[Dr. Who] Trying to figure out...

[MerakSpielman]

...how to go about watching the entire series.

I have compiled a list of all the Doctor Who episodes from various websites. I didn't realize it spanned 26 seasons! I remember watching a few scattered episodes on PBS when I was a teenager, and I loved them, but never got a picture of the larger, overarching storyline.

Do any of you have any ideas about how to go about watching the entire series? I am a member of Netflix, but they only have about 20 episodes available, out of over 150...

I don't have the money to actually BUY the series, as I'm sure can be done, but I have the money/time/patience to RENT it, if I can just figure out from where I can do so...

Rumor has it that the BBC is going to be putting their ENTIRE archive of all past broadcasts online for free download. This would take years, at best, and is still the subject of much contraversy in Britain. If worse comes to worse, and renting is impossible, I might have to place my hopes on this project...

 

[CCamfield]

I don't have any real advice, but there was no overall storyline in Doctor Who. Sometimes issues would come up again in a sequel episode (like various Dalek stories) but really, there was no overall story arc.

There are only a couple of seasons in which there was a seasonal story arc - the Key To Time series and the one in which the Sixth Doctor was put on trial are the only I can recall.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I know there's no storyline on the level of, say, B5 or anything. It's not like the more modern space soap-opera series.
Still, there's a certain continuity. You can watch the original Star Trek (or even the next generation) episodes in almost any order - they tend not to depend on each other too much - but there's something to be said for watching the episodes in order. You can watch the show evolve as it did in real time. You can see the acting getting smoother and the writing solidify. You also get the feeling of historical connection, knowing that you're seeing the shows from the same perspective that the original audience saw them - especially if you are relatively new to the series.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I don't think you will every be able to watch them all, a lot of them went missing. BBC would place in archive and forget about them, relocate and not care ablout keeping stuff together and record keeping. Many have have been lost to time.

 

[Henry]

A LOT of the first and second doctor episodes (from 1963 to 1969) went missing after their original runs, because the BBC could no longer store them all. the first Doctor (John Hartnell?) has the most missing, because only a few were kept as "examples of the genre." Plus, the celluloid used degrades over time, meaning that you will NEVER get to see them all (more's the pity).

However, everything from the third doctor onward (John Pertwee) has been preserved, as I understand it. My favorite by far was Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor), who portrayed the most eccentric version of them all, for 7 fantastic years, and (what? 120?) episodes.

 

[MerakSpielman]

It's hard to count the episodes. They would film one long sequence, 2-4 hours long, and chop it up into episodes. One time a sequence that was supposed to be 2 45-minute episodes had to be re-done into 3 30-minute episodes.

As best as I can figure out, there were 155 sequences, split into 695 episodes. What we see on PBS nowadays is usually a whole sequence, what would have originally been 2-4 episodes.

Shame about the earlier stuff being lost. Maybe it will turn up agian when they archive their warehouses. Enough modern technology might be able to restore old celluloid....

I might have better luck asking this on BBC or Doctor Who web sites, but I gotta try my community first, ya know.

 

[Umbran]

I don't have the money to actually BUY the series, as I'm sure can be done, but I have the money/time/patience to RENT it, if I can just figure out from where I can do so...

You might want to double-check that. Sometimes, buying can be more economical in the long run, depending on the packaging.

 

[WizarDru]

Actually, most Dr. Who stories are fairly self-contained. Unless the same villain has appeared multiple times in a season, they usually give some quick summary to keep you up:

"Who are they?"
"They're called Sontarans. A nasty race of clone warriors. Terrible chaps."

And so forth. The videos that are available are snippets from all over the series history, with no clear cut history, per se. The Doctor had NO continuity to speak of until the third Doctor, Jon Pertwee. If I were to recommend starting somewhere, it might be there (I think that's "Message from Space"? I forget the title).

The fourth doctor, Tom Baker, is universally the most famous, and did it for the longest, namely 8 years. His successors each had their time, but I think it's safe to say that the Doctor's best years to most fans are most of the Tom Baker years, pre-Romana for me (although City of Death is one of the best episodes EVAR).

Any episodw with more than one Doctor is fun, but if you're not familiar with the doctors involved, it takes away from it a good deal.

Hartnell's years are the least fantastic, and more to do with time travel on earth. Patrick Troughton's years are more about space monsters. Pertwee's years are when many of the classics really start appearing, and the budget rose with the advent of color and a helicopter!

The two last doctors are the least enjoyed, one unfairly and the other due to poor scripts. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Richards]

On a related note, I believe that each of the Doctor Who episodes is now available in paperback book form. It's not the same thing as watching them on TV, but for some of the adventures of the first and second Doctors (William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton), which no longer exist on film, it will be the only way you'll ever get to experience them. Check out the library, you might get lucky!

Johnathan

 

[RangerWickett]

For some reason, I always thought Roger Daltrey should've played Dr. Who. I mean, he was in The Who, wasn't he? And he was immortal on Highlander.