General All-Purpose Doctor Who Thread

I’ve been a fan since the 80s. Peter Davison was my first Doctor.

Up until the recent Whitaker seasons, I had watched/heard/read every televised episode and read several of the books.

3 Likes

Tom Baker, Sarah Jane Smith.

5 Likes

The Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) was my first Doctor. I grew up with tight ties to the Whooiser Network, a very active group of Who fans in the central Indiana area. Read a huge amount of the books…Earthshock was my fave.

Very hit or miss over the years, only got into NuWho right before the 50th Anniversary. Was a lot of, um, fun watching what was it, 7, 8 series in about 4 months??

Been filling in some classic Who now and then. Pertwee (Third Doctor) is probably my favorite of the Classic Doctors, though I’ve been on a Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor) kick recently.

3 Likes

I saw occasional episodes of the old series on PBS as a kid. I watched the new series right from the start of the Eccleston season, and through to the end of Tennant.

7 Likes

Classic Who, Tom Baker.

Local NBC station bought the Time/Life-syndicated Tom Baker package (Seasons 12-15) and showed them over and over in notoriously varied time slots. And I watched them over and over. And over. Companions Sarah Jane + Harry. Then Leela, plus with K9’s 1st season.

2 Likes

I’ve always had a soft spot for Patrick Troughton. Not only did he have a wonderfully expressive face, but he also acted through body motion in a way reminiscent of the great silent era comic actors. The only other modern actor with a similar ability who comes to mind is Rowan Atkinson (particularly as Mr. Bean). This makes the fact that so many of the serials featuring Troughton being available only in audio form even more tragic. Another mark in his favor is how he and Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon were arguably the greatest Doctor/Companion match-up.

Now for a couple of potentially unpopular opinions. I think the Colin Baker era is nowhere near as bad as the fandom makes it out as. The issue as I see it is that he gives a really bad first impression in The Twin Dilemma (an otherwise decent enough story) and it colors the perception of all the other serials of his era. Adric also doesn’t deserve the amount of grief he gets, as the only times I found him intolerable were in State of Decay and Four to Doomsday. Finally, I found the Seventh Doctor era a complete mess. This is all the more tragic since McCoy clearly had it in him to be a great Doctor but was constantly hobbled by terrible scripts. I also think Ace is an overrated Companion whose only real quality is that She’s Not Mel. Then there was the final serial Survival, which left me genuinely angry, in particular how they took one of the most memorable moments from the first Dalek serial and subverted it in the most insulting fashion possible.

1 Like

Yes! Another Troughton fan! Pat and Frazer had some of the best chemistry. I also liked Zoe much more than Barabara. And folks can say all they want about the first Dalek story, I thought Tomb of the Cybermen was possibly the best monster intro ever. It was so wonderful to get more of Troughton’s era back about ten years ago when Enemy of the World and most of Web of Fear were found.

I’ll add to your unpopular opinions: I dislike William Harnell’s era. Not as much as I disliked Jodie Whitaker’s, but I do not watch his stories. I don’t like the pacing, or Barbara (she really irritated me with her sanctimonious arguments in The Aztecs). I realise that his era was still the early days of television in general and they were literally committing plays to film, but it just does not work for me.

1 Like

The only Hartnell era episodes I’ve really seen are the ones from “The Beginning” DVD set, which has “An Unearthly Child”, “The Daleks” and “Edge of Destruction.” I enjoyed them, in large part because of the historical interest, but I don’t know if I would have liked dozens of episodes like that, especially when they started to get into the “educational” ones. Then again, the show was aimed squarely at children back then.

1 Like

I started watching Doctor Who on PBS (10pm Saturdays, full stories stitched together so there was only one opening and ending credits) around 1990-1991. After the full classic run had ended, but while you could still believe the line that it was just on hiatus, given how the BBC can be where sometimes there are years between seasons (sorry, “series”) of shows.

I got into the reboot by Torrenting episodes of the 9th Doctor before they even announced it would air anywhere in the US. (EDIT: Or at least I think I did. I can’t remember how much the lag was then. I definitely was torrenting at times when we were way behind the UK.)

And just general writing and production issues near the end of the classic Doctor Who run. I think just about anyone who has listened to Colin Baker Big Finish audio dramas has their opinion of him revised dramatically up.

Their original remit was an educational children’s show, but as you can see with “The Daleks” as the 2nd story, they started pushing back against that in favor of family friendly SciFi almost immediately.

2 Likes

Well, in his first scenes, he’s going through the regeneration trauma. I think it’s unfair to judge his entire run based on his first scenes. I haven’t watched much of his era yet, but I’ve seen some of those first scenes and it’s clear that he’s not in his right mind.

