we assume a basic fifty seven fifty six strategy, covering all available exits on the ground floor.

Huh. Okay then. We have one mention of 57 in Series One. Surely it doesn’t happen again in Series Two? But then, we get this in Army of Ghosts:

DOCTOR: And just last week, she stared into the heart of the Time Vortex and aged fifty seven years. But she’ll do.

JACKIE: I’m forty.

Well then. We have two mentions of 57 in Series One and Two. Surely it doesn’t happen again in Series Three? But then, we get this in The Shakespeare Code:

DOCTOR: Come on. We can all have a good flirt later.

SHAKESPEARE: Is that a promise, Doctor?

DOCTOR: Oh, fifty seven academics just punched the air. Now move!

And then, we get this in 42:

DOCTOR: It’s alive. It’s alive. It’s alive!

SCANNELL: Doctor, close the airlock now! That pod’s going to smash into him.

MCDONNELL: Stay here.

COMPUTER: Impact in eight fifty seven.

The latter example might be more of a coincidence; the number fifty-seven is inevitably going to appear when people are counting down the clock, especially when you are counting down from sixty. But the former example seems to very strongly suggest that Russell included the line when he rewrote that particular script. And we know that’s basically what he did for all the scripts during his first tenure as showrunner, except for certain writers [1].

Okay, so we now have four mentions of 57 in Series One, Two and Three. Surely it doesn’t happen again in Series Four? But then, we get this in Voyage of the Damned:

DOCTOR: Evening. Passenger fifty seven. Terrible memory. Remind me. You would be?

HOST: Information. Heavenly Host supplying tourist information.

And then, we get this in The Poison Sky:

DOCTOR: What? I told you not to launch.

MACE: The gas is at sixty percent density. Eighty percent and people start dying, Doctor. We’ve got no choice.

PRICE: Launching in sixty, fifty nine, fifty eight, fifty seven, fifty six. Worldwide nuclear grid now coordinating. Fifty four, fifty three.

Another countdown. Again, not particularly interesting.

But perhaps the former’s mention of ‘Passenger fifty seven’ could be read as a reference to the 1992 film Passenger 57, starring Wesley Snipes. Is Russell T Davies a fan of Wesley Snipes? Probably not. But maybe he just really liked the way the title sounded? Go on. Say it out loud. See? It does actually sound good.

You can find multiple examples of the number 57 in popular culture. Here are some of my favourites:

• The 2004 film The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks, features a jazz band with exactly 57 members.
• Agent 57, the master of disguise, is a character in the TV show Danger Mouse.
• The 2017 video game Hollow Knight features a character named Zote the Mighty who has exactly 57 precepts [2].
• There were a group of New York City disc jockeys called The Fabulous 57 during the 1960s.
• Bruce Springsteen has two songs, Incident on 57th Street and 57 Channels (And Nothin’ On), which feature the number.
• The concert venue Carnegie Hall is located on West 57^th Street in New York City.
• And of course, there’s Heinz 57, on the packaging of Heinz products, such as the ever-popular tomato ketchup sauce.

The number fifty-seven also has a bit of a reputation within the history of mathematics. It is jokingly known as the “Grothendieck prime”, named after the French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck (1928 – 2014). He was born in Berlin to anarchist parents, held radical and pacifistic political views, and is generally considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20^th Century [3]. (Look him up, he’s genuinely quite interesting!) There’s a story that Grothendieck was asked to suggest a prime number and he gave fifty-seven [4].

But fifty seven is not prime (57 = 3 x 19); it just sounds like a prime.

That’s the joke.

He’s not a terrible mathematician, far from it actually, he just thought about maths in a different way.

And when you think about it, sometimes numbers do just sound right. No really, think about it:

• Would you buy a can of drink called ‘6-Up’?
• Would you purchase some ‘WD-41’ for your bike chain?
• Would you order a burger from a place called ‘Seven Guys’?
• Would you want to watch a blockbuster film called ‘1999: A Space Odyssey’?
• And doesn’t ‘Room 100’ sound less scary?

All of these examples, to me at least, sound wrong. People genuinely choose certain numbers because they sound right. The psychology of numbers, whether in popular culture or religion or product branding, is a genuinely fascinating topic all of its own [5]. The number 57 then is something of a low-key brand for Russell T Davies. Perhaps you can help me find more examples from his other TV shows in the comments below?

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah.

We had established that there’s at least one mention of the number 57 in every series that Russell was showrunner for during the 2000s [6]. Steven Moffat also wrote for every one of those series, so no wonder he managed to clock this. And what we also know is that when Steven Moffat has an idea (God forbid!), it’s something that he just can’t let go of.

Exhibit A: The Eleventh Hour

DOCTOR: Oi, I didn’t say you could go! Article fifty seven of the Shadow Proclamation. This is a fully established level five planet, and you were going to burn it? What? Did you think no-one was watching? You lot, back here, now.

Exhibit B: Last Christmas

DOCTOR: These books should be identical in the real world. But as they don’t exist in your memory, in a dream, they can’t be. Agreed? Clara. Give me any two digit number.

CLARA: Fifty seven.

DOCTOR: All right, all of you, turn to page fifty seven and look at the very first word.

Exhibit C: Heaven Sent

DOCTOR: (narrating) It’s funny, the day you lose someone isn’t the worst. At least you’ve got something to do. It’s all the days they stay dead.

DOCTOR: Fifty seven minutes?

DOCTOR: (narrating) This is how my world works, Clara. I tick off the seconds as they pass. My life is a countdown.

And Exhibit D: World Enough and Time(/The Doctor Falls)

BILL: But I’ve been up there. There’s a friend of mine, he could help.

RAZOR: You do not understand the dangers. Many years ago, there was an expedition to floor 507, the largest of the solar farms.

BILL: And?

RAZOR: Silence. They never came back. There is something up there. And we must be strong.

Never mind Rusty the Dalek [7] – this here, my friends, is the real proof about how much Steven Moffat loves Russell T Davies. I mean, honestly, get a room! (A writer’s room, perhaps?)

So anyway, if you do just happen to clock someone mentioning the number 57 at any point during the RTD2 era of Doctor Who, please know that I will be also be watching along somewhere, and I WILL be squealing with delight.

One last thought. Did you know that every universe has a designated universe number within the Marvel Multiverse? I do, because I watched Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse earlier this year in the cinema. Doctor Who is already a part of the Marvel Multiverse. This is because Marvel Comics have released several Doctor Who comics since the late 1990s, and this means that the Whoniverse actually has it’s own designated universe number.

Do you know what it is?

It’s Earth-5556.

Fifty-five… fifty-six.

I wonder what comes next…

Happy Birthday Doctor Who, and welcome back Russell!

P.S. There are no mentions of the number 57 during the entire Chris Chibnall era. I have absolutely no idea why.

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Footnotes

[1] The Writer’s Tale by Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook, p180.

[2] A precept is “a commandment, instruction, or order intended as an authoritative rule of action”. The ones in Hollow Knight though are not to be taken too seriously.

[3] You can read Grothendieck’s obituary in The Guardian newspaper here.

[4] The story is recounted in As If Summoned from the Void: The Life of Alexandre Grothendieck by Allyn Jackson. You can read it here.

[5] For more on the psychology of numbers, I recommend reading Chapter One of Alex Through the Looking Glass by Alex Bellos.

[6] And arguably one single day in the 2010s, thanks to the broadcast date of the The End of Time: Part Two.

[7] Who appears in Into the Dalek and Twice Upon A Time.