Welcome to Outpost Gallifrey!

Originally created in 1995 as a homepage for the Gallifrey One conventions of Los Angeles, Outpost Gallifrey has grown throughout the years to become the Internet's most popular fan-created online destination for Doctor Who fans, second only to the BBC's official Doctor Who website, with a daily average of over 22,000 unique visitors and over twelve million visitors since its inception.

Outpost Gallifrey's visitors are from both the UK (statistically 63% of its readership) and abroad from over 80 countries, and the site counts, among its readers, actors, writers, producers, BBC executives, Doctor Who licence holders, and the production team of Doctor Who. (We're told the site is still mighty popular in the offices in Wales!) Meanwhile, it remains the only Doctor Who website completely unaffiliated with the Doctor Who licence to be recommended on the official Doctor Who website.

According to the Web Guide to Doctor Who, the quintessential Doctor Who web site listings guide on the Internet, "If you only want to visit one Doctor Who site, make it this one."

With Doctor Who fandom in Los Angeles, California, having established an 'online' presence on CompuServe (where its creator worked) and the fledgling America Online (where Gallifrey One had been a part of the "Doctor Who Online" AOL member area), Outpost Gallifrey was created in the last quarter of 1995 as the world initially moved toward the World Wide Web. The site was originally a placeholder page for the Los Angeles-based Gallifrey One conventions and the local fan club, the Time Meddlers of Los Angeles, as well as a personal page for its editor, using the free web space granted by CompuServe's original foray into interconnected cyberspace. (Although the page itself is no longer located on CompuServe, the earliest evidence of its existence, in December 1995, can be seen in this archived message on the rec.arts.drwho newsgroup.) The site later moved off of CompuServe's home pages onto the Concentric internet network (in fact, some very old websites still link to this location today!) before taking the current URL of gallifreyone.com in the spring of 1998, and is currently hosted by the Atlanta company A Small Orange Web Hosting. The site has been redesigned several times, with major changes to site structure made in 1999, 2001 and 2005.

Outpost Gallifrey's News Page, still arguably the most popular part of the website, was created at the same time as the site was born... although initially it covered several programs besides Doctor Who (Star Trek and Babylon 5 being popular topics of the day; the editor was contributing news to the Time Meddlers' newsletter, and it was also published online). The Doctor Who-only focus was fully established in 1999, and the Outpost Gallifrey Doctor Who News Page continues to this day to bring fans the latest and most detailed coverage of Doctor Who news online. (Stories that the Outpost's News Page was a 'spinoff' of another site or started on another site are bogus; we've always had a news page, and we borrowed the concept from no one.)

In April 2001, Outpost Gallifrey opened the first iteration of what eventually became our hugely popular Doctor Who Forum. After a shaky start, the Forum was fully established on the ezBoard network of web forums, where it existed for three years until moving in 2004 to its own dedicated server (in conjunction with the website) using vBulletin host software. Over the years, the Doctor Who Forum has inspired dozens of other Doctor Who discussion communities, both on ezBoard as well as on other servers, and in 2004 absorbed the bulk of the membership base from the closure of BBCi's official Doctor Who community.

To this day, Outpost Gallifrey ranks among the top websites of its type, rated by Amazon's Alexa website ranking service in the summer of 2005 as one of the top 20,000 most traveled websites in cyberspace. Our daily visitor count varies from lows of about 16,000 (usually on holiday weekends) to our record count of 47,724 unique visitors on June 18, 2005, the day of the transmission of "The Parting of the Ways," the final episode of series one of the new Doctor Who series, on BBC1.

A dedicated history of Outpost Gallifrey's development as a website can be found on our Legacy page.

While literally hundreds of people contribute to the various collections of material on Outpost Gallifrey - its news pages, reviews section and other features - the site is created, edited and managed by Shaun Lyon, and to this day remains a one-person affair in its day-to-day operation. Having originally come into Doctor Who fandom in 1986 after contributing to the local club's newsletter via friends on the CompuServe network (where he served as the Administrative SysOp of CompuServe's Science Fiction and Fantasy Media Forums), he eventually helped found the Gallifrey One conventions, managed the club, the Time Meddlers of Los Angeles, as a Councillor for many years, started Outpost Gallifrey and founded the Doctor Who Alliance of North America, a now-defunct organization that served to bridge the various Doctor Who communities of the US and Canada from 1997-1999. He later penned the book Back To The Vortex, the story of the new Doctor Who television series from the perspective of the fan, published by Telos Publishing in October 2005, with a sequel on the way.

Outpost Gallifrey is supported by many people in many different countries. Steve Tribe and Paul Engelberg serve as Associate News Editors, contributing the bulk of the material used on the News Pages. Likewise, the Outpost Gallifrey Doctor Who Forum is run separately from the website by Shaun and a team of administrators, Steve Hill, Jennifer Kelley and Michael Zecca, and the moderating staff, Karen Baldwin, Arnold T Blumberg, Michael Blumenthal, Wil Cantrell, Neil Chester, Samantha Dings, Matt Evenden, Lindsay Johnson, Derek Kompare, Matthew Kopelke, J.R. Loflin, Raymond Sawaya, Mark Stevens, Steve Tribe, Garth Wilcox and Scott Alan Woodard.

