My friend (assuming he still is, we fight like cats and dogs) says I’m suppsed to mention Peter Cushing. He was in the Dr. Who movie circa 1965. He says he’s his favorite.
I’m still going with Tom. But I guess Peter deserves a mention.
No, you’re not.
I first watched Tom Baker, then our PBS station showed the Pertwee Years, but Peter Davidson will be my Doctor.
Well duh!!! What does that have to do with my post? Does it have to do with the movie? Cuz I haven’t seen it. Just reporting on my friend who insisted I mention him.
And I know, as I know all the stuff you mentioned that his name is not Doctor Who, but that was in the name of the movie.
That movie is generally not considered to be a part of the Doctor Who Cannon is all that was meant. It had only a resemblance to the shows.
Peter Cushing’s Doctor is a source of much anxiety and trepidation in certain circles.
Sort of like the creator of the Daleks, Yarvelling.
Exactly. betenoir, your friend’s favoirte is essentially the Bizarro Doctor. Mr. Cushing didn’t even acknowledge the role in his autobiography.
Those Peter Cushing movies were lame. The first took the plot of the serial “the Daleks” and changed some of the details. I don’t remember the second well…I haven’t seen it in twenty years and was so disappointed I think I blocked it out.
Anyway, I’ve tried to see every extant serial/episode of Doctor Who. I actually like all the Doctors in their own ways. I admit, Colin Baker was really hard to take at first and I still probably like him least of all. Although “The Two Doctors” serial remains one of my favorites.
Depending on my mood, my favorite is either Patrick Troughton or Tom Baker. I regret the BBC purging Troughton’s serials and wish that someone had all of them somewhere so I can see them all, no matter how goofy/dated they are. I adore his Doctor. He was clever and subtle and his humor really came out with his interactions with Fraser Hines as Jamie.
But Tom Baker really convinced me, despite the cheap sets and lame special effects, that he was the Doctor. It was part of why I fell in love with the show. And he did have the best companion in Sarah Jane Smith.
After that, I have to put David Tennant and Peter Davison. I like how the Doctor has evloved in Tennant, and I loved Davison’s exasperation with the people around him.
I never saw much of Sylvester McCoy, but I think he’s pretty interesting as the Doctor and wish the writing had been better. I thought he and Ace had a great dynamic.
Jon Pertwee was great. I especially loved his repartee with the Brigadier, although a lot of his stories suffered, I think, from being Earthbound. Still liked his Doctor though. He had great chemistry with Katy Manning too.
As for William Hartnell, I really did like his Doctor, once he got settled in the role and trusted his companions. He had wit, a temper, and a way of putting people in their place that was quite fun.
As for the Paul McGann movie, I wasn’t really happy with the movie itself, but I thought his Doctor had potential.
Christopher Eccleston was great. But to me he wasn’t a proper Doctor. I always refer to him as “wounded PTSD Doctor.” But it added a dimension to the character that really made the new series a lot more compelling than the old.
The three never appeared together in a single scene.
I am going to buck the trend here and say that Tom Baker is overrated. He gets credit because he was in the role for so long that for those of us in the US especially (having had AFAIK no access to the Hartnell incarnation outside a single scene in “The Five Doctors” (and what, no love for the pinch-hitting Richard Hurndall?) and little to none with Troughton, TB became the default Doctor for us. Personally toward the end of his run I was heartily sick of him. I remember little of Davison’s actual work but I thought he was cute. CB and McCoy came on at about the time that I was finishing high school and the PBS stations in Texas where I started college didn’t carry the show. The movie was awful and I wish they had retconned it away with the new serial. I find both the Eccleston and the Tennant takes on the character to be about equally good.
Previous Doctors had always been cheerfully arrogant - [Tom Baker] “You might be a doctor, but I am The Doctor. The definite article, you might say.” [/Tom Baker] - but Colin Baker made the character an insufferable smug git, like the pub quiz know-it-all that everyone in the bar detests.
No, only half-human.
