Wanting to dive into Classic Doctor Who but don’t know where to start? Today I give my suggestions for each Doctor, and some tips for how to get used to the slower pacing!
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Watch the Doctor Who: Classic channel! Travel in the TARDIS with full episodes dating back to the Doctor’s first incarnation on SloppBoxx.Com.
I started with classic who, I had vaguely heard about the show from Blue Peter segments, and in the late 90s we had the Curse of Fatal Death skit for Comic Relief which I watched and loved, but I still didn’t know much about it, or feel the need to seek it out, until I randomly stumbled onto UKTV Gold on a Saturday morning, which was showing the Ark in Space (omnibus edition, all 4 episodes back to back without a break (except for adverts, conveniently placed for the cliffhangers). From there I was hooked and would tune in each weekend to watch whatever classic story they had in store (slowly going all the way through Tom Baker, to Peter Davison, Colin Baker and ending on Sylvester McCoy, before looping back around to restart Tom Baker). I would have been 9 or 10 at the time
I developed an obsession from there that some definitely found annoying. When we played in the playground I often played as a character that regenerated like the Doctor, and was cybernetic like the Cybermen, and could timetravel etc. when designing our own t-shirts at school I put a Dalek on mine (as well as some TARDISes) which led to my teacher asking if I was a fan, and whether I was looking forward to the new series, which is genuinely how I found out that the series was coming back, and I was so hyped.
Agree with a lot of your picks. If you were to extend to 6 part stories then Genesis of the Daleks would be a good one. I also really like the Robots of Death for the merging of Isaac Asimov and Murder on the Orient Express. My other favourites were Warriors of the Deep and Attack of the Cybermen, but I understand not wanting to show those to beginners.
Waiiiiit. How can you not include Genesis of the Daleks from the Tom Baker era???
I jumped in with The War Games in its 10 episode glory
Probably not the best place to start but it’s a very solid story and Patrick Troughton is now one of my favourite Doctors so it all worked out
Coming back to this after finishing the Hartnell era for the first time: It isn’t really that different. He’s clearly recognizable as the Doctor, he has a clear character arc, the companions are a recognizable archetype, its just that the effects are a wee bit dodgy by comparison. My personal Harnell Picks™ are probably The Romans and The War Machines. Both four episodes, neither of them are DIRECTLY LINKED to new who lore but they are both very familiar in feel to the new series in my opinion.
Tom Baker. Best Doctor. best companions. Best stories. Tom Baker convinced us that he was an otherworldly, but frie3ndly, being who offers us a chance to ride with him to different adventures across the universe.
This is such a good resource. Some Classic Who fans have just tried to shame new fans, tell them they aren’t real fans, etc. which is a great way to make sure they never watch the Classic episodes.
RTD did a fine job threading the Classic years into his first run. His second run handled them so poorly I don’t even want to imagine what new fans would think of the original show. They would probably be most surprised that Susan is not just randomly appearing in the clouds, or whatever.
doctor who does feel more desighned to jump around and just watch the doctor you like more.
starting from the beginngs issue is more the missing episodes then it being in black and white.
To and for everyone who is making the effort to watch the classic years of the show, I thankyou sicerely. If you are enjoying them, I thankyou even more so. Josh has paved a fine introuctory set of recommendations here and he and many, many of us hope that it unlocks much more for you just getting started with it.