How to Start Watching Doctor Who
Obviously the right answer is to watch it all from start to finish, starting with the new rebooted 2005 series with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and his traveling companion Rose Tyler played by Billie Piper. But maybe you don’t have time for that and you want to be up to date on what the most recent Doctor is all about.
The nice thing about the current history of the New Who is that there are really two eras. There have been three Doctors since the reboot but only two main showrunners : Russell T. Davies and Stephen Moffatt. The plots and themes of the Davies and Moffatt eras interact a bit but are largely distinct. So if you want to get up to speed on the most recent Who storyline you could just start with Moffatt and catch up. After you are addicted, you’ll need to go back and get more background, if only to find out what the heck an Ood is (it’s fascinating story actually). Then you’ll have a whole 4 more seasons to go through.
So here is my plan for you to get addicted quickly to the show and filled in on the most important story arcs for the Moffat era of Doctor Who.
Optional : If you want to see a single standalone episode, maybe the best Doctor Who episode ever… one that doesn’t need any setup other than “he’s a mad man who travels through time in a box” then watch “Blink”. It also has the nice bonus that it introduces you to one of Moffat’s signature new aliens, The Weeping Angels. It isn’t necessary for later but it will be nice. It’s also just a fantastic little episode. Even more optional: “The Girl in the Fireplace” is also a Moffat and it’s wonderful. Although it will be a bit more confusing and it doesn’t connect to anything later.
The mandatory starting point though has to be “Silence in the Library”. You won’t know who Donna is, she’s his current companion, and wonderful change as she’s the only travelling companion who in the rebooted series who never has any romantic connection to the Doctor at all, they’re just pals.
But this episode does set up a very important character for later on, River Song, who’ll you’ll meet later and wonder where the hell she came from. It also will give you another taste of how awesome David Tennant was as the Doctor. After that you can jump straight to the beginning of season 5 with “The Eleventh Hour” just after the 10th Doctor has said his goodbye to all his friends and regenerated into the 11th Doctor. The only intro you really need is to know is that as the Doctor regenerated into a new body he damaged the TARDIS as it was flying and…well, he’s in the process of crashing towards the Earth.
Now off you pop.