But I’m coming long after his run and I admit that I may have had a different perspective if I had been watching as it started.

1 Like

Colin Baker was the Doctor when I first became aware of the series, so I’ve always been partial - not having anything to compare it to at the time and being young obviously big factors. But I like his general…. erm……‘prickliness’ even now.

Revelation Of The Daleks absolutely mashed my mind as a child. As an adult of course the most horrifying part is Alexei Sayle’s American accent.

2 Likes

Doctor Who was a “keep circulating the tapes” thing for us. Our local PBS station didn’t show it, but my brother had a friend in another town who sent us a bunch of tapes of John Pertwee and Tom Baker episodes, so those were my first two Doctors.

3 Likes

It was almost a year before the series made it to the US. So you experienced the Graham Norton bleed-through during Rose!

2 Likes

We had a little of that too. My friend’s dad had been recording the episodes off PBS for as long as they had a VCR, so if you had any lacunae that weren’t also one of the beeb’s (in the early 90s there were still missing Pertwee episodes, even) they could hook you up from their VHS cabinet.

2 Likes

Yeah, fortunately I had learned to use BitTorrent before things got going again.

1 Like

Wow, lots of other fans of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor here! :wave: I’ve usually thought of him as my favorite. His was a very approachable Doctor, and the actor & show wasn’t afraid to play up the humor now and then. Plus the scarcity of his episodes made it a treat to watch. … Does Britbox-US still have all the existing classic Doctor Who?

Local PBS stations: We really were at their mercy back then. Even with a good one, you had to wait years after the UK broadcasts for newer Doctors. With Sylvester McCoy’s, and maybe prior, a group of fans on the Internet decided to split the costs of having tapes sent weekly and converted so they could all watch within about 2 weeks. Extreme, maybe, but seemed worth it at the time.

1 Like

Put me in the Troughton Club too. I think what I like most about his Doctor is the impish compulsion to discover things. “Tomb of the Cybermen” is a perfect example. He seems to suspect the site they are on is actually filled with Cybermen, and he can’t help himself giving assistance to the archaeologists so they can release the terror, really all to scratch the Doctor’s curiosity itch. It’s such a mad scientist mentality. (This is also why I love the Re-Animator movies; West is driven by a desire to get it right, and he just doesn’t understand that the danger outweighs the potential knowledge. It’s so deliciously insane.). I know I paint him as a madman, but I do adore that Doctor.

Tom Baker is classic of course, but the two problems with him are: 1) he believed that the show was at its best when the camera was pointed at him, and 2) he was absolutely right in that regard.

As for the modern era, all the usual commentary. When Chibnall was announced as showrunner, though, I dreaded what was to come. In my opinion the episodes he had written for Doctor Who and Torchwood were the absolute worst. But he had gone off and done Broadchurch, which I didn’t see but everyone seemed to love, so I was hopeful for his tenure as head Who Guy. And that first promo I saw with Jodie Whitaker, where she said “new faces, new worlds, will you be my new best friends?” I was like “YES this is my Doctor!”

And then we got Chibnall-caliber scripts. I honestly think he doesn’t understand Doctor Who. My friend and I ended up hate watching his entire run, and we were crazy excited to hear he was leaving but upset that Jodie was going too. She’ll show up in a multi-Doctor story, sure, but even if written brilliantly it’s mostly going to show me how good her era could have been.

I’m much excite for Davies coming back, though I admit I prefer the earlier Moffat seasons. It seems he got burned out running Who and Sherlock, and both shows suffered.

7 Likes

And I’ll add my quasi-conspiracy theory idea regarding Jodie Whitaker: the moment she was announced, I thought “did Chibnall cast a woman to deflect from his bad writing?”

While I’m sure there’s some strong “the Doctor can’t be a woman” feelings out there, I’m glad that most of the criticism I’ve seen of the last few seasons has been about the writing. Take that, Chibnall! Your smokescreen didn’t work!

7 Likes

Another conspiracy theory I’ve heard is that Chibnall purposely sank Whitatker’s Doctor to ensure there would never be another female Doctor.

No, Chibbers just can’t write Who. He never could.

The problem I see going forward is finding a showrunner that not only understands how to make a good show, but one who understands the special issues with trying to produce a sci-fi show like Who. RTD can’t run it forever (we tried that with John Nathan Turner) so who else is out there that understands how to produce genre TV?

3 Likes

Chibnall can write a decent script - Broadchurch, especially the first season, is pretty darn perfect - but I think with Who he got caught up in being SO CLEVER that he got lost in his own haze. Maybe he felt like he had to “keep up” with Moffat and RTD and shot himself in the foot trying.

I still need to watch the last two Jodie series. I made it through Highlander Season 1, so I can make it through anything!

3 Likes