Decided to start watching on D+ next year. My son watched the first season of the reboot years ago. I decided to try watching the original DW on BritBox to educate myself. First episodes of season 1 with the cavemen and the search for fire are … trippy.
Don’t mean to de-rail the conversation.
Just sharing.
Woah, you went deep cut. First of all, are you sure you don’t want to start from the 2005 reboot onwards? That first season with Christopher Eccelston was a mixed bag, especially the 3rd and 4th episodes, but when it’s good it’s absolutely amazing (see ‘Dalek’, ‘The Empty Child’, ‘The Doctor Dances’, ‘The Parting Of The Ways’) and Chris is genius as the Dr. Then of course you go into the David Tennant and Matt Smith eras which are all mostly brilliant. It’s all great up until when the 11th regenerates into the 12th. THEN I would stop there and dive into classic Who.
Whether you do watch the reboot or not, when getting into Classic Who, if I were you I would go all the way up to Tom Baker, the 4th Dr’s first series immediately, starting with the story ‘Robot’ (that story isn’t that great to be honest so please don’t let it put you off, that season gets REALLY good, especially the second story following Robot.)
Work your way through Tom Baker’s 4th, Peter’s 5th Dr, the 6th (although beware some of his stuff struggled with both writing and budget, although there is some amazing stuff still) then 7th (his first season is the worst of Classic Who BUT don’t be discouraged, they realised they’d gone in completely the wrong direction with him and therefore his second season with companion ACE is awesome and his final is some of the best WHO ever written and he becomes one of the best actors to take the job, which is almost unbelievable when you watch that first season of his.) Finally the 8th Doctor movie.
Once you’ve got through all of that, go all the way back to the 3rd Doctor and work backwards to 2nd and then 1st.
I always suggest this method because although as you’ll already be aware these are BBC pretty low budget productions from the 60s-80s, the black and white 60s stuff is very niche and hard to get into. You might find it a novelty for a bit but you will very likely find yourself getting bored.
You need to start with Tom onwards which was when the show became one of the most popular in the UK. A lot of the effects will still look very dated but the writing on most of the seasons is FANTASTIC and far far better than most of today’s TV. Some of the 4ths seasons, the last 5th Doc season, the final 7th Dr season at
least have some of the best writing of any television ever. It’s such a very intelligent, fascinating, learn’ed and exciting Tv series, hence it’s lasted for 60 years (although god knows how it’s made it through the last 5 disastrous years, praying it’s being fully repaired again now with the new/old team for the 60th.)
By the time you’ve finished the 7th Doctor and the one off 8th Dr Movie you’ll be in love with the show and the 3rd, 2nd and 1st stories will suddenly become properly appealing to watch all of.
Keep us updated on how you get on! I’m always excited when someone new starts their WHO journey.
