Doctor Who: Twice Upon a Time 4K UHD (2017)

[pottyaboutpotter1]

Originally Posted by HarrySullivan

No, terrible start point.

Series 5 (Matt Smith) is a good in-point. If you watch Series 5 start to finish and really don't like it, then modern era Doctor Who probably has nothing for you anywhere else either.

Series 5 is probably the strongest run of episodes in the revival, perhaps slightly overtaken by Series 9. There's so many great ones in Series 5 and even the lesser episodes are good campy fun at the very least. I don't think it's possible to watch Series 5 and come out not liking at least one episode.

[pottyaboutpotter1]

Originally Posted by BDougherty

For someone who's never watched Doctor Who, is this a good place to start?

As others have said, this is an awful place to start watching Doctor Who.

This is basically an epilogue to Series 10 and Capaldi's time as the Doctor as a whole. It's also the third in a trilogy of stories devoted to tying up all the loose ends in Capaldi's era so there's a lot of references and cameos that won't make any sense to you if this is your first episode.

A better starting point is Series 1, Series 5 or the upcoming Series 11. Series 5 is probably the best of those since it starts a lot stronger than Series 1. Not to say Series 1 is bad (it's not, it's great), it's just that The Eleventh Hour (Series 5 Episode 1) is a stronger episode and a much better episode to just how, well, mad Doctor Who is than Rose (Series 1 Episode 1).

[MisterKorman]

Originally Posted by BDougherty

For someone who's never watched Doctor Who, is this a good place to start?

If you're able to, I don't see why you couldn't just begin with Series Eleven when it starts soon. Now that all the loose ends have been cleared up, this is going to be a golden opportunity to jump on.

[Vandal Savage]

The ideal place to begin Doctor Who is probably with series one, Eccleston's season.

Series 5, Matt Smith's first season isn't a bad place to start either. It is a soft reboot that new viewers can jump into without much of a problem.

Even series 10, Capaldi's final season, is sort of a soft reboot though some of the stuff near the end might confuse some newbies, as it has a pretty big callback to some of the earlier series. But it does start with a new companion and has series-long arc.

[BDougherty]

Thanks everyone for the input. I think I'll start with series 5. If I like the show I might go back to the older doctors.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by pottyaboutpotter1

Series 5 is probably the strongest run of episodes in the revival, perhaps slightly overtaken by Series 9. There's so many great ones in Series 5 and even the lesser episodes are good campy fun at the very least. I don't think it's possible to watch Series 5 and come out not liking at least one episode.

I agree Series 5 is probably the best, but maaaaaan I disagree Series 9 is second. I found Capaldi's first two series very disappointing and poorly written overall, and I hated Clara. I like his final series a lot though.

I think Tennant was the best modern Doctor so far but his era had a lot of misses and weird shit in it. I wish Tennant stayed on with Moffat.

Originally Posted by Vandal Savage

The ideal place to begin Doctor Who is probably with series one, Eccleston's season.

As someone else said above if I started with Eccleston I likely wouldn't have kept watching. I love the Moffat two-parter that series but other than that it's a pretty rough set of episodes IMO. Eccleston himself is probably fine but the material is just poor. Tennant's first year isn't much better either. The show takes a big step forward in quality after that.

[morphinapg]

Personally, for me Series 4 is my second favorite, but I know not everyone likes Donna

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by morphinapg

Personally, for me Series 4 is my second favorite, but I know not everyone likes Donna

I like series 4 a lot as well, and I thought Donna worked well with Tennant's Doctor. I also liked series 3 a lot even if the finale goes a bit off the rails. I also really liked Waters of Mars, The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead. Wish The End of Time held up to those.

[Gacivory]

I’m gonna have to disagree with everyone here. I love the Eccleston and the Tennat, and began to truly dislike the show when Moffat took over. I lost interest in his writing half way through the Matt Smith years.

[mymythos]

Originally Posted by Gacivory

I’m gonna have to disagree with everyone here. I love the Eccleston and the Tennat, and began to truly dislike the show when Moffat took over. I lost interest in his writing half way through the Matt Smith years.

