This will be a thread for those of you who are interested, of my updates in a watching DW challenge I am currently undertaking.
I'll start with the basics: I am a fan who started watching with the first episode of the New Series, and I have slowly started to branch out to the Classics as well.
My challenge is as follows: To watch every episode of Doctor Who from the point at which every serial of a series is complete: the beginning of the Pertwee era.
So far I am up to episode three of Inferno, feel free to give me any warnings on upcoming episodes or to give me feedback on my reviews.

Earlier this year I watched from Pertwee onwards. Very glad I did. Now I have my favourite stories on DVD.
Good luck.

Once you're done you can watch the Hartnell stories onwards. I did with the exception of a number of missing episodes.

Thanks for your support, so far I've got all up to Day of the Daleks on DVD, plus the Sea Devils and the Time Warrior.

I've been watching from Hartnell for about a year now. I'm currently up to Jon Pertwee's last season. Just watched Invasion of the Dinosaurs. The dinosaurs really aren't as bad as I thought they were going to be!

Can I ask now, do the UNIT stories ever become a little samey by that point?

From my subjective point of view, watching a continuous stream of Pertwee would be a significant challenge.

Yes. Especially when The Master appears in Pertwee's 2nd season.

Spearhead from Space Review

A really strong start for Pertwee as the Doctor, and a great introduction to the Autons. It takes until the final scene of part 1 for the episode to shake off the recent regeneration, but once it does, the story never looks back. The plastic-like Channing is a great villain, and he controls the serial to great effect. The Brigadier shines again, and Liz Shaw looks to be a good companion.

8/10

Dr Who and the Silurians

The Doctor develops on his promising start in Spearhead in this serial. It feels a part too long at seven parts, but the Silurians are great villains for this episode. It is hard to imagine any other Doctor taking on this story with a similar effect to the Third's. The serial is very political, which shouldn't be surprising given it is by Malcolm Hulke, but you can sense it reflects on the world's position at the time. Pertwee again proves he is perfect for the role in a better story than his previous.

9/10

The Ambassadors of Death

I noticed as soon as episode 1 started, it's peculiar title sequence. This is something I dislike about the episode, as it distrupts the general flow of the entire season and has no relevance to the story. The music in this one is pretty shoddy and seems too unlike Doctor Who to work. This episode is unique as the aliens in this story aren't the villains, but the humans are. I think the actual story in itself isn't bad, but it certainly isn't to the standard of Pertwee's first two serials.

6/10

Not really, no. Obviously the fact that the Doctor was Earthbound for several seasons restricted things a bit but the threats and plots were still pretty varied, IMO.

There were three companions over the five years, Jo and Sarah were two of my favourite companions and I really liked the UNIT team of the Brigadier, Benton and Yates. In the second season the Master appeared in every story which was, perhaps, a little unimaginative (the production team were certainly a little regretful of it in the commentaries) but Roger Delgado was great and he wasn't always the focus of the story so I didn't really have a problem with it.

*cough* and in almost every other story the Master appears in throughout the history of the programme. He's a tiresome addition that speaks of the Pertwee era's desire to do whatever is laziest. Car chases, kung fu, whatever else was, you know, what they do in TV programmes.

Don't worry though! Series 7 is good, and there are a few other good ones along the way. I've always liked Day of the Daleks and everyone likes The Daemons. And then Baker will turn up eventually.

i liked the Master but he was overused.

Hardly lazy. All that action was hard work and extremely well done on many occasions. The cooperation from the armed forces in some cases made for some extremely good stuff.

It just reflects Pertwee's love of the action man role. He fancied himself as a kind of James Bond figure. That may not appeal to you but it's not a reflection of any deficiency in the production values. Everyone has different tastes.


I always loved Carnival of Monsters and the Peladon stories as well.

IMO Pertwee probably did most in terms of developing the show. Baker only really made sure the show was more popular than it ever has been, or will be. His tenure went downhill after Talons.

I tend to agree with you there. The series became more focused on humour instead of violence, which suited Tom Baker. Baker did make some good ones after Talons but not quite as good as under Hinchcliffe.

Alright, intellectually lazy.


