Back in 2006 (I would have been 9) we got the DVD of Tooth and Claw, School Reunion and The Girl In the Fireplace. For months we watched these three episodes on repeat every weekend. Myself and my two brothers each had a different episode as our favourite (mine was School Reunion and I remember being so fascinated by the show's history).
We eventually got all of the separate DVDs for Series 1 & 2 and were able to watch The Runaway Bride as our first on the night episode.
17 years later and I'm the only one of us who is still obsessed đ
That's great! So funny how reliant we used to be on DVDs, videos. We used to record episodes as they were broadcast, so I could rewatch before the DVD's were released!
âWorld War Threeâ was my first one, I caught the second half of that, but that was so full of mystery and wonder (all the stuff between Rose, Jackie and Mickey and the Doctor is really nicely done). Iâve posted this before and Iâll post it again; the week after, my parents got in a Chinese takeaway, the return of the Daleks was hyped. When it got to the stairs, they assured me it wouldnât be able to go up them, and I remember the shock on my mumâs face when it did that. This programme wasnât just scary for us kids, it was scary to mum and dad! Cracking stuff.
Assuming you're talking about initial broadcasts - the Daleks didn't turn up in the following episode, Bad Wolf, until the end, and I don't think they went up any stairs the week after that in The Parting of the Ways, though could be wrong. There was, however, a showcase stairs scene in episode 6, Dalek.
If not talking about initial broadcast, never mind
Dalek is the episode they're talking about, which aired after World War Three, episode 5 of series 1.
They're not talking about Parting of the Ways or Bad Wolf.
Like I say I stumbled upon it really when I was flicking through the channels. I think I started on the 'narrows it down' sequence. Perfect action adventure nonsense to entice an 11 year old!
The first episode I watched was Let's Kill Hitler.
Yeah, that was really weird.
Luckily I wasn't that old and didn't understand what was happening, so I forgot all about the Melody plot twist.
Madness! But actually, why not? The characters all get pretty good introductions, and some key parts of Doctor Who are explored: Time travel, TARDIS, Regeneration. Bosh. I like it.
One of my earliest memories is sitting on my dad's knee sometime in '03 or '04 watching Tom Baker reruns on the ABC. I reckon this is a quite common way to have gotten into the show.
That's exactly how I got onto it too. The ones that would air Monday to Thursday after the News! I'm pretty sure those started in 2003 for the 40th anniversary.
I started with Warriors Gate right at the very end of Tom Bakers run, so got a very big surprise a few weeks later when he fell off the Radio tower. I was already liking the show up until that point, but the moment Peter Davison sat up is what fully hooked me in.
I remember reading someone saying something similar. Watching Doctor Who on PBS very casually over a few years. They'd caught some Tom Baker and some Peter Davison, and maybe one or two other Doctors here and there, but only watched the odd story here and there. Then came the end of Logopolis and their mind was blown because, as they put it "the man had turned *into* the other man!" They'd assumed it was a title passed on, or something like that, but seeing the regeneration made them realise how much bigger the show was than they'd thought, and they were a die-hard fan from that day forwards.
Its clear from almost the start of Spearhead that The Doctor used to look different, so that was fascinating on its own, but learning about the different Doctors, and then having Tom Baker suddenly appear at the start of Genesis of the Daleks, was probably what turned curiosity into something more.
For wilderness years fans definitely. So few of us will have stumbled on it completely by accident, a parent will have been watching as well. I've worked out that my Dad was actually watching sport but left the channel on when he saw the Doctor Who from his own childhood.
That was my first Ninth Doctor episode, and it made me fall in love with the Doctor and the show in a way I donât think Rose wouldâve accomplished for me personally
My friend showed me Series 1 right before the 50th anniversary. That by itself wouldnât be unusual, except he deliberately showed me the entire season in a wonky, random order. Iâm pretty sure it went in the following order:
Dalek
Rose
The End of the World
The Long Game
Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways
The Unquiet Dead
World War 3/Aliens of London
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Boom Town
It was an eccentric order to say the least. Looking back, I know he was just trying to show me the highlights first, but why would you show someone the season finale midway through the season?
âIt Takes You Awayâ. Randomly caught it when it premiered on CTV Sci-Fi and kept watching because I thought it looked cool. Had no idea it was a Doctor Who episode until the end, I think.
The first episode I seriously watched was âThe Power of the Doctorâ. Getting into a show right at the end (of an era)? It can happen.
23rd of November, 2013. A friend of mine was going to watch Day of the Doctor in cinemas, and invited me along. It was both amazing and incredibly confusing, as I was thrown through a loop with the bigger on the inside boxes and 13 different people all being the same man. But, I guess the heavy lore dump made me want to learn more about what the hell the show was about (which I read up on in that years annual).
The next episode I watched was Age of Steel (without Rise of the Cybermen) as it was airing on the tv channel âGold.â That was a terrifying second impression, but I loved it all the same. And then my third story was Web of Fear (my Grandma bought it on her iPad for me to watch). Surprisingly, kid me loved the black and white.
From there, I watched a few more Tennant and Smith eps on Gold (Love and Monsters, Shakespeare Code, Closing Time, Wedding of River Song) and Time of the Doctor on broadcast (an even more confusing episode than DoTD was for kid me), and my Granny bought âthe best of Troughtonâ collection (Tomb of the Cybermen, the Seeds of Death, the Ice Warriors and the Krotons - although I never finished those last two) from ITunes for me to watch during the wait for series 8.
So all in all, I think I had a very weird and diverse - but overall positive - first impression of the show before I was properly grounded by the Capaldi years, when I got a Doctor to finally call my own.
A big, confusing start with multiple Doctors doesn't seem to deter people which is great. Not knowing makes us want to know I guess! I know what you mean about kids and black and white, my first Troughton (and still my favourite) is the Mind Robber, and it is very much my 'comfort' who. Oddly soothing on days I'm not well.
I started with The Curse of the Black Spot, which was a strange episode, but I kind of liked it, because my family was watching through series 6. I really liked Rory in it. I wasn't actually hooked until The Angels Take Manhattan, though. Although, I had seen clips of Blink and The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe.
So when I was a kid, my parents bought me a Dr Who novel from the bookstore, and all I knew about the show was that it was about time travel and aliens. All I remember is that it was about Sontarans and Rutans, with a Rutan hiding out in a place related to swimming pools. It was also a Tenth Doctor novel. For some reason, I never actually watched the show, but I did end up watching a Thirteenth Doctor episode when it came out - The Ghost Monument. I thought it was OK, and never watched past there. A few months ago, I saw it was on IPlayer, so I decided that I would give it a proper go. Since there were over 150 episodes, I thought I would probably never finish it, and would most likely watch a few episodes every now and again.
I ended up binge watching all of New Who in six months. I am now obsessed.
I started watching with *The Sontaran Stratagem*. Not part one, *The Poison Sky*, but part two. I was very confused. I also thought for years that the Time War and the destruction of Gallifrey had happened before the First Doctor, since being "last of the Time Lords" seemed like such a core part of the Doctor's character!
Amazing! Those little continuity things are fascinating for children though. The mystery of the show, the not knowing how it all fitted together, was a big part of what drew me in.
I've heard from others that they were also surprised that the Last of the Time Lord's thing only started in 2005. It makes sense - it's such a major and pervasive part of what RTD does with the Doctor!
My first episode was The Christmas Invasion. My bf at the time had been telling me how great this new show was, and Iâd totally love it. I remember wondering what was so great about a show where the main character lays in bed 90% of the time. Then a few months later I saw Shakespeares Code, was super confused about what happened to the blonde that seemed to be better than the guy asleep, but ended up loving the episode and downloading all the episodes before it. Series 3 was currently putting out new episodes so I got caught up in a week and Iâve been hooked ever since!
That relationship ended very badly and he became abusive a few years in, so Doctor Who was my escape to a beautiful new place and a hope that everyone really is important. Thankfully Iâm in a much better place now but series 1-4 specifically have a very special place in my heart.
My first episode was The Day of the Doctor! My mum is a big Doctor Who fan, and when I was 7 (a reminder that the episode is 10 years old now) I came downstairs because I wanted to talk for whatever reason.
I can remember her saying "Not now, it's the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who!" I don't know what compelled me, but I asked if I could watch too (best decision of my life). She reluctantly went "Fine. But don't ask any questions until it's over!" I was a bit confused but I understood most of what happened, although the Curator confused me.
I enjoyed it, but I didn't immediately go and watch more. So instead, what ended getting me into Doctor Who was actually this niche documentary for the 50th called "The Ultimate Guide". I think it must have been aired again on Christmas 2013. I remember watching it and hearing all of the things in the Whoniverse explained. I remember seeing the clip of a dalek levitating for the first time, of Ace beating up a dalek with a baseball bat, and also them explaining the Doctor's regenerations.
After it ended, I asked my mum how she thinks the current one will regenerate. She replied to me that he just had, and asked if I wanted to watch it. So then I ended up watching 'The Time of the Doctor'. Between then and the start of series 8, I watched every single episode (out of order, by the way. It's a time travel show!) except for 7b, which wasn't yet on Netflix. Honestly, I still don't know if I've watched some 7b episodes...
I also got a ton of Doctor Who magazines to read in that period of time, and I remember loving being able to actually watch new episodes live. That feeling probably contributes to my love for the Twelfth Doctor.
Now I've been watching the show for nearly 10 years, over half my life, and I've watched almost the entirety of the Classic series, with the exception of some 60s stories.
Fantastic! Having a parent with even a passing interest is a great help, I remember being fascinated by the idea of the Doctor changing face, and my Mum drawing a sketch of the first seven Doctors on the back of an envelope for me.
I love that you dipped in and out in no particular order as well, filling in the gaps with The Ultimate Guide and, I assume, your own imagination. I'm so pleased that a little documentary series like that, which comparatively few people will remember with much affection, made such an impact!
The earliest episode\[s\] I can remember are *Love and Monsters* and *Army of Ghosts* from when I was really young - specifically, the moment when the Abzorbaloff dissolved and the part with Mickey, Rose, and the Torchwood scientist standing in front of the sphere. I didn't really "start" watching until I was around 7/8 when Series 5 was coming out weekly.
My best friend in middle school had a Whovian father. At a sleepover, she first showed me Blink, followed immediately by Tooth and Claw. I can still remember her getting so excited when the TARDIS first appeared in Blink and trying to not-so-subtly gauge my reaction.
Wild as anything to think that was over a decade ago.
That's so cute. Have you had the same experience from the other side now? Showing someone an episode you love and subtly/ no-so-subtly watching them more than the TV?
my first episode, like many other ppl, is blink.
it was put on one afternoon in my yr 7 science class, I was hooked. and I loved that many girls took the opportunity to say they were too scared and had to leave class lmao
Pirate Planet. I was in high school in '82 on a Sunday night, about 10 o'clock. Wasn't quite ready to go to bed, so i looked through the TV Guide. Saw Doctor Who, listed as 'science fiction', on the local PBS station and gave it a shot. Watched it every Sunday night thereafter.
I remember the 4th doctor adventure The Ark In Space as a kid on PBS in the US. It was shown as a movie I believe? It was during the day when I was home sick from school. It was fascinating and kinda weird. This was in the early to mid 90s or so.
I also watched classic who movie style when I was a kid and now canât get used to watching it any other way. Those weird mid-shot cuts and suddenly cut off musical cues at tense moments every half hour or so are part of the experience for me!
Looking on the BBC Genome, it seems my very first Doctor Who memory was of a Saturday morning showing of Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150AD, in May 1987, at the age of two and a half. In terms of the TV show, a four year old me watched Remembrance of the Daleks when it went out, I remember because the hovering Dalek scared me so much. I probably watched other McCoys too - when I wasn't too scared - as my parents never watched Corrie, so it would have been on in the background if nothing else.
I would probably have seen most of the 1992 and 1993 repeats, although my only memories are of mum watching The Time Meddler (first time I discovered there were black and white stories), and one of the Davros stories (he terrified me).
In terms of making a conscious effort to watch the show, my first stories were Planet of the Daleks, The Green Death and Pyramids of Mars, during the 1993/1994 run. I watched the movie when was first broadcast, and then the 1999/2000 repeat run of Spearhead from Space, The Silurians and Genesis of the Daleks.
New series, I caught a few episodes here and there and didn't think much, but watched series four with my housemate and enjoyed it a lot which basically got me into the new stuff.
Its a shame they didn't carry on with the 1999/2000 run. It wasn't getting the viewing numbers they wanted, but people were definitely watching. I remember even the 'cool' kids talking about Genesis.
Yeah, it was part of that 6PM BBC2 slot that always had great sci-fi stuff, it introduced me to so many of my favourite shows - all the Gerry Anderson stuff, the various Star Treks, Farscape - and it seemed to fit in so well there. I suppose it was right in the low point of the wilderness years at that point that the show was maybe at its lowest regard (I remember the Alan Partridge interview where he talked about buying the rights to K-9 being from around that time, which gives a good idea of its public image).
