Like many classic genre shows, Doctor Who has fantastic eps and oh-so-painful-WTF-eps. To make matters worse, the show has been going for decades and often assumes you know what is going on so they can get on with the storytelling. So where does someone who has never seen the show…or saw bad eps and friends keep hounding them to try again…even start?
There’s an accidental secret to watching Doctor Who: Contrary to some opinions, it’s not a life-choice, or an addiction. It’s a salad bar. You don’t have to get hooked and watch everything to enjoy it. You can skip around, find what you like (there are two distinct eras, Classic Who and New Who, and different actors in those eras have different tone and styles; the show is constantly reinventing itself like James Bond on acid). If you check these out and like what you see, you can explore at your leisure.
This is a guide for people to look over, pick what appeals to them, and go from there. These are not necessarily the best episodes, merely good starting episodes to give you a taste and see if you like. As such, a major criteria is that the story can stand alone, with no or little introduction.
This is not a ranked list, but we’re going to start with New Who, for two reasons: A) The stories are traditionally shorter and B) Unless you love old B-movies, the shoestring budget and switching between film/video filming (due to guild restrictions) of Classic Who may be a turnoff. We will include some at the end for those who are either new and want that, or are New Who fans and need a good entry point into the classics.
The title listed for each story is a link to a scene or trailer of that episode.
Basic knowledge you need to know: The Doctor is a Time Lord from a distant very advanced civilization called the Time Lords; in New Who, he believes himself to be the last survivor of his people after a great war. He’s rather fond of Earth, having been stranded here for many years in the Classic Who era. His ship is the TARDIS, which can travel in time and space. It’s chameleon circuit is broken, so it’s stuck looking like a 1960’s UK Police Box. That’s the basics.
Extra detail: Because the show has been going since the 60’s, there have been many actors who have played the Doctor. To explain this, there’s a process when a Time Lord is mortally wounded: he regenerates in a new body. Same core character, different face and some different personality traits. And he hates traveling alone, so he almost always has companions with him, traditionally 1-2.
