Ask Slashdot: How/Where To Start Watching Dr. Who? 655
stinkfish writes "I am a big fan of science fiction, especially good TV science fiction. For some reason Dr. Who is a show I have watched very little of. My question to Slashdot is, whats the best strategy for enjoying this classic show? Looking at the wikipedia page on Dr. who, I see there are 11 Doctors, so is hard to pick a good starting point. If it was just up to me, I would start watching from the very beginning. But I know my wife would not watch a show that dated, though she is a science fiction fan herself and enjoyed a few seasons of Torchwood. So where do I start? Here's an article on this topic; is there more to say?"
Re:At the risk of my nerd card... (Score:5, Informative)
First, you need to remember that Doctor Who started life as a children's show. Thus, the first bunch of seasons were very oriented toward the 60s serial audience for children. As a Doctor Who lover, I had to really push myself through the first three doctors worth of shows. That isn't to say that there aren't some really great shows to be found early on, but I can see how it might not be the cup of tea of most viewers.
The show really kicks off with the fourth doctor (Tom Baker), often heralded as the most popular doctor. For a certain generation (such as myself, being around thirty years old), Tom Baker is "the" doctor, kind of the same way that for people around my age think of Ronald Reagan as our concept of what "the" president should look like.
Anyway, I would say Tom Baker is the place to start and if you discover that you have a hunger for even more, you can go back and watch the rest. There's a good chunk of missing content over the first three doctor's, however. There's some beyond the third doctor that is still missing, too, but the most content is missing from early on. Back in the day, the BBC just threw out films in order to make room to store more. And at another point, I believe a fire destroyed a lot of it. Where possible, people have recreated episodes by merging audio recordings with still photos from the set.
Beginning with the 2005 Doctor Who, the show technically had a "reboot". You could reasonably only have ever watched these episodes and nothing before. While it's a reboot, the doctor's still count in order and the chronology of everything still happened. So it's a reboot, but . . . . not really. The tone of the show also changed, dramatically. While the doctor always had companions, it was never a show about a brooding sad doctor alone in the world having one romantic interest after another with all the intrinsic undertones. This puts a lot of fans off. If the early doctor who shows (the first three doctor's, at least) were very oriented toward young children, the latest three doctor's were very oriented toward the female "Lifetime" channel audience (to a degree). I find it a noticeable change, but honestly, I don't have a huge problem with it. I like the additional depth the doctor has grown to have.
Anyway, my advice would best be summarized as:
+ You can get away with just watching the modern Doctor Who.
+ I'd really suggest watching everything beginning with Tom Baker onward.
+ If you're hungry for more, afterward, go back and pick up what you can of the first three doctors.
Then you can add on the rest of the shows, like Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood (none of which I have watched yet, but will, eventually -- I don't know much about them).
As for how to find them? You can find old episodes on Netflix. Not sure how much is there. I'm not sure what the legal status is of the copyright and distribution on the content is, but if you know where to look around, you can find collections of all Doctor Who episodes available to the world on bit torrent. It comes out to 26 seasons and about 750 episodes (none of this including 2005+). I would absolutely love to have some sort of an official collection of every single Doctor Who content out there (they also have lots of books, comics, and radio plays . . . all of which I've owned to some extent over the years, because I'm a raging dork). Unfortunately, I don't know where you can find a lot of the content, commercially, and torrent seems possibly the only way for much of it.
Starting with Chris Eccleston (Score:4, Informative)
He's good, but for the full flavour, you need some of the early stuff.
Start with 'An Unearthly Child', then 'The Daleks' - the first two stories of Hartnell. Try 'Tomb of the Cybermen' - the first existant Troughton. Watch 'War Games', then 'Spearhead from Space' to get the transition to Pertwee's doctor. Most Pertwee stuff is pretty good, but with special mention for 'Terror of the Autons'. Tom Baker had a lot of good stories, but again, special mention for 'Genesis of the Daleks', 'Pyramids of Mars', and 'The Masque of Mandragora'.
Peter Davison is a little harder to pick and choose, as they were running loosely-connected plot arcs over entire series at this point, but 'Earthshock' is a good one.
From Colin Baker, I'd pick 'Vengeance on Varos', and for Sylvester McCoy, 'Battlefield', and 'The Curse of Fenric'.
Remember, budgets were pitiful, it spent a lot of time being perceived as a children's show, and yes, they did script pacing differently back then. Sets are wobbly, some effects are woeful, and some acting isn't up to much. But underneath are stories, characters and entire mythologies that make something greater than the sum of their cardboard spaceships and bad chromakey effects.
The Daleks, the Cybermen, the Doctor himself, these will be myths and legends long after everyone's forgotten Firefly.
Re:At the risk of my nerd card... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a whole generation older than you, so I started watching Tom Baker as the Doctor when I was a teen in the 70s. I have a friend the same age as me who lived in the UK as a child and watched the original series live as a small child. He remembers thinking it was craptastic even as a 5 year old (but he watched it anyway - not a lot of good options back then). I saw the shows from the 60s in my teens in the mid 70s and really couldn't get past the lack of production values. Revisiting them later on in my 30s, I still didn't find them really worth watching.
For me, the best Doctors were Tom Baker, David Tennant, Peter Davison, and Christopher Eccelston. I like Matt Smith, the current doctor as well.
I agree with your overall advice to the OP:
1. If you have have limited time, just start watching from the "reboot" of 2005.
2. If you have more time, start with Tom Baker, then continue on with his successors from the original series as long as your interest holds up.
Re:At the risk of my nerd card... (Score:1, Informative)
Firefly was really a Western. That made it more general interest in a way. Although Westerns themselves are dated and most people would not be able to get past the whole "space" thing.
Cowboy Bebop?
Cowboy Neal?
Re:At the risk of my nerd card... (Score:4, Informative)