Doctor Who

I realized I have yet to say anything about the series we've been collectively watching for over a year now. (EDIT: I found I actually posted about it back in January, but hey, I've slept since then. This is a different post than that one.) I introduce it that way, because I remembered watching Doctor Who on PBS Saturday nights when I was younger, and I discovered the 2005 revived series on Netflix, and I talked everyone into sitting down to watch it to see how it would go. I knew nothing about the revival until I found it on Netflix. I figured if everyone would have a chance of getting into the series, starting with today's version would be it.

Well, the princesses and the Queen completely loved it. We ripped through the 5 seasons that were on Netflix at the time, watched the DVDs for the first half of series 6, and then watched the second half of series 6 weekly as they came out. But what to do after we had gotten all caught up with the series as it stood? After all, we learned that the 2005 Doctor was the ninth incarnation. I watched Doctors 3-6 when I was growing up.

Well, Doctor Who started in 1963, so the logical conclusion was for me to get ahold of every existing episode of Doctor Who and we started at episode 1. I had not seen most of the first Doctor episodes and none of the second, so I was honestly really looking forward to this. We watched An Unearthly Child last July or August, I believe, and we've been steadily plugging along ever since. Series 7 finally started for Doctor number 11, and we've reached the end of the classic series' season 20 with the fifth Doctor in our other watching. That's right. We've been watching Doctor Who steadily for over a year now, and we've yet to repeat an episode. I'm thoroughly enjoying though, since I saw any of these episodes only once when I was young, so I'm getting a lot more out of them now. Once we finish them all, I'll feel free to watch whichever whenever, but for now, I'm patiently watching with everyone else. I'm really chomping at the bit for Doctors 7 & 8 which I've also never seen.

The plan for our TV series watching is to watch all of Doctor Who all the way through to whichever episode is the most recent so the Queen and Princesses can rewatch the new series (which they like far more than the classic, anyway) in the context of the adventures of the 8 Doctors that came before it. Many of those episodes will take on entirely new meanings when you know what came before. The episode entitled 'Dalek', for example, I noted had a completely different meaning for me than the girls. After all, I knew the Daleks before we started. I knew who they were to the Doctor. I knew how he reacted to them. The girls had never seen a Dalek before (I'm so sorry - don't judge me). To them, this was just another story. So watching that episode, in particular, in the context of 7 Doctors worth of Dalek stories (the 8th Doctor only had one on-screen story, and that did not involve the Daleks) will mean something different. The Master also makes an appearance in the new series, and the girls didn't know him either. Well, they do now.

Anyway, once we finish with Doctor Who in its entirety, we will move on to Star Trek, which they also have not seen. The plan there is to watch 38 specific episodes of the original series, movies 2, 3, 4, and 6 and the all of the Next Generation along with its movies. I never got much into the other series, but they're all on Netflix if the girls feel the need.

I am happy they like Doctor Who so much, though. I enjoyed it thoroughly growing up, and often pretended that our tire gauge was a sonic screwdriver. It looked just like the third and fourth Doctor's version of it. They play Doctor Who with their Barbies. At least one Ken doll is the Doctor and the others play the various companions. Oh, and they love the Daleks. Go figure.