This
is a project I've been meaning to get around to for years: a full
watch-through of classic Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child to the
1996 TV Movie stopping at all stations.
Why
am I doing this? Well, I'd bet my view of the new series would be
different if I'd watched it in random order over the course of over
half my life. I saw my first Doctor Who story (Planet of the Daleks,
as it happens) in 1992 when I was nine and watched the recently
rediscovered The Enemy Of The World three weeks ago. Aside from that
one unreleased episode of The Underwater Menace it took me 21 years
to experience the complete canon in no real order and at the whim of
the BBC's video and DVD schedule.
So
now I have the chance: the very-nearly-almost complete canon of
surviving episodes on shiny disc and a full set of Loose Cannon
missing episode reconstructions. As I say, I've seen it all before
but never in order, the way a series is supposed to be experienced.
As
a project this is, of course, inspired and indebted to those who have
gone before: Robert Shearman and Toby Hadoke's Running Through Corridors (which someday might even reach its second volume), Hannah
J. Rothman's Twitter Who (which recently did), Lawrence Miles and Tat
Wood's About Time and Philip Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum (currently
hosted at his blog Philip Sandifer Writer). I heartily recommend all
of them.
Much
as I love Sandifer's essays its Rothman's approach I intend to
imitate. This here is one fan's journey through 697 episodes of
Doctor Who, seeing how I experience it as a series rather than as
isolated stories.
And
tomorrow we begin, at that mysterious junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane...
Next
Episode: An Unearthly Child
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