How do I get started...

Bryan Moore · Post by **Bryan Moore** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 2:00 am

So my curiousity is peaked... but having never seen so much as an episode of this, how should I start?

celeritas · Post by **celeritas** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 2:31 am

yes, pray tell -- it sounds like an interesting series but there seems to be so many revivals that its hard to know where to begin!

The Wormhole · Post by **The Wormhole** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 2:39 am

I only started watching the show with the 2005 revival. It's as good a place as any to get started. Of course, I had the beneift of my uncle being a huge fan of original Who. He pretty much explained things and answered my questions.

Still, it does seem that the 2005 series is a good place to start, considering how many new fans it has gotten.

celeritas · Post by **celeritas** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 2:48 am

how many revivals have there been? are they within the same continuity or are they like series reboots?

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 2:13 pm

are they within the same continuity or are they like series reboots?

A bit of both. The new Who is little like the old one, but it has the same continuity. Some of the older characters even turned up.

As for where to start, some of my friends recently got into it through the newer seasons. I'd suggest watching the 2005 series and continuing from there. Anything from the older episodes that turn up are all explained, so you won't miss much.
All said, its not a show where you need to watch every single episode to get whats happening. You coud probably just sit down in front of a random episode and pick most of it up there.

celeritas · Post by **celeritas** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:22 pm

Rochey wrote: All said, its not a show where you need to watch every single episode to get whats happening.

thanks, i might give it a shot, but not watching every single episode does conflict with my obsessive-compulsive personality disorder characteristics...

Blackstar the Chakat · Sat Aug 04, 2007 7:34 pm

celeritas wrote:
Rochey wrote:
All said, its not a show where you need to watch every single episode to get whats happening.
thanks, i might give it a shot, but not watching every single episode does conflict with my obsessive-compulsive personality disorder characteristics...

Well there are 737 episodes, and even if you wanted to there are missing episodes. Compared to other shows from the era when it started there are actually very few that are missing, but there are a number of serials with missing parts. The most sought after is Part 4 of The Tenth Planet, an episode that among other things was the first encouter with the Cybermen. The only portion of this in existence, barring a few poor quality silent 8 mm clips, is the few seconds of the regeneration scene. The first regeneration scene I might add which is why it is desired so much.

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 9:17 pm

Okay, there's no reasonable way you could watch it from the start, it would take years to catch up. And to be honest, much of what came before is... not of great quality, shall we say.

I would watch the new revival series. That's not a reboot of the series in the New BSG sense, it's closer to being to the original what TNG was to TOS.

I mean, you could watch "The Neutral Zone" having never heard of a Romulan, and it still makes perfect sense. But TOS viewers will have an extra layer of context that would make it a bigger moment.

Similarly, the Doctor will explain to Rose what a Dalek is when they meet one, you don't need to know in advance... but longtime viewers will have an extra layer of "oh S**T!!!" when it appears.

What I would say is that Who is a very different kind of show than most modern sci-fi. It's kind of hard to explain, but the mood is a little more... zany. The focus is more on the characters and the wacky situations they get in... they'll often just concentrate on that and then resolve everything in the blink of an eye at the end. And a bigger degree of suspension of disbelief can be required.

What's odd is that having done all that, they'll then turn around and do a hum-dinger scary as hell ep every now and again!

Blackstar the Chakat · Sat Aug 04, 2007 9:58 pm

Ya, the Doctor has a tendency to explain stuff to his companion alot. The companion is usually a normal human who travels with the Doctor. It helps the viewer to understand stuff that the Doctor knows of. That's the reason why the companion was created. Oh, and the Daleks are awesome. I think they inspired R2-D2's general design, like how the Cybermen seemed to inspire the Borg. There is a resemblace. But the same could be said about a trash can.

For those of you who don't know what a Dalek is, think R2's evil twin on steroids. With a creature born to hate controlling it, with a wisk for a weapon and a plunger for a manipulator.

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Sun Aug 05, 2007 1:44 am

ChakatBlackstar wrote:Ya, the Doctor has a tendency to explain stuff to his companion alot. The companion is usually a normal human who travels with the Doctor. It helps the viewer to understand stuff that the Doctor knows of. That's the reason why the companion was created.

Yeah, that's so common in movies and TV they even have a term for it - the cabbage. The cabbage is the person who's function in a scene is to be stupid so that everybody else can explain things to him or her, and thus to the audience.

Once you become really aware of this it becomes massively obvious when it's happening. Ian and I will often look at one another in a scene and just go "cabbage".

My all time favourite is in "Disaster", when Troi is told that the antimatter pods are losing containment and says "What does that mean?" I don't care what her speciality is, she can't possibly have spent years and years on a Starship and not know THAT!

One of the funnier things about Doctor Who is that they make very little effort to make the technobabble convincing. Mostly the Companion will say "But how can a robot grow to a hundred feet tall like that?" and the Doctor will snap "oh, that's just the trans-perambulation of cosmic antimatter. Common side effect." And the companion will give him a funny "that makes no sense" look, and that's that.

If you like sorting all the tech details in a series it can seem annoying and incompetent even... but the truth is it's a bit of a mickey-take of the way shows like TNG do try to make all that stuff sound sensible.

celeritas · Post by **celeritas** » Sun Aug 05, 2007 2:07 am

yes i'll probably start with the 2005 revival -- there's no reason for me to try to watch them all if i discover that its not my cup of tea early on.

plus, i have no money so its not like i'm going to start watching it any time soon.

Martin · Post by **Martin** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 12:11 am

Yes, I think the 2005 revival is a good place to start for new viewers. Let us know what you both think, it would be interesting to hear.