Who is your Favourite "Doctor"?

[Renegade]

So, who is your favourite Doctor?

I'm firmly in this camp:

Don't click until you've voted!

Tom Baker

If you don't understand the question, please crawl out from under your rock.

[wraith808]

My Non-Vote

Tom Baker of the old school... but I didn't vote because David Tennant and Matt Smith firmly won me over.

[Shades]

"Who is the doctor?"

Spoiler

David Tennant was my vote.   And if you like the "captain Jack" companion, watch a show called: Torchwood (if you haven't done that already). First 3 seasons of that show were made without US influence, its last season did. Except for the love scenes, a nice watch.

[Edvard]

"You may be a doctor. But I'm THE Doctor. The definite article, you might say."

- Tom Baker

[lanux128]

need i say more?

Spoiler

the one and only - Tom Baker!

[MilesAhead]

Should be a vote each for new/old divide

I liked the humor of Tom Baker.  For the modern Doctors I liked Eccleston.  The more macho dude in leather jacket brought a different aspect to the Doctor rather than a "more of the