David Tennant is Mrs. Know-It-All’s Doctor, and everybody knows it. Mine’s Matt Smith, and I gave him the hardest time when he started.
We were working on the set and I was white balancing the lights when she told me to put my shirt on, because she wanted to talk some Doctor Who. So that’s what this is. She’s had it on the brain because a friend of hers from high school, somebody she hadn’t talked to in years, has been going back and forth with her about the show. His Doctor is Tom Baker. He was watching in eighth grade and freshman year, on Channel 11 in Chicago, which had to buy the show from the BBC. From what she understands, it went away because the guy in charge of programming didn’t think it was worth it. It was one of the most expensive things they were purchasing, and that station’s community funded.
So he’s only ever seen the color ones, and her question for me was how you find the Doctors before Tom Baker.
Where the Old Doctors Went
The BBC’s been remastering a bunch of the old stuff. We have a lot of the First Doctor. Then, overlapping the First Doctor and the Second, there’s a big chunk missing because of a big fire that happened back in the day.
That’s when it clicked for Mrs. Know-It-All. That’s why the old Toymaker story we saw was animated. They were able to recover some audio, and that’s why they’ve been doing animated restorations. The animation’s not super great, but whatever.
From the latter part of the Second Doctor on, most of it’s available, and they’ve been remastering a lot of it. I think they’re stalled at the moment. Everybody’s asking where the rest is and it just hasn’t come out yet. Eventually it will. Her friend’s going to end up watching this, so if I got that history wrong, please feel free to correct me. I’m totally cool with that.
A Watch Party for the New Season
We’ve got a launch date for the new season, and I’m super excited for it. Mrs. Know-It-All wants to do a live watch together with you for the first episode. I’m down. You’ve got to be careful with some of that stuff, because the minute you try it on YouTube, YouTube says you’re trying to make money off something copyrighted. I’ve got a Patreon we could pull it off on, someplace off the beaten path. Nobody’s getting charged. She just wants to enjoy it together.
She’s one of the newer fans, and she’d love to talk to people in real time. Right now she goes to her friend for it. Who’s your favorite Doctor, why do you like them.
She’s watched Christopher Eccleston’s run, and she thought he should’ve kept going. A lot of people did. He didn’t want to, and that’s fair. He was the gravitas they needed to relaunch the thing, and he didn’t need to be more than that.
The Two Doctor Who Movies
There’ve actually been two movies. The first one was back in the day, when the BBC wanted to make a big thing out of this. It’s got a Doctor who isn’t in canon, played by the actor who was Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars, when he was a younger man. It’s a Daleks adventure, and a lot of people enjoy it, even though it was never connected to anything else.
The one that’s canon is the one with Paul McGann. They wanted to bring it to North America, with a very American feel and a whole different style. The Master was an American actor. The companion was an American actress. It sounds so weird right now.
They brought in the guy who played the Seventh Doctor to do the opening as a cameo. His name literally escapes my head, and I just had it. He steps out, gets shot by some street toughs, and gets taken to the hospital, where he dies. In the morgue, his body regenerates, and he wakes up as Paul McGann inside the freezer vault. His initial energy blows the handle off that big door, and he walks out completely confused. The whole thing is him trying to remember who he is. He ends up in some old dated clothing from what looks like a secondhand store, and that sort of establishes his look. I don’t remember the companion’s name exactly.
It didn’t go very well, because it wasn’t done great. I think we’ll appreciate it today. And they do include it. During the opening credits, they attempt this surreal retelling of the past. On the planet Skaro, the Doctor delivers the Master to stand trial in front of the Daleks, and you hear him get exterminated, with this old laugh from an actor from back in the day. Then he’s some kind of weird energy thing that finds a way to infect a human being as a blob. So the new Master comes from possession, the Master’s energy taking over a person. And this guy was totally campy.
I have the movie. It’s on our Plex. Mrs. Know-It-All wants to know if any of you have watched it and whether it’s a fun movie, without telling her what happens. It is a fun movie. That’s date night tonight, and she’s making gourmet popcorn.
The Scarf and the Hat
Tom Baker’s the first Doctor I remember. When I was younger, Saturday morning cartoons would roll into afternoon wrestling. After wrestling they’d do Godzilla and some kung fu movies, and sometimes they’d also put in Doctor Who. I had no clue what it was. I just remember seeing him with the colorful scarf and the hat, him and Elisabeth Sladen, who played one of his very classic companions.
A lot of people consider Tom Baker one of the more impactful Doctors. I think at the time he was the longest running, and I could be wrong. People will tell you he only went a few seasons like everybody else, but seasons back then had like 60 episodes. I’m exaggerating, but a series of Doctor Who was much longer than it is now.
They’d break a season up into stories. These episodes are Logopolis, these are the whatever of whatever. Star Trek gave you a new adventure every episode. Doctor Who did it in runs of four or five, and when that adventure was done it rolled into another one.
It’s a much older storytelling style. But you can see the threads of who he’s always been, so it’d be worth watching one or two just to get a feel for him. I don’t know where we’re going to find them.
Matt Smith Is My Doctor
I know a lot of people are giving what’s coming up crap. I’m not. Mrs. Know-It-All figures she’s excited because she wasn’t a big fan of Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, and maybe that’s why people are giving the new one a hard time too. True story, they didn’t care for hers. I just think she got a bum deal. She really did.
I loved David Tennant, and I consider him one of my Doctors. But if I had to pick, I’d have to say Matt Smith. Something about his attitude, his temperament, his personality really spoke to me. What’s funny is I wondered at first if he’d be able to carry the gravitas. Then you get that nice moment where he dresses down the Atraxi, and you’re like, oh yeah, you’re good. He was playful. It was fun.
I loved the 50th anniversary, when David Tennant and Matt Smith were together, because they did a really great job being the contrast of the Doctor who regrets and the Doctor who forgets. I believe the forgetting was much more a factor of maturity. Living in sorrow served no purpose and didn’t help anybody, so he decided he was going to move on. Seeing that growth in him has been good.
This was fun. She says it’s really all me, because she just forces me in front of the camera when she wants to talk. I love talking Doctor Who all the time.
Who’s your Doctor, and why? And if you’ve seen the Paul McGann movie, tell Mrs. Know-It-All whether it’s a fun one, no spoilers. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
