As far as TV science fiction series go, I am a moderately knowledgeable Trekkie and an ardent believer in the cult of Firefly. But Doctor Who has been something I never paid much attention to, despite the broad and growing chorus of fandom surrounding it. So I've decided to embark on a journey to watch the whole damn thing - 238 episodes and TV movies covering eleven different Doctors, beginning in 1963 and still ongoing, with the first episode's broadcast apparently having been delayed several minutes by breaking news about the Kennedy assassination (seriously). Having watched the first few serials (ongoing story arcs broken up into 2-7 episodes) of the first season of the First Doctor, I'm finding this exciting on many levels, as an adventure simultaneously into the past of television and into its present-future - exactly like the show.
The experience so far is simultaneously archaeology - especially episodes that have been reconstructed in subsequent eras due to their original films being lost; cultural anthropology, since it's British and twenty years older than I am; and also an inspirational experience, as a reminder of science fiction eras where scientists are the intrepid heroes rather than sinister villains being fought by some wisecracking, muscle-bound jackass. I know that this will invariably change to some extent as the time periods of the series move on, but so far I'm enjoying the hell out of my journey into 1963 British television science fiction. I'm actually somewhat more impressed with Doctor Who of this time period than the first season of Star Trek TOS, which was rigidly episodic and not nearly as content-rich.
And that brings up another thing I'm noticing: They really tried hard back then. The sets and special effects may have been craptacular, but the writing is intellectually stimulating (though hardly without occasionally egregious logical flaws) and the acting not at all irritating - far better than I would have expected from an early prototype. In fact, the very first episode was simply remarkable. I knew not long into it that I had decided to watch the entire series. In fact, I'm not ashamed to say I really like this kind of stilted approach to science fiction way more than the swaggering cowboy stuff - it's more central to the philosophy of science, and I find I'm liking it on the same level that I liked Star Trek TNG: As a full-bodied contribution to a genre of ideas rather than merely a compelling set of stories set in space.
I'm sure there will be disappointments and disgraces along the way (no spoilers please!) - 50 years of TV is a long-ass time - and I have no clue how long it will take me to watch this whole series, but I'm excited at the prospect nonetheless. Now, Netflix doesn't have the whole early series available, and I'm not sure if any of the other streaming services do - but there are, shall we say, less official approaches to getting the full span of the surviving episodes. Or, more practically, each individual season thereof, since I literally could not fit the entire series on my harddrive and my entire collection of flash drives and blank DVDs even if I deleted every other discretionary file.
There are a lot of goofy moments already, but it's done with such sincerity that you just can't hold it against the show. Since I was born in the '80s, anyone with direct personal experience of shows like this decades earlier will have to forgive my attitude: I never knew any of this as something immediate - it's a found object of awesome history, and as far as science fiction TV goes, it doesn't get much more primordial. I mean, years before the debut of Star Trek TOS! And as I toggle back and forth between the window in which I'm watching Doctor Who and ST:TOS, the latter actually seems incredibly polished and sophisticated by comparison - maybe even a little slick and insincere (though only in the mediocre-to-bad episodes).