Indeed, I am almost at the negative extreme on Pertwee — I would expect 95% of people to have a more positive attitude than I do, and the average to be significantly more positive than my assessment. Pertwee often scores highly in polls and I think some of his DVDs are amongst the best selling of the Who range.

It is more likely than not that the thread starter will enjoy the entire run at least as much as any other Doctor.

I like Sun Makers, City of Death and Keeper of Traken after Hinchcliffe, but other than that, the rest are either average or below park which compared to his first three series, where there wasn't a really bad episode among them, is extremely poor.

Different strokes for different folks, but there's plenty of good stuff in S15-18 for me.

I'd also tend to agree. After The Horror of Fang Rock, the stories rarely hit the heights of the Hinchcliffe era. In fact, I dislike a lot of the season 15 - 18 stories more than the Colin Baker era stories. Of course, there are some exceptions. I quite like Nightmare of Eden as well as State of Decay and Warrior's Gate from when JNT took over. City of Death is also one of the finest examples of Doctor Who ever made.
But then you have crap like The Invisible Enemy, The Invasion of TIme, The Creature from the Pit and one of the worst pieces of television I have ever seen in my life: Underworld (I also hate The Sun Makers, but apparently other people quite like it).

I think you'll find that the early-mid Bakers are a lot of fun and very engaging. Even the stuff like Pirate Planet, Horns of Nimon, etc are fun, even if for the wrong reasons.

Later Baker is very po-faced and drab. As has been remarked many times, Baker looks bored and fed up in his burgundy 'uniform'.

I nearly gave up watching on early Davison. Wet and lacking in drama and vitality. I remember watching Castrovalva and thinking "Get the heck ON with it already!!!" - this is just before my Mum actually shouted it at the telly. Things picked up a bit, but it was never as watchable as Baker's era. He only really hit his stride towards the end with the Dalek and Cybermen stories. Loved his last story and wondered why they couldn't have had it more like that earlier on.

Colin was a great actor and after the initial ho-ha of him strangling Peri, seemed to settle down to a very much more dynamic Doctor. Some good and bad stories (OK, quite a few bad stories). Then there is Trial of a Time - honestly, this is really terrible. I remember being at a freinds house and watching impossible planet and thinking "Wow, Doctor Who is back on" and promptly getting into a conversation about Irwin Allen TV shows and forgetting it was on entirely.

After that it got even more grim. You'll want a nice bottle of your favourite tipple for anything after this. There were the odd highlights here and there, but even they are badly flawed. Doctor Who wasn't cancelled, it was put out of it's misery. Mel, Dragonfire, Time and the Rani (minus Kate's performance) - really, large bottle required to sit through that.

If you make it to the end of Colin's era and give up, no jury will convict you.

I remember when I was watching McCoy's era at the time that I was becoming more and more annoyed at the silly nonsense humour creeping in (much as I've done for some of Matt's stuff, actually) but I never stopped being glued to the screen every week. At the end of the day it's Doctor Who and it's all worth watching in my book!

Actually that would be from "The War Games" onwards

A few of us discussed a similar thing. Starting from 1963 moving through all the serials. I have watched all available episodes and quite a number of the reconstructions. I am nearly at the end of Troughton. I have just watched "The Mind Robber" Which until the last episode which got abit silly was a great serial.

It will be a lot easier once I get to Pertwee and there are less serials per season and all the serials are all in tact.

War Games was part of season 6, when the Space Pirates and others were missing. Season 7 is the first where every episode is available in full series.

kinda is worth a watch. ms fielding does some interesting stuff outside her usual tegan character. also has mary morris who played "the lesbian part" in pathfinders, the itv childrens show which pre dated and partly inspired dr who.

stones of death. stonehenge is actually alive. living glowing stone obelisks moving around outside peoples' houses is simultaneously scary and also ridiculously camp and funny .....

I recently started watching the Hartnell years, with the intention of watching all the classic episodes, in order. I worked out that, watching one whole story per week without a break, it would take me three years to get through everything.

I toyed with the idea of starting with Pertwee, as you have. He was the first Doctor I can recall (despite having been born before Doctor Who was even imagined). In the end though, it seemed right to start at the beginning, even if it meant watching several reconstructed missing episodes.