Is this an "American website"?
No. Outpost Gallifrey was created by an American, true... but over 63 percent of our visitors are from the UK, as opposed to other countries (that translates to over twelve thousand daily UK readers alone!) Most of our contributors of news and information are British, as are a majority of participants in our Forum. This is a multi-national community. So the next time you wonder which site is really the UK's #1 Doctor Who fan site, you're looking at it.

Why is there advertising on this site, and/or an Amazon.com affiliation?
Outpost Gallifrey costs a lot of money to keep going. This site is based on TWO (that's right, two) web servers (one for the site, one for all the images), which currently runs over $400.00 US/monthly. (We experience an enormous amount of bandwidth consumption, especially during the airing of the new Doctor Who series when our web traffic went through the roof!) What isn't made up with the Amazon affiliation and the voluntary 'patron' memberships in our Forum, has to come from somewhere... so it usually comes out of the editor's pocket. Please note, however, that while we have run the rare paid advertisement (twice in 2005 we ran ads for Radio Times advertising their Doctor Who covers), Outpost Gallifrey has never, and will never, charge for "fan advertising" including conventions, fanzines, special fan-run events or fan clubs; it is our purpose, and indeed a duty, to promote fandom in such a manner.

Are there really that many visitors?
Yes. As of late June 2005, we averaged 22,000 daily readers; that's not total page hits or artificially inflating hit counters (as is done by one or two other Doctor Who websites we could mention), but rather the number of unique individuals who browse the site on a daily basis.

What is Gallifrey One?
Gallifrey One is the longest-running annual Doctor Who convention in the world, occuring every year since 1990, based in Los Angeles. The reason Gallifrey One is so prominent on this site is that this is the convention's home page; Outpost Gallifrey's single most important purpose (as far as its editor is concerned) is advertising the convention... after all, that's why it was started in the first place! (In other words, if you see a lot of advertising on the site for Gallifrey One, get used to it!)

Why do you not take requests for the links page?
The site's Recommended Links page is just that... sites recommended by the editor. Don't take it personally if your site isn't listed; there are lots of wonderful sites out there. Instead, why not try to make sure you're listed on the Web Guide to Doctor Who, the single best links list for Doctor Who sites online? Outpost Gallifrey hosts a mirror of the Web Guide here (look in the Links section). That's the place to start. If your website starts getting noticed and becomes a prominent and beloved part of online Doctor Who fandom, it may end up on the Recommended Links list.

Why haven't you answered my email?
Simply put: the editor loves to receive email, but remains just one human being with a real job and a real life. Imagine having to take an extra hour or two out of your day to work on a project that people expect to be kept up to date. Now imagine that many of those expectant people have questions that need to be answered. That is the position I am faced with. Outpost Gallifrey is an extremely high-traffic website... because of that, I tend to get a lot of email. It's not that I don't appreciate your email, it's simply due to a lack of time on my part to answer everyone; I have a full-time job that I work 40+ hours per week, I go to school in the evenings, and I retain a social life with friends and family in the L.A. area. This is, after all, just a hobby. I do try to respond to questions regarding the website, queries about the Gallifrey conventions, and personal comments, as much as I am able. Even if you don't get a reply to a personal comment, please rest assured that I've received it and do appreciate it very much! Also, please note that I do not (and never will) respond to the following types of messages: answers to trivia questions; queries regarding actors' agents or merchandise vendors; requests for news and information beyond what's on the Doctor Who news pages on this site; or spam and/or derogatory comments.

Can I write for Outpost Gallifrey?
Yes! We have an open-submission policy on reviews, articles and features. You are more than welcome to submit. Guidelines are on the appropriate pages. Note that we aren't really putting a lot of effort into the Features pages, but the Reviews page is always looking for submissions!

Why is the Outpost Gallifrey Forum closed to everyone but registered Forum members?
To protect our members from bots and site-crawlers. Imagine yourself as part of a big community. You like to share personal details on occasion; sometimes you can say things you're comfortable saying to friends, but don't want it seen by the public. Google and AltaVista and Yahoo exist as Internet archives to prevent exactly that. Our members like to post without thinking that what they've said is going to searchable on Google. Therefore, you simply have to register to be part of the Forum. Membership is free, of course... so don't worry about it being 'closed'. It's just an added layer of protection.

Why don't you allow free web-based email addresses to register in the Forum?
This is a very good, much misunderstood and easily explained question: it all comes down to ownership and responsibility. The problem with the Internet, as far as social dynamics goes, is that we tend to forget that we're speaking to other people when we talk online; therefore, some people who might be otherwise polite in civil society turn into spammers, flamers, personal abusers or otherwise the moment their fingers hit the keys. While the editor of this website believes in the concept of freedom of speech, he caveats that to read the freedom of responsible speech: you must take ownership and responsibility for what you say. Disallowing free web-based email removes one of those barriers. Instead of being able to register anonymously at Hotmail or Yahoo and joining our Forum (including, as has happened before, doing so right after one has been kicked out for abusing other users), you must use a real email address... something given to you by your ISP, or your work, or your school. We're not calling anyone a spammer outright, but let's face it... when you use a credit card, they ask to check your ID. There's no reason in the world why we can't do so either, in order to maintain a sense of dignity in our Forum. We're sorry if that excludes your participation, if you don't have any other email address, but the policy works for us, and we aren't going to change it.

I heard [insert negative story here] about Outpost Gallifrey/the editor. Is it true?
Do you believe everything strangers tell you? Of course not.