What Doctor Who should I start with?

[glee]

@Scissorjack

Just a warning to those who have only seen New Who: the older version didn’t wrap up a story in a single one hour episode {or even two-parters}. A story would comprise four or six half-hour weekly episodes, which taken at a single DVD sitting, can show up the weakneses in the extended format. Every episode except the last will end on a cliff-hanger, and there’s a lot of running to and fro down cardboard corridors.

Typically the Doctor and Sarah will land on a mining colony {read Essex quarry}, Sarah will blithely ignore a warning to “stay here” and wander off to be captured by a tribe of mutants {cue first cliff-hanger}, while the Doctor will be captured by the miners, who naturally suspect him {probably in collusion with the mutants, with whom they are at war} for a serious of mysterious sabotages.

Naturally he will win their grudging trust mid-way through the second episode, and uncover a Greater Hidden Evil threatening both miners and mutants and immediately imperilling Sarah, whom he will set down a paper-mache tunnel to rescue, and will himself be captured by the Greater Evil by the end of the second part {cue second cliff-hanger}.

Sarah meanwhile will have gained the mutants’ trust and set off in search of the Doctor, only to be captured again by the miners {who spend little or no time actually mining except to uncover artifacts of ancient power and menace}. The Doctor and Sarah will be reunited at the beginning of the third episode, after which they will convince both miners and mutants to put aside their differences and work against the common foe, against whom he has devised a cunning plan involving the menacing artifact {which looks like part of an old roller skate painted gold} and probably a retraipse down the cardboard corridor: episode three will end with the Greater Evil {played by a guy in a rubber suit with horns against some dodgy back-projection} manifesting itself to threaten both the Doctor and Sarah in the third cliff-hanger.

After that it’s just a canter to the finish in episode four, with the rubber suited Greater Evil tricked into seizing the Old Gold Roller Skate Of Doom and thus destroying both himself and his underground fortress, which perishes in a welter of special effects consisting of a couple of Roman candles and a cardboard box spray-painted silver: miners and mutants, only most have whom have perished during the fray, are established as the best of friends as ever were, and it’s off in the Tardis again.

God, Doctor Who was great when you were a kid in the '70’s.

Psst! See post 6!

[kelly5078]

@Peter_Morris

Not his first. But generally considered bad, even by 7th Doctor standards.

Considered bad, really? I quite liked it (obviously, or I wouldn’t have said). But overall, the 7th Doctor should have been sued for malpractice.

[kelly5078]

Oh, another one with Peter Davison that I like a lot is “Enlightenment.” Even the effects are pretty good. Immortals racing ships made to look like sailing ships, powered by solar winds.

[Baron_Greenback]

Here’s a pretty good run through of the first 8 Doctors in about six minutes

- YouTube