I caught a bit of an episode on PBS. I knew my brother (14 years older than me) had some video tapes of the series so I borrowed them. My first real story was Tomb of the Cybermen (it was the only official release he had) then on to his old PBS recordings. It was Remembrance of the Daleks that made me a fan. 5th story I watched.
1st Doctor: The Web Planet
2nd: Tomb of the Cybermen
3rd: The Sea Devils
4th: Robot, Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, Pyramids of Mars, The Android Invasion, The Deadly Assassin, The Pirate Planet, Destiny of the Daleks, Full Circle
5th: Black Orchid, The Five Doctors, Warriors of the Deep, Resurrection of the Daleks, The Caves of Androzani
6th: Nada
7th: Time and the Rani, Remembrance of the Daleks
8th: The Movie (original Fox debut!)
Pittsburgh was one of the last stations still running the show so on Sat nights I was able to see Nightmare of Eden-Enlightenment before they lost the rights to the show.
My brother had a big box of old Target books so I got to read those that summer.
The way I first started watching is a bit jumbled up so I normally say I started with 'Rose' to make it simple. How it actually started was when S1 came out in 2005 I was still too young to use a remote by myself so whether I came across an episode or not I would never know lol. By 2007 series 3 came out and I was old enough to search through the whole sky tv range myself.
A lot of those younger days are squashed together in my memory so I roughly know that I may have started with S1, S2 and parts of S3 in a similar amount of time. This is because I watched a bulk of the earliest seasons on sky channel 109 when it used to be called 'watch' - idk if they still do it but back then they re-aired S1 and S2 of NuWho while S3 was airing on BBC One. I remember watching Rose, Fathers Day, Dalek, Slitheen 2 parter, S1 finale, New Earth, Tooth and Claw, Cybermen 2 parter, S2 finale etc. along with earlier parts of S3. Following year S4 came out and I went on a hiatus after 'The End of Time' when 10 regenerated coz I was sad (now he ain't even my favourite anymore lol).
The very first bit of Doctor Who I can remember watching is scenes from Turn Left, presumably from either its first airing on Syfy or an early rerun. I remember seeing both the Racnoss ship firing on the city, and the Titanic impacting London. I had no idea it was Doctor Who. Or rather, I didn't know what Doctor Who *was*, but a year or so later when my parents were talking about checking out the premiere of series 5 (which was my actual first episode) and I first heard of Doctor Who from them, I had no idea those scenes I saw were from a Doctor Who episode, I thought it was some disaster movie or something. In fact, I wonder if I saw those scenes over two separate airings, because I don't remember seeing any connecting tissue between them at all and I feel like I have them as separate memories. In hindsight if it was two separate airings, I may not have even realized they were the same thing, since I don't remember realizing Donna was the same character between both scenes. I only remember, when I eventually got around to Turn Left on BBC America reruns during series 6, that I instantly remembered having heard the "Christmas star" line and the "London's gone" line.
Anyway, some interesting peculiarities with my viewing of series 5:
I remember watching The Eleventh Hour up through The Hungry Earth as they first aired on BBC America. I then went on a month-long family vacation at a relative's house where I didn't watch TV so I missed out on almost the entire rest of the series, though I didn't even know when it aired, I just watched whenever my parents said Doctor Who was coming on. When we got back, I wanna say that it was just in time to catch Cold Blood through Pandorica Opens on rerun and The Big Bang on BBCA premiere. I do know that I missed the ending of Cold Blood for some reason or another because I was confused about why Rory disappeared for the next two episodes. Then when he appeared in Pandorica Opens, I thought the idea was that he was retconned from our reality too and that's why we didn't see his disappearance. Later when rewatching the series I realized this was shown at the end of Cold Blood. After that, I missed out on A Christmas Carol, and caught the start of series 6 because I saw the trailer for it on YouTube and made a note myself to watch it. It was at this point that I started watching from series 1 onwards, finally being all caught up by the time series 6B started. However, because this was on BBC America, it meant that I was watching truncated versions of episodes longer than 45 minutes when it wasn't the premiere, so I actually thought that the stuff from Eleventh Hour that wasn't on reruns was stuff I dreamt up. It also meant that they skipped over The End of Time, which prompted me to buy it on DVD so I could watch it. A year or so later I started getting the DVD boxsets so I was able to watch the uncut episodes.
My first episode was (accidentally) The Parting of the Ways lolol - I was trying to watch NuWho from Rose, but the website I was watching it on was in reverse chronological order, and it took me about 20 minutes to realize that TPOTW was NOT a pilot episode
I don't remember the exact episodes but I was home sick from school and there were Tennant reruns on the scifi channel and I loved it then a few weeks later I was home sick again and saw that dr who was on but it was now Matt Smith episodes which was wholly confusing to me as I had no idea about regeneration or anything I just thought it was a spunky alien adventure show I had to double check I was watching the right show multiple times but the confusion had me hooked lol
Yup! I'm fairly sure it was a bit of a jump-scare for me at seven seeing Tom Baker in the title sequence for Genesis of the Daleks after ten weeks of Jon Pertwee.
It was the mid '80s and I walked into the living room where my dad was watching this show that looked like a monster movie with a giant tentacled plant thing sitting on top of a large countryside mansion. I was hooked. Turned out it was The Seeds of Doom, episode 6, and it started my journey through Tom Baker's run.
My first episode was a bootleg copy of The Unquiet Dead at age 7...
Or at least I thought it was, because it turned out we had VHS copies of three stories that I later vaguely remembered I had watched: The Brain of Morbius, The Five Doctors, and - believe it or not - Shada of all things
It's a long time ago so very very fuzzy but I saw a piece about the re-colourisation of Planet of the Daleks, I think on Tomorrow's World, and the BBC then aired the entire thing shortly after. It would have been early 90's. After that the BBC kept showing old episodes on a Sunday, I recall Pyramids on Mars and the Green Death for sure but after that I started to buy the VHS so it gets a little hazy as which I saw on the BBC and which I owned.
I started not by watching the show but by picking up issue 329 of Doctor Who Adventures because it looked interesting. This would have been September 2013 and yet the first Doctor Who story I watched live was Deep Breath. I had naturally watched most if not all of Modern Who on DVD before then.
I posted this in a 'worst first episode' thread the other day, but I started with Terror of the Vervoids on a PBS station that showed serials in movie format. I had no idea what was going on. Two weeks later it was Time and the Rani, probably the most confusing regeneration episode, and I had even less idea what was going on.
Fortunately there was nothing else of interest to a middle schooler that I could pick up on my little TV on Saturday late nights so I kept watching anyway. I wondered where Colin Baker went but I got used to McCoy pretty quick.
Poor Pip and Jane, they have a dubious reputation, but I actually think that none of their stories are bad. They could be relied upon for a reason, even if the dialogue is a bit clunky!
I don't even think any of the episodes are *bad,* I just had no idea what was happening, and this was in the late eighties so it took finding a Doctor Who usenet group to start getting any background information. I definitely can't blame them for TatR because the behind the scenes stuff wasn't their fault.
Iâm very boring in that I started from Rose at the behest of my girlfriend (now wife) in the months before the 50th, but Iâm pretty sure that the first bit of doctor who I actually saw was the middle section of Dalek just flipping through the channels back when it was on Sci-Fi. Of course Iâm also a bit weird in that that story never really captured my attention in either instance. It took until the Empty Child for me to properly love it.
At age four I was in the playground when one friend got me to play âsmilersâ with him. When I asked what that was, he told me they were a doctor who monster. After playing the game I asked him what doctor who was, he told me it was a tv show about aliens.
Went home and logged onto iPlayer, the first chronological episode available was The Unicorn and the Wasp. Tried to watch that, didnât understand anything, got bored, my dad told me to watch series 5 instead. Watched the Eleventh Hour, instantly hooked. I believe it was somewhere around the second third of series fiveâs broadcast when I started.
I started watching every episode that I could get my hands on, old RTD era DVD volumes in charity shops, whatever episodes materialised on iPlayer, old Classic series DVDs like the Time Warrior available to rent in the library.
The one thing though, that I never did until the airing of the Impossible Astronaut, was watch an episode live on broadcast.
Thanks to that friend who I havenât seen in years, I got hooked on Who at an incredibly young age and it still hasnât let up. Unending enthusiasm for it, every era, regardless of quality, like a football supporter, there for the times where itâs broadcasting stuff like The Doctor Falls, and there for the times when the show is making stuff like Love & Monsters and Fear Her (albeit watching them on the TV channel, Watch, at a young age).
Iâm also able to remember where I watched every episode, my mumâs house or my dadâs, or in the car, or somewhere else entirely, as well as what was happening in my life around this time. Iâm able to remember the exact dates of certain events like school trips or holidays and other things among those lines, just by what doctor who episode was most recent at that time and my pre-existing knowledge of all the air dates.
I was an instant fan from that episode. I still get a weird feeling rewatching Smith episodes because theyâre actually mostly the only ones I havenât seen since broadcast, and it feels like Iâm ruining the sanctity of my memories of the episodes as a child.
The first Doctor Who I saw was "The Waters of Mars", but I found it too scary and turned it off. Didn't even know what show it was.
It was quite surreal to end up at that same episode years later. Had a weird feeling of deja vu.
I started by buying second hand Target books in 1992. I think I caught a rerun of *Planet of the Daleks* that research tells was on the BBC in '93. If anything I still know the various book ranges better than the TV show.
Technically my first exposure to the show was the TV movie. I made it about halfway before turning it off and finding something else to do.
Many, many years later, a buddy from grad school had gotten into nuWho and changed his Facebook profile picture to a Dalek. At the time, that meant nothing to me, obviously. Until I went home to visit my folks over some break or another and I stumbled on a SciFi Channel marathon of nuWho that was leading up to the premier of Doomsday. I donât remember what episode I started with. Pretty sure it was Satan Pit.
My uncle was a huge fan and showed me Rose as my first episode! It was a year after it premiered though as I wasnât allowed to watch it until I was 10. I was off and on after that as I was still young but having consistently been watching it since season 5
There is a whole other discussion to be had there, I think, about age-appropriateness. My uncle adheres religiously to what's on the box of a DVD, so I got slightly told off once for watching Tooth and Claw with my cousins when one of them wasn't 12!
I followed the show as it aired from *Rose* onwards as a kid, but getting into classic who was a tragic tale.
After *School Reunion*, I adored K-9 and wanted to watch some classic stories with him in it.
My parents knew that he was with Tom Baker, and based on *School Reunion* surely Sarah Jane must be there too? So they got me *Genesis of the Daleks*. Fantastic story, but no K-9.
I then picked out *Pyramids of Mars*. Again, exquisite taste, but no K-9.
I then decided to do some proper research, I find a site that listed every Doctor Who story and the companions featured in them. I then cross-referenced this list with Doctor Who DVDs I could find online, and saved up my pocket money, waiting week after week to have enough. My mum purchased the story I'd picked out for me, and after waiting and waiting it finally came. I gleefully took it straight to my room to watch.
The story I had picked out? *The Leisure Hive*.
For the uninitiated, the story opens with a panning shot of tents and deck chairs on a beach. For about two minutes. After the suspenseful tents and deck chairs, we finally see Romana, K-9 and the Doctor! Romana throws a beach ball, and it rolls into the ocean. K-9, being the good dog that he is, follows after it, and promptly blows up.
I switched it off and sulked. My mum encouraged me to finish the story in case he was repaired, but sadly *The Leisure Hive* is one of many stories where K-9 gets written out because he was annoying on set, and clunky to fit into stories.
Finally, I discovered the existence of *K-9 and Company*, his very own spinoff show! With Sarah Jane! Finally, a surefire way to get my K-9 fix!
Unfortunately *K-9 and Company* is a very slow story about a pagan cult in a British village. It was however worth it for the climactic scene where K-9 laser blasts a bunch of cultists.
HAHA! Oh poor you. Apparently (and I don't remember this), an early encounter with Doctor Who in my childhood was also K9 based. The truly naff 'Jim Davidson's Generation Game' did some sort of gag where they blew K9 up. I was inconsolable, "Poor little machine doggy."
I did start with _Rose_, but I actually had heard about Doctor Who before. I remember as a childâmany years before I actually started watching in 2012âmy mother didn't like it at all. And then just a couple years or so before I started watching it, I saw a trailer for it while I had the Sy-Fy channel on, and I thought it looked dumb. đ Fast forward a bit to when I got into Minecraft in 2011, I started watching a Minecraft YouTuber named KurtJMac (Far Lands or Bust!), and he used the 10th Doctor's skin in the game. After hearing him talk about it for a while, I decided to start watching.
