Introduction

My first exposure to Doctor Who came when I was six. My father was in the Navy and we were living on a military base in Japan at the time. Since it was the 1980's, the Armed Forces Network aired a two hour block of cartoons on Saturday which my sister and I would religiously watch. After that it varied. For a while it was movies (both animated and live action) but in our second year there it was reruns of the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who. I was not interested at first since the Tom Baker era titles are a bit sinister when first viewed. The music is creepy and Tom's lack of smile (unlike his portrayal in most episodes) makes him look rather uninviting. But curiosity got the better of me and I opted to finally see what this show was and if it was any good.

As it turns out, the episode that I opted to keep the TV on for was part four of Masque of Mandragora. I didn't make it past the recap. Unlike most episodes of Doctor Who where the recap is a replay of the last 30 seconds to a minute of the previous episode, Masque of Madragora has a full synopsis of the story so far. So the credits dive in to a shot of a sparkling ball igniting a man with his mutilated corpse shown just after that, some sword play, a few rather grim faced men, and another man being converted into a being of energy and then using that energy to electrocute someone. All of this while under a very dark and sinister, almost Satanic, atmosphere. As soon as the recap finished, I turned it off and decided that this was not a show for me. You must also remember I was six at the time so it didn't take much to scare me.

Aside from about 30 seconds of episode six of Invasion of Time that I happen to flip past when changing channels once, I never watched Doctor Who until a few years ago. By this point, Doctor Who was in the Matt Smith era and had become mainstream. I didn't have much interest in checking out the new show yet but I was curious to find out more about the bit from my childhood. The interesting thing is, I never forgot Masque of Mandragora. That little clip I saw stuck with me, enough that I was able to do a little research and figure out what story it was from and then rent it through Netflix. As an adult, I found that I quite enjoyed it but could also see why I found it so scary as a kid. I let that settle and then went on with my life.

It was probably around a year after that that I decided to give the new series a try. It was a bit slow at first, but I got into it and once I had cycled through the new series episodes that were available, I went back and began watching random classic stories that I could. I also started paying some attention to fan outlets which helped fill in the back story of how the show progressed over time, the highs and lows, the wilderness years and then the resurrection. In doing so, I started finding that my opinions of the show seemed to be somewhat different that conventional fan wisdom. Now this is not surprising as all people are different and will react differently due to what makes them tick. But as someone who both enjoyed The Unicorn ad the Wasp and didn't think that Caves of Androzani was the greatest classic story ever told, I find myself a bit more off the beaten path that I might expect.

As such, now that I've seen a reasonable percentage of both classic and new series stories, I thought I would jot down my impressions of them, just to show that opinions can differ and the show can be enjoyed by all sorts of folks. Now, I'm nowhere near done of all my watching. In fact, I'm in the middle of Keys of Marinus right now. So I will be adding stories in a somewhat haphazard manner. I'll try to put a tag for each doctor so there can be some level of organization, but I'll be jumping around quite a bit. I'm also going to try and alternate between a classic story and a new series story just to keep the mind fresh and so we don't stagnate on any one particular doctor at a time.

And with that, let the impressions commence.