Doctor Who

1963.

If you can find the episode arc entitled "Genesis of the Daleks" on DVD that would be a good place to start. If you don't like that, you won't like any of it.
Overlook the production values, the BBC didn't have any of that Star Trek money.
The show is greatness.

EDIT-I am assuming, by the way, that you are watching the older series not the new 21st century version.
Best non Galactica show on the box.

The Tom Baker years are required viewing....It's greatness is without question.

I've only seen a few episodes of the pre and post Baker years.....The Fox movie can be skipped....Eccleston's season was great and rehooked me to the show....And so far I'm enjoying Tennant as the Doctor....The show is definatly in my top five "must see" TV.

My favorite doctor was the second, Patrick Troughton, who replaced an ailing William Hartnell partway through Season Four (1966) and stayed to the end of Season Six (1969). His doctor had a fidgety, clownish quality which suited the character well and offered a welcome dose of amiability after Hartnell's miserable, grouchy mad scientist. Troughton is in my opinion the only doctor who could really sell the timeworn gag of pulling irrelevant objects out of his pockets to search for a crucial tool (in one case, a roll of masking tape!), because I could buy into the idea that his nervousness would compel him to grab anything which might prove useful down the road.

The Troughton Years were also in that period when British pop culture was at its most psychedelic, so there's a lot of freaky and bizarre visuals, some of it very heady and experimental for TV at that time (particularly in "The Mind Robber"). And partway through Troughton's run the doctor picked up possibly my favorite of his companions, Zoe (Wendy Padbury), who was plucky and cute in a way that the later female sidekicks never quite matched.

Unfortunately, most of the Troughton episodes were destroyed during the BBC purges, and only three of his serials are so far available on DVD ("The Tomb of the Cybermen," "The Mind Robber," "Seeds of Death"). Seek them out.

The Tom Baker episodes are probably the easiest to locate on DVD (and my personal favorite)...I got hooked on the series during its 70s reruns and only later delved into its earlier episodes.

Not too fond of the actors who followed Baker throughout the 80s, though the current Doctor (David Tenant) is likeable.

Current Doctor is the best since Tom Baker for my money.
He has a little of all of the Dr's (the good ones, anyway) but has made it his own. I think he is the first actor to really convey the feeling that this guy has been around for ever and seen everything since Baker, who displayed a sort of madness and wild eccentricity you would expect from some one who has a universe worth of information and experience rattling around in his scone.
Can't wait for series three.


EDIT-spellink

I've only seen the first two episodes with Tennant but so far i'm impressed....I thought Eccleston was great in the fact that he got me back into enjoying the show and didn't try to emulate any of the other doctors and brought his own take on the character....But your right about how Tennant has that kind of wildness to him that makes the character so wonderful.

Tennant's surprisingly good at squaring off against the heavies. He dishes out the smack-talk with a tremendous amount of authority and really sells the fact that he is one of the most formidable life forms in the galaxy.
Although it's takes place in a pretty average episode, the sequence where Tennant and Anthony Head talk each other out while circling a gymnaisum pool are fantastic. Their scenes crackle with energy and good ole fashioned england hammy acting!
Between this and Battlestar Galactica Im pretty much sorted for TV viewing.

Get your hands on The City of Death.
It's a Tom Baker episode that was written by Douglas Adams (im pretty sure it's written under a non de plume) and is one of the best episodes, at least as far as fleshing out a pretty brilliant sci-fi concept with a pissy budget goes.

Also from the Tom Baker era is a story arc called "The Talongs of Weng Chiang" that is a fantastic example of the "Gothic" sensibilities the show has, which is still on display in the newer series, particularly the episodes written by League of Gentleman alumni Mark Gattis.

My first exposure was to the Jon Pertwee Doctor on PBS when I was a kid. Then PBS started showing the Tom Baker shows when I was in junior high and high school. It's just such a solid concept (and the name "Doctor Who" is so damn iconic), and they had a stroke of genius with the regeneration concept. And yes, the production values aren't always the best, but I'll take imagination without a budget over routine with an unlimited expense account any day.

Just finished watching disc 2 of the British DVDs, and Tennant has solidified himself in my mind as the perfect modern take on the character. I love the fact that they definitively linked him to the Pertwee/Baker era. Not to take away from Eccelston, 'cause he was great and added nicely to the pantheon, but Tennant for me is more of a "proper" doctor, and so far I like season 2 better than season 1, even the weird episodes. I just fucking love the show. It has made me remember why the Doctor is my favorite fictional character; the perfect adolescent nerd-boy fantasy.

The new guy is definitely better than the previous doc.

wait until the later episodes of the second series with tennant. he just got better and better as the show progressed.

I just pray they hold on to Tennant for as long as humanly possible. I'll miss Piper, but I don't mind a change in the companion dept.

Unfortunately, Tennant is apparently asking for 1 million pounds to do season 4, which is sky-high for BBC programming. I can't help but feel that cycling out Doctors so rapidly will hurt the continuity of the show (and get to 12 regenerations awfully fast).

