If you do watch past stories out of order, there's a tiny number that reference adventures that were never made, so don't go looking for past references and expecting to find them all.
Ahh, "Timelash." It confused so many people!
And forget what they may tell you, but the old iteration of the show wasn't devoid or limited in characterization - it was just a little too English about it, basically focusing on the story at hand.
My take on it is that the new series gives a lot more development to the companions but the episodes are often too short to really properly develop the guest stars. The classic series, meanwhile, has longer stories which require far more development for the guest cast. But the classic companions generally never evolved much beyond 1 or 2 trademark personality quirks. (Perhaps the sole exception to that is the final classic companion, Ace. She was much more front & center of some of her stories, particularly that final trilogy of "The Curse of Fenric," "Ghost Light," & "Survival.")
^ I don't know enough about the franchise to know if it's in line with the kinds of TV Sci-Fi that I generally like, which is what I was kind of hoping to figure out through this thread.
I think I kind of overestimated Whovians' ability to be objective, though.
Objectivity is for sterile, formulaic sci-fi. We Whovians are beyond such things!
The thing that makes
Doctor Who tough to pitch to existing sci-fi fans is that it's hard to really compare to anything else. Most sci-fi shows can ultimately point to either
Star Trek or
The X-Files and give you at least some idea of where it originally came from.
Doctor Who doesn't really have that. It's not copying anything and no one else has really copied it. I suppose, tone-wise, I might be able to draw parallels with
Farscape or
Firefly in that it's relatively light hearted but takes its sci-fi mythology mostly seriously. But it's still a very poor comparison.
I have another question:
If I do decide to watch the series, keeping in mind that I don't care about spoilers for future things and am by and large a "chronology fiend", should I give myself some context for The Doctor's 9th regeneration by watching the DW TV movie and "The Night of the Doctor" before I dive into Eccleston's run?
If anything, that would make it worse. You're still skipping over the entirety of John Hurt's run that way anyway.
The 1996 movie is a mess, even if Paul McGann does nail the character. "Night of the Doctor" is a nice treat for Paul McGann fans and regeneration completionists but it adds nothing to Eccleston's run.
Cassandra's stretched skin snaps, but the Doctor doesn't do anything to the brain in the tank. Hence her return (the original series often brought back old enemies with a lot less excuse).
Honestly, the fact that the Anthony Ainley version of the Master could just do that was part of his charm! "I'm indestructible. The entire universe knows that."
Series 1 was a bit of a roller coaster ride. The first five stories weren't exactly that good. There was a definite improvement in the remaining episodes though. Series 2 was... Well, it had a few great stories but in my opinion series 2 was the low point of the new series.
Season 1, IMO, is probably good gateway
Doctor Who even though the show would later be on much surer footing. The show was testing the waters, seeing how far out it could go in terms of wacky sci-fi. And while it's far from my favorite season, I think it is the most consistent one. I don't think there's a true stinker in the bunch.
"Rose" does a good job of setting everything up, even if some bits get overly silly. The part where the trash bin eats Mickey pushes it a bit too far, IMO. I wouldn't have stuck with the show if they were all like this.
"The End of the World" was actually the episode that sold me on the new series. It was lovely to see such out & out alien-ness on TV again. The entire episode gives me a very
Farscape sort of vibe.
"Aliens of London"/"World War Three" isn't nearly as bad as most fans make it out to be. While the Slitheen aren't the greatest villains, their plot is a credible threat, the stuff with the Doctor is decent (particularly the aforementioned space pig scene), and I love the way that they handle the impact that Rose's departure had on everyone she left behind. That added a surprising touch of realism to an aspect that had never been addressed on the classic series. The episode also helped retroactively make me like "Rose" a bit better because I was originally frustrated that it spent so much time on Mickey & Jackie, 2 annoying characters that I never expected to see again. But when they came back, I thought they were handled very well and I actually wish that we got a little bit more of them later on in the series. (That said, I think later seasons went to that family drama well a bit too often. I want to enjoy the sci-fi adventures, not have to check in with Martha or Donna's mother ever few eps.)
"Dalek" & "Father's Day" are the high points of the season for me. In fact, when I was first introducing my mother to the series, I started with "Father's Day."
Season 2, IMO was much more uneven. I think it had higher highs than Season 1 but also some of the most abysmal lows of the entire franchise.
"The Girl in the Fireplace," "Rise of the Cybermen," "The Age of Steel," "Army of Ghosts," & "Doomsday" are all excellent, IMO.
"The Christmas Invasion" struggles a bit until the final act when the Doctor finally comes back into the picture.
"New Earth" has aged better than I would have thought but it's still only so-so.
"Tooth & Claw" and "School Reunion" focus too much on running up & down corridors being chased by unconvincing CGI monsters.
