How To Start Watching Doctor Who

“Where should I start watching Doctor Who?”

Any given episode.

“Rose” is as good a place to start as any though.

I might also add that, though it’s almost completely devoid of the Doctor and Companion, and you’re on the fence about whether watching Doctor Who is for you or not, watch the episode Blink (season 3 episode 10) starring Carey Mulligan. It is a perfect example of how creative this show can be.

I’ve been a fan since the late ’70′s (I’m 35) and it’s never been better than it is now. Sometimes the Russell T era gets stick for being overly sentimental but I don’t care I don’t know any other sci-fi (or any other drama) series that can tug the heart strings like Who. It’s mad, scary and inspiring year after year…..and for a programme about a pacifist is steeped in death….

Start at the beginning of the revival in 2005. Only start with the Matt Smith series if you want nonsensical plots, devoid of characterisation and emotional impact.

Oddly enough I finally started watching Doctor Who two days ago after wanting to watch it for a couple years now. however I have started watching from the 2005 season because thats where It starts on Nexfilix, but I am loving it i cannot wait to get into the newer seasons!

I’d start with ‘Rose’. RTD’s Who just pulled me in and made me feel for the characters more. The latest series was a little sterile in that regard.My favourite still has to be series one, followed by series 4.

Rose is the best place to start. As for the Stephen Moffat’s first series being the best? WRONG. It never reaches the lowest points of series two an four and NOTHING beats the final half of THE END OF TIME part 2.

I love it all. :) I’d give Eccleston and Tennant their due by starting with “Rose” and continuing through the first four seasons + specials. My other recommendation would be to try out “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances,” Steven Moffat’s two-parter for the Eccleston season. My first episodes of Doctor Who, and they were a *great* way to start off. I sometimes like to show “The Christmas Invasion,” Tennant’s first full episode, to get people hooked in because Tennant’s so damn charming, but I suppose the trap there is not giving Eccleston love and sort of making it the Tennant show from the get-go. I do love Tennant, but our show’s about change.

I agree with the above posters– Doctor Who is ALWAYS good. Emotional vs. cerebral… I’m entertained either way and I don’t think one’s better than the other. RTD and Moffat are just different. I can’t knock RTD because he’s the showrunner that made me fall in love with Doctor Who in the first place! :)

“there’s always the twenty-six seasons from the original run, but be warned: They are an entirely different beast altogether, with good writing but significantly lesser special effects and, in many cases, acting.”

You can fault the fx. and sometimes the scripts, but never have I seen ANY actors on Classic or Current Who give ANYTHING but their best!

I started with Eccleston and ended with Tennant….pretty much overall good stuff

The RTD era is the best, especially Season Two for Tennant and Piper. I tried to keep watching when Moffat took over, but the new direction just wasn’t doing it for me, which is a shame because I enjoyed Matt Smith’s Doctor and new companion Amy. Nothing beats the fabulous The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End episodes at the end of Season Four in terms of pure fun. I actually found The End of Time (the exit of Tennant and RTD) to be a good jumping *off* point. Fortunately I still get my Whoniverse fix from Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Wasn’t that recently addressed in an episode of the Sarah Jane Adventures – the Doctor says something about having 509 regenerations. Haven’t seen the episode but it got some minor media coverage.

Well, I wouldn’t recommend watching “The Horns of Nimon” then…

Two years to watch every episode? Impressive, man.

Wow

They wouldn’t do a big retcon like that outside of Who.

As many have pointed out here, I’d recommend starting with the Eccleston series (first of the three ‘new’ Dpctors) and progress on to the Tennant seasons. Sadly, I think the plots started heading downhill in the final Tennant episodes (though Tennant himself has a strong claim to be the best ever Doctor).
At this point I would skip the current – woefully miscast – Matt Smith incarnation (Dr Who as a young absent-minded professor with verbal diarrhoea who has to be rightly told to shut up by 10-year-old boys…? I don’t think so…) – as a long-time Who fan, I find them almost unwatchable.
Much better to check out companion series Torchwood or the ‘old’ Doctors, starting with Tom Baker or John Pertwee from the 1970s.

I totally agree that the 2005 revival is a great place to start watching for anyone. It’s great that the revival of show allows new people to be introduced to characters and places that were in the original run without alienating them while not talking down to the fans of the show before the revival. There are two other places that people can get into the show. The first is “An Unearthly Child.” Why not start at the beginning of the original run. The other place is the start of Season 7 with “Spearhead from Space.” The reason I say this is because you don’t need to know about regeneration and it’s the first time the series has a regular cast and setting.

Time and Relative DIMENSION in space. Sorry the geek in me me! But to all people thinking about it – watch it! It is awesome. Love the new stuff – but my favourite Doctor? # 3 – Jon Pertwee 1970-74. You could do worse.

Funny, I just started watching “Doctor Who”…today, as a matter of fact. I’d heard good things about the Matt Smith/Steven Moffat season, and I downloaded it from iTunes. Loved “Eleventh Hour!” Can’t wait to continue!