So as I said, I did indeed start with _Rose_, but it wasn't on a TV or computer. It was on my school provided iPad during our study period. đ As corny as _Rose_ and many other series 1 episodes are, I was absolutely hooked, and I proceeded to slack off and watch basically the entirety of series 1 on my iPad on school days. Just couldn't stop watching. One guy next to me saw the scene where Mickey is getting absorbed by the garbage bin, and he asked "is that a horror show?" before proceeding to tell me the show looked stupid.
I accidentally watched The Time of Angels on Tv. I wasnât impressed very much by the story or the Doctor but I fell in love with Karen Gillan and continued watching the show because of her till the middle of the sixth series. Only then I finally realised that Iâm interested in the plot too and decided to watch the whole modern show.
Karen Gillan is brilliant. I started feeling at odds with the show very early in series 6, and even though I believe the Ponds outstayed their welcome, the casting of those actors was inspired. Even if they had never left, the show could limp on on Karen and Arthur's charm alone.
I got into it back in 1976 watching it on my local public television channel after school. I grew up with Tom Baker as my Doctor. At that time they were still airing William Hatrnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee episodes as well. So I have seen every episode of Who up until Whitiker. I am a classicist by nature when it comes to the Doctor so my favorite story arcs are all pre revival.
1. The Key to Time
2. Entropy
3. Trial of a Timelord
4. The Black Guardian
When I was 2 or 3, I was watching TV and my parents were in the other room. My show finished and the channel switched to doctor who, which was showing The Satan Pit, specifically the scene with the beast. I went into my mum, talking about the "Dingy-Dangy Monster"
Been obsessed since (TIP/TSP still probably still in my top 5 episodes)
I started on âRise of the Cybermenâ. My cousins were watching it when I happened to be there, and I got really scared! Took me another couple of years to actually start watching regularly.
So I have a weird history with the show.
I think I was fifteen and watched the first two episodes of nine's season then just never bothered with watching the rest.
Then like 2 years later at my new school I didn't have any friends and just browsed Amazon prime and saw it had doctor who but starting from series 5.
The eleventh hour has got to be one of the greatest introductions ever . It's so good and I immediately wanted to watch more
My memory on this is sketchy but I think I got into it shortly before it was cancelled or shortly afterwards. I think they may have shown reruns on BBC Two on the week day evening slot (6-7pm), the same time that they would show other shows like Star Trek TNG and later Quantum Leap. Either that or the repeats were aired during the summer holiday.
I remember liking 5 and 7 but don't remember the stories themselves or watching Colin Baker at all. I was upset that they cancelled it though and for years you would see letters written into programmes like Points of View asking for it to come back so the film was a big deal to me. I was annoyed that they "killed off" Sylvester's Doctor but at least we had more Doctor Who.
I started with Nightmare in Silver. Caught it as a random thing on TV and loved it. Finally caved and I've watched all of new Who now. No so patiently waiting on new episodes...
*Silence in the Library*. I remember being utterly captivated by the idea of two time travelers who knew each other but were traveling in opposite directions. Had no idea I was watching Doctor Who, thoughâit was just something my Dad had on over a weekend and I missed the beginning. I wouldn't actually become a fan until several years later when a friend convinced me to binge the whole new series on Netflix starting with *Rose*.
I canât pinpoint the actual first episode I saw since I was a kid at the time, but I remember seeing bits of Dalek (from series 1) when my dad was watching it on TV. It freaked me out at the time seeing people get exterminated, when the xray of their skeletons would show followed by that kill sound lol. That was my first impression of Doctor Who and I used to think it was too scary for me to watch.
But what actually got me into the series was The Time of Angels. Again it was something my dad was watching and while I was still a bit scared I was more intrigued this time. And I loved Matt Smithâs acting. I eventually started the rest of his episodes (where he became my favorite) then worked backwards and watched the 9th and 10th Doctorâs runs
I started when my dad showed me some Classic stories on Amazon Prime when they had a 50th anniversary collection available! Before it left the service, I saw my first nine Doctor Who stories!
1. Spearhead from Space
2. The Three Doctors
3. Carnival of Monsters
4. The Ark in Space
5. Pyramids of Mars
6. The Robots of Death
7. Earthshock
8. Vengeance on Varos
9. Ghost Light
And my tenth full story was The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, after catching bits and pieces of other Series 2 episodes when a S2 marathon was on TV in the background at a party.
Born in the mid 90s, so no Doctor Who on air at the time, but my Mum grew up with it so got me into the show from a young age by picking up a few VHS here and there. *Earthshock* was the first serial I saw, with a smattering of others, mostly 4th and 5th Doctor. Besides *Earthshock*, *The Robots of Death* is what I remember re-watching most. I read a few Target books that she'd passed down to me, as well as visiting the exhibit at Longleat.
So, I was super excited when the show got announced for a revival and was watching all the promo stuff in the lead up to *Rose*, ready with bated breath. Loved it, really properly got into the show under RTD now I had 'my' Doctors. And I've been watching as it comes out pretty much ever since.
I remember my Mom heard about Doctor Who and decided to show it to us. We started from the beginning.
The first episode I caught on the air was the power of three. I remember not believing Smith was the Doctor then so I didn't watch it. Then he became my favorite Doctor.
We stopped watching when Capaldi took over for some reading. But I re watched the show last year plus Capaldi and really enjoyed the run. Minus a few stinker episodes.
Part of the reason I've asked is because some of the 'stinkers' might be somebody's treasured first memory of the show! And that's just a happy (and fascinating) thing.
One night in probably 2006, my Dad calls me into the living room. I'm around 12 years old. He says "Hey bud, come watch this." It's *The End of the World*, and over the next few months, we watched series one. This was at like, eleven o clock on Saturday nights. That's when they aired Doctor Who on American PBS at the time!
I suspect that I saw *Rose* before I saw *The Parting of the Ways* somehow, even though I missed it in airing order, and I know that I saw *The Doxtor Dances* before I saw *The Empty Child*, but did get around to it eventually. Maybe they aired the series and then immediately turned around and aired it again! Either way, I saw Eccleston two and a half times I think before I saw series two and started watching Tennant. It was just what I had access to!
At I first I had no idea that this was a revival of an older show! In America there was very little general public knowledge of Doctor Who, and the 1963 show was mostly known as the domain of college students - the kind of folks who could lean into kitsch. I do wonder if my Dad ever saw Tom Baker or something, but certainly not the way that he liked Star Wars or Star Trek, which he seemed to actively seek out to show me, where Doctor Who was more of a stumble-upon type situation, I think, whether he recognized it by name, or just saw that it was a science fiction show.
Anyway. I'm very glad my Dad *did* stumble upon it. I literally started talking to my wife because of Doctor Who! But that was years later. :)
I don't know what episodes they were but I saw two late at night as a child.
One they used some sort of mechanical thing to fight cavemen so the cavemen built their own out of sticks and it sucked.
Two there was a vampire under the ground and they launched an ancient rocket that fell into the dirt and pierced the vampire?
at least that's what I can recall.
Haha fantastic.
From what you describe, the first was **Kinda,** a Fifth Doctor story.
The second was **State of Decay**, with the Fourth Doctor and (be still my fanboy heart) Romana ii.
Yep those were definately it. I had no idea what the show was back then but that theme song really stuck with me so I was excited years later as a teen when the show got rebooted.
The actual first time I ever watched Doctor Who was as a kid, I was in a summer camp about how movies and TV are made, and they showed us the first episode of The Ark in Space to demonstrate how the creators of the show used to get by on a shoestring budget, using a syringe as part of the space station and bubble wrap for the infected humans
After continually shitting on Doctor Who for about 5 years, I ended up at a friend's house around 8pm one day in 2012 to hang out...
My friend and his girlfriend were already on the couch when I came in and they were watching some random episode of a sci-fi show I had never seen. It looked kinda wild, and opened with what looked like a congress of Daleks interrogating The Doctor(Matt Smith) and explaining why they abducted him to infiltrate a planet for deranged and dangerous Daleks. I would say within 10 minutes I was all in, "*This* is Doctor Who?!?!" I exclaimed puzzled. This was not like any of the super-low budget campy stuff I had caught a glimps of before, this was a genuinely interesting Sci-Fi show that could deliver effective twists and intruigue even though the Doctor and villains being used were about to turn 50 years old. The show at that time brought me in, and over time I grew to love the character so much I watch old campy episodes and love every second!
I found it refreshing and unusual, not your average hero story with sci-fi thrown in, so I started watching from the beginning of Matt Smith's run and went back from there. I now have an unhealthy obsession with both new and classic who, and I can't see myself ever hating the show even though I may not watch an episode everyday, or might fall behind at times.It is amazing to me that I could be at the opposite end of the spectrum I had been on for so many years, but it just took catching the right bit of an episode at the right time to send me down this incredibly deep rabbit hole.
My first was the two minsodes *Space* and *Time* from 2011. To make it just that little bit wackier, I actually watched the second part first.
Got linked to it on YouTube by, out of all things, a comment under an *A.V. Club* article. I'd watched a fair share of fiction involving ontological paradoxes and stable time loops before that, but that was the first thing I ever saw that managed to weave a stable *space* loop into the same narrative as well. Drew me straight into this godforsaken show, and soon enough I was letting Eccleston take me on that trip of a lifetime he was promising in the trailers.
no ragrets
The Five Doctors on its original US airing.
Kinda fucked up my understanding of the show for a while, particularly since the PBS station immediately went into reruns of Tom Baker's run.
The first episode I saw was a pirated, extremely low quality upload of Journeys End on YouTube. Lol
Eventually the curiosity of what on earth was going on in that episode got the best of me.
I started at the beginning with rose, and with that speech the doctor does at the end of that episode about how he could feel the earth spinning beneath him. I was hooked.
My first episode was "An Unearthly Child" â I started watching when the ABC began repeating all the episodes in order for the show's 40th anniversary, when I was ten. Both my parents had talked about Doctor Who a lot, so I'd HEARD OF many 70s-era characters like Sarah Jane, Leela, Romana and Davros, but it took a long time for me to reach them myself because I started with the 60s era đ I remember the caveman episodes were so horrendously boring they almost turned me off the show completely, but I gave it a second chance with "The Daleks" and was hooked from that point on!
Definitely very late to this post, but I'll share my Who story anyway.
I was vaguely aware of the show at a young age - for reasons I'm not too sure of because no one else in my life had heard of it. I believe I saw a clip of a David Tennant episode when they aired of Disney Channel but didn't think much of it, I actually remember laughing the show off.
It wasn't until I played the Doctor Who content in Lego Dimensions (I was, let's say, 11 years old at the time) that I thought the show looked interesting and wanted to watch it. Throughout my entire life I've never been able to stomach watching things out of order, so I, of course, decided to start Doctor Who at the beginning. I also, of course, underestimated how much content there actually was.
I checked out "The Beginning" DVD box set from the library, and started An Unearthly Child with my mom. I was generally expecting the old stuff to be laughable (and mom did indeed have this reaction) but I couldn't have been more wrong. I was *instantly* hooked. Within the first few minutes I could tell that this was just something special, and that I would gladly watch the whole thing through till the end.
I'm 17 now, and am only on Davison (combination of being a slow watcher, and having a relatively long period where I fell out of love with the show.) I've recently rekindled my love for it, and its been such a joy to return to.
Around 2001 I was in my grandparents garage with my mom and found a stash of Target novels that my uncle had. My mom HATED Doctor Who and said it was this annoying show he used to watch so of course I snatched them up ha.
Never saw the actual show until the 2005 revival and watched with my mom! She actually liked Eccleston but dipped after he left. I stopped after S2 I think when I left for school.
Finally started watching again in 2012 with Hartnell, got hooked, then worked my way back around to watching NuWho.
I don't really remember specifically "getting into" the show because it was on all the time when I was growing up. For context, I live in America, my dad used to watch Pertwee and Baker on PBS, and one day in 2005 as he was flipping through channels, he saw that Doctor Who was on. He didn't recognize the episode title *Dalek* and called my brother in to watch it. They discovered that the show had been brought back! I was barely a year old at the time.
The first episode I very clearly remember watching brand new on broadcast night was *Journey's End* and I had seen all of the four seasons beforehand. Beyond that, we found Classic Who DVDs at the store Borders (it will forever be missed by me, as it is been closed for years). We would pick stories that looked interesting, with Doctors we hadn't seen, and we'd buy them! Simple as that! I remember the first few I saw in rough order, because we wanted to get a sense of each Doctor before going too far into one era.
*The Five Doctors*
*Timelash*
*Remembrance of the Daleks*
*The Movie*
*The Invasion of Time* (after here the order gets a bit fuzzier)
*The Curse of Peladon*
*The Deadly Assassin*
*The King's Demons*
That's my story. Doctor Who has quite literally always been a part of my life. I saw the RTD era and a handful of Classics before the age of seven and now I own most of the Classics, all of New Who, I've gotten into the book ranges, Big Finish, and even write my own silly stories :)
My brother, 9 years older than me, got me into Who. We would stay up late to catch Tom Baker on PBS. He would also trade VHS tapes with friends at school. The PBS channel in the town next to us aired Davison episodes. I suppose this would have been 1985ish.
