So You Want To Get Into… Old School Doctor Who

Not that I’m advertising for them but BritBox have now made available every existing episode (and some reconstructed ones) of the original Doctor Who so the whole thing is now readily accessible without a vast stack of physical media. That’s 26 seasons (with some missing episodes at the start) of old school low budget British sci fi goodness to gorge yourself senseless on. But, given that it did run for twenty six years the first time round, where do you start? If only there was some sort quick and hastily written blog post by someone with a bald head that could give you some options…

The Very Start
It seems obvious to say but you could start at the very start. The first three storylines exist in their entirety so you get to know the original TARDIS crew a bit before any gaps start to creep in. Gaps? What are these gaps I keep mentioning? Well, BBC policy back in the 60s and early 70s was to reuse videotape as it was expensive and the concept of extensive repeats or home viewing for the archive just wasn't a thing back then. Fortunately the practice was stopped and a number of wiped episodes have been recovered over the years but that still leaves more than 90 episodes missing from the first two Doctors. Another thing to note on the early years - we’re talking still the relatively early days of television back then so a lot of TV was shot as if live (as it was expensive to go back and refilm) and so the pacing can be a little different to what a modern audience expects and there are a number of minor fluffs in the Hartnell years that weren’t serious enough to reshoot so they just kept going…

The Colour Years
Given that there are gaps, you could start with the Third Doctor when the series shifts to colour and move forward from there. It’s a bit closer to the modern show - elements like UNIT and The Master make their debut pretty quickly and the Doctor is initially confined to Earth so there aren’t too many stories of quarries doubling for alien worlds (at least not at the start of his run). Every episode exists from here on in so you can safely watch all the way through to the end without any gaps.

The Best Ones
A fandom does like to disagree with itself so the concept of which story is “best” is something that very few fans can agree on. Also, you’re likely to have your own personal bests based on what age you were when you discovered certain stories - Tom Baker story Revenge Of The Cybermen is never going to top any best of lists but it's the first one I bought on VHS (yes, they were a thing once) so I have an inordinate amount of love for it. Anyway, these are ones that enough fans can agree consistently are favourite stories:- Genesis Of The Daleks (Tom Baker); The Caves Of Androzani (Davison); The Dalek Invasion of Earth (Hartnell); The Curse Of Fenric (McCoy); The City of Death (Tom Baker); Inferno (Pertwee); Remembrance Of The Daleks (McCoy); The War Games (Troughton); The Robots Of Death (Tom Baker). Those will no doubt be disputed by other fans but that's Doctor Who fans for you. It’s a good sampler from across the years to give you a flavour of the different stories that Who can tell.

That should be enough to get you started one way or another. If lockdown goes on long enough, you might be able to get through them all...