My first episode was Destiny of the Daleks all the way back in the 1980s, which I think was a good episode to start on.
For my money, Horror at Fang Rock and Stones of Blood are the two best Who serials, full stop.
Tom Baker was my first Doctor too, though I don’t remember exactly which story. Might have been The Ark in Space.
Tom Baker is also my first doctor. The first story I watched was Robot, which I didn’t realize until much later was also his first story. Of course, I didn’t understand anything at that point, except it was fantastic.
I’m in the U.S., so I was watching on PBS. Due to the weirdness of our cable system at the time, I could never reliably figure out when it was on again. Life was different then.
I also watched it on PBS via antenna though. 2 seasons over and over. There was no nerd culture then, just nerd. My mom knitted me a scarf just like his
I’ve got the scarf my mom made hanging in my laundry room waiting to be very, very gently washed (for the first time ever, so I’m a bit nervous).
In high school marching band I would roll it up and bring it with to football games, then unroll it on the aluminum bleachers and let the majorettes sit in a row on either side of me. Did that until I got a girlfriend who played flute in the band. Then we’d use it.
When I was in college, a friend gave me a complete run of Five that he had taped from his PBS station and every single time, there was a break and the announcer would say, “we’ll return to the Doctor Who movie in just a moment…” and it drove me crazy because, you know, it’s not a freakin’ movie!
We couldn’t even see it on PBS because our local station didn’t show it. My (much older) brother had a friend in another state who would send us VHS tapes and he would hook one VCR to another VCR and copy them and send the tapes back. He had mostly Three and Four episodes, but he sent a few Five ones before my brother went off to college.
I have not seen a photo of him since the 50th Anniversary Special. He is still one of my favorite Doctors. He and Sarah Jane!
NuWhovian here. It took me a while to watch Classic, and between the pacing and missing episodes the early Doctors were tough going.
Then the Third Doctor regenerates into this tall, shock-haired eccentric, and it just… clicked. Tom Baker was peak Classic Who, he is magnetic to watch. I can definitely understand why his version remains iconic.
Happy birthday, good sir!
Even though I grew up with classic Who, it took me a long time to get into One and Two’s episodes, as you said, the pacing is very slow. I’ve gone back to them since and I enjoy them a lot more now. I’m especially impressed with what they tried to achieve on such a limited budget. It sometimes was a complete failure, but every attempt was interesting.
Oh, I agree. What the production pulled off with tighter and tighter budgets is impressive. The Ark in space bubblewrap monster is phenomenal 😂
I’ve become quite fond of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor as well, and I see some of the same quirkiness in his performance as in Tom Baker’s. The Second Doctor with Jamie is as memorable as Four with Sarah Jane, just a pity so many episodes were junked.