Really!? Where did you hear that?

For those Brits out there, how successful is the show in the UK? I don't even know how the ratings work there. Could Tennant get that kind of money, realistically?

I got it from the boards at Newsarama.com...the search function there sucks, but the guys on that board at Doctor Who FREAKS, and the information is almost always right, sadly.

Well, if he's asking for a million, they'll negotiate and hopefully come up with something amicable. Then at least we'll get three seasons of Tennant.

Who knows if it'll even last past 4 seasons. Although we are talking about a show with a forty year history.

Isn't it about time they rounded up the surviving six doctors and Tennant for a Seven Doctors anniversary special? If Eccleston turns up his nose, the producers could always use outtakes and then stick his character in a time eddy for the remainder of the show.

I couln't agree more. I know Eccleston is pissed about the way he was treated as The Doctor, but there's a moment in the second to last episode of this season that I really had hope that he was coming back. He's far too magnetic as the Doctor to never take the role again. That being said, I think he'll be awesome as Number 6 in The Prisoner.

I would love to see the producers go back to using older, more eccentric actors to play the Doctor. Malcolm McDowell and Robbie Coltrane would be interesting choices.

He is? I always figured it was an amicable deal. What's the story?

As Tennant has said, there's always a loophole the show can figure out regarding the regeneration limit (I think this has been hinted at in Who before). But yeah, I'd certainly like to see Tennant stick around for more than two seasons...ending another season with a newish companion witnessing another regeneration would be bad deja vu.

The problem with Tennant-and a little bit with Eccleston, for that matter-is that these guys are talents on the rise, and they're so damn good at what they do that they're gonna get offers out of the wazoo post-Doctor. I love Tennant, he's the best doctor since Baker. But I can understand why, with the added exposure the series has given, he would want to move on to pastures new. He's got a whole career ahead of him, and being shackled to a signature role this early on would be incredibly counterproductive.

I tihnk they need to cast older when they eventually replace him, find someone who has nothing to prove any more and who can have fun with the role. Then again, I can't see them doing that now that the character's been set up as a sex symbol.

I caught the last two weeks of Who reruns on Sci-Fi, having not yet seen an entire episode of Who (new or classic) before. It's tempting to say that I'm hooked. Tennant's fun to watch, that's for sure. I'm looking towards getting Series 2 when that is released in Region 1 in January, and will probably snag Series 1 with some Christmas cash.

The local library had a handful of Who DVDs, and I got out a Pertwee story (Carnival of Monsters) that... wasn't so great. The others available were The Pirate Planet (Baker) and Resurrection of the Daleks (Davison). Any preference from the more knowledgeable Who fans out there?

Anyway, here's hoping that Sci-Fi doesn't wait until the fall to give us Americans (who don't have CBC) Series 3...

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I don't care what the haters say, I love Doctor Who! To me, I think it was like reading a book in that you had to use your imagination to fill in the gaps provided by the low budget.

I loved coming home from elementary school and pretending to do my homework while watching the show in half-hour format. Then they moved the show to the full hour on Saturday nights.

I haven't seen enough of the older doctors, I don't think the Pertwee years added much besides his Aikido and Katy Manning's deliciously short skirts.

I finally accepted Peter Davison, never liked Colin Baker, but I thought Sylvester McCoy was suitably wacky but by then the series had run out of steam.

I don't know what exactly is available but I recall some of my favorite episodes:

Genesis of the Daleks-Excellent, almost has a WW2 overtone to it. I used to have a record of the episode narrated by Tom Baker and would fall asleep to it. NERD!

Talons of Weng Chi'ang-This one is good too, and the main villain's little robot henchman is played by Deep Roy, who was in some Jamie Kennedy shows and Willie Wonka.

Horror at Fang Rock-Ok, the villain is a glowing mass of goo, but I liked the claustrophobic atmosphere of this one.

The Brain of Morbius-Basically a Frankenstein story, the creature is wonderfuly absurd and the henchman reminds me of Freddie Mercury on steroids.

When I first caught some Doctor Who, they were editing the serials into movies, and it bored me to tears. It wasn't until a year later, when the local PBS station started showing the series in its proper half-hour daily serial format, that I became hooked.

I understand why people love the Tom Baker years so much, as he himself was a blast to watch, but the episodes themselves didn't always live up to him. Though there were certainly a good number of great episodes, the Baker years were afflicted with a case of "monster of the week" syndrome. Davison fared a little better in this regard, with stories that showed a little more imagination. Colin Baker was just annoying.

Personally, I preferred Eccleston to Tennant just a little bit. Eccleston's ability to turn deadly serious on a dime was impressive, and he could be one thing that I've never found another Doctor to be: intimidating. When he'd turn on the bad guys and warn them to stand down or be destroyed, I bought it.

The Deadly Assasin should be required viewing, just so you can see The Matrix being invented in 1976.
Rememberance of the Daleks is continuity-heavy, but had the best effects in the history of the old series, and the original stair-climbing dalek.
Vengeance on Varos, although patchy, is one of those "pre-empting reality tv" things.