"The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit" was actually the first time when I really felt like the show genuinely felt like the classic show. It's like, if you just lowered the production value substantially, I could totally see it as a 4th Doctor & Sarah Jane story.
"Love & Monsters is one of the worst things ever to have the
Doctor Who name associated with it. I hate hate HATE this episode. I find the tone to be insulting. It's mawkish sentimentality with a sci-fi veneer and the sci-fi is garbage! And the ending is supposed to be cute or funny or sweet or something and it just comes across as disturbing.
"Fear Her" isn't as bad but, considering it comes right on the heels of "Love & Monsters," the show went through a really rough couple weeks. It's not awful but it feels like a rip-off of "The Idiot's Lantern" from earlier that same season. It suffers from the Doctor getting trapped out of the action for a good chunk of it. And I just can't stand the whispering child voice that the villain has.
I don't mind fart jokes, it's the vomiting jokes in American movies that gross me out. I don't get why these are funny.
As an American myself, I agree. For a while, it seemed like every other
Saturday Night Live skit had fake vomiting in it. Thank the lord that they seemed to stop doing that once Tina Fey left. It also ruins the first
Pitch Perfect movie for me. Again, thankfully they completely got rid of that for the sequel.
And yeah, you've stumbled right into the big fandom divide, much as which Star Trek show is the best - there are those that love the Russell T. Davies years, there are those that love the Moffat years, there are also those that love both.
Moffat wrote some brilliant episodes through the RTD years but as the showrunner - in my opinion - he concentrated too much on clever time travelling twisted stories and his characters felt less rounded and loveable to me.
I enjoyed the show during the RTD era but I LOVE the Moffat era. While Moffat's plots could sometimes get too convoluted for his own good, even his failures tended to be really funny. And he spent less time checking in on the companions' parents. And, IMO, RTD spent too much time providing 'shipping fuel for the Doctor/Rose & Doctor/Martha 'shippers. I'm not entirely opposed to romance on the show (Amy/Rory 4evah!
) but I just never believed that a 19-year-old shop girl could turn the head of a 900-year-old alien in that way.
I have a question I started thinking about: just as a guide, could somebody - or multiple somebodies - give me some comparisons between the "nu" and classic Doctors as far as their overall characterization and base personalities go in terms of "if you like ____ "nu" Doctor, you would most likely like ____ "classic" Doctor"?
That's hard, partly because, as mentioned, Tom Baker is so definitive that nearly every Doctor after him owes some debt to his version. I would also say that, overall, the new Doctors tend to not have as much contrast between them as the classics did. Eccleston, Tennant, & Smith all feel very much like a natural progression to me.
Capaldi goes through a lot of different iterations and you can sometimes see the influences of his predecessors more clearly. His wardrobe & posture sometimes bring to mind Jon Pertwee. His crustiness is closer to William Hartnell & Colin Baker. There are moments in "Mummy on the Orient Express" where I'd swear he was holding a seance with the 4th Doctor.
I would note that Smith & Capaldi are both more eccentric than Eccleston & Tennant. In particular, each has an episode ("The Lodger" & "The Caretaker," respectively) where the entire premise of the episode is "The Doctor can't pass himself off as a normal human being when he goes undercover." It requires them to go a a level of alien obliviousness that Eccleston & Tennant could never pull off. They're actually 2 of my favorite episodes from their respective seasons.
As far as what aspects of the classic series to sample, I think it really depends. I will warn you, most of classic
Doctor Who is super low budget, so much so that you'll never complain about the dodgy production values of the original
Star Trek ever again! It's also really slow in places (not quite as slow as
Dark Shadows but it's the closest comparison I could think of). I would say start with Tom Baker. The pacing isn't quite as slow there as it is in the earlier seasons. The first 3 Doctors are great but you'll probably need to work up to them. Meanwhile, I would avoid most of the 1980s Doctors. Peter Davison is too bland for my tastes. Colin Baker isn't a bad Doctor but he had awful companions and his coat takes a lot of getting used to. Sylvester McCoy had some really godawful writing but a couple of absolute gems mixed in; I would say, watch "Remembrance of the Daleks" & "Battlefield" but ignore the rest. Overall, I love the classic series but I freely admit that it's an acquired taste. But if you have the time & money to spend acquiring it, it's definitely worth it.
In short, Williams' run is not bad, but it was bad a lot of the time. In comparison, Hinchcliffe's three years and JNT's sole Baker year were all-in-all, great.
I like the Graham Williams run. The writing could have trouble sometimes but I enjoyed the season for the devilmaycare "Lets let Tom adlib whatever he wants!" attitude. Most times that would be disastrous but since Tom Baker is an actual space alien it's perfect. On the other hand, JNT was too stiff & sci-fi-ish for my tastes. And I don't understand all the love for Hinchcliffe & Sarah Jane. They were well-executed seasons but I think there was a certain formulaic feel that set in around that time. It lacked the danger of the first 3 Doctors.
