About This Project
The goal sounds deceptively simple: watch roughly an hour of Doctor Who every day, in order, start to finish, and then talk about it. It sounds simple enough until you take into account exactly how much there is to watch: by the time I'm finished, there will be over 800 episodes of Doctor Who -- and that doesn't even take into account "semi-canon" things like Shada or Scream of the Shalka. It's going to be a pretty large endeavour.So why do it? Well, to be honest, I've never done it before, not really, and I want to. Sure, I've seen large runs in order, but a lot of the time I tend to watch the show "out of context", as it were. One week I might watch a Peter Davison story, the next a William Hartnell, and then a David Tennant. And there's nothing wrong with that: Doctor Who in many ways is a sort of anthology show -- the Doctor not only shows up in a new time and place with each new story, but usually in a different style of television as well, so things can generally be watched out of order without too much trouble. But by watching in order, I can see how things developed, how the best show in the world evolved and changed over time.
I dunno, it sounds like fun to me.
So that's the lofty goals. The actual details are a bit more mundane. Starting January 1, I'll be watching (or listening, in the case of the missing episodes) roughly an hour of Doctor Who every day -- so two 25-minute episodes or one 45-minute episode, as the case may be. I'll then write up my thoughts on what I've watched, which I'll post every day (access to the Internet permitting!).
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Someone once said Doctor Who was "the trip of a lifetime". Here's a journal of my travels on that trip.
Quick Q & A:
Why now? Why not in 2013, given it was the 50th anniversary year?
- To be honest, because not everything was out on DVD at that point, and I didn't want to deal with digging out an old VHS player. With the release of The Tenth Planet in November (Region 1), virtually everything that exists is now out on DVD, and January 1, 2014 was close enough to be a good starting point -- although even with this lead time The Underwater Menace 2 wasn't officially available in time for me to watch it (but I found a work-around)...
Why only two episodes a day? Why not, say, a story a day?
-The nature of the show, particularly during the earlier years, was to be seen week by week, not all in one go. Watching many of these stories all in one go reveals padding that wasn't nearly as obvious to the intended viewers and thus detracts from the show. On the other hand, watching it one episode a week would border on the ludicrously slow (as it is, this project will last well into 2015). Two episodes a day seems like a reasonable compromise -- plus it means that the amount of time per day will remain roughly the same when I go to one 45-minute episode a day.
About the Author
Adam Gobeski is currently working on a doctorate in linguistics from Michigan State University. A lifelong fan of Doctor Who, he is also the author of "Terror of the Zygons: Love & Loch Ness Monsters" in Outside In: 160 New Perspectives on 160 Classic Doctor Who Stories by 160 Writers (edited by Robert Smith?) and "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead: A Matter of Perspective" in Outside In vol. 2. Originally from Michigan, he currently lives in Arizona.