Oh god, what have I gotten myself into?

My intentions were pure. simple.

Every one kept telling me start with the new series, start with the new series. Ugh, fuck off with that already. I'm an Aries. No one tells me what to do.

All I wanted was to work my way through Doctor Who chronologically. Not having seen anything Who related, I have the opportunity to begin at the beginning.

But one does not simply begin at the beginning.

The Doctor Who franchise is a labyrinthine clusterfuck. And I'm not even talking about the timeline (see below). The actual availability and production of this stuff is all over the place. I didn't want to spill any ink over the history of the show, but you've forced my hand, BBC. The fact is I can't simply "start", I have to research and plan. And here I thought this project was an escape from academic work.

Coming to Doctor Who is really a series of subjective choices. One must decide on what counts, the order one will go in, and how one will approach the missing episodes and the myriad off shoots.

Technically I've already made a choice: chronology. But in reality this is just one of many. The Internet is lousy with Doctor Who viewing guides, episode guides, and "Where to Begin" think pieces put out by every culture magazine on the web.

But not a single one of these suggests going in order. Most of them tell you to start with the new series. These "episode guides" are in reality curated lists of popular or important story lines.

Which brings me to my first point.

I.

terminology

Doctor Who is not like Star Trek. Because that would be too easy. Star Trek is neatly divided into the TV series and the movies. Each of the series is divided into seasons and those seasons are divided into episodes. The movies are numbered. DONE.

But Doctor Who is divided into seasons, at first. According to this model there are 26 seasons. And while the seasons do have episodes, these episodes are grouped into serials, story arcs that span anywhere from 1 to 12 episodes. Now when I think serials I think of the cinema and the serialized films like Flash Gordon or my favorite Fantômas. Typically this wouldn't be a problem, only that one cannot simply go out and get Doctor Who season 1. You have to find the serials, and these are scattered like sticks in the fucking wind.

Louis Feuillade is the man.

To make these even easier to understand the new show, beginning in 2005, is referred to as a series. So series 1 is really season 27. Technically, these new series are like seasons, but what Americans call a season the United Kingdom calls a series. Wonderful.

Then there are the special episodes: random ass fucking specials that sometimes are properly part of the season and sometimes are short spoofs or crossovers. Currently there are specials that are also known as mini-episodes and some nonsense called "prequels", short preludes to practically every fucking episode in the new series.

Then there are the films, which is a special kind of shitshow. The 1960s saw the theatrical release of two films, but they don't seem to be considered part of the actual Doctor Who series, just one-off cash-ins on popular serial plot lines. So nothing at all like the connection between Star Trek the show and Star Trek the movies. But in the 1990s there was a made for TV film that is the chronological continuation of the original show that ended in 1989 and preceded the new series that starts in 2005. But this piece of shit is literatly known by three to four completely different names: Doctor Who, Doctor Who: The Movie, Doctor Who: The Television Film, and for some fucking reason, The Enemy Within.
 
I'm building a checklist to keep it straight for my own viewing purposes, because apparently it would be too much to ask of the Internet to make this readily available in one place.

I'll make this available for download if anyone is interested.

The impetus for this list brings me to my next point.

II.

choose your own adventure

Apart from Doctor Who being comprised of a bewildering amount of formats its availability has been diced into infinite possible collections. The most obvious are the divisions of the Doctors, referenced by their number or the actor who played him (such as "The Second Doctor" or "The Hartnell Years"), not unlike dividing the Bond franchise into the Connery years or the Moore years. But you can't even buy those, they make you buy boxed sets of random out of order movies, forcing you to purchase Moonraker. No one in their right mind would ever purchase Moonraker. What is it with British media companies? Consider the following dramatization:

ME: Hey, BBC, I would love to watch all of Doctor Who in chronological order.

BBC:

Imagine wanting to go through The Rolling Stones or The Beatles discography and their record labels decided to release 100 different albums comprised of random songs: "The Ones With Guitar", "The Songs About Women". Because that is what this feels like.

Another problem is this goddamn timeline. If there is anything that turns me off faster to a pop culture property its those fan-made infographics about the entire time line of some "world". I just want to read a good book or watch a great show, I don't need to know what the "proper" retcon timeline is. Search "Doctor Who Timeline", you'll find multiple variations of this:

give me cancer now god.

Now, to be fair, part of the reason the show is divided up into collections of story arcs and specific plot lines is because almost 100 episodes are currently lost. For more information watch this informative and silly video (here), but the long and short of it is the BBC erased hundreds of tapes in order to reuse them, thus saving money and precious storage space. But these "Missing Episodes" as they are called, are often random episodes from the middle of a serial, and some are apparently crucial moments in the series, such as the first time the Doctor is regenerated into a new one.

If the missing episodes were simply gone, that would make this a whole lot easier. But even they force you to make a choice about how you will consume them. For one, fans recorded the audio to every episode as it aired and these amateur audio recording have been officially released by the BBC. But again, not in any simple "here are all the fucking missing episodes" release. No. Some are on soundtracks to other episodes, some are in BBC collections sets, and all of the them have been reconstructed (recon) by dedicated fan groups, such as the company Loose Cannon, which has been releasing meticulous reconned episodes since the 80s. And it gets messier. Some of these Loose Cannon productions have been "officially" released, many have not. But the BBC has randomly released some recon episodes in their own home video releases, but again for whatever reason, many have not.

For this project I am going to be watching the Loose Cannon recons. My reasons are simple: (a) I could access all of them at once in one place and (b) they represent a crucial part of Doctor Who history, one that is fan-authored and officially un-official.

III.

get to know a human

Lastly, I want to take a moment and give a shout out to a flesh and blood human that has been most helpful in laying the groundwork for my Doctor Who journey. His name is Zach and we were neighbors since before Internet porn.

He looks like this:

But just like a good librarian is key to navigating the world of academic research (note: be nice to your librarian), having a person already familiar with Doctor Who has been essential to me figuring this mess out. So thank you Zach for the information on where to find this stuff, recommendations, pointers, and sending me some Doctor Who DVDs. I'll post pictures when the arrive.

So, dear readers, if you want to experience the exquisite pleasures of seeing your photograph on this blog, all you have to do is send me free shit.



In Sum: This show better be fucking good, because I'm already putting more time into it than my own dissertation.

UP NEXT: That theme song tho