I am a Whovian and have been since my 10th birthday when I finished watching Creature Double Feature on channel 10 (56 out of Boston) and turned the dial to channel 11 (NH PBS.) They were in the middle of a pledge drive and were playing the Tom Baker story The Invasion of Time.
I was instantly hooked.
Famous Monsters of Filmland had written a cover story on Doctor Who about a year earlier so I knew that there was something CALLED Doctor Who, but didn't really know that much about it. The cover and interior photographs from the show were an odd mish-mash of Tom Baker and William Hartnell era Who. The image that put my pre-teen imagination into overdrive wasn't the Daleks, but the Menoptera. Giant moth-men were pretty damn awesome to a boy that age.
Doctor Who on Channel 11 became a Saturday tradition. I watched Baker become Davison and then they went back to Baker when the lastest Davison season had ended.
I soon started getting the Pinnacle and Target novelizations of the stories. There was the Doctor Who Technical Manual and it's crappy blueprints. The best was Doctor Who: A Celebration that commemorated the 20th anniversary of the series back in 1983. There was a few paragraphs on each of the stories made up until that point, including 74 stories
(made up of over 300 hundred episodes) that couldn't air in the US because of copyright issues and the fact that over 100 of them had been destroyed by the BBC.
My obsession grew more intense.
In time, the rights were worked out for the older episodes to air in the US. Eventually I saw everything that I could see of Doctor Who. I've also heard the missing episodes thanks to fan made audio tapes from the 1960s. In the pre-DVR/VHS days some people made audio tapes of their favorite shows so that they could at least hear them again.
The show ran from 1963 to 1989. A TV movie was made in 1996. The series returned in 2005 and is still going strong today.
I have given myself a project. I'm going to go back the the beginning of the series and watch an episode a day until I get caught up. It will take me over two years to do this and with new episodes being made I should be finished pretty close to the 50th anniversary of the show.
When I come to an episode that no longer exists on tape, I'll listen to BBC CD release of the episode. When I come to an episode that hasn't been released on DVD, I'll watch it on Youtube or one of it's bastard cousins.
It will be approximately 8 and a half months before I see an episode in color.
Three and a half of those months will be listening to audio.
The name Gallifrey will first be used about a year into this, (the term Time Lord will crop up at around the 8 month mark.)
A month after that the term Regeneration will be used for the first time (when the Doctor is going through it for the third time.)
It will take nearly 6 months to watch every Tom Baker story.
Peter Davison's run as the Doctor will take 69 days to watch.
I will have watched more episodes with Jamie McCrimmon (companion of the 2nd Doctor) than the 6th-9th Doctors combined.
The new series (2005 on) will take 88 days plus to watch. With new episodes coming out between now and then it'll probably work out to be about 110. Four Doctors and one companion from the classic series have been in more episodes.
I was instantly hooked.
Famous Monsters of Filmland had written a cover story on Doctor Who about a year earlier so I knew that there was something CALLED Doctor Who, but didn't really know that much about it. The cover and interior photographs from the show were an odd mish-mash of Tom Baker and William Hartnell era Who. The image that put my pre-teen imagination into overdrive wasn't the Daleks, but the Menoptera. Giant moth-men were pretty damn awesome to a boy that age.
Doctor Who on Channel 11 became a Saturday tradition. I watched Baker become Davison and then they went back to Baker when the lastest Davison season had ended.
I soon started getting the Pinnacle and Target novelizations of the stories. There was the Doctor Who Technical Manual and it's crappy blueprints. The best was Doctor Who: A Celebration that commemorated the 20th anniversary of the series back in 1983. There was a few paragraphs on each of the stories made up until that point, including 74 stories
(made up of over 300 hundred episodes) that couldn't air in the US because of copyright issues and the fact that over 100 of them had been destroyed by the BBC.
My obsession grew more intense.
In time, the rights were worked out for the older episodes to air in the US. Eventually I saw everything that I could see of Doctor Who. I've also heard the missing episodes thanks to fan made audio tapes from the 1960s. In the pre-DVR/VHS days some people made audio tapes of their favorite shows so that they could at least hear them again.
The show ran from 1963 to 1989. A TV movie was made in 1996. The series returned in 2005 and is still going strong today.
I have given myself a project. I'm going to go back the the beginning of the series and watch an episode a day until I get caught up. It will take me over two years to do this and with new episodes being made I should be finished pretty close to the 50th anniversary of the show.
When I come to an episode that no longer exists on tape, I'll listen to BBC CD release of the episode. When I come to an episode that hasn't been released on DVD, I'll watch it on Youtube or one of it's bastard cousins.
It will be approximately 8 and a half months before I see an episode in color.
Three and a half of those months will be listening to audio.
The name Gallifrey will first be used about a year into this, (the term Time Lord will crop up at around the 8 month mark.)
A month after that the term Regeneration will be used for the first time (when the Doctor is going through it for the third time.)
It will take nearly 6 months to watch every Tom Baker story.
Peter Davison's run as the Doctor will take 69 days to watch.
I will have watched more episodes with Jamie McCrimmon (companion of the 2nd Doctor) than the 6th-9th Doctors combined.
The new series (2005 on) will take 88 days plus to watch. With new episodes coming out between now and then it'll probably work out to be about 110. Four Doctors and one companion from the classic series have been in more episodes.
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