My History with Doctor Who Part Two

As I mentioned yesterday, by the time I reached my mid teens, my attention turned to other activities on Saturday nights in Oklahoma City outside of just being glued to the television watching Doctor Who. This was in the days before DVRs and our video tape recorder was unreliable.

The funny thing was I actually found out about the regeneration from Peter Davison to Colin Baker from my mom who had continued watching the program. 

Eventually, I moved to Denver, Colorado for four years in the early 90s. I quickly learned that Doctor Who was airing Sunday mornings on the local PBS station. By this time, Sylvester McCoy had started driving the TARDIS. I was so excited to be watching the show again not to mention the fact that new companion, Ace, was pretty cool!

But my excitement didn't last long. The thing to understand is the local PBS station was running about two years behind what was being aired in Britain. So in 1991 I was watching Survival and heard the doctor say "Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we've got work to do," as the pair headed back to the TARDIS. Just then a voice came on over the final credits announcing that BBC had canceled the series in 1989. While it had happened two years earlier I was devastated, no more Doctor Who. 

It was six years till we got another taste of the TARDIS when Fox aired the TV Movie with Paul McGann. The less said about that debacle the better. Nothing personal against McGann, in fact I loved Night of the Doctor which aired shortly before the 50th anniversary special.

Finally in 2005, Doctor Who returned. I was so excited about watching Christopher Eccleston on OETA this time on Friday nights. I wasn't following any news or internet chatter about the show so imagine my surprise when just 12 episodes later, he regenerated into David Tennant. 

Tennant was phenomenal. And Matt Smith has been incredible. I have enjoyed watching them both as the Doctor. What I think is funny is I knew when Tennant was leaving, but didn't know who would replace him. Now I not only know Smith is leaving, I know he will be replaced by Peter Capaldi. 

Over the past few years I have gone back to watch all the episodes for William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee. I am currently catching up on all the episodes of Patrick Troughton. Those are admittedly harder to watch as most episodes are reconstructions after the purge of original episodes by the BBC in the 70s.

So after 30 years of watching Doctor Who it has been an amazing journey, and I don't expect it to end anytime soon.