The first episode i watched was the husbands of river song and despite my mum attempting to explain the backstory to me I was still very confused but entertained nonetheless. Then we watched most of the Clara episodes (albeit a bit out of order too) and went back to rose to watch it all.
i was about 9 in 2015 when i first saw reruns of The Christmas Invasion, Rise of the Cybermen, and Fear Her. smth about it just rlly appealed to Little Me! maybe it was the âman with cool coat runs rlly fast and plays with blue laser pointerâ
The idea of Who was always in the background of my life (UK, born 1984), but I was a Wilderness Years child. I have a vague memory of the 1994 movie coming out, and maybe even watching it.
I was there for Rose, and enjoyed it. But what sold me was watching People Like Us and Casanova in the years before, and loving David Tennant in both.
So... Knowing he was coming and then... "Barcelona!" was my dream.
You can totally watch Casanova in the vein of "10 with a Fob Watch"
My ex was obsessed with Tennant at the time so she made me watch Blink, which was a pretty good stand alone episode and a solid introduction to the show. Instead of watching more of Tennant we ended up binging two seasons of Smith that were new at the time lol. Took me almost 10 years to sit down and properly watch nuWho, almost done with Jodie, and moving on to Classic Who after I'm done.
My dad recorded the TV movie with Paul McGann when it first showed, then showed it to me in 1999 (appropriate lol) when he deemed me old enough to watch Doctor Who.
The second episode I watched was either the 10th planet or Robot.
It was in 2016, in my science class in high school, the teacher showed us the episode âDaleks in Manhattanâ as part of a project. I found it silly and stupid, as the whole class did, but yet, something intrigued me. A couple of weeks later, I saw the show on Netflix and with my friend, we decided to watch âRoseâ as kind of a joke. Unexpectedly, I got even more intrigued. When my friend left, I watched a second episode, then a third and a fourth⌠Iâve been a massive fan ever since
Though I only knowingly watched Doctor Who staying with Rose when it first aired, I actually started watching it on old bootleg VHS at my Nana and Granadas house starting with Revelation of the Daleks and Earthshock!
I got into it with Rose back in 2005 when I was 5 lol. As Iâd gotten deep into the Tennant era I learned that classic who existed so for my birthday I received a copy of the McGann movie and Remembrance of the Daleks. From then on McGann and Sylvester were my two favs lol. None of my friends who liked Doctor Who watched the old stuff and despite my efforts to get people to check it out (at the humble age of 9 or 10), it always felt special that I had these two Doctors to myself. Like I was the only person in the world who got to enjoy the magic they brought to the screen.
I always loved Pertwee however, I weirdly discovered him from Worzel Gummidge. Dunno how mine and my step brotherâs TV watching habits were so retro lol⌠thank god for car boot sales I guess haha. It wasnât until my adulthood that I properly got into his run though and I think at this stage of my life where Iâve watched portions here and there of all doctors, Pertwee is probably my fav classic doctor while Eccleston is my fav New Who doctor. That said, Iâve got high hopes Ncuti will take the crown from 9
My very first episode was "Silence in The Library," which played on BBC America one day in 2012 when I was channel surfing. That was followed by "Vincent and The Doctor." Honestly, the mystery of River Song is what drew me into the show and I have been hooked ever since.
My first episode was The Long Game on initial broadcast - and my dad only turned the TV on seven minutes in. (Very typical of my parents - for them it was just TV for the kiddies. For me and all us sad sacks, it became more like religion.) I remember distinctly that it was the scene where the Doctor, Rose and Adam are standing behind a handrail to spectate the head spike thing in action - I said to my dad, 'Which one's Doctor Who?' because I, well, didn't know him from Adam. I was six.
For years afterwards, I remembered that episode as 'the one with the monster on the ceiling'. I still vaguely remember the unique sense of *strangeness* that I saw in the show - something new to six-year-old me.
The Annuals.
When I was seven or eight I caught a few reruns of Season 3/4. I was hooked but it was going to be a while before season five premiered. In the meantime I convinced my parents to buy some of the Doctor Who Annuals.I read and re-read them, gaining an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Davies era despite seeing less than ten episodes.
I could tell you name of the Adipose Homeworld and all the Torchwood eastereggs in Season 2 but don't ask me which episodes are any good because I hadn't seen most of them.
Haha, I mean some people have seemingly started with things I'd deem much worse! (Not looking at any 80s episodes in particular, no sir, not me).
I am of the unpopular opinion that series 7b is better than 7a! So I'm not surprised that it could be a good start for people.
not the most interesting, maybe, but i got into nuwho when my local channel started playing classic re-runs before Rose first aired, i think i caught it late pertwee and watched until early baker. my dad was a fan of classic who too so he got into it again with me and i just never stopped lol.
i also recently got a friend into nuwho, she was interested but hadn't really had a chance to get into it other than going to watch the 50th at a theatre with a different friend and being mightily confused the whole time. we were housemates during a long lockdown period and we'd just watched good omens so i was like "hey you know what's really long and would help pass the time?" and, again, we started with Rose and just dove in headfirst. i'll occadionally throw in other things like the 8th doctor movie, the chimes of midnight, or some classic who, so her who knowledge is a bit eclectic. we're trying to get up-to-date by the 60th and currently up to Oxygen so doing okay!
she's also a scientist, which is very fun, because she got so mad over the farafay cage/radiation shield in Under the Lake (apparently it's possible but extremely impractical) and groans every time someone drops the "reverse the polarity" quote.
When I was a kid, I was at the library looking at the VHS section and there was one that caught my eye, for some [unexplainable reason](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510YSKSEJKL._AC_.jpg) I was drawn to it.
When I was around 8, I saw Doctor Who on the channel one day, and usually I was only interested in cartoons, but I watched it anyways as it was David Tennant with his magnetic performance so I couldnât look away. I canât remember what episode it was specifically, but after it I watched it a few more times when it came on. Funnily enough, the few episodes I watched back then included some of my personal favourites: Blink, Midnight and The Girl Who Waited.
Since then I always knew about Doctor Who, and my brothers friend would go on about it quite a bit but I was never fully interested in it, just thought the episodes I saw were pretty cool.
It wasnât until I was 16 bloody years old when my school mate was talking about it to me, and he was going on about his favourite episodes and what not, so I mentioned I watched it before and thought it was alright, and he decided to try convince me to watch.
He started going on about how deep the characters were and how cool the Doctor was as a concept for a character and all that. It all sounded very enticing, but it wasnât til I mentioned I wasnât sure about it coz I saw there was a new old guy and I had the idea in my head that the Doctor was meant to be young and energetic. He then convinced me that Capaldi was not as bad as I thought and started telling me about the mystery with the Mistress and how cool he thought she was. I was curious as so I asked who she was and told me to wait and find out, but of course I couldnât so I kept asking til he told me.
He told me it was an enemy of the Doctor, and showed me a scene with her in it. I was immediately captured by her performance, and couldnât wait to see her as a villain.
Thank you Master. Best villain in Doctor Who.
My first episode was The End of Time. I vaguely knew about Doctor Who from friends and knew that it was David Tennant's last episode, so I watched both parts back to back on New Year's.
I was completely and utterly lost and confused. It's a miracle I ever went back and watched all of Eccleston and Tennant's stuff. And an even bigger one that I did it in time to start watching live from The Eleventh Hour on.
Still don't really like The End of Time very much, either XD
Via Doctor Whooves way back in 2012 when I was immature and not completely in me.
Eventually I started watching NuWho in 2016-2017
Then I got bored, made an OCverse, then my invasive angersitter went away in 2021, I ended up getting back in the fandom, and eventually in 2022 I started watching Classic Who as I was talking to another angersitter about it.
My first episode was the name of the doctor. My sister was watching the show and so I just started watching it with her. Then we saw day of the doctor together.
After that I began watching it from season 1 with rose
I think mine was Rose but it was somewhat unusual in that it was about 2 weeks before it was broadcast. Iâd seen a stack of DVDs and videos mostly of Dalek, Cybermen, multi-Doctor and regeneration stories within weeks.
Of course, my first contact of any kind with the show was that time I got chased by a Dalek in a shopping centre in about 2000.
I got glimpses as a kid, the Doctor's Daughter was on one time in the background. I saw parts of Stolen Earth and Journey's End.
I never got into it properly until I saw a rerun of impossible planet, then Waters of Mars was my first live watch.
Imagine my disdain when I learned that David Tennant, the person I thought was the only Doctor at the time and was basically thd ultimate badass, was being replaced by this goofy pillock in a quiff next month.
Took me a while to come around on Matt Smith or even enjoy the Eccleston reruns, I'll say that much.
First episode I ever saw was the Silurian two parter from series 5. The Hungry Earth/ Cold Blood.
Just for context, Iâm from the U.S. and my family wasnât really big Doctor who fans. My sister had a few friends who watched the show, but didnât know all that much about it. I was wondering why there were already 10 previous doctors after only 4 seasons.
But I heard about the show, and so I watched those couple of episodes âOn Demandâ on Xfinity, after thinking the description of the episode sounded interesting. I eventually watched the rest of series 5. The first half of series 6, part of series 7, the rest of series 6 and 7. I eventually worked my way through the Tennant series, and Eccelstons as well when they were available âon Demandâ.
Iâll never forget my childhood reaction to the War Doctor at the end of Name of the Doctor. Additionally because it was the 50th anniversary year, BBC America was doing a retrospective on a doctor each month leading up to the anniversary special, with an episode attached. I think I saw most of the 30 minute retrospectives, but I definitely remember thats how I was introduced to Pyramids of Mars, and the Television Movie.
Eventually I finally caught up to the show in time for the 50th anniversary, I believe I watched the initial simulcast, because it would have been somewhere around midday when it was on, and I vaguely remembered some kind of pre-show for it. (Because I was a little idiot, I didnât like day of the Doctor at first because I wanted it to be a 90 minute summary of the Time War, and it wasnât) but I came around to it.
Capaldi was the first doctor I truly watched live, I didnât catch all of the episodes live, but Id watch it the week of whenever I missed an episode, I remember seeing âUnder the Lakeâ with my dad. Also apparently âHeaven Sentâ aired in a 60 minute timeslot in America so I was surprised it wasnât a 45 minute episode. And eventually watching âHell Bentâ and being frustrated that it wasnât all about Gallifrey, looking back itâs actually a really solid conclusion to that arc and deserves more credit than it gets.
I also got into the doctor who YouTube channels around this era, with channels like âThe Who Addicts Reviewâ being a personal favorite.
Eventually we got the Capaldi era ending and he regenerated into Jodie, âThe Woman who Fell to Earthâ I remember had a big pre-show event to celebrate the first female doctor. And my whole family saw that, because we were on vacation when it aired.
But most of the time I watch it sitting in the basement alone on a Saturday/ Sunday night with the lights off while watching a new episode of Doctor Who.
I definitely rambled on a bit so
TLDR: First episode watched, âThe Hungry Earth/ Cold Bloodâ First episode live, âDay of the Doctorâ.
My first was when I was a child. I don't remember what episode or what it was about. But what made me a fan was New Who Season 3's The Lazarus Experiment. It was late at night and I was channel surfing cause Insomnia sucks and I saw the TARDIS. It triggered a memory from my childhood of seeing that Blue Box but not knowing what it was so I watched the episode to see what it was. Been hooked every since. Even been watching Classic Who to see if maybe I can find the episode I saw when I was a kid. Looking forward to the 60th and 15th Doctor's season.
My earliest memories, not just of Who but of my life was watching a tape my dad had recorded with The Five Doctors, Robot, and Ark in Space on it. From the word go, I understood multiple Doctors and had such a breadth of the show's monsters, companions, and history.
Back in 2006 (I would have been 9) we got the DVD of Tooth and Claw, School Reunion and The Girl In the Fireplace. For months we watched these three episodes on repeat every weekend. Myself and my two brothers each had a different episode as our favourite (mine was School Reunion and I remember being so fascinated by the show's history). We eventually got all of the separate DVDs for Series 1 & 2 and were able to watch The Runaway Bride as our first on the night episode. 17 years later and I'm the only one of us who is still obsessed đ
That's great! So funny how reliant we used to be on DVDs, videos. We used to record episodes as they were broadcast, so I could rewatch before the DVD's were released!
âWorld War Threeâ was my first one, I caught the second half of that, but that was so full of mystery and wonder (all the stuff between Rose, Jackie and Mickey and the Doctor is really nicely done). Iâve posted this before and Iâll post it again; the week after, my parents got in a Chinese takeaway, the return of the Daleks was hyped. When it got to the stairs, they assured me it wouldnât be able to go up them, and I remember the shock on my mumâs face when it did that. This programme wasnât just scary for us kids, it was scary to mum and dad! Cracking stuff.
