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| Art by Andy Lambert, epic Doctor Who artist. |
For me, it started sometime before I was even born. In the 1970s, Doctor Who had been on the air for over 10 years. For us here in the United States, it airs on the local PBS station. One day my Aunt came across the show, and she has been watching ever since. So from there, others of her family became interested, including my dad.
There is a common saying among Doctor Who fans that "You never forget your first Doctor." My Aunt first started with the 4th Doctor. However, since I was raised with Doctor Who, I have no idea who my first Doctor was. But I do have a few clear memories.
The first episode to air after I was born was the 20th Anniversary Special, "The Five Doctors" when I was 7 months old. But how about we instead start where I actually remember and work backwards.
When I was 16, Doctor Who reruns had not been playing on PBS for a number of years. But then New Years Eve that year, they were bringing it back with a "Regeneration Marathon" where they showed one episode from each Doctor's first story, along with the usual PBS fund drive.
At the time, I was looking forward to that, since I remembered the show, but hadn't seen too many episodes. I remember when I was maybe early teens and seeing a couple 3rd Doctor Stories. I remember seeing "The Green Death" and it freaking my sister out. Understandable too: Maggots are gross already at their normal size. I remember in the same timeframe seeing "Carnival of Monsters" with The Doctor being chased by Drashigs through the Miniscope, while the people on the sailing ship repeated the same actions over and over again.
But even then, I knew what Doctor Who was. I remember from my childhood my first clear memory of Doctor who being a dream that I had where the Doctor went back in time over and over again and that there were a line of Police Boxes right next to each other because of it. They were all painted Pink, leading me to believe that the first episode I clearly remember was "The Happiness Patrol" which aired when I was 5, so I had to be at least that old.
I can't put a date on my other memories as they are less clear. But when I see the Mouse Droid in Star Wars, I think about K-9 from Doctor Who. I remember as a child seeing an old grain silo, and thinking that it looked like a Dalek. There's a strong resemblance:
I didn't know Daleks or even the TARDIS by name when I was a child, not until I was 16 and PBS returned to airing them regularly every Saturday. But even without names, they left an impression on my childhood memory. Much like I remember seeing Lost in Space when at my Grandma's house, but I couldn't tell you what one episode was about.
Doctor who went off the air in 1989, and with the TV movie in 1996, there were always that dream that it would return to the air, but I had thought it a hopeless dream. My sister was the first to hear that they were making a new season to begin in 2005, and our family couldn't be happier.
In celebration of the 50th Anniversary this year, I decided that I would go through and watch every episode of Doctor Who. By the end of this year, there will be 800 episodes, so it was no easy task. Yet somehow, I finished last Sunday night.
In watching it straight through, I received many surprises. My sister had wached every episode, and then every episode again when converting them from my Aunt's VHS tapes to DVD, so I had thought I had seen most episodes. I had actually seen very few 1st and 2nd Doctor, and I was missing quite a bit from the others. In reality, I had only seen all 4th Doctor and 7th Doctor prior to this point. (Well, and 8th-11th Doctors too.)
Although I was familiar with the early Doctor's companions, I rarely knew when they left, so that was surprising for me. Many times they were in the lost episodes, so that only makes sense. The First Doctor went through a lot of companions, especially during that third season. I hadn't realized that before.
Originally, I had thought of Doctor Who as mainly like Star Trek: a series of unconnected stories that you didn't have to watch in any particular order, and only recently started making better plot arcs and character development. While it may be the case that you don't lose much from what order you see them in, watching them in order you could really see the characters develop. And they actually did reference previous adventures from time to time.
The First Doctor I had thought of as a cranky old man. But really, he's as playful then as he is now. A little boy in an old man's body. That really stuck out to me in "The Romans" where the Doctor and Viki have a nice bit of fun, while unknown to them, Ian and Barbara are attacked and kidnapped. You really see how the Doctor had grown to love having people with him when he is finally alone at the end of "The Massacre".
The First Doctor is one of my favorites. Besides being the one to start it all, they had some quality writers during his time, especially the first two seasons. Ian and Barbara are also two of my favorite companions, who really set the bar high for those to follow. Where the first Doctor era suffered was in the pacing. The same story would be told a lot quicker today, but at least the delays had a point. It's not like they were just wandering around to fill up time, like some later stories.
But because of the lost episodes, it was hard to get a feel for this new Doctor. I felt much like his companions, not knowing who this new character was. When the Daleks in that first episode identified the Doctor, that settled it for them. (I really enjoyed that it turns out "The Victory of the Daleks" is simply a clever reversal of "The Power of the Daleks.") For me, it was when over 10 episodes later I was able to see a non-lost episode, and with his facial expressions and acting, I knew this too was the Doctor. Of his companions, I think Jaime and Zoe are two of the best companions he's ever had.
