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Ask Slashdot: How/Where To Start Watching Dr. Who?

Posted by timothy on from the very-carefully-31-years-ago dept.

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?"

21 of 655 comments (clear)

  1. At the risk of my nerd card... by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You aren't alone. I never got into this show, and I've just never been particularly interested in trying.

    And you know what else--I thought "Lord of the Rings" was boring (both in book and movie form), "Babylon 5" was poorly written and acted, and the movie version of "Starship Troopers" was much better than the book. There, I said it.

    I assert that being a geek doesn't mean having to like *everything* associated with geek life. And if you have to FORCE yourself to get into it, you're probably going to take all the fun out of it anyway.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by Crunchie+Frog · · Score: 5, Funny

      Phew... well at least he didn't take a pop at Firefly

      --
      --- Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
    2. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by FreonTrip · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't agree with everything you've said, but your perspective's interesting. More importantly, it's entirely worth defending. When a friend told me to hand in my geek card because I've never cared for Firefly, I turned it around on him. After a few questions, he admitted that didn't know who Jerome Bixby or Harlan Ellison were*, and that he'd never read anything by Isaac Asimov. Long story, made short: "Nerd authenticity" is relative, and it's worth shaking the foundations a little to ensure that they stand on merit rather than orthodoxy.

      As for Doctor Who, start any place. The Fourth Doctor's a classic for a reason, and I'm partial to Chris Eccleston's turn (2005 series). Don't worry too much about formality or getting off on the wrong foot; it's designed to be pretty approachable.

      * You don't have to like them, but they were both influential enough that it really helps to know why they matter.

    3. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm in the same boat. I go back and catch up on old series with Netflix. But Dr. Who is just intimidating.

      For example, my current series is Smallville. I've done 9 1/2 seasons in about 4 months. I'm going to try and time the finale with the actual shows finale. I did DS9 in 6 months. All of SG-1 in 10.

      But Dr. Who has 770 episodes. 770. That's one a day for 2 years.

    4. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by guspasho · · Score: 4, Funny

      "the movie version of "Starship Troopers" was much better than the book. There, I said it."

      Of course it was; it had Denise Richards.

    5. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by Seumas · · 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.

    6. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by shaitand · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That is the source of all this confusion. People can't seem to grasp the difference between nerds and geeks.

    7. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by kuzb · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Even my mother liked firefly. We can't have nice things because the majority of people are fucking stupid, ignorant drones that believe reality TV shows like "Jersey Shore" are the pinnacle of human creation.

      --
      BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
    8. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by H0p313ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Agreed. Maybe it's because he was the first Doctor I saw, but I still think he was the best.

      In Dr. Who fandom it's commonly said: "You never forget your first Doctor."

      I started watching Dr. Who in 1977 (I was eight...) when I spent four months living in an old manor house on the outskirts of Sheffield. So of course for me The Doctor will always be Tom Baker. He could even make K9 tolerable.

      --
      XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
    9. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by Raffaello · · Score: 4, 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.

    10. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by Davorama · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, K9 was tolerable because you were eight. At fourteen K9 was an unforgivable joke but Tom Baker was still the best Doctor.

      --

      Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.

    11. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by N0Man74 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not simply a matter of reality TV shows being more popular... They are really cheap to make. My impression is that they can cancel a typical (non-reality) television show, and replace it with a reality show, and still be more profitable even if the reality show gets less viewers.

      The free market has many strengths, but it doesn't necessarily promote the best of the arts.

    12. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by Damouze · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I disagree. I view the Ninth, Tenth and Eleven Doctor as - and in some ways quite liteally - three faces of the same individual: Eccleston's Ninth Doctor is the mysterious happy-go-lucky persona that comes in from the cold and takes you up into an adventure. Tennant's Tenth Doctor is a bit more pragmatic, maybe a bit less mysterious: he knows his time is running out and he will go to great lengths to postpone that, and hints of his true age show up all over. And he falls in love. Smith's Eleventh Doctor is neither. Only the Doctor has remained. In a way, he has been reborn, not just regenerated.