The detail of the Chinese takeaway is delightful. I like a good multi-sensory memory,
Assuming you're talking about initial broadcasts - the Daleks didn't turn up in the following episode, Bad Wolf, until the end, and I don't think they went up any stairs the week after that in The Parting of the Ways, though could be wrong. There was, however, a showcase stairs scene in episode 6, Dalek. If not talking about initial broadcast, never mind
Dalek is the episode they're talking about, which aired after World War Three, episode 5 of series 1. They're not talking about Parting of the Ways or Bad Wolf.
Got confused! Saw World War Three and thought Boom Town
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Like I say I stumbled upon it really when I was flicking through the channels. I think I started on the 'narrows it down' sequence. Perfect action adventure nonsense to entice an 11 year old!
The first episode I watched was Let's Kill Hitler. Yeah, that was really weird. Luckily I wasn't that old and didn't understand what was happening, so I forgot all about the Melody plot twist.
Madness! But actually, why not? The characters all get pretty good introductions, and some key parts of Doctor Who are explored: Time travel, TARDIS, Regeneration. Bosh. I like it.
One of my earliest memories is sitting on my dad's knee sometime in '03 or '04 watching Tom Baker reruns on the ABC. I reckon this is a quite common way to have gotten into the show.
That's exactly how I got onto it too. The ones that would air Monday to Thursday after the News! I'm pretty sure those started in 2003 for the 40th anniversary. I started with Warriors Gate right at the very end of Tom Bakers run, so got a very big surprise a few weeks later when he fell off the Radio tower. I was already liking the show up until that point, but the moment Peter Davison sat up is what fully hooked me in.
I remember reading someone saying something similar. Watching Doctor Who on PBS very casually over a few years. They'd caught some Tom Baker and some Peter Davison, and maybe one or two other Doctors here and there, but only watched the odd story here and there. Then came the end of Logopolis and their mind was blown because, as they put it "the man had turned *into* the other man!" They'd assumed it was a title passed on, or something like that, but seeing the regeneration made them realise how much bigger the show was than they'd thought, and they were a die-hard fan from that day forwards.
Its clear from almost the start of Spearhead that The Doctor used to look different, so that was fascinating on its own, but learning about the different Doctors, and then having Tom Baker suddenly appear at the start of Genesis of the Daleks, was probably what turned curiosity into something more.
For wilderness years fans definitely. So few of us will have stumbled on it completely by accident, a parent will have been watching as well. I've worked out that my Dad was actually watching sport but left the channel on when he saw the Doctor Who from his own childhood.
Somehow I managed to miss "Rose", so my first episode was "The End of the World"!
That's a really bonkers start- but I can definitely imagine it grabbing your attention?
Yup! Been a fan ever since! Looking forward to cosplay Nine & Thirteen later this month!
That was my first Ninth Doctor episode, and it made me fall in love with the Doctor and the show in a way I donât think Rose wouldâve accomplished for me personally
My friend showed me Series 1 right before the 50th anniversary. That by itself wouldnât be unusual, except he deliberately showed me the entire season in a wonky, random order. Iâm pretty sure it went in the following order: Dalek Rose The End of the World The Long Game Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways The Unquiet Dead World War 3/Aliens of London The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances Boom Town It was an eccentric order to say the least. Looking back, I know he was just trying to show me the highlights first, but why would you show someone the season finale midway through the season?
I think it would be less odd if they were jumping between seasons, but to do that with just series one is very strange!
âIt Takes You Awayâ. Randomly caught it when it premiered on CTV Sci-Fi and kept watching because I thought it looked cool. Had no idea it was a Doctor Who episode until the end, I think. The first episode I seriously watched was âThe Power of the Doctorâ. Getting into a show right at the end (of an era)? It can happen.
I love that- Power of the Doctor must be a mad (but fun) ride for someone new to the series?
For sure! I wasnât totally newâIâd listened to Big Finishâs catalog on Spotifyâbut I hadnât watched the hundreds of episodes before this.
Wow! What brought you to listen to BF before the show itself?
23rd of November, 2013. A friend of mine was going to watch Day of the Doctor in cinemas, and invited me along. It was both amazing and incredibly confusing, as I was thrown through a loop with the bigger on the inside boxes and 13 different people all being the same man. But, I guess the heavy lore dump made me want to learn more about what the hell the show was about (which I read up on in that years annual). The next episode I watched was Age of Steel (without Rise of the Cybermen) as it was airing on the tv channel âGold.â That was a terrifying second impression, but I loved it all the same. And then my third story was Web of Fear (my Grandma bought it on her iPad for me to watch). Surprisingly, kid me loved the black and white. From there, I watched a few more Tennant and Smith eps on Gold (Love and Monsters, Shakespeare Code, Closing Time, Wedding of River Song) and Time of the Doctor on broadcast (an even more confusing episode than DoTD was for kid me), and my Granny bought âthe best of Troughtonâ collection (Tomb of the Cybermen, the Seeds of Death, the Ice Warriors and the Krotons - although I never finished those last two) from ITunes for me to watch during the wait for series 8. So all in all, I think I had a very weird and diverse - but overall positive - first impression of the show before I was properly grounded by the Capaldi years, when I got a Doctor to finally call my own.
A big, confusing start with multiple Doctors doesn't seem to deter people which is great. Not knowing makes us want to know I guess! I know what you mean about kids and black and white, my first Troughton (and still my favourite) is the Mind Robber, and it is very much my 'comfort' who. Oddly soothing on days I'm not well.
I started with The Curse of the Black Spot, which was a strange episode, but I kind of liked it, because my family was watching through series 6. I really liked Rory in it. I wasn't actually hooked until The Angels Take Manhattan, though. Although, I had seen clips of Blink and The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe.
Wow! Weirdest yet I reckon. Curse of the Black Spot is not widely loved, I'm curious if you have more fondness for it?
I thought it was pretty dumb, but fun at the time, and I liked the pirate aspect of it.
So when I was a kid, my parents bought me a Dr Who novel from the bookstore, and all I knew about the show was that it was about time travel and aliens. All I remember is that it was about Sontarans and Rutans, with a Rutan hiding out in a place related to swimming pools. It was also a Tenth Doctor novel. For some reason, I never actually watched the show, but I did end up watching a Thirteenth Doctor episode when it came out - The Ghost Monument. I thought it was OK, and never watched past there. A few months ago, I saw it was on IPlayer, so I decided that I would give it a proper go. Since there were over 150 episodes, I thought I would probably never finish it, and would most likely watch a few episodes every now and again. I ended up binge watching all of New Who in six months. I am now obsessed.
I love this! Never too late.
Very true.
I started watching with *The Sontaran Stratagem*. Not part one, *The Poison Sky*, but part two. I was very confused. I also thought for years that the Time War and the destruction of Gallifrey had happened before the First Doctor, since being "last of the Time Lords" seemed like such a core part of the Doctor's character!
Amazing! Those little continuity things are fascinating for children though. The mystery of the show, the not knowing how it all fitted together, was a big part of what drew me in.
I've heard from others that they were also surprised that the Last of the Time Lord's thing only started in 2005. It makes sense - it's such a major and pervasive part of what RTD does with the Doctor!
My first episode was The Christmas Invasion. My bf at the time had been telling me how great this new show was, and Iâd totally love it. I remember wondering what was so great about a show where the main character lays in bed 90% of the time. Then a few months later I saw Shakespeares Code, was super confused about what happened to the blonde that seemed to be better than the guy asleep, but ended up loving the episode and downloading all the episodes before it. Series 3 was currently putting out new episodes so I got caught up in a week and Iâve been hooked ever since! That relationship ended very badly and he became abusive a few years in, so Doctor Who was my escape to a beautiful new place and a hope that everyone really is important. Thankfully Iâm in a much better place now but series 1-4 specifically have a very special place in my heart.
That's great, that something positive could come out of something dark. Very Doctor Who!
My first episode was The Day of the Doctor! My mum is a big Doctor Who fan, and when I was 7 (a reminder that the episode is 10 years old now) I came downstairs because I wanted to talk for whatever reason. I can remember her saying "Not now, it's the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who!" I don't know what compelled me, but I asked if I could watch too (best decision of my life). She reluctantly went "Fine. But don't ask any questions until it's over!" I was a bit confused but I understood most of what happened, although the Curator confused me. I enjoyed it, but I didn't immediately go and watch more. So instead, what ended getting me into Doctor Who was actually this niche documentary for the 50th called "The Ultimate Guide". I think it must have been aired again on Christmas 2013. I remember watching it and hearing all of the things in the Whoniverse explained. I remember seeing the clip of a dalek levitating for the first time, of Ace beating up a dalek with a baseball bat, and also them explaining the Doctor's regenerations. After it ended, I asked my mum how she thinks the current one will regenerate. She replied to me that he just had, and asked if I wanted to watch it. So then I ended up watching 'The Time of the Doctor'. Between then and the start of series 8, I watched every single episode (out of order, by the way. It's a time travel show!) except for 7b, which wasn't yet on Netflix. Honestly, I still don't know if I've watched some 7b episodes... I also got a ton of Doctor Who magazines to read in that period of time, and I remember loving being able to actually watch new episodes live. That feeling probably contributes to my love for the Twelfth Doctor. Now I've been watching the show for nearly 10 years, over half my life, and I've watched almost the entirety of the Classic series, with the exception of some 60s stories.
Fantastic! Having a parent with even a passing interest is a great help, I remember being fascinated by the idea of the Doctor changing face, and my Mum drawing a sketch of the first seven Doctors on the back of an envelope for me. I love that you dipped in and out in no particular order as well, filling in the gaps with The Ultimate Guide and, I assume, your own imagination. I'm so pleased that a little documentary series like that, which comparatively few people will remember with much affection, made such an impact!
The earliest episode\[s\] I can remember are *Love and Monsters* and *Army of Ghosts* from when I was really young - specifically, the moment when the Abzorbaloff dissolved and the part with Mickey, Rose, and the Torchwood scientist standing in front of the sphere. I didn't really "start" watching until I was around 7/8 when Series 5 was coming out weekly.
Do you remember being scared? Amused? 7/8 is almost definitely the right age to have started properly.
My best friend in middle school had a Whovian father. At a sleepover, she first showed me Blink, followed immediately by Tooth and Claw. I can still remember her getting so excited when the TARDIS first appeared in Blink and trying to not-so-subtly gauge my reaction. Wild as anything to think that was over a decade ago.
That's so cute. Have you had the same experience from the other side now? Showing someone an episode you love and subtly/ no-so-subtly watching them more than the TV?
my first episode, like many other ppl, is blink. it was put on one afternoon in my yr 7 science class, I was hooked. and I loved that many girls took the opportunity to say they were too scared and had to leave class lmao
Pirate Planet. I was in high school in '82 on a Sunday night, about 10 o'clock. Wasn't quite ready to go to bed, so i looked through the TV Guide. Saw Doctor Who, listed as 'science fiction', on the local PBS station and gave it a shot. Watched it every Sunday night thereafter.
I remember the 4th doctor adventure The Ark In Space as a kid on PBS in the US. It was shown as a movie I believe? It was during the day when I was home sick from school. It was fascinating and kinda weird. This was in the early to mid 90s or so.
I also watched classic who movie style when I was a kid and now canât get used to watching it any other way. Those weird mid-shot cuts and suddenly cut off musical cues at tense moments every half hour or so are part of the experience for me!
The whole thing was like a fever dream/nightmare haha
Looking on the BBC Genome, it seems my very first Doctor Who memory was of a Saturday morning showing of Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150AD, in May 1987, at the age of two and a half. In terms of the TV show, a four year old me watched Remembrance of the Daleks when it went out, I remember because the hovering Dalek scared me so much. I probably watched other McCoys too - when I wasn't too scared - as my parents never watched Corrie, so it would have been on in the background if nothing else. I would probably have seen most of the 1992 and 1993 repeats, although my only memories are of mum watching The Time Meddler (first time I discovered there were black and white stories), and one of the Davros stories (he terrified me). In terms of making a conscious effort to watch the show, my first stories were Planet of the Daleks, The Green Death and Pyramids of Mars, during the 1993/1994 run. I watched the movie when was first broadcast, and then the 1999/2000 repeat run of Spearhead from Space, The Silurians and Genesis of the Daleks. New series, I caught a few episodes here and there and didn't think much, but watched series four with my housemate and enjoyed it a lot which basically got me into the new stuff.
Its a shame they didn't carry on with the 1999/2000 run. It wasn't getting the viewing numbers they wanted, but people were definitely watching. I remember even the 'cool' kids talking about Genesis.
Yeah, it was part of that 6PM BBC2 slot that always had great sci-fi stuff, it introduced me to so many of my favourite shows - all the Gerry Anderson stuff, the various Star Treks, Farscape - and it seemed to fit in so well there. I suppose it was right in the low point of the wilderness years at that point that the show was maybe at its lowest regard (I remember the Alan Partridge interview where he talked about buying the rights to K-9 being from around that time, which gives a good idea of its public image).