‘Spock’s Brain’ unwatchable?!??!?!?
And you’re writing about Doctor Who??
What are you, British?? hee-hee.

Seems I’m not alone in thinking that the Matt Smith season is the weakest since the revival in 2005

Please, no-one listen to Alan’s constant trolling of Matt Smith. I’ve met more people who like him than not (and that isn’t my opinion, it is the opinions of people I know), and, to be honest, he’s a much more complex character now that RTD and Tennant aren’t insisting he spend his time either as a grinning buffoon or a menacing intergalactic statesman (again, that description wasn’t me, but Charlie Brooker).

The fact is that right now we have a compelling ongoing plot surrounding the identity of both River Song and the mysterious silence, and hefty emotional drama that, in the last three episodes, has seen characters betray each other, nearly die, desperately seek redemption and love, and be imprisoned for millenia by an unlikely alliance of villains attempting to save all of creation – all whilst touching on the Van Gogh, the Blitz, Romans, Greek mythology, Dickens, and decades worth of back-story, but without ever, once, being inaccessable.

Compared to the incredibly indulgent Tennant years (which were entertaining, but, lets be honest here – Tennant didn’t actually do a full series, and was never fully committed to ‘Who’, given that every year had to have a Doctor-free episode, before, in his final series, he said he wanted to go and do Shakespeare instead, and even when the BBC accomodated him, he quit to go off and do… a remake of ‘Fright Night’?) where RTD used only two major bad guys for the main series story arc over five years (either those pepperpots, or the Doctor’s Moriarty (to avoid spoiling it for others)), and we had to put up with rubbish like ‘Love and Monsters’ and that terrible episode about a living sun (written by Chris Chibnall, whose episodes made the first two series of ‘Torchwood’ unwatchable more often than not, and who left before the superb, Quatermass-like ‘Children of Earth’), or the rubbish one about the Olympics…

Look, the Tennant years were good, but not as good as most people make out. The Christopher Eccleston series was generally entertaining, but a bit lame at times (every time the Slitheen show up, for example). Meanwhile, every year there has been one thing that has been consistent about the show – Steven Moffat’s episodes have been the best. ‘The Empty Child’/'The Doctor Dances’ was the point where people started to take the reboot seriously, ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ was probably Tennant’s best all round performance (being funny, heroic and tragic), ‘Blink’ is spoken of in hushed tones for a reason, and ‘Silence in the Library’/'The Forrest of the Dead’ was the best part of season four, especially the ending, which shows just why The Doctor is such a great hero – something we didn’t see in Russell T. Davies finales that tended to rest on a deus ex machina (Bad Wolf, shut down a paradox, meta-crisis).

Then came this series, where The Doctor was eccentric, amazingly flawed, occasionally alien, and just about good enough to get himself out of the messes caused by a life that seemingly was starting to catch up with him, and all through his own wit and wisdom. This time he was the one saving the day, he was the one clever enough to fight his own battles. The show itself had consistent themes, and a coherant narrative told over the course of the season – not just in a bit of five minute long exposition at the end of the first part of a two-parter, leading to cliffhanger that gets me all excited, and then falls apart in the finale. And what a finale… Wow. The significance of the story The Doctor tells Amy is worth is weight in gold, alone.

Plus, look at what we have next year: the resolution to a long-running mystery, the reveal of a mysterious enemy, The Doctor travelling with a married couple for the first time, an episode by Neil Gaiman… The show has never been better.

Impossible to pick a where to start, they have all had their magic moments as well as quite a few arrgh (Horns of Nimon etc) moments over the 40 odd years. Matt Smith has been fine, likewise David Tennant, Chris Eccleston, all the way back to William Hartnell. I just wish the TV channels over here in the UK would actually repeat some of the pre-Eccleston episodes – it is as if those Doctors no longer exist.

As to starting point, perhaps pick a few stories from each period.. Genesis of the Daleks (Tom Baker), Curse of Peladon (Jon Pertwee) etc as well as the Dr Who Lost In Time DVD set to get an overview of the really early material. There are quite a few dud episodes in all the Doctors

As to best Doctor.. everyone will disagree, mine has always been Patrick Troughton but then again, most of the best episodes of his period have long been wiped, the quality of the recordings will never be transferred to HD, so probably more total nostalgia.

And as to the regenerations, was William Hartnell truly the first? he was the first actor but has it ever been stated that he was the first incarnation? Perhaps he was the fourth or fifth – never liked the limit added on the character, anyway, with the blast of tardis energy etc perhaps he can now regenerate 100 times or more

I believe that you have that in reverse, Jacob. If Time Lords “can live forever, barring accidents,” as the Doctor stated in the TV series many years before the “thirteen incarnations” retcon in 1976, and the concept of “a new life cycle” (of, presumably, thirteen more) in 1983, then surely it was the Time Lords themselves who enforced (somehow) the thirteen lives limit. Now that they are all gone, what’s to stop the Doctor from having the 507 lives that he told Clyde about last year?