Movies - TV
Your Beginner’s Guide To Watching Doctor Who
By HOAI-TRAN BUI
Quick Facts
"Doctor Who" is about an alien called the Doctor who travels through time and space with his/her human companions in a spaceship shaped like a 1960s British police box.
The Doctor can change into an entirely different person every time he dies in a process called regeneration — a neat trick that basically grants him and the series immortality.
Rose
We recommend starting with the first episode of the revival that launched in 2005; “Rose” will get you to where “Doctor Who” is now.
It's a radical introduction for the Doctor, who in the final days of the classic era was more known for his tawdry quirks, but "Rose" reimagines him as a sort of cynical Superman.
Dalek
The revival had a rough first season so we recommend its sixth episode that really kicks it into gear and also introduces the Doctor’s greatest enemy, the Dalek.
The episode treats a Dalek as a complex villain rather than just a killing machine and thinly veiled Nazi metaphor and reveals the Doctor's backstory of the Time War.
Girl in the Fireplace
In the fourth episode of season 2 the Tenth Doctor, Rose, and Mickey land on an abandoned spaceship with portals to 18th-century France.
It's hard for any 45-minute love story to be convincing, but the Tenth Doctor and guest star Sophia Myles manage to make you believe that theirs is a love for the ages.
The Eleventh Hour
Each new Doctor and showrunner is a new era and soft reboot of the show but with the first episode of season 5, Doctor Who almost completely wipes the slate clean.
The episode marries the classic Doctor Who camp with modern sci-fi storytelling and is the best introductory story to a new Doctor yet, reimagining him as a Peter Pan figure.