My sentiments exactly. Although I like several episodes of the Matt Smith years, I gradually became less and less interested. Hell, I haven't even watched season nine yet. Nothing to do do with the actors, specially Capaldi, whose look is how I believe every Doctor should have (big Pertwee fan here). And please, I don't want to antagonize anyone here, but the gender swapping is the final straw. I know a lot of people are okay with it, and you have every right to be so, but as pointed out in this tread before, this is just a gimmick. Throughout the first fifty years of the show every regeneration of ANY Time Lord/Lady on the show, either shown or just mentioned, was always in the same gender, after all, it's a REgeneration, which means means the REgrowth of a damaged or missing organ part from the remaining tissue, so a penis would never regenerate into a vagina. In my opinion if they wanted to change the show so much they should have done like the Bond films and rebooted the franchise. Many here will certainly disagree with me. I respect their opinion. I just ask mine to be respected in return.

[morphinapg]

Originally Posted by Gacivory

I’m gonna have to disagree with everyone here. I love the Eccleston and the Tennat, and began to truly dislike the show when Moffat took over. I lost interest in his writing half way through the Matt Smith years.

I'd say Season 5 is near flawless, but for the rest of Moffat's seasons there's a lot you can complain about, especially the latter part of Season 7. That being said I think the issue was, outside of Season 5, Moffat wasn't the best at setting up an overarching story for the season whereas RTD did a fantastic job with that stuff. Also the whole stubbornness with "I'm not doing 2 parters anymore" from the second half of season 6 until the end of season 8 was super annoying considering 2 parters were often some of the best stories. But then season 9 more than made up for that, lol

Regardless of his weaknesses as a showrunner, I do still think almost all of the episodes directly written by Moffat have been fantastic.

[StarkRomanoff]

Basically, buy this when it's cheap but don't watch it until you've seen some of every New Who Doctor. Seriously.

Don't start with Moffat and if you wait for Chibnal it's fine because they designed season 11 for brand new eyes, but you're still missing all of the basic necessary context of who the character of the Doctor is for this 1 ep.

Also this episode comes right before season 11 so it's super heavy on a ton of character and plot buildup from DW history. I find people stop watching something when they're too confused to follow...Don't be those people.

P.S. Season 5 was just OK and not nearly representative of the entire show's capability to tell compelling stories.

[The Dark Shape]

Originally Posted by morphinapg

That being said I think the issue was, outside of Season 5, Moffat wasn't the best at setting up an overarching story for the season whereas RTD did a fantastic job with that stuff.

What overarching story did RTD tell? His idea of a season-long story was to have a random word pop up once per episode before the finale. Moffat actually had stories that built through the series, whether you liked them or not.

Count me in as one of the people who never would have kept watching if I'd started with Series 1. Big chunks of the first two series are rough. The worst Moffat episodes are kind of dull, while the worst RTD episodes are genuinely bad television.

[Dexter1998]

The first thing I ever watched was The Day of the Doctor. It was November 2013 and the episode premiered in TV all around the world. I remember reading in the Programming "Doctor Who" and thinking, "Huh, I've heard people love this show". So I watched Day of the Doctor, Doctor Who Explained and An Adventure in Space and Time. Not the best way to start the show, but that happens to me (the first HP book I read was CoS). Anyway, I decided to start from the beggining, but Classic Who was a mess to find online (and they don't sell it here), so I decided to start with New Who and watched in order. My fav? Series 4, and Donna is one of my fav in the show. Rosa is a close second, followed up by Amy, then Bill, Clara and Martha. Don't get me wrong, Martha is a good character, but the way she was developed, Freeman deserved better.

I would recommend you to start with Series 1, but to know to give it at least that first season as a chance. It gets better.

[StarkRomanoff]

Originally Posted by Dexter1998

The first thing I ever watched was The Day of the Doctor. It was November 2013 and the episode premiered in TV all around the world. I remember reading in the Programming "Doctor Who" and thinking, "Huh, I've heard people love this show". So I watched Day of the Doctor, Doctor Who Explained and An Adventure in Space and Time. Not the best way to start the show, but that happens to me (the first HP book I read was CoS). Anyway, I decided to start from the beggining, but Classic Who was a mess to find online (and they don't sell it here), so I decided to start with New Who and watched in order. My fav? Series 4, and Donna is one of my fav in the show. Rosa is a close second, followed up by Amy, then Bill, Clara and Martha. Don't get me wrong, Martha is a good character, but the way she was developed, Freeman deserved better.