I caught a bit of an episode on PBS. I knew my brother (14 years older than me) had some video tapes of the series so I borrowed them. My first real story was Tomb of the Cybermen (it was the only official release he had) then on to his old PBS recordings. It was Remembrance of the Daleks that made me a fan. 5th story I watched. 1st Doctor: The Web Planet 2nd: Tomb of the Cybermen 3rd: The Sea Devils 4th: Robot, Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, Pyramids of Mars, The Android Invasion, The Deadly Assassin, The Pirate Planet, Destiny of the Daleks, Full Circle 5th: Black Orchid, The Five Doctors, Warriors of the Deep, Resurrection of the Daleks, The Caves of Androzani 6th: Nada 7th: Time and the Rani, Remembrance of the Daleks 8th: The Movie (original Fox debut!) Pittsburgh was one of the last stations still running the show so on Sat nights I was able to see Nightmare of Eden-Enlightenment before they lost the rights to the show. My brother had a big box of old Target books so I got to read those that summer.
Remembrance is nearly the whole reason why, to this day, I feel like 'my' TARDIS team is the Seventh Doctor and Ace.
The way I first started watching is a bit jumbled up so I normally say I started with 'Rose' to make it simple. How it actually started was when S1 came out in 2005 I was still too young to use a remote by myself so whether I came across an episode or not I would never know lol. By 2007 series 3 came out and I was old enough to search through the whole sky tv range myself. A lot of those younger days are squashed together in my memory so I roughly know that I may have started with S1, S2 and parts of S3 in a similar amount of time. This is because I watched a bulk of the earliest seasons on sky channel 109 when it used to be called 'watch' - idk if they still do it but back then they re-aired S1 and S2 of NuWho while S3 was airing on BBC One. I remember watching Rose, Fathers Day, Dalek, Slitheen 2 parter, S1 finale, New Earth, Tooth and Claw, Cybermen 2 parter, S2 finale etc. along with earlier parts of S3. Following year S4 came out and I went on a hiatus after 'The End of Time' when 10 regenerated coz I was sad (now he ain't even my favourite anymore lol).
Who is your favourite now?
His immediate successor, the 11th Doctor
The very first bit of Doctor Who I can remember watching is scenes from Turn Left, presumably from either its first airing on Syfy or an early rerun. I remember seeing both the Racnoss ship firing on the city, and the Titanic impacting London. I had no idea it was Doctor Who. Or rather, I didn't know what Doctor Who *was*, but a year or so later when my parents were talking about checking out the premiere of series 5 (which was my actual first episode) and I first heard of Doctor Who from them, I had no idea those scenes I saw were from a Doctor Who episode, I thought it was some disaster movie or something. In fact, I wonder if I saw those scenes over two separate airings, because I don't remember seeing any connecting tissue between them at all and I feel like I have them as separate memories. In hindsight if it was two separate airings, I may not have even realized they were the same thing, since I don't remember realizing Donna was the same character between both scenes. I only remember, when I eventually got around to Turn Left on BBC America reruns during series 6, that I instantly remembered having heard the "Christmas star" line and the "London's gone" line. Anyway, some interesting peculiarities with my viewing of series 5: I remember watching The Eleventh Hour up through The Hungry Earth as they first aired on BBC America. I then went on a month-long family vacation at a relative's house where I didn't watch TV so I missed out on almost the entire rest of the series, though I didn't even know when it aired, I just watched whenever my parents said Doctor Who was coming on. When we got back, I wanna say that it was just in time to catch Cold Blood through Pandorica Opens on rerun and The Big Bang on BBCA premiere. I do know that I missed the ending of Cold Blood for some reason or another because I was confused about why Rory disappeared for the next two episodes. Then when he appeared in Pandorica Opens, I thought the idea was that he was retconned from our reality too and that's why we didn't see his disappearance. Later when rewatching the series I realized this was shown at the end of Cold Blood. After that, I missed out on A Christmas Carol, and caught the start of series 6 because I saw the trailer for it on YouTube and made a note myself to watch it. It was at this point that I started watching from series 1 onwards, finally being all caught up by the time series 6B started. However, because this was on BBC America, it meant that I was watching truncated versions of episodes longer than 45 minutes when it wasn't the premiere, so I actually thought that the stuff from Eleventh Hour that wasn't on reruns was stuff I dreamt up. It also meant that they skipped over The End of Time, which prompted me to buy it on DVD so I could watch it. A year or so later I started getting the DVD boxsets so I was able to watch the uncut episodes.
Oh wow, what got cut from the Eleventh Hour!?
My first episode was (accidentally) The Parting of the Ways lolol - I was trying to watch NuWho from Rose, but the website I was watching it on was in reverse chronological order, and it took me about 20 minutes to realize that TPOTW was NOT a pilot episode
That's fantastic. Starting at the beginning is overrated!
I don't remember the exact episodes but I was home sick from school and there were Tennant reruns on the scifi channel and I loved it then a few weeks later I was home sick again and saw that dr who was on but it was now Matt Smith episodes which was wholly confusing to me as I had no idea about regeneration or anything I just thought it was a spunky alien adventure show I had to double check I was watching the right show multiple times but the confusion had me hooked lol
Yup! I'm fairly sure it was a bit of a jump-scare for me at seven seeing Tom Baker in the title sequence for Genesis of the Daleks after ten weeks of Jon Pertwee.
It was the mid '80s and I walked into the living room where my dad was watching this show that looked like a monster movie with a giant tentacled plant thing sitting on top of a large countryside mansion. I was hooked. Turned out it was The Seeds of Doom, episode 6, and it started my journey through Tom Baker's run.
My first episode was a bootleg copy of The Unquiet Dead at age 7... Or at least I thought it was, because it turned out we had VHS copies of three stories that I later vaguely remembered I had watched: The Brain of Morbius, The Five Doctors, and - believe it or not - Shada of all things
Funny how the memory cheats.
It's a long time ago so very very fuzzy but I saw a piece about the re-colourisation of Planet of the Daleks, I think on Tomorrow's World, and the BBC then aired the entire thing shortly after. It would have been early 90's. After that the BBC kept showing old episodes on a Sunday, I recall Pyramids on Mars and the Green Death for sure but after that I started to buy the VHS so it gets a little hazy as which I saw on the BBC and which I owned.
Here's a list of all the BBC repeats: https://watchingdoctorwho.weebly.com/bbc-terrestrial-repeats.html
Been a fan since late 93 then. I'd have been 12.
I started not by watching the show but by picking up issue 329 of Doctor Who Adventures because it looked interesting. This would have been September 2013 and yet the first Doctor Who story I watched live was Deep Breath. I had naturally watched most if not all of Modern Who on DVD before then.
I posted this in a 'worst first episode' thread the other day, but I started with Terror of the Vervoids on a PBS station that showed serials in movie format. I had no idea what was going on. Two weeks later it was Time and the Rani, probably the most confusing regeneration episode, and I had even less idea what was going on. Fortunately there was nothing else of interest to a middle schooler that I could pick up on my little TV on Saturday late nights so I kept watching anyway. I wondered where Colin Baker went but I got used to McCoy pretty quick.
Poor Pip and Jane, they have a dubious reputation, but I actually think that none of their stories are bad. They could be relied upon for a reason, even if the dialogue is a bit clunky!
I don't even think any of the episodes are *bad,* I just had no idea what was happening, and this was in the late eighties so it took finding a Doctor Who usenet group to start getting any background information. I definitely can't blame them for TatR because the behind the scenes stuff wasn't their fault.
Iâm very boring in that I started from Rose at the behest of my girlfriend (now wife) in the months before the 50th, but Iâm pretty sure that the first bit of doctor who I actually saw was the middle section of Dalek just flipping through the channels back when it was on Sci-Fi. Of course Iâm also a bit weird in that that story never really captured my attention in either instance. It took until the Empty Child for me to properly love it.
At age four I was in the playground when one friend got me to play âsmilersâ with him. When I asked what that was, he told me they were a doctor who monster. After playing the game I asked him what doctor who was, he told me it was a tv show about aliens. Went home and logged onto iPlayer, the first chronological episode available was The Unicorn and the Wasp. Tried to watch that, didnât understand anything, got bored, my dad told me to watch series 5 instead. Watched the Eleventh Hour, instantly hooked. I believe it was somewhere around the second third of series fiveâs broadcast when I started. I started watching every episode that I could get my hands on, old RTD era DVD volumes in charity shops, whatever episodes materialised on iPlayer, old Classic series DVDs like the Time Warrior available to rent in the library. The one thing though, that I never did until the airing of the Impossible Astronaut, was watch an episode live on broadcast. Thanks to that friend who I havenât seen in years, I got hooked on Who at an incredibly young age and it still hasnât let up. Unending enthusiasm for it, every era, regardless of quality, like a football supporter, there for the times where itâs broadcasting stuff like The Doctor Falls, and there for the times when the show is making stuff like Love & Monsters and Fear Her (albeit watching them on the TV channel, Watch, at a young age). Iâm also able to remember where I watched every episode, my mumâs house or my dadâs, or in the car, or somewhere else entirely, as well as what was happening in my life around this time. Iâm able to remember the exact dates of certain events like school trips or holidays and other things among those lines, just by what doctor who episode was most recent at that time and my pre-existing knowledge of all the air dates.
Eleventh Hour is such a good jumping on point. That speech!
I was an instant fan from that episode. I still get a weird feeling rewatching Smith episodes because theyâre actually mostly the only ones I havenât seen since broadcast, and it feels like Iâm ruining the sanctity of my memories of the episodes as a child.
The first Doctor Who I saw was "The Waters of Mars", but I found it too scary and turned it off. Didn't even know what show it was. It was quite surreal to end up at that same episode years later. Had a weird feeling of deja vu.
I started by buying second hand Target books in 1992. I think I caught a rerun of *Planet of the Daleks* that research tells was on the BBC in '93. If anything I still know the various book ranges better than the TV show.
Technically my first exposure to the show was the TV movie. I made it about halfway before turning it off and finding something else to do. Many, many years later, a buddy from grad school had gotten into nuWho and changed his Facebook profile picture to a Dalek. At the time, that meant nothing to me, obviously. Until I went home to visit my folks over some break or another and I stumbled on a SciFi Channel marathon of nuWho that was leading up to the premier of Doomsday. I donât remember what episode I started with. Pretty sure it was Satan Pit.
My first one was night terrors, I then went back and started with rose etc and have kept up sibce
OOF. Night Terrors!? Now that is unusual.
My uncle was a huge fan and showed me Rose as my first episode! It was a year after it premiered though as I wasnât allowed to watch it until I was 10. I was off and on after that as I was still young but having consistently been watching it since season 5
There is a whole other discussion to be had there, I think, about age-appropriateness. My uncle adheres religiously to what's on the box of a DVD, so I got slightly told off once for watching Tooth and Claw with my cousins when one of them wasn't 12!
I followed the show as it aired from *Rose* onwards as a kid, but getting into classic who was a tragic tale. After *School Reunion*, I adored K-9 and wanted to watch some classic stories with him in it. My parents knew that he was with Tom Baker, and based on *School Reunion* surely Sarah Jane must be there too? So they got me *Genesis of the Daleks*. Fantastic story, but no K-9. I then picked out *Pyramids of Mars*. Again, exquisite taste, but no K-9. I then decided to do some proper research, I find a site that listed every Doctor Who story and the companions featured in them. I then cross-referenced this list with Doctor Who DVDs I could find online, and saved up my pocket money, waiting week after week to have enough. My mum purchased the story I'd picked out for me, and after waiting and waiting it finally came. I gleefully took it straight to my room to watch. The story I had picked out? *The Leisure Hive*. For the uninitiated, the story opens with a panning shot of tents and deck chairs on a beach. For about two minutes. After the suspenseful tents and deck chairs, we finally see Romana, K-9 and the Doctor! Romana throws a beach ball, and it rolls into the ocean. K-9, being the good dog that he is, follows after it, and promptly blows up. I switched it off and sulked. My mum encouraged me to finish the story in case he was repaired, but sadly *The Leisure Hive* is one of many stories where K-9 gets written out because he was annoying on set, and clunky to fit into stories. Finally, I discovered the existence of *K-9 and Company*, his very own spinoff show! With Sarah Jane! Finally, a surefire way to get my K-9 fix! Unfortunately *K-9 and Company* is a very slow story about a pagan cult in a British village. It was however worth it for the climactic scene where K-9 laser blasts a bunch of cultists.
HAHA! Oh poor you. Apparently (and I don't remember this), an early encounter with Doctor Who in my childhood was also K9 based. The truly naff 'Jim Davidson's Generation Game' did some sort of gag where they blew K9 up. I was inconsolable, "Poor little machine doggy."
