I guess what I’m trying to say is we were aware that the Doctor regenerates, this is a new iteration, etc., but didn’t realize for instance that the Time War referenced in nuWho is actually an event in the older series. I kind of assumed they’d created a certain backstory for the new Doctor that didn’t necessarily line up with the old show. If I think about it, I watched the new series with the idea that the Time War was supposed to be something that happened before he started wandering and picking up companions.
Given your user name, I’m not surprised.
We’ve been working our way through all of classic Who since early in 2012. We’re not doing them in order. We watched most of Four, then some of Five, then all of Three, and now we’re finishing off what little there is of Two.
The early episodes work better if you just pretend you’re watching a live stage play. The special effects are crap, and sometimes the acting goes off the rails, but there are some great moments in the old episodes. Two and Three in particular have some really fun adventures. The team of Two, Jamie, and Zoe is my current all-time favorite Doctor/Companion combo.
[David Tennant Voice] Welllllll … [/David Tennant Voice] technically the Time War wasn’t an event in the earlier series since it takes place AFTER the events of the 1996 movie.
But, yes, continuity was preserved … as much as Doctor Who has ever preserved continuity … .
Originally, I took the Time War to be a device where they could end up ignoring continuity because it had scrambled up the timeline of the universe. Sure, he remembers his old companions/enemies/etc., but the effects of the War were such that some of these could have been erased from time or changed in whatever way makes it easiest for the writers/producers on the new series. For example, I thought this was the justification for re-booting the Cybermen and having a new origin story (rather than just letting them show up with a new nefarious plan like any classic villain), or to fig-leaf why a villain as powerful and old as the Weeping Angels never tangled with the Doctor before.
But near the end of Tennant’s run (and now into Matt Smith’s) it seemed like they were taking continuity with the old series more, well, seriously: More pictures of older Doctors are shown, and he mentions events and persons from the older series (even leaving Elisabeth Sladen aside, which I think could have been handled as a one-off special case had they wanted to). So yeah, I guess the Time War is itself part of the continuity now–and it explains why we didn’t see much of the Doctor between 1996 and 2005 (he was busy).