So for years and years I’d been putting off watching Doctor Who because I’m a terrible chronologicalist and completionist. That is to say, I can’t abide unfinished works, or reading things out of order. Things like Star Wars only being Episodes IV-VI has long bothered me. And of course the new trilogy did little to assuage my mental dissonance relating to the SW universe. I may never start reading the books because there are so damn many, and this is one of the things that’d kept me from DW for so long. Everyone was talking about how awesome the new Doctors were, and how it didn’t matter if you hadn’t seen all the old stuff. So I decided to start with the 4th Doctor, Tom Baker, for a number of reasons.
- At the time it was the earliest Doctor with no episodes missing.*,**
- He was several of my trusted friends’ favorite
- Douglas Adams was editor for the series, and even wrote several episodes.***
Anyways, I finished watching the fifty or so “Stories” of Baker a few weeks ago, and I’ve been rather enjoying Peter Davison. I’ve also been watching some of the Matt Smith and I must say, having watched Matt Smith before I finished the Baker years, that watching Davison, he really reminds me of the current Doctor. I wonder how much of that will bear out in the next few Doctors. Anyone else noticed this?
* Since I started the final missing episodes of Doctor 3 have been found.
** I’m not counting the Unaired Shada Episode, since this wasn’t finished due to writer’s strike, and was eventually aired w/ Baker doing narration for the missing parts.
*** Including the unfinished Shada Episode.