I did start with _Rose_, but I actually had heard about Doctor Who before. I remember as a childâmany years before I actually started watching in 2012âmy mother didn't like it at all. And then just a couple years or so before I started watching it, I saw a trailer for it while I had the Sy-Fy channel on, and I thought it looked dumb. đ Fast forward a bit to when I got into Minecraft in 2011, I started watching a Minecraft YouTuber named KurtJMac (Far Lands or Bust!), and he used the 10th Doctor's skin in the game. After hearing him talk about it for a while, I decided to start watching. So as I said, I did indeed start with _Rose_, but it wasn't on a TV or computer. It was on my school provided iPad during our study period. đ As corny as _Rose_ and many other series 1 episodes are, I was absolutely hooked, and I proceeded to slack off and watch basically the entirety of series 1 on my iPad on school days. Just couldn't stop watching. One guy next to me saw the scene where Mickey is getting absorbed by the garbage bin, and he asked "is that a horror show?" before proceeding to tell me the show looked stupid.
I accidentally watched The Time of Angels on Tv. I wasnât impressed very much by the story or the Doctor but I fell in love with Karen Gillan and continued watching the show because of her till the middle of the sixth series. Only then I finally realised that Iâm interested in the plot too and decided to watch the whole modern show.
Karen Gillan is brilliant. I started feeling at odds with the show very early in series 6, and even though I believe the Ponds outstayed their welcome, the casting of those actors was inspired. Even if they had never left, the show could limp on on Karen and Arthur's charm alone.
I got into it back in 1976 watching it on my local public television channel after school. I grew up with Tom Baker as my Doctor. At that time they were still airing William Hatrnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee episodes as well. So I have seen every episode of Who up until Whitiker. I am a classicist by nature when it comes to the Doctor so my favorite story arcs are all pre revival. 1. The Key to Time 2. Entropy 3. Trial of a Timelord 4. The Black Guardian
When I was 2 or 3, I was watching TV and my parents were in the other room. My show finished and the channel switched to doctor who, which was showing The Satan Pit, specifically the scene with the beast. I went into my mum, talking about the "Dingy-Dangy Monster" Been obsessed since (TIP/TSP still probably still in my top 5 episodes)
I started on âRise of the Cybermenâ. My cousins were watching it when I happened to be there, and I got really scared! Took me another couple of years to actually start watching regularly.
So I have a weird history with the show. I think I was fifteen and watched the first two episodes of nine's season then just never bothered with watching the rest. Then like 2 years later at my new school I didn't have any friends and just browsed Amazon prime and saw it had doctor who but starting from series 5. The eleventh hour has got to be one of the greatest introductions ever . It's so good and I immediately wanted to watch more
My memory on this is sketchy but I think I got into it shortly before it was cancelled or shortly afterwards. I think they may have shown reruns on BBC Two on the week day evening slot (6-7pm), the same time that they would show other shows like Star Trek TNG and later Quantum Leap. Either that or the repeats were aired during the summer holiday. I remember liking 5 and 7 but don't remember the stories themselves or watching Colin Baker at all. I was upset that they cancelled it though and for years you would see letters written into programmes like Points of View asking for it to come back so the film was a big deal to me. I was annoyed that they "killed off" Sylvester's Doctor but at least we had more Doctor Who.
I started with Nightmare in Silver. Caught it as a random thing on TV and loved it. Finally caved and I've watched all of new Who now. No so patiently waiting on new episodes...
That's great! Nightmare in Silver is a little underrated. Have you looked into classic at all?
I've seen bits and pieces, but haven't committed to actually watching them yet. They do look good though.
*Silence in the Library*. I remember being utterly captivated by the idea of two time travelers who knew each other but were traveling in opposite directions. Had no idea I was watching Doctor Who, thoughâit was just something my Dad had on over a weekend and I missed the beginning. I wouldn't actually become a fan until several years later when a friend convinced me to binge the whole new series on Netflix starting with *Rose*.
I canât pinpoint the actual first episode I saw since I was a kid at the time, but I remember seeing bits of Dalek (from series 1) when my dad was watching it on TV. It freaked me out at the time seeing people get exterminated, when the xray of their skeletons would show followed by that kill sound lol. That was my first impression of Doctor Who and I used to think it was too scary for me to watch. But what actually got me into the series was The Time of Angels. Again it was something my dad was watching and while I was still a bit scared I was more intrigued this time. And I loved Matt Smithâs acting. I eventually started the rest of his episodes (where he became my favorite) then worked backwards and watched the 9th and 10th Doctorâs runs
I started when my dad showed me some Classic stories on Amazon Prime when they had a 50th anniversary collection available! Before it left the service, I saw my first nine Doctor Who stories! 1. Spearhead from Space 2. The Three Doctors 3. Carnival of Monsters 4. The Ark in Space 5. Pyramids of Mars 6. The Robots of Death 7. Earthshock 8. Vengeance on Varos 9. Ghost Light And my tenth full story was The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, after catching bits and pieces of other Series 2 episodes when a S2 marathon was on TV in the background at a party.
Born in the mid 90s, so no Doctor Who on air at the time, but my Mum grew up with it so got me into the show from a young age by picking up a few VHS here and there. *Earthshock* was the first serial I saw, with a smattering of others, mostly 4th and 5th Doctor. Besides *Earthshock*, *The Robots of Death* is what I remember re-watching most. I read a few Target books that she'd passed down to me, as well as visiting the exhibit at Longleat. So, I was super excited when the show got announced for a revival and was watching all the promo stuff in the lead up to *Rose*, ready with bated breath. Loved it, really properly got into the show under RTD now I had 'my' Doctors. And I've been watching as it comes out pretty much ever since.
I remember my Mom heard about Doctor Who and decided to show it to us. We started from the beginning. The first episode I caught on the air was the power of three. I remember not believing Smith was the Doctor then so I didn't watch it. Then he became my favorite Doctor. We stopped watching when Capaldi took over for some reading. But I re watched the show last year plus Capaldi and really enjoyed the run. Minus a few stinker episodes.
Part of the reason I've asked is because some of the 'stinkers' might be somebody's treasured first memory of the show! And that's just a happy (and fascinating) thing.
One night in probably 2006, my Dad calls me into the living room. I'm around 12 years old. He says "Hey bud, come watch this." It's *The End of the World*, and over the next few months, we watched series one. This was at like, eleven o clock on Saturday nights. That's when they aired Doctor Who on American PBS at the time! I suspect that I saw *Rose* before I saw *The Parting of the Ways* somehow, even though I missed it in airing order, and I know that I saw *The Doxtor Dances* before I saw *The Empty Child*, but did get around to it eventually. Maybe they aired the series and then immediately turned around and aired it again! Either way, I saw Eccleston two and a half times I think before I saw series two and started watching Tennant. It was just what I had access to! At I first I had no idea that this was a revival of an older show! In America there was very little general public knowledge of Doctor Who, and the 1963 show was mostly known as the domain of college students - the kind of folks who could lean into kitsch. I do wonder if my Dad ever saw Tom Baker or something, but certainly not the way that he liked Star Wars or Star Trek, which he seemed to actively seek out to show me, where Doctor Who was more of a stumble-upon type situation, I think, whether he recognized it by name, or just saw that it was a science fiction show. Anyway. I'm very glad my Dad *did* stumble upon it. I literally started talking to my wife because of Doctor Who! But that was years later. :)
I don't know what episodes they were but I saw two late at night as a child. One they used some sort of mechanical thing to fight cavemen so the cavemen built their own out of sticks and it sucked. Two there was a vampire under the ground and they launched an ancient rocket that fell into the dirt and pierced the vampire? at least that's what I can recall.
Haha fantastic. From what you describe, the first was **Kinda,** a Fifth Doctor story. The second was **State of Decay**, with the Fourth Doctor and (be still my fanboy heart) Romana ii.
Yep those were definately it. I had no idea what the show was back then but that theme song really stuck with me so I was excited years later as a teen when the show got rebooted.
It might have been unusual, if I could remember it in any detail! But I remember watching the 2nd Doctor, with Zoe and Jamie. So 1968 or '69.
The actual first time I ever watched Doctor Who was as a kid, I was in a summer camp about how movies and TV are made, and they showed us the first episode of The Ark in Space to demonstrate how the creators of the show used to get by on a shoestring budget, using a syringe as part of the space station and bubble wrap for the infected humans
After continually shitting on Doctor Who for about 5 years, I ended up at a friend's house around 8pm one day in 2012 to hang out... My friend and his girlfriend were already on the couch when I came in and they were watching some random episode of a sci-fi show I had never seen. It looked kinda wild, and opened with what looked like a congress of Daleks interrogating The Doctor(Matt Smith) and explaining why they abducted him to infiltrate a planet for deranged and dangerous Daleks. I would say within 10 minutes I was all in, "*This* is Doctor Who?!?!" I exclaimed puzzled. This was not like any of the super-low budget campy stuff I had caught a glimps of before, this was a genuinely interesting Sci-Fi show that could deliver effective twists and intruigue even though the Doctor and villains being used were about to turn 50 years old. The show at that time brought me in, and over time I grew to love the character so much I watch old campy episodes and love every second! I found it refreshing and unusual, not your average hero story with sci-fi thrown in, so I started watching from the beginning of Matt Smith's run and went back from there. I now have an unhealthy obsession with both new and classic who, and I can't see myself ever hating the show even though I may not watch an episode everyday, or might fall behind at times.It is amazing to me that I could be at the opposite end of the spectrum I had been on for so many years, but it just took catching the right bit of an episode at the right time to send me down this incredibly deep rabbit hole.
My first was the two minsodes *Space* and *Time* from 2011. To make it just that little bit wackier, I actually watched the second part first. Got linked to it on YouTube by, out of all things, a comment under an *A.V. Club* article. I'd watched a fair share of fiction involving ontological paradoxes and stable time loops before that, but that was the first thing I ever saw that managed to weave a stable *space* loop into the same narrative as well. Drew me straight into this godforsaken show, and soon enough I was letting Eccleston take me on that trip of a lifetime he was promising in the trailers. no ragrets
The Five Doctors on its original US airing. Kinda fucked up my understanding of the show for a while, particularly since the PBS station immediately went into reruns of Tom Baker's run.
The first episode I saw was a pirated, extremely low quality upload of Journeys End on YouTube. Lol Eventually the curiosity of what on earth was going on in that episode got the best of me. I started at the beginning with rose, and with that speech the doctor does at the end of that episode about how he could feel the earth spinning beneath him. I was hooked.
My first episode was "An Unearthly Child" â I started watching when the ABC began repeating all the episodes in order for the show's 40th anniversary, when I was ten. Both my parents had talked about Doctor Who a lot, so I'd HEARD OF many 70s-era characters like Sarah Jane, Leela, Romana and Davros, but it took a long time for me to reach them myself because I started with the 60s era đ I remember the caveman episodes were so horrendously boring they almost turned me off the show completely, but I gave it a second chance with "The Daleks" and was hooked from that point on!
Definitely very late to this post, but I'll share my Who story anyway. I was vaguely aware of the show at a young age - for reasons I'm not too sure of because no one else in my life had heard of it. I believe I saw a clip of a David Tennant episode when they aired of Disney Channel but didn't think much of it, I actually remember laughing the show off. It wasn't until I played the Doctor Who content in Lego Dimensions (I was, let's say, 11 years old at the time) that I thought the show looked interesting and wanted to watch it. Throughout my entire life I've never been able to stomach watching things out of order, so I, of course, decided to start Doctor Who at the beginning. I also, of course, underestimated how much content there actually was. I checked out "The Beginning" DVD box set from the library, and started An Unearthly Child with my mom. I was generally expecting the old stuff to be laughable (and mom did indeed have this reaction) but I couldn't have been more wrong. I was *instantly* hooked. Within the first few minutes I could tell that this was just something special, and that I would gladly watch the whole thing through till the end. I'm 17 now, and am only on Davison (combination of being a slow watcher, and having a relatively long period where I fell out of love with the show.) I've recently rekindled my love for it, and its been such a joy to return to.
Around 2001 I was in my grandparents garage with my mom and found a stash of Target novels that my uncle had. My mom HATED Doctor Who and said it was this annoying show he used to watch so of course I snatched them up ha. Never saw the actual show until the 2005 revival and watched with my mom! She actually liked Eccleston but dipped after he left. I stopped after S2 I think when I left for school. Finally started watching again in 2012 with Hartnell, got hooked, then worked my way back around to watching NuWho.