Are we sure? He signed his name “Doctor W” in The Underwater Menace, and in The Highlanders he introduced himself as “Doctor von Wer” (German for Who). And when he got a personalised number plate for his car Bessie, it was was “WHO 1”. And in The War Machines he was called “Doctor Who” by WOTAN - and he was a really, really smart computer!
No, but his granddaughter Susan invented the name.
The second was based on another Dalek serial, Dalek Invasion of Earth.
I don’t think Cushing made a terrible good Doctor either, he just played him as an old man, nothing more.
THis thread makes me feel old, since I watched the first ever episode (from behind the couch, naturally!)
Having seen them all come and go, I put **Tom Baker ** first, because he felt alien.
David Tennant comes second because he is a quality actor with an edge.
Christopher Eccleston is third because again he’s a decent actor and he really made the relationship with Rose work.
I think the quality of the scripts, sets and CG makes a big difference. Early Dr. Who is hilarious when you look back at it. Deus ex machina plots, wobbly sets and men in rubber suits. It’s incredible that Baker was able to make us believe in it.
Tennant and Ecclestone have benefited from Russell T Davis doing everything properly. (Aaargh! Davis has left! 
)
E.g. since Blink was the best episode ever, this helps Tennant’s reputation.
As for companions, I put them in order of lust :o :
1.Romana II (Lalla Ward) (and Tom Baker married her 
)
-
Leela (Louise Jameson) (fur loin cloth…
) -
Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) (believable actress
)
Yeah, I believe it was in a tom Baker episode, I don’t recall which one or who his companion was at the time where he said * “You’re improving…but it must be my influence, you shouldn’t take any credit for it.”* I thought that it was pretty funny and I use every time my wife does something she finds difficult. Luckily she knows where I got the line so I don’t get punched in the face.
Tom Baker.
I was a fan of the local PBS re-runs. I still remember the shock and horror when I heard that Tristan the doofus from All Creatures Great and Small was gonna be the next Doctor.
He was okay.
Oh, and Leela wins the eye-candy award.
Oh, yeah. I think I first discovered sex watching a knife-wielding woman clad in a scanty rawhide minidress doing a slo-mo dive through a plate glass window {The Talons Of Weng Chiang}: I didn’t quite know what these youthful stirrings were, but maybe girls weren’t as bad as I had been led to believe. Bonus points, of course, for being both knife-wielding and taking shit from nobody: “Enjoy your death, as I have enjoyed killing you.”
Well the good news is that ‘Blink’ was Moffat and not Davis and there is talk of Moffat getting more involved in the show. Actually the very best shows of the new series have beem Moffat if I am not mistaken.
He wrote:
The Empty Child (21 May 2005) - Writer (written by) (My Favorite)
The Doctor Dances (28 May 2005) - Writer (written by)
The Girl in the Fireplace (6 May 2006) - Writer (written by)
Blink (9 June 2007)
Upcoming (for the the US):
Silence in the Library (Tonight)
Forest of the Dead (Next Week)
And was first seen in Doctor Who and the Silurians, the title of which is widely considered a gaffe, as are usages of “Doctor Who” in title cards for The Underwater Menace, The Highlanders, The Savages, and The Moonbase. Documentation from 1963 indicates that “Doctor Who” is not his true name but simply what he’s called by those he encounters, starting with Ian and Barbara. In Part 5 of The Armageddon Factor, a childhood friend of the Doctor calls him “Theta Sigma”, but this is later (in The Happiness Patrol) said to be a college nickname. In The Fires of Pompeii, Evelina says his true name is hidden.
Wow, glad to see all the love for Tennant cause he’s now my favorite, bar none. My first Doctor was Tom Baker, but I only saw the show hit and miss in those days (and typically never an entire serial all the way through). When I started watching regularly, the local PBS station was running through the Pertwee serials and after initial skepticism, he really grew on me, plus I thought the Brigadier was a really cool chap as well.
Peter Davison will always be “my doctor”. He was my first. I was like 13 when I discovered Dr. Who on PBS. I like the stories, the companions, the Master, everything about his series.
David Tennant is my next favorite. Of course that may be because he reminds me so much of Davison’s version of the doctor.