Which do you prefer?

[O'Dib]

Several posts cropped up recently, praising The Curse of the Black Spot for its Classic Who feel, which puzzles me a bit. I've tried watching some of the old series, and had a really tough time staying interested.

My hypothesis, which y'all will hopefully help me test, is that one's preference for classic or nuWho is a matter of nostalgia, i.e. whichever was your introductory point to the show, is the one you're more likely to hold most dear. I personally count the TV movie on the nuWho side of the scales, for its increased production values, and modern story-telling tropes.

The poll is pretty self-explanatory: There are 10 options on a continuum, select 1, and please clarify bellow. That's it.

 

[Deckerd]

You have to remember that people of a certain age grew up with Doctor Who as a staple on Saturday evenings. The majority of us have never seen a single episode again but they were part of our life.

 

[Starkers]

Personally I didn't think the curse of the black spot had that much of a classic feel about it. If it'd been classic Who people would have really died!

 

[ITL]

I've been watching since the early 70's. I prefer the new show to the old, though. I still have a lot of love for the old show, but it has dated somewhat.

 

[Gov Kodos]

I like both, classic Who has had my favorite Doctors but for Matt Smith. Of course there are better effects and make-up now but that covers only so much for me. It's nice to have done in one stories, but classic Who, despite slower pacing, still has more re-watch value for me overall.

 

[VDCNI]

Black Spot was nothing like Classic Who - as has been said if it had been people would have died and we wouldn't have had to suffer the annoying kid and the pirate learning to be a good father stuff.

I started with Classic Who and prefer it but I do really like nuWho - it's almost the only thing I watch on TV.

 

[JoeZhang]

I liked and watched original Who but there is no getting away from the fact that a lot of it is very slow and there is an awful lot of padding and filler. I've tried to watch some old series again but find myself fast-forward through a lot of it.

 

[Mr Awe]

There were some elements of Curse that reminded me of the classic series, but not too many. The limited number of sets and limited amount of action, primarily. But the relationships between the Doctor and companions are more fleshed out. The SFx loads better even though this was a lite SFx episode for the new series. Even the set was more realistic in Curse. So, a bit of classic Who and a bit of new Who mixed together.

I grew up on classic Who. But, I love new Who just as much. To me, it all really feels like it's a part of a whole. A constantly evolving series but there's as much difference between each of the classic Doctors as there is between the classic Doctors and the new series Doctors. So, it's almost as if the series just is one continuous series (minus that pesky gap!).

Mr Awe

 

[23skidoo]

As I keep telling people, you don't watch classic Who - or frankly any SF series made before 2000 - for the special effects. You watch it for the stories and the characters. So I consider both to be equals, and not out of any nostalgia, although I did start with classic Who back in the late 1980s. The bells and whistles are irrelevant - the most state-of-the-art SF film or series made today will look dated and "bad" in some people's opinions in 10 years, 20 years, heavens - 40 years (yes, I'm talking Firefly, Avatar, Tron Legacy, you name it; no exceptions. After all, I've seen people dismissing 2001: A Space Odyssey and Metropolis as looking kitschy and bad simply on the basis they're old, and of course Paramount was compelled to redo half of Star Trek TOS to make it palatable for some modern viewers). If one wants to be shallow and simply base one's judgement about a show on production values, have at 'er. But I prefer the Roddenberry philosophy that the characters and the writing will outlive the SFX. Watch the "filler" 2-parter "The Edge of Destruction" from 1964 and then watch the Hugo-nominated "Midnight" from 2008 strictly from the character and writing POV and you'll see what I mean. At their core there is no difference.

Alex

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I liked and watched original Who but there is no getting away from the fact that a lot of it is very slow and there is an awful lot of padding and filler. I've tried to watch some old series again but find myself fast-forward through a lot of it.

This. I find many old TV programs (not just DW) could do with a good dose of editing given the sensibilities that I've developed from watching more modern TV.

 

[Starkers]

And by the same token I've seen plenty of modern tv shows where it would have been nice if they slowed the pacing down at times so you could enjoy the story rather than have them running around at 100mph all the time, so there's good and bad in both eras.

 

[VDCNI]

Very true - Old Who would have spent a lot more time building up the mystery of the siren. The episode one cliffhanger would have probably been her first appearance. Black Spot just jumped from one thing to another so quickly it was hard to care about any of it yet it also wasn't in any way exciting.

Look at Hand Of Fear - half way through and we haven't even seen Eldred!

 

[Captain Dago]

I've been watching since Hartnell and I love Classic Who and NuWho equally. But you've got to remember that Classic Who was made for different audiences and with different formats. When you sit down to watch a complete Classic story now, you have to take into account the needs of a weekly serial -- you have to remind people where you left off, give the ones that missed last week a chance to catch up, etc. This invariably make the scripts seem slow when viewed in quick succession.

But the old format DID allow for character development, something this pirates episode could have used. And pacing was slower because life was slower. It's not better or worse, necessarily, just different.

 

[Count Zero]

Personally I didn't think the curse of the black spot had that much of a classic feel about it. If it'd been classic Who people would have really died!

Well, you could say it had the feel of bad classic Who.


As for the original question, I started out with the new show, found it brilliant and decided to check out the old show. I love both equally.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I prefer nuWho. But haven't seen all of the classic Doctor's yet.
I've seen the first which I liked, I've seen the third who is on the bottom of my favorite list so far, saw some of the fifth which was ok but kind of bland and I have some faint child hood memories of the seventh which were cool, although I didn't GET the show back then.

 

[captcalhoun]

i started in the 80s and i like both equally.

 

[StalwartUK]

Started off with NuWho, starting watching the classic DVD's in 2009 and now find that I prefer the older series.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Started with classic who, love them equally. It's the same series, really.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Started with the Classic series. I guess the 6th and 7th Doctors will have been on the air when I was a kid, my strongest memories are of 3 and 4 though from repeats that aired. Though to be honest I don't really remember them enough to name stories I saw and everything. So I'd say I prefer the new series, but that's probably based on being more famliar with it than anything else.

 

[Starkers]

Very true - Old Who would have spent a lot more time building up the mystery of the siren. The episode one cliffhanger would have probably been her first appearance. Black Spot just jumped from one thing to another so quickly it was hard to care about any of it yet it also wasn't in any way exciting.

Look at Hand Of Fear - half way through and we haven't even seen Eldred!

Yeah this was something I picked up as a slight problem with NuWho as early as The Unquiet Dead, another story that really could have done with more time to set the creepy tone of the story. Unfortunately the 45 minute run time doesn't give you a lot of time to set the scene as it were. I'm not saying this is always a bad thing, sometimes it's nice to jump right into a story, and sometimes classic Who did take too long to get a story going, but particularly in the spooky episodes it's nice to have a sense of uneast forming for more than 30 seconds (this is one of many reasons Blink is so fantastic)