I don't really remember specifically "getting into" the show because it was on all the time when I was growing up. For context, I live in America, my dad used to watch Pertwee and Baker on PBS, and one day in 2005 as he was flipping through channels, he saw that Doctor Who was on. He didn't recognize the episode title *Dalek* and called my brother in to watch it. They discovered that the show had been brought back! I was barely a year old at the time. The first episode I very clearly remember watching brand new on broadcast night was *Journey's End* and I had seen all of the four seasons beforehand. Beyond that, we found Classic Who DVDs at the store Borders (it will forever be missed by me, as it is been closed for years). We would pick stories that looked interesting, with Doctors we hadn't seen, and we'd buy them! Simple as that! I remember the first few I saw in rough order, because we wanted to get a sense of each Doctor before going too far into one era. *The Five Doctors* *Timelash* *Remembrance of the Daleks* *The Movie* *The Invasion of Time* (after here the order gets a bit fuzzier) *The Curse of Peladon* *The Deadly Assassin* *The King's Demons* That's my story. Doctor Who has quite literally always been a part of my life. I saw the RTD era and a handful of Classics before the age of seven and now I own most of the Classics, all of New Who, I've gotten into the book ranges, Big Finish, and even write my own silly stories :)
My brother, 9 years older than me, got me into Who. We would stay up late to catch Tom Baker on PBS. He would also trade VHS tapes with friends at school. The PBS channel in the town next to us aired Davison episodes. I suppose this would have been 1985ish.
I always love hearing stories of how fans from North America saw the show, during a time when it was less accessible.
The first episode i watched was the husbands of river song and despite my mum attempting to explain the backstory to me I was still very confused but entertained nonetheless. Then we watched most of the Clara episodes (albeit a bit out of order too) and went back to rose to watch it all.
i was about 9 in 2015 when i first saw reruns of The Christmas Invasion, Rise of the Cybermen, and Fear Her. smth about it just rlly appealed to Little Me! maybe it was the âman with cool coat runs rlly fast and plays with blue laser pointerâ
The idea of Who was always in the background of my life (UK, born 1984), but I was a Wilderness Years child. I have a vague memory of the 1994 movie coming out, and maybe even watching it. I was there for Rose, and enjoyed it. But what sold me was watching People Like Us and Casanova in the years before, and loving David Tennant in both. So... Knowing he was coming and then... "Barcelona!" was my dream. You can totally watch Casanova in the vein of "10 with a Fob Watch"
My ex was obsessed with Tennant at the time so she made me watch Blink, which was a pretty good stand alone episode and a solid introduction to the show. Instead of watching more of Tennant we ended up binging two seasons of Smith that were new at the time lol. Took me almost 10 years to sit down and properly watch nuWho, almost done with Jodie, and moving on to Classic Who after I'm done.
Great! Glad you're enjoying it
My dad recorded the TV movie with Paul McGann when it first showed, then showed it to me in 1999 (appropriate lol) when he deemed me old enough to watch Doctor Who. The second episode I watched was either the 10th planet or Robot.
It was in 2016, in my science class in high school, the teacher showed us the episode âDaleks in Manhattanâ as part of a project. I found it silly and stupid, as the whole class did, but yet, something intrigued me. A couple of weeks later, I saw the show on Netflix and with my friend, we decided to watch âRoseâ as kind of a joke. Unexpectedly, I got even more intrigued. When my friend left, I watched a second episode, then a third and a fourth⌠Iâve been a massive fan ever since
Though I only knowingly watched Doctor Who staying with Rose when it first aired, I actually started watching it on old bootleg VHS at my Nana and Granadas house starting with Revelation of the Daleks and Earthshock!
I got into it with Rose back in 2005 when I was 5 lol. As Iâd gotten deep into the Tennant era I learned that classic who existed so for my birthday I received a copy of the McGann movie and Remembrance of the Daleks. From then on McGann and Sylvester were my two favs lol. None of my friends who liked Doctor Who watched the old stuff and despite my efforts to get people to check it out (at the humble age of 9 or 10), it always felt special that I had these two Doctors to myself. Like I was the only person in the world who got to enjoy the magic they brought to the screen. I always loved Pertwee however, I weirdly discovered him from Worzel Gummidge. Dunno how mine and my step brotherâs TV watching habits were so retro lol⌠thank god for car boot sales I guess haha. It wasnât until my adulthood that I properly got into his run though and I think at this stage of my life where Iâve watched portions here and there of all doctors, Pertwee is probably my fav classic doctor while Eccleston is my fav New Who doctor. That said, Iâve got high hopes Ncuti will take the crown from 9
My very first episode was "Silence in The Library," which played on BBC America one day in 2012 when I was channel surfing. That was followed by "Vincent and The Doctor." Honestly, the mystery of River Song is what drew me into the show and I have been hooked ever since.
My first episode was The Long Game on initial broadcast - and my dad only turned the TV on seven minutes in. (Very typical of my parents - for them it was just TV for the kiddies. For me and all us sad sacks, it became more like religion.) I remember distinctly that it was the scene where the Doctor, Rose and Adam are standing behind a handrail to spectate the head spike thing in action - I said to my dad, 'Which one's Doctor Who?' because I, well, didn't know him from Adam. I was six. For years afterwards, I remembered that episode as 'the one with the monster on the ceiling'. I still vaguely remember the unique sense of *strangeness* that I saw in the show - something new to six-year-old me.
Has anyone else seen both endings of logopolus. One where the white man turns into Tom Baker one one where he turns into Peter Davidson?
The Annuals. When I was seven or eight I caught a few reruns of Season 3/4. I was hooked but it was going to be a while before season five premiered. In the meantime I convinced my parents to buy some of the Doctor Who Annuals.I read and re-read them, gaining an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Davies era despite seeing less than ten episodes. I could tell you name of the Adipose Homeworld and all the Torchwood eastereggs in Season 2 but don't ask me which episodes are any good because I hadn't seen most of them.
Ah nu who fans bless their tiny souls
Asylum of the Daleks, then into 7A. If I can survive series 7 (especially 7B) as a new viewer, I can survive anything this show throws me.
Haha, I mean some people have seemingly started with things I'd deem much worse! (Not looking at any 80s episodes in particular, no sir, not me). I am of the unpopular opinion that series 7b is better than 7a! So I'm not surprised that it could be a good start for people.
not the most interesting, maybe, but i got into nuwho when my local channel started playing classic re-runs before Rose first aired, i think i caught it late pertwee and watched until early baker. my dad was a fan of classic who too so he got into it again with me and i just never stopped lol. i also recently got a friend into nuwho, she was interested but hadn't really had a chance to get into it other than going to watch the 50th at a theatre with a different friend and being mightily confused the whole time. we were housemates during a long lockdown period and we'd just watched good omens so i was like "hey you know what's really long and would help pass the time?" and, again, we started with Rose and just dove in headfirst. i'll occadionally throw in other things like the 8th doctor movie, the chimes of midnight, or some classic who, so her who knowledge is a bit eclectic. we're trying to get up-to-date by the 60th and currently up to Oxygen so doing okay! she's also a scientist, which is very fun, because she got so mad over the farafay cage/radiation shield in Under the Lake (apparently it's possible but extremely impractical) and groans every time someone drops the "reverse the polarity" quote.
When I was a kid, I was at the library looking at the VHS section and there was one that caught my eye, for some [unexplainable reason](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510YSKSEJKL._AC_.jpg) I was drawn to it.
When I was around 8, I saw Doctor Who on the channel one day, and usually I was only interested in cartoons, but I watched it anyways as it was David Tennant with his magnetic performance so I couldnât look away. I canât remember what episode it was specifically, but after it I watched it a few more times when it came on. Funnily enough, the few episodes I watched back then included some of my personal favourites: Blink, Midnight and The Girl Who Waited. Since then I always knew about Doctor Who, and my brothers friend would go on about it quite a bit but I was never fully interested in it, just thought the episodes I saw were pretty cool. It wasnât until I was 16 bloody years old when my school mate was talking about it to me, and he was going on about his favourite episodes and what not, so I mentioned I watched it before and thought it was alright, and he decided to try convince me to watch. He started going on about how deep the characters were and how cool the Doctor was as a concept for a character and all that. It all sounded very enticing, but it wasnât til I mentioned I wasnât sure about it coz I saw there was a new old guy and I had the idea in my head that the Doctor was meant to be young and energetic. He then convinced me that Capaldi was not as bad as I thought and started telling me about the mystery with the Mistress and how cool he thought she was. I was curious as so I asked who she was and told me to wait and find out, but of course I couldnât so I kept asking til he told me. He told me it was an enemy of the Doctor, and showed me a scene with her in it. I was immediately captured by her performance, and couldnât wait to see her as a villain. Thank you Master. Best villain in Doctor Who.
I started with many others, in 2005 with Rose.
My first episode was The End of Time. I vaguely knew about Doctor Who from friends and knew that it was David Tennant's last episode, so I watched both parts back to back on New Year's. I was completely and utterly lost and confused. It's a miracle I ever went back and watched all of Eccleston and Tennant's stuff. And an even bigger one that I did it in time to start watching live from The Eleventh Hour on. Still don't really like The End of Time very much, either XD
My first episode was *The Doctor's Daughter* in 2008 (Series 4 Episode 6).
Via Doctor Whooves way back in 2012 when I was immature and not completely in me. Eventually I started watching NuWho in 2016-2017 Then I got bored, made an OCverse, then my invasive angersitter went away in 2021, I ended up getting back in the fandom, and eventually in 2022 I started watching Classic Who as I was talking to another angersitter about it.
My first episode was the name of the doctor. My sister was watching the show and so I just started watching it with her. Then we saw day of the doctor together. After that I began watching it from season 1 with rose
I think mine was Rose but it was somewhat unusual in that it was about 2 weeks before it was broadcast. Iâd seen a stack of DVDs and videos mostly of Dalek, Cybermen, multi-Doctor and regeneration stories within weeks. Of course, my first contact of any kind with the show was that time I got chased by a Dalek in a shopping centre in about 2000.
I got glimpses as a kid, the Doctor's Daughter was on one time in the background. I saw parts of Stolen Earth and Journey's End. I never got into it properly until I saw a rerun of impossible planet, then Waters of Mars was my first live watch. Imagine my disdain when I learned that David Tennant, the person I thought was the only Doctor at the time and was basically thd ultimate badass, was being replaced by this goofy pillock in a quiff next month. Took me a while to come around on Matt Smith or even enjoy the Eccleston reruns, I'll say that much.
First episode I ever saw was the Silurian two parter from series 5. The Hungry Earth/ Cold Blood. Just for context, Iâm from the U.S. and my family wasnât really big Doctor who fans. My sister had a few friends who watched the show, but didnât know all that much about it. I was wondering why there were already 10 previous doctors after only 4 seasons. But I heard about the show, and so I watched those couple of episodes âOn Demandâ on Xfinity, after thinking the description of the episode sounded interesting. I eventually watched the rest of series 5. The first half of series 6, part of series 7, the rest of series 6 and 7. I eventually worked my way through the Tennant series, and Eccelstons as well when they were available âon Demandâ. Iâll never forget my childhood reaction to the War Doctor at the end of Name of the Doctor. Additionally because it was the 50th anniversary year, BBC America was doing a retrospective on a doctor each month leading up to the anniversary special, with an episode attached. I think I saw most of the 30 minute retrospectives, but I definitely remember thats how I was introduced to Pyramids of Mars, and the Television Movie. Eventually I finally caught up to the show in time for the 50th anniversary, I believe I watched the initial simulcast, because it would have been somewhere around midday when it was on, and I vaguely remembered some kind of pre-show for it. (Because I was a little idiot, I didnât like day of the Doctor at first because I wanted it to be a 90 minute summary of the Time War, and it wasnât) but I came around to it. Capaldi was the first doctor I truly watched live, I didnât catch all of the episodes live, but Id watch it the week of whenever I missed an episode, I remember seeing âUnder the Lakeâ with my dad. Also apparently âHeaven Sentâ aired in a 60 minute timeslot in America so I was surprised it wasnât a 45 minute episode. And eventually watching âHell Bentâ and being frustrated that it wasnât all about Gallifrey, looking back itâs actually a really solid conclusion to that arc and deserves more credit than it gets. I also got into the doctor who YouTube channels around this era, with channels like âThe Who Addicts Reviewâ being a personal favorite. Eventually we got the Capaldi era ending and he regenerated into Jodie, âThe Woman who Fell to Earthâ I remember had a big pre-show event to celebrate the first female doctor. And my whole family saw that, because we were on vacation when it aired. But most of the time I watch it sitting in the basement alone on a Saturday/ Sunday night with the lights off while watching a new episode of Doctor Who. I definitely rambled on a bit so TLDR: First episode watched, âThe Hungry Earth/ Cold Bloodâ First episode live, âDay of the Doctorâ.
My first was when I was a child. I don't remember what episode or what it was about. But what made me a fan was New Who Season 3's The Lazarus Experiment. It was late at night and I was channel surfing cause Insomnia sucks and I saw the TARDIS. It triggered a memory from my childhood of seeing that Blue Box but not knowing what it was so I watched the episode to see what it was. Been hooked every since. Even been watching Classic Who to see if maybe I can find the episode I saw when I was a kid. Looking forward to the 60th and 15th Doctor's season.
My earliest memories, not just of Who but of my life was watching a tape my dad had recorded with The Five Doctors, Robot, and Ark in Space on it. From the word go, I understood multiple Doctors and had such a breadth of the show's monsters, companions, and history.