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

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?"

Comments

At the risk of my nerd card...

[elrous0]

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.

Re:At the risk of my nerd card...

[Crunchie Frog]

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

Re:At the risk of my nerd card...

[FreonTrip]

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.

Re:At the risk of my nerd card...

[0100010001010011]

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.

Re:At the risk of my nerd card...

[guspasho]

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

Of course it was; it had Denise Richards.

Re:At the risk of my nerd card...

[Seumas]

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.

Re:At the risk of my nerd card...

[shaitand]

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

Re:At the risk of my nerd card...

[kuzb]

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.

Re:At the risk of my nerd card...

[H0p313ss]

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.

Re:At the risk of my nerd card...

[Raffaello]

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...

[N0Man74]

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.

Start with the modern ones -

[DontScotty]

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!

Re:You Never Forget Your First Doctor

[TheRaven64]

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.