I would recommend you to start with Series 1, but to know to give it at least that first season as a chance. It gets better.

I actually agree with this the most.

Those of us who stumbled upon the series likely didn't start watching at the most opportune episode. The first episode I saw was Doomsday. But if you're considering watching the series for the first time, start from the beginning and be patient. It's a much better experience.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by The Dark Shape

What overarching story did RTD tell? His idea of a season-long story was to have a random word pop up once per episode before the finale. Moffat actually had stories that built through the series, whether you liked them or not.

Count me in as one of the people who never would have kept watching if I'd started with Series 1. Big chunks of the first two series are rough. The worst Moffat episodes are kind of dull, while the worst RTD episodes are genuinely bad television.

This 100%.

[morphinapg]

Well okay aside from season 4 I guess it was less about an overarching story necessarily, and more about cool built up reveals. Like, you have

[Show spoiler]Bad Wolf

mentioned as soon as episode 2, Torchwood referenced as soon as the season 1 finale,

[Show spoiler]Harold Saxon

mentioned as early as 2x10, about a year before the reveal, things like

[Show spoiler]the Face of Boe

having multi season payoffs,

[Show spoiler]the Master's ring being picked up in the season 3 finale and paying off 2.5 years later

, etc.

Yes I'm sure not all of that was completely thought out at the start, but you still get those kind of reveals that feel like they had some thought put into building them up throughout the season or seasons. Season 4 (and the specials) on the other hand was more of an overarching story, essentially starting with the Doomsday / Runaway Bride and ending with The End of Time.

Moffat did a great job with that in season 5, and the first half of 6. Other than that, Moffat introduced a lot of cool ideas that could have had some cool payoffs, but most of them disappointed aside from maybe the

[Show spoiler]Missy

reveal. The reveal about

[Show spoiler]what the deal was with the multiple Claras

was a cool moment, but didn't quite feel as earned as those other reveals.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by morphinapg

Yes I'm sure not all of that was completely thought out at the start, but you still get those kind of reveals that feel like they had some thought put into building them up throughout the season or seasons.

Again though, having the words "bad wolf" or "torchwood" be mentioned here and there with no story significance or context isn't really what I would consider "completely thought out story reveals." It's just continuity porn, really. I will agree he did better with series 3 and 4 though.

In any case I don't really consider season-long arcs to be a good thing anyway. One of the reasons I love Who is it's NOT serialized.

[morphinapg]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Again though, having the words "bad wolf" or "torchwood" be mentioned here and there with no story significance or context isn't really what I would consider "completely thought out story reveals." It's just continuity porn, really. I will agree he did better with series 3 and 4 though.

In any case I don't really consider season-long arcs to be a good thing anyway. One of the reasons I love Who is it's NOT serialized.

My point was that it felt built up in some sense, like it was a cool reveal, that it felt planned to some degree, regardless of how much or little it affected the story of those episodes, or how little it might actually have been planned, it still felt like it was. On one hand I don't want Doctor Who to be completely serialized (although arcs like Trial of a Time Lord were still cool) but having it be completely procedural isn't ideal either. Having little connections sprinkled throughout the season that build up to something cool is a nice way to balance it. Make it feel like there's a purpose and direction to the season, without making it so serialized that you can't tell too many stories.

I haven't read anything about the upcoming season to avoid spoilers. I'd worry about it getting too serialized with Chibnall's history, but if he can still still tell a handful of separate stories while also delivering a decent arc to the season, I think he could have potential to be better than what Moffat did for the most part, although Moffat did great with Season 5. There's definitely room for improvement in the storytelling even beyond what Season 5 did imo, if done right, but finding that right balance is tricky.

[StingingVelvet]

Fair enough points. Like a lot of things I'm sure subjective taste matters a lot. I really dislike serialized TV for the most part, so we probably have different interests and such when it comes to which season-long aspects impress us.

Moffat had a lot of stinkers in his run but overall I liked it better mostly because it focused on sci-fi and adventure, while RTD's era tended to have a lot more soap opera and farcical elements. It will definitely be interesting to see what Chibnall does because his episodes prior to this tended to be very sci-fi adventure in focus, which I liked, but as showrunner he might have different priorities.