So I wanted to do a lil piece on Doctor Who, what with it being my favourite show ever and all, but I realised that there was so much history I wanted to talk about before I even got to talk about episode 1. I figured I'd spin this first part off into a bit of extra reading beforehand, and here that is!
In this (hopefully) series, I want to discuss each story in relative depth, and why I think Series One of the reboot is so fantastic. In order to even get to that, we need to talk about Classic.
The original "classic" run of Doctor Who ran from 1963, to its cancellation in 1989 and a movie we don't talk about releasing in 1996.
Don't get me wrong, I adore classic Who, and while I'm nowhere near an expert on it, I do enjoy watching it as much as I do new Who, although it's definitely not the same kind of enjoyment?
You really have to be in a certain mindset to really enjoy classic imo, the first couple times I tried to get into it was when I was a dumb stupid teenager and it did NOT go well at all. Above all, classic is SLOW. Episodes feel very drawn out when approached with a modern mindset, and call me a zoomer all you want, but it's just not exciting in the same way new Who is.
Revisiting classic nowadays though (I'm 21 so not that much later but still), I can appreciate what it brought to the series so much more. I've still not watched much in the grand scheme of things, but I've easily watched enough to love the show.
Unfortunately, the BBC didn't feel the same way. In the late 80s, Who was declining, badly. After four seasons where ratings were only going down, the BBC axed the show in 1989, ending The Seventh Doctor's run short.
The reception to the news wasn't quite what you'd expect either; in fact, some people claim there wasn't much news about it in the first place. The BBC just.. quietly brushed the show under the rug and hoped no-one noticed. And for the most part, they didn't.
While obviously devastating to long-time fans, the general public opinion amounted to not much more than a shrug. The show had essentially faded into mild obscurity, and to be honest I can see why; the stories shown in the final few seasons just weren't up to the standard of previous Who episodes, even if they were on an upward trajectory, and the simple fact that the show had been running for over twenty five years at this point, that amount of runtime will just do that to most shows.
After repeated efforts to bring the show back in the mid nineties, such as a particularly bleh TV movie and several extended media, the rights were finally given to BBC Wales, and the first episode of the revival, titled Rose, was aired on the 26th of March, 2005.
Sidenote, did you know that the revival was codenamed Torchwood? It's an anagram of Doctor Who! I don't think it fooled anybody for very long though, I mean, when you're filming with a huge blue box, there aren't too many things it could be.
That's part 0 and the first real bit of writing I'm doing here, how exciting. I'll write the next part whenever, I'm quite busy with uni exams coming up soon. The plan is to do one story per post, so two-parters get one post between the two. Believe me I love this series, but not enough to write 800 words about bloody Aliens of London. We'll see how it goes though!