My friend recommended Torchwood to me a while back and I’m partway through the first season and I enjoy it a lot. It’s just the sort of silly shoot-em-up alien sci-fi show I like after a long day of doing actual thinking. But as I understand it, there’s a lot of Doctor Who references and tied-together plot lines that I’m missing if I haven’t at least watched the last several incarnations’ worth of Doctor Who, plus I figure if I like Torchwood, I’d like that too.
But as I understand it, there’s about ten or eleven different, well, incarnations of Doctor Who going all the way back to the 1960s, comprising of over 700 episodes. The really early ones are in black and white and they don’t look that well done, and I read that there’s several episodes missing entirely that nobody bothered to archive from the early series. Where in forty years’ worth of a television show should I start watching? Is it enough if I just pick up with, say, the twenty-first century era and watch from there? Or am I going to miss out on something if I don’t start earlier?
I started with the 21st-century version and had no problem following it. I’ve since watched a number of episodes from the earlier seasons, but I’m glad I didn’t start with that.
You can do pretty well by starting with the ninth doctor (Christopher Ecclestone who revived the series). While there are things that you’d catch if you knew the entire history of the show (e.g., the villain in the first episode), you can still enjoy it.
Overall, the new series is stronger dramatically than the original anyway. I love the first seven doctors and have seen nearly all the serials, but the writing in the revived version is better and the characters have much more depth. The older shows are still fun, but at a less ambitious level.
I’d suggest you begin with The New Who–Christopher Eccleston. He was the first Doctor after a long hiatus & stayed only a year. But that’s the year Captain Jack Harkness appeared.
David Tennant soon won over most of us who were sad to see Eccleston go. He’s had 3 excellent seasons; watch them! There will be 5 specials this year before a new show-runner takes over. Later today, we’ll find out who succeeds him in 2010.
Surely folks who grew up with The Old Who will drop by with suggestions; I’ll stay tuned. Tom Baker had a long run & is the main guy we remember in the USA; PBS carried the show. Not all his stuff was stellar, but The Talons of Wang Cheng (spelling?) & Pyramids of Mars were good story arcs.
In short: Start with The 9th Doctor & go on through the 10th. Then, consider catching up with the history.
I’d recommend you start with the new era. You can either start at the beginning with Season One, or jump ahead into a great episode like ‘Blink’ or ‘The Girl in The Fireplace’ or a two-parter like ‘Silence in the Library’ and ‘Forests of the Dead’. You will miss out on some things by not watching sequentially, but not so much you wouldn’t be able to follow the story and enjoy it.
iTunes has Doctor Who, Seasons 1-4 up, and some of the older shows as well, if you want to go back and give Tom Baker or Jon Pertwee a try.
The older shows were more fun in a camp kind of way. The cheesy special effects were part of its attraction. The newer version is a bit bigger budget and takes itself just a bit more seriously. Fortunately they have preserved a sense of humor and don’t take themselves too seriously.
Start with the new shows as others have said. The old shows don’t hold up well, especially for new viewers. As much as I loved the Tom Baker years, I even find them difficult to watch after the new series.
Thanks for the recommendations. I’ll start with the 9th Doctor after I finish Season 1 of Torchwood. After I get caught up with everything I might go back and watch the early ones to indulge my love of camp 1970s British TV.
There are ten. The eleventh (Matt Smith) has just been announced, but won’t appear for over a year.
I disagree, they were good for the time. There are some very good B/W stories. Also some extremely lame ones.
about 110 episodes are missing, presumed wiped. Although the soundtrack and stills exist, so reconstructed versions of all the missing episodes have been made.
I’d say you should start with Tom Baker. Watch his stories in order. For maximum impact, watch the stories as individual episodes, rather than watching a whole story at once. Leave at least a day between episodes, so that you have to wait to see how the cliffhanger is resolved. Follow with Peter Davison.
Don’t bother about Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy. The stories were universally awful.
The Paul McGann TV movie was good, but not great. Worth watching.
I’m old enough to remember Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, so he’s the one I first think of. (He was the second, so that dates me a bit.) I still remember the huge injustice levied against the Doctor by his fellow Time Lords at the end of Troughton’s reign.
The show’s ratings suffered in the 80s, and the quality went downhill so badly that the BBC cancelled the show. Iconic it may be, but the shows produced in the 80s and 90s didn’t hold the viewers. (I didn’t watch them because I drifted away when I went to university, and lost touch with the show. Peter Davison was OK, but I didn’t like the others.) The revival with Christopher Ecclestone as the ninth Doctor reestablished the show; the writing was a lot stronger.
Torchwood itself is an invention of the revived show (I believe - you won’t find any reference to it in the early Doctors, anyway).
For those reasons, I agree that you should start with the Christopher Ecclestone series. Some of the early stuff may be dated now, but if you want to try and watch, the Troughton, Pertwee and Baker years were my favourites - shaky sets and all.
You can get the new episodes a season at a time - the older ones are packaged individually (a few eps per DVD). There are bundles I think though but to get (say) the entire Peter Davidson collection would be expensive. (correct me if I’m wrong)
So starting with Eccleson makes financial sense (of course you could rent the older eps also)
The two main Douglas Adams episodes are “The Pirate Planet” and “City of Death” (using a pseudonym; one of the great Dr. Who episodes ever). He also wrote “Shada,” which was never aired, but was put out on videocassette in the late 80s (the production was halted by a strike, so it was incomplete; the video included commentary by Tom Baker on what would happen in the missing episodes).
I think the early Who holds up well – there are great episodes in nearly every season. The special effects are cheesy, but the stories were often first-class space opera. And the Seventh Doctor had a run of purely brilliant serials – “Paradise Towers,” “The Happiness Patrol,” and “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy” – that managed to take the Doctor in new directions. “Paradise Towers” is one of my top ten favorites.
The problem is that the videos out now include some great ones, and some mediocrities. Tom Baker had the ability to rise above a weak script, but some of the other Doctors could not.
The Ecclestone and Tennant revivals are better, but not because they had better stories (though they had plenty of great ones). The main improvement is in the depth of the characterization, and for exploring the ramifications of the Doctor’s actions. The series in the original run stood alone (other than having recurring villains and referring to earlier ones), but the newer epsodes show how the Doctor’s actions has consequences.
In fact, you won’t even find reference to Torchwood in Series 1 of the new Who. It came about during the time of the Tenth Doctor, in Series 2.
I agree, start with Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor. I’d watch them chronologically, as there are lots of subplots & references that you’ll pick up along the way that will make later episodes even stronger than if you had gone in blind. His first episode was “Rose,” and is a great introduction to the series.
I completely disagree. It will be a long time before I volunteer to sit through another 20th century Doctor Who story arc. This is specifically true for someone who is coming from Torchwood.