Jon Pertwee, my first Doctor. I was 17, my first night living in NJ, checking out the TV channels. Caught the “The Daemons” and was hooked. Does anyone feel as I do that Austin Powers was a spoof of the Third Doctor?
OK, it looks like everyone who was interested in replying has replied, and the winner is… David Tennant!
Not much of a surprise, really. He is the current Doctor, after all, and has been for a few years now. People are already starting to forget about poor Christopher Eccleston, and as for the older Doctors, they weren’t usually allowed to display the full range of emotion and experience that the newer ones have been. Still, Tom Baker managed a respectable second. I wonder how much of that was the “my first Doctor” effect – especially for Americans. I know when our local PBS stations would air Doctor Who it was almost always one of his episodes.
My own choice: Tennant, far and away. I think because his extremes can be so extreme, people may overlook the subtler moments, but they’re there. I just feel like Tennant is 100-percent committed to whatever he’s doing as the Doctor, whereas some of the others have at times been a little condescending, detached, or even embarrassed. Tennant also has an uncanny ability to portray multiple conflicting emotions in a single line or expression that I think may have been difficult for some of the previous actors.
As for Doctor/Companion combinations in the new series, it’s Tennant/Tate. Their friendship and growing mutual respect was much more interesting to me than Rose’s soppy infatuation or Martha’s unrequited crush, and I loved Donna’s combination of bluster and self-doubt. There are too many permutations in the old series that I haven’t seen enough of for me to pick a clear favorite.
I agree. My first Doctor was Pertwee towards the end of his shift, and then of course Tom after that, but I think that Donna is one of the best companions that the Doctor has had (up there with Sarah-Jane, Leila and Romanadvoratrelundar, obviously). I’m pretty sure that Donna’s story hasn’t ended though.
Having said that, I reckon that the best single Who story that there has ever been is the Human Nature two-parter written by Paul Cornell based on his own novel, albeit quite a bit different. Martha Jones was awesome in that.
I wonder how many people that voted for Tennant saw Baler, and vice versa. I think Baker has scored remarkably well, considering how long ago he played the part. I voted for him, and he was not my first Doctor - I saw from the first, but have not seen any of the last four. To me, Baker was Doctor Who.
Actually pretty much the only shows I saw first-run have been the Baker and Tennant ones. Baker was good and fun, but Tennant is all over him, show quality aside. His sheer joy in the character’s eccentricity is great to watch.