In many ways, the Second doctor was the opposite of the first. He was a young man who seemed very playful. But while the first Doctor seemed to enjoy relaxing and exploring, the second seemed very keen on seeking out and destroying evil. The second Doctor isn't one of my favorites, and I wonder if that's why: Yes, the Doctor is always in trouble, but here it seemed he was always in trouble, with no rest. Lots of scary monsters for him to battle, but little time for the joys in life.
The third Doctor began with the Time Lords forcing his regeneration and banishing him to Earth. We had previously seen UNIT with two of the 2nd Doctor's stories, but now that the TARDIS was immobile, the Doctor stayed with them as their scientific adviser.
But of course, that didn't stop the Doctor from trying to repair the TARDIS so that he could try to escape. He actually did manage to leave Earth more often than I had realized. Usually by the allowance of the Time Lords. After saving Gallifrey, they restore his his TARDIS to full working order.
Each Doctor has had their own main recurring villain: Daleks for the first Doctor, Cybermen for the second, and here with the third, we meet the Master. One thing I admire about the Master, is that unlike other villains, he had patience. He never hurries his plan along, but lets it instead plays it safe. Unfortunately for the 3rd Doctor's Master, his plan is always foiled because he always attempting to work with some other alien, and they always turn against him in the end.
Unlike the many companions that previously entered the TARDIS, usually on accident, the third Doctor only had three regular companions, the first two assigned to him as his assistants, and he would take them to help with fixing the TARDIS. We could also rightly call the regular UNIT soldiers companions, despite rarely traveling in the TARDIS. After all, the Doctor himself didn't often travel by TARDIS in this time period either. Jo Grant is one of the best companions, and was great with the 3rd Doctor.
While the previous Doctors relied on their male companions for physical protection, this Doctor could stand on his own in a fight. He also acted as a kind of diplomat, the voice of reason that went unheeded by the megalomaniacs he often encountered. I think it's that variety that makes him one of my favorite Doctors, on par with the first.
The fourth Doctor was the longest running Doctor ever, and with good reason too. He really is the best. He has that quirky carefree attitude that immediately sets you at ease, and before you know it, you've fallen in love.
Besides that, he had some very quality writers. The stories he was in are some of the best episodes in Doctor Who history, including "The City of Death", "The Pirate Planet", "Genesis of the Daleks", "The Deadly Assassin", "The Face of Evil", and "The Brain of Morbius". When you want a good story, there is no better writer for Doctor Who than Douglas Adams.
One interesting aspect of the 4th Doctor was that he was finally able to fly the TARDIS. It often goes of course still, but the 1st and 2nd had no control at all over the TARDIS as its navigation circuit was broken. While still in exile, the 3rd Doctor had the Master fix the TARDIS, but the Time Lords had made it so the TARDIS would always return to Earth. Even after they had restored the Doctor's freedom, it took a while for the Doctor to learn to fly properly. In fact, it was only in the last story, "The Planet of Spiders" that the Doctor was able to go somewhere on purpose: becasue he had previously hard-wired the control to go to Metebelis Three. By the end of the 4th Doctor, he had installed a randomizer so that he didn't always have to plan on where to go, and he had also become proficient enough to not only go to the planet he wanted, but also could go from two different locations on the same planet.
The fourth Doctor also had some long-running companions: news reporter Sarah Jane Smith had first shown up with the third Doctor, but I associate her more with the fourth. Next was Leela, a savage descended from a human colony in the distant future. Then there was Romana, a young Time Lord sent to assist the Doctor retrieve the segments to the Key to Time. They are all at the top of my favorite companion list, too. I especially enjoyed the variety of companions, really none of these are like any other ever. The 4th Doctor era really was the golden age of Doctor Who.
People sometimes joke that the fifth Doctor was the time period of having too many companions. Although the norm had become just having one female companion, remember the first Doctor started out traveling with three companions. Really, in many ways, during the 5th Doctor, the show was going back to its roots. Despite a now-working TARDIS, the Doctor often had trouble flying it again, rarely going where he wanted.
I think Nyssa is my favorite 5th Doctor companion, but I want to talk about Tegan. I used to not like her, since she was always complaining. However, watching them in order, I was able to see the development her character goes through. She comes to enjoy traveling with the Doctor and only leaves when the strain of all the death and destruction makes it stop being fun for her. I think in many ways, that reflects on the Doctor's attitude himself, but also on my own.
