In the current times of complex plot lines and high tech CGI, it can be easy to overlook and ignore the work done in the past to get to this point. Where TV sets seemed to be made of cardboard and monsters mostly comprised of tin foil and bubble wrap.
Nowadays, Doctor Who is a massive worldwide phenomena. If you don’t watch it, you’ve probably at least heard of it. And yet, the original 26 season run often gets passed over in favor of its modern counterpart. Yes the sets wobbled, they couldn’t afford to edit out line fluffs (‘anti-radiation gloves-uh-drugs’) and the most terrifying thing – by today’s standards – is just how bad the monsters looked (*cough Invasion of the Dinosaurs cough*). But in essence it was and still is the same show. The Doctor and his companions flying around time and space in a battered blue police box.
Some of the reasons I’ve heard for not really giving the Classic series a real try is the over the top minor characters (looking at you, Professor Zaroff.), the laughably bad cliffhangers (still looking at you, Zaroff) and the not-so-special special effects. But this is a show that was designed to be educational. To be seen once on a Saturday evening and then never shown again. It’s not surprising that it has a far different reaction decades later when the stories are watched in one sitting rather than spread out over – on average – 2-10 weeks.
Through episode reviews and character studies, and with a genuine love of the show, I plan to show off the good and the very bad points of the original run and why I love it so very much.
And of course without the Classic series we wouldn’t have some of the things that are very well loved today within the show. And that includes UNIT and the wonderful Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. So many strange and wonderful things in the current run have an origin deeply ingrained in those original 26 seasons. In fact there are several episodes in recent years that I recall something very similar happening in the past!
I’m on a trip back to a junkyard in 1963 and to quote the Doctor himself “After all, that’s how it all started.”