      --
      And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
    13. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Hartnell was also obviously a stage actor (in that period, most people on TV were). Whenever he makes an entrance, he pauses to make sure that the audience has seen him before continuing to walk onto the set. This is normal on a stage, where you don't want people to start delivering lines before the audience has noticed that they're there, but on TV it just looks weird.

      Patrick Troughton was the first Doctor I saw, but I was too young for the episodes to make much sense. Jon Pertwee was the one I saw when I was old enough to appreciate the show. I only watched any of the ones between Tom Baker and Eccleston after the new series aired, and they're not really worth it. The arc that they were trying for just before it was cancelled looked interesting, but they ignored it in the new series.

      I'm not sure where the best place to start is. Some of the old episodes are really tedious, and only worth watching as a historical curiosity. The end of Troughton or start of Pertwee is probably around the time when they get to the point where they're watchable for a modern audience - they look horribly dated, but they're still entertaining. Some of the Tom Baker ones are superb, but then it quickly becomes appalling.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    14. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not simply a matter of reality TV shows being more popular... They are really cheap to make. My impression is that they can cancel a typical (non-reality) television show, and replace it with a reality show, and still be more profitable even if the reality show gets less viewers.

      This. Low paid participants who don't need any acting skills, simple camera work and almost no retakes just broadcast whatever happens. Take something like Paradise Hotel. Rent a luxury hotel, find a few good-looking guys and girls and give them skimpy swimwear and free booze. That's pretty much all the props you need for the entire season, the rest is just gossip and intrigue.

      Even if you just compare it to some drama series you still need fairly known actors, script, clothing, props, scenery, you need to do many takes per scene and so on . There's just no doubt that reality shows is much, much cheaper to produce. I once saw some numbers but I've completely forgotten, the difference was stunning though.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    15. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by david+duncan+scott · · Score: 3, Informative

      You know, "Blink" is superb Dr. Who, and the funny thing is that there's hardly any Doctor, or even a companion, in it, which makes it a weird introduction to the series.

      --

      This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander

    16. Re:At the risk of my nerd card... by immaterial · · Score: 3, Insightful

      you have GOT to have a better way of doing things than walking around with a future-pistol. I mean the energy and technology that's got to be available....

      Somewhere on this planet is there's a naked kid scrounging through the mud for some fish to eat. His mom works for $0.25 an hour on an assembly line painting details onto plastic gewgaws that'll sell for fifty times that to some (relatively) astronomically rich Florida tourist on some other part of the planet she can't even dream of seeing for herself. His dad was hacked to death by angry guys with machetes and a different political opinion. When he goes home, he might wash himself off with dirty water heated up on a beat-up pot over an open flame.

      But that can't be. There have GOT to be better ways of living than that. I mean seriously, we have nuclear reactors, hot and cold running water, machine guns and ICBMs, and specialized advanced fishing equipment with built-in radars and GPS....

  2. Start with the modern ones - by DontScotty · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With Billie Piper and C. Ecklsteiner.

    Then, David Tenet.

    Then - I haven't seen them, but get caught up.

    From there - you'll know the flavor of Doctor you like, and be able to make a more informed choice.

    The nice thing about a Time Travel series - is you need not watch it sequentially!

  3. Starting with Chris Eccleston by Leo+Sasquatch · · Score: 3, Informative

    would be like watching Enterprise, and not wanting to watch original Trek because it was dated and didn't have bucket-loads of CGI for space battles.

    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.

  4. Re:Firefly by nattt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nothing excuses the theme tune though...

    --
    -- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
  5. Re:You Never Forget Your First Doctor by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One minute the Doctor is all serious, then he's all giggling and babbling with this totally forced, maniacal grin. It seemed like there was nothing in between. If anyone acted like that in real life, their friends would be urging them to seek mental help.

    I think that was the point. He'd been responsible for the destruction of his entire species in the Great Time War and then had spent a lot of time alone. He was pretty unhinged, and certainly suffering from post traumatic stress problems. One of the major plot points for the new series has been that he needs to have humans with him to keep him approximately sane.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News