A newbie


Im interested in buying early episode/dvds and see so many options on Amazon. I want to start from the beginning, are the early episodes (1963-1965) worth it? And in what format?

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It's awkward as some are missing. Have you watched any yet as you may be able to subscribe to Britbox which has all of the classics I believe. They often offer trials

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yeah I just found that app and subbed. I think theyre all there. Thanks. It looks like series #4 was missing a lot of episodes and they used recovered audio only with still pictures.

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A lot of the 1st and 2nd doctors are missing. It's to do with the way the BBC managed its old shows. Back then we didn't have all the tech to rewatch so things got thrown out to make space. They are slowly making animated versions with quite a few out now. Not sure if they are on Britbox though

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Some articles and discussions on other sites say that (most of) the animated reconstructions are available on Britbox. They are still releasing new ones, so the most recent ones might take a while to be put on Britbox.

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My husband started watching Classic Doctor Who on Britbox and started howling that they'd turned it into a cartoon. "I'm not watching a cartoon!" It makes sense, though, if they were trying to reconstruct from audio only. Thanks for this information. Very helpful for an American!

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Yeah there aren't a lot of options. Over the years some lost episodes were reconstructed using "telesnaps," which were photos that somebody took of their TV when the episodes were originally broadcast. So then you get the audio playing with a series of still photographs. Is that better or worse than the new animated versions? It boils down to personal preference, since some fans like the telesnap versions better than the animated ones.

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I rented all of the 1970s Doctor Who, a few at a time, from LoveFilm back in 2013, namely Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, and loved most of it. But yes, nowadays I would use BritBox.

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To me, Tom Baker is THE Doctor Who.

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He's definitely the one who comes to mind first for me when I think of the show and the character. It's probably because the Tom Baker episodes were always playing on the local PBS station when I was a kid, so that was my formative experience with Doctor Who.

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Probably for me, too. However, I watch occasionally as my husband binges, and to my mind he was the best Doctor, after Christopher Eccleston. I'd not seen Eccleston before, so I was sitting there thinking what a waste of a great actor as he knelt over the body of the dead pig, screaming convincingly, "He was SCARED!!! Why did you have to shoot him? He was SCARED!!!" Brought tears to my eyes! Thought I, "This man should be doing Shakespeare!" Which, of course, he did.

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