At the beginning?

I have decided I would like to 'further my knowledge' and go back in time - learn more about Doctor Who and everything else that has happened having been inspired by all you that seem to know a 'hell of a lot' about Doctor Who over the 50 years.

I need a hobby anyway

So where is the best place to start? Is there a best place to start?

Thanks in advance.

I'd say try to read them in orders you can experience the Doctors life as he lived it

You mean with regards to the order of his time travelling?! That would be a challenge and very difficult no?!

If you mean straight forward era's of doctors... That will be a little easier I guess!

In the 1980s, my brother and I used to read the Target novelisations of classic 'Dr Who' stories and absolutely loved them, especially those by Terrance Dicks. IMO they were often better than the televised versions as, in my imagination, there were no dodgy SFX, no wobbly sets and no rubber monsters to spoil it. There are sometimes differences in the novelisations compared with the TV stories though.

It's quite depressing that I can remember getting Peter Haining's 25th anniversary book for Christmas one year, and now we've just had the 50th anniversary

Waterstones.

Do you mean novels or non fiction. I still think the best novel was the very first one "Dr Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks. This was an adaptation of the second televised story but with a slightly different opening and told in the perspective of Ian Chesterton.
As far as non fiction books Peter Haining did a series of large format books covering the series up untill its cancellation. There are a series of books published by Telos which cover each of the "new" series and of course RTS's book The Writers Tail which is very goos from a writer/producer point of view.

Under no circumstances should anyone reading up on Doctor Who in the 21st-century start their non-fiction education with any of Haining's books. Seriously, not a good idea. In retrospect, we should probably be thankful he got the name of the series correct.

The same goes for Adrian Rigelsford's The Doctors: Thirty Years of Time Travel, which was strictly Thirty Years of Time Travel, Apart from Season 18 Which Isn't Included...

The Sixties/Seventies/Eighties trilogy of books by Howe, Stammers and Walker from the 1990s are a whole other ball game. Gary Russell's Regeneration does a similar job for the 1996 TV movie. And The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter is a must for anyone interested in how modern-day Doctor Who gets to screen - it's arguably one of the most important non-fiction works on the series to date.

I quite fancied reading the fiction/novels.. but reckon there are quite a few to get through? Perhaps I will break that up with some of the non-fiction, history of etc..

Thanks for all your input here. Still a little bit unsure where to start but I have some pointers now.. so great

There are a lot. There are:

156 Target novelisations of TV episodes (and a couple of unproduced scripts and audio plays), plus a couple of original novels by Target.

33 "Missing Adventures" published by Virgin, featuring one of the first 6 Doctors (with one featuring the 7th and 5th).

76 "Past Adventures" published by the BBC, featuring one of the first 7 Doctors (with one featuring the 4th and 8th, and one featuring an unspecified Doctor).

61 "New Adventures" published by Virgin, featuring the 7th Doctor (these were the books published between the series ending and the TV Movie being broadcast, although the final one features the 8th Doctor and was published after the TV Movie).

73 "8th Doctor Adventures" published by the BBC and featuring, surprisingly enough, the 8th Doctor. These were published after the TV Movie and before the return of the series except the last which, unlike the last Virgin novel, still features the 8th Doctor, but does make reference to 3 possible 9th incarnations (unspecified but assumed to be Richard E. Grant from "Scream Of The Shalka", Rowan Atkinson from "The Curse Of The Fatal Death" and Christopher Eccleston from, well, you know).

15 novellas published by Telos, featuring the first 8 Doctors.

3 short story collections published by Virgin, featuring the first 7 Doctors.

3 short story collections published by the BBC, featuring the first 8 Doctors.

28 short story collections published by Big Finish, featuring the first 8 Doctors.

So there's a few to get through, and that's just books featuring past Doctors, and ignoring things like annuals and the comic strip.

Now, my recommendation is to dip in and out of the show's history. The Target novelisations, the Past Adventures, and the Missing Adventures, and short story collections should allow you to do that with ease. They're all independent of each other and generally, if they reference something from the series or other books, then it'll let you know what you need to know. There may be occasions where it expects you to know something (1 story I remember has a twist that relies on the reader knowing that the Doctor's companion Frobisher is a shape-shifting penguin), but that's not usually the case and a quick trip to Wikipedia should make everything clear in the rare instances that it is the case.

The same can't necessarily be said of the New Adventures and the 8th Doctor adventures. When I first started reading them, I dipped in and out throughout the timeline in them, and there was no problem with that (just as you can watch any individual televised story without needing to have seen what's gone before), but there is a continuing story which is much better if followed from start to finish, and you can feel like you're missing out key details if you read them out of order (why has the Doctor got amnesia, why is he staying on Earth, and what is that white cube he's got with him?). But, if you read them all in order, then that's a lot of books with just the 7th Doctor, and a lot of books with just the 8th Doctor.

If you're committed to giving reading them all a go, then you could do what I'm currently doing - I'm reading through the New Adventures and will then do the 8th Doctor Adventures, but if I get 7th Doctored out or feel like I'm going to get 7th Doctored out, I read a Target novelisation, a short story or two, or one of the Past Doctor/Missing Adventures. Go away from the series for a day or two while you read a different book then come back to it and I find that even if you've left a book in the middle because you're finding it a bit of a slog and don't think it's that well-written, I suddenly think that it's much better written, the premise is far more interesting than I first thought, and that I zip through it.

In your particular case, as you're looking to expand your Doctor Whoniverse, I'd suggest completely alternating. Read the first New Adventure, then a Past Doctor Adventure, then a short story, then another New Adventure, then a Missing Adventure, then a novella, then a Target novelisation, then the next New Adventure, and so on. I think you'd find it really rewarding and would quickly come to appreciate how large and varied the print Whoniverse is.

If not, then start with the short story collections. Lots of different stuff in a relatively short period of time.

I was going to mention these titles but thought I would keep it simple. Actualy thinking about it, I agree with you about those "other" books I mentioned.