I first discovered Doctor Who when I moved to NYC in 1986. I had heard of it from friends in college, but had not had a chance to watch it until then. My first Doctor was Peter Davidson, and I really enjoyed the show. Later (although he was earlier in the series), I got to see Tom Baker as the Doctor, with his characteristic floppy hat and long, striped scarf.
More recently, I watched the rebooted series on BBC America, with Doctors 9, 10, and 11, and just saw the premiere of Doctor #12, Peter Capaldi. David Tennant is definitely my favorite of this group so far, although I also like Matt Smith. There were some particularly good episodes during his run, especially “The Doctor’s Wife.”
But as much as I am enjoying the new series, I became curious about the other doctors, the ones I had not seen. So I searched for the series on Netflix and found that they had 175 episodes, only a small subset. But I set out to see what I could see.
For the first two Doctors, they only had one story (consisting of 3 — 4 episodes each). The first I saw was with the first Doctor, William Hartnell, and was entitled “The Aztecs”. As the title suggests, the Doctor and his companions traveled back to the time of the Aztecs and got into a bit of trouble with the locals. I have to say, this episode did not grab me, and I don’t know if I would have continued watching if this was the first one I had seen.
The next story was entitled “The Mind Robber”, with Patrick Troughton, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The TARDIS is swept into a place out of time and space and the time travelers encounter some very weird happenings, reminiscent of Alice on Wonderland. At this point, I would have said that I preferred Troughton to Hartnell.
Next I got to see my first Jon Pertwee episode, “Spearhead from Space.” I liked this one as well. I found it a bit campy, but later episodes with him got better. I’m now into the Tom Baker episodes, which are more the Doctor Who I remember, though they are new episodes for me, which is very exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing Peter Davidson again, as well as Doctors I don’t know, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. Paul McGann and Richard E. Grant will have to wait until new episodes are released.
In the meantime, brand new episodes are now showing on BBC America. I’ll write about the new season later. For now, I’m back to the screen to enjoy two Doctors.