Twitch Presents is streaming classic 'Doctor Who' thru most of January

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/18/twitch-presents-is-streaming-c.html

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dang, i wish i had known earlier – it’s half over now :frowning_face:

the last one was so much fun.

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Well I now know what the rest of my day will be.

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Romana 1 is on

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One of the public stations in the Seattle area, KBTC, has run classic Doctor Who episodes every Saturday night for 31 years. Currently working through the Tom Baker stories. This Saturday happens to be their semi-annual pledge drive. I guess this means another Tardis coffee mug!

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Is my instant default visualization of Tom Baker as “The Doctor” some sort of age related date stamp?

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That probably includes a ton of people considering how long he was the doctor… But yeah, likely so.

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The most recent season of this century’s Doctor Who is dramatically different in tone and themes than all the previous seasons (in addition to a woman playing the Doctor, the show got new producers with a different sensibility).

If what turned you off of 21st century Who was the “Doctor as Christ Figure” theme and the tendency to have storylines that seemed to have a bad case of excessively! dramatic! stake! inflation!, then I recommend the Jodie Whittaker Who to you. I enjoyed the latest season of Who far more than any of the last five or ten seasons that came before it.

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Doctor Who as a human love interest who suddenly can’t live without Rose was a big part of it. I think the War Doctor was a 1 episode return to the who the Doctor was, with Smith and Tennant gone and explained as wildly not the actual Doctor. I was bored and didn’t care where they went with the new Doctor.

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I tried to start at the beginning, only to find the first season or two is lost down the memory hole, and the next season has gaps and I couldn’t even figure out where the beginning began.

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Psst…some pirate streaming sites have Doctor Who in as much entirety as possible.

ETA: Edited for accuracy.

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There is audio of every missing episode, and animated/surviving clips & stills reconstructions available but the thing with a show that has a history as long and convoluted as Doctor Who is that it can have fun with it’s history but it’s at it’s worst when the history becomes the driver.

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Request: do not host an article that autoplays audio/video, especially when the controls to pause or mute it are not accessible at the top of the page and require scrolling down to access.

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I’d still like a whole series of Scouse Dr. Who.

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Another annoying bit of the Russel T Davies/ Steven Moffat era which has been discarded for the Jodie Whittaker incarnation. Give it a try, you may be pleasantly surprised.

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The first and second doctors are largely lost. Some have survived, others have been reconstructed, but in many cases the best you can hope for are production stills and an audio recording of the show.

I recommend starting with the Third Doctor - everything from Pertwee on forward has survived - and treat the few surviving episodes of the first two Doctors as optional time capsules from a lost era.

ETA: inter-series continuity was light enough back then that there’s not much you need to know to fully enjoy the show starting with the Third Doctor.

ETA2: assuming you want to watch in chronological order, that is. Another option would be to watch them out of order, as @Counterspin suggests below.

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“Carnival of Monsters” was my first Dr Who adventure; because we didn’t have a telly when I was a kid. It was quite a shock when Tom Baker came along; but I soon warmed to him.

As much as the Davies/Moffat years irritated me, at least it wasn’t John Nathan Turner. A classic case of why you shouldn’t hand over a franchise to a fan.

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I’d start with Tom Baker instead. He is arguably the best version of the doctor, and his stories are a lot more interesting than Pertwee’s. Then continue on with Peter Davison, who was maybe the most human of the lot. Then circle back and catch what remains of Hartnell (annoying, but good to see how the show started and reflect on how much has changed and how much has not) and Troughton (who really killed it; just great stuff). Then Pertwee. After that, you will be willing to slog through Colin Baker and finish up with McCoy and the best companion ever, Ace.

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Nope, nope they don’t. Some early episodes have been lost entirely due to BBC film purges. Anyone claiming to have everything is either ignorant, a liar, or has their very own Tardis.

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It’s presented as Dr. Who Classic, with the first season, first episode about a pair of schoolteachers who follow the Doctor’s granddaughter to the Tardis. After a brief encounter with Doctor Who posing as a confused old man, they gain entry to the Tardis and wind up accidentally time-traveling to a prehistoric era of early humans.
I’m not sure if the season 3, 4, & 5 missing episodes are present (60 episodes for 3, 53 for 4, and 50 for 5), but the classic seasons are up, in chronological order

I’ve edited my statement for accuracy. I don’t care to join a pedant competition.

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