I think I relate my personality most with the 5th Doctor, which is why I really want to like him. However, I didn't really care for the writing style that the stories gave him. For example, "Terminus" could have been one of the best stories ever-- A mysterious spaceship in the center of the universe filled with contagious sick people, the fate of the universe in the balance as its reactor goes unstable, a servant of the Black Guardian set as a companion in order to kill the Doctor. All the makings of a great story, but in practice, it was just a lot of wandering through corridors and ventilation shafts for four episodes.
As I said earlier, some Doctor Who stories moved slow, but at least they had a point. It is often a common theme that they can't just leave in the TARDIS because they are separated from it, however in 5th Doctor, it seemed like they were only separated from it because they couldn't remember where they parked. And both 5th and 6th Doctor seemed to suffer from just wandering around lost to fill up time. So while I want to like him, 5th Doctor is actually low on my favorite Doctors list.
The 5th Doctor took an entire story to recover from regeneration. Some say the 6th Doctor never recovered. He is the least favorite Doctor on many lists, including my own. Really, a lot of that is in the fault of the writers, however. I hear that he is actually really good in the audio adventures.
Most Doctors have some large amount of pride, but the 6th Doctor acted as though the universe revolves around him. While there's nothing wrong with that really in Doctor Who, the problem that I had was that it was at the expense of his companion. All that mattered to him was that he was safe, even if it meant putting Peri in danger.
Though Peri is also one of my least favorite companions, she had a lot to put up with. Somehow by the end, she learned how to deal with the 6th Doctor's mannerisms. In the end, though, the Doctor still desired to destroy evil, and his companion still just wanted to have fun.
The 7th Doctor started out shaky, but then they got some better writers, which really saved the character. This Doctor is more of a manipulator and much more destructive than his previous incarnations. He also really cares for his companion.
During the 6th Doctor, the TARDIS was usually pulled off course by some force or another, so it was refreshing for me that the 7th Doctor could always go where he wanted. In fact, in seems that his travels were designed specifically to give Ace her character development.
Although not my favorite, Ace is definitely an above average companion on my list. She comes to face her fears and overcome them.
In 1996, Fox attempted to bring back Doctor Who as an American TV show with the movie. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) it wasn't popular enough, so that didn't happen.
I liked the 8th Doctor well enough, but my only complaint is that he was so short-lived that we never really got a chance to know him. I do hear that he does really well in the audio adventures.
In 2005, I was just glad that my favorite show was back on the air. I was disappointed that the 9th Doctor was only around for one season. At the time I liked him well enough, but looking back, I just don't like many of the stories he was in. I'm not really a fan of the Slytheen, for much the same reason I'm not a fan of Sil.
During the first two episodes, I was thinking, "Yep! Same old Doctor, same old adventures!" But when the Doctor revealed that his planet had been destroyed in a Time War, I knew that the show was something more now. It wasn't just a Time Lord on the run having adventures. Now he was the last Time Lord.
The 10th Doctor is probably my 3rd favorite Doctor. He was adventurous and loving, yet there is still that shadow over his hearts from the Time War. I really like what Donna had to say-- that he needs a companion because sometimes he needs someone to stop him.
Donna was my favorite companion of his. A companion is someone who is there to support and help the Doctor, and I didn't like that his other companions were falling in love with him. However when I put that aside, I realize some of the best episodes were there with Rose and Martha, too.
I did like that Martha just left the TARDIS. Only very few times in classic Doctor Who were companions forced to leave in the was Rose and Donna were, and it always makes me sad that they couldn't have had happier endings.
It was after re-watching the 11th Doctor that made me think he is my 2nd favorite instead of the 10th. Even though he's zany, and the stories and aliens are kind of odd, the acting, writing, and cinematography are all very professional and in a way that I like.
The one thing that I like most is the character development between Amy and Rory. Instead of like his predecessor letting his companions fall in love, he puts a stop to that and instead opens the windows to show who they really love. Amy and Rory have got to be two of my favorite companions, right up there with Ian and Barbara. (Who, in turn are right after Sarah Jane Smith, Romana and Leela.)
We've only just met Clara, I really wish that we had known her better before the Name of the Doctor, but I'm hoping that she does really well.
I'm excited for the new Doctor, and I hope we have many new companions, plot developments, good quality writing for another 50 years. Though things may change, I hope they stick to the core of what Doctor Who is all about: Love life and have a brave heart. Nothing is impossible, and there's always hope while there's life.
Even though we are limited to one life on one planet, there is still so much to see. Let's get out there and make sure every day in our life is an adventure!
It's been a good 50 years
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