PrincessOogieBoogie wrote:Hello, whovians! I would like to join your fandom but I don't know what season to start on since they all have different doctors and such. Which one?
Hi there! c:
I warn you in advance that I always talk too much when it comes to Doctor Who and other interests, so this will likely be a long post; the first 5 paragraphs are answering your question in detail (feel free to just read the first sentence of each if you want and you should get the general idea, lol), and the rest is explaining a bit about Doctor Who in general. If you have any further questions, you're more than welcome to ask, of course!
If you want to follow the show in chronological order and not skip around, then you'll want to either start with the 9th Doctor like Bad Wolf said (that would be the episode "Rose") or at the very beginning with the 1st Doctor (the episode "An Unearthly Child"). I wouldn't personally recommend starting with the classic series, though, unless you're already familiar and comfortable with watching old TV shows/movies, because it's very slow-paced compared to modern shows and so can be a bit off-putting at first if you're not used to that.
(Also a lot of the old sets, costumes, and effects look hilariously fake, so you'll have to get used to using your imagination a bit more than with all the CGI stuff we get nowadays. ^^)However, even though Doctor Who follows one continuous story from "An Unearthly Child" to now, for pretty much the whole of Classic Who and, to a certain extent, the first four seasons of New Who, it does not have very much in terms of multi-story arcs, meaning that most stories are more or less self-contained without relying much on the viewer knowing everything that has happened in previous episodes. In other words, as long as you know the basic premise of the show (which I'll explain below in case you don't), you can generally watch the stories completely out-of-order without much confusion.
So, if you don't mind skipping around and/or just want to get a taste of the show first before deciding if you want to seriously watch it, you might like to start by sampling a couple stories for each Doctor and seeing what you think. (If you want to do that, I and I'm sure the rest of us would be happy to recommend some good ones for you to try. ^^) Then if you decide you like the show, you can either pick a Doctor you really like and continue to watch the rest of their stories, or go to the beginning of the show and watch everything in order.
You could also do what I actually did, which is that if you already know and like one of the actors who have played the Doctor, you might enjoy watching all of their episodes to begin. I put off watching Doctor Who for a while because I was intimidated by how many seasons there were and I had no idea where to start, but I already knew David Tennant from his role in Harry Potter, so when I learned that he was the 10th Doctor, I decided to watch Season 2 first where his episodes begin and was hooked almost immediately.
Bad Wolf doesn't know what they're talking about: nobody ever got mad at me for not watching Nine first! Or if they did, at least they all kept it to themselves. ;PHonestly, even though I jumped in with no idea about what was going on and had to figure things out as I went along, I'm happy I started with the second season because I'm not crazy about the first five episodes of the first season and I'm not sure what I would have thought of DW if I had started there. The first couple episodes aren't
bad per se, but the sixth episode, "Dalek", is the first one I really liked from the season, and I also liked the rest after that, with the exception of "The Long Game". So basically what I'm saying is that you might completely disagree with me and love those first episodes, but if you start with the 9th Doctor and don't like the show much at first, I'd encourage you to at least get through the rest of the season before deciding if you want to keep watching. :)
Some background information about Doctor Who if you're interested:
Doctor Who first began in 1963 with the original/classic series, also called "Classic Who", which ran from 1963 to 1989 with 26 seasons and features the first seven Doctors. In the classic series, episodes are ~23 minutes long (except for Season 22, which had 45-minute episodes), and most stories have 2-6 episodes/parts. There are also six stories that have 7 parts, one with 8 ("The Invasion"), one with 10 ("The War Games"), and one with 12 ("The Daleks' Master Plan" -- unfortunately nine parts of which are currently missing.)
Then DW was taken off the air for 16 years (except for a TV movie released in 1996, which is the 8th Doctor's only full-length TV story) until 2005, when the show was revived with the beginning of the new series ("New Who" or "NuWho"). The new series started with the 9th Doctor and is currently featuring the 12th. It has had nine seasons so far and is still running but on hiatus with Season 10 scheduled to air this April. Most New Who episodes are ~44 minutes long, and stories have either one or two episodes, with two stories being 3-parters.
The show is about an alien Time Lord known as "The Doctor", who explores the universe in his TARDIS, which is a time-traveling spaceship that is bigger on the inside than the outside and (on the outside) has the appearance of a British police box. When he is fatally wounded/ill and dying, the Doctor has the ability to regenerate and take on a new appearance and personality, which is why there have been several different incarnations of the Doctor throughout the show's history. He almost always travels with one or more companions, who are most often humans from modern-day Earth but also sometimes come from another planet or time period. The typical story involves them visiting a planet/location and either getting stranded and having to find a way to escape, or voluntarily staying and trying to help the locals in some way.
*Bad Wolf* wrote:Speaking of Classic stuff, anyone know where I can find The Android Invasion online? I did find it on Dailymotion, but it's in mirror image...
Also, I gave in and started watching Sarah Jane Adventures. I probably should have waited until Sarah left in Classic, but I was sick of waiting. XD
Try hereCool! What do you think of it so far? :)
. I really loved the Doctor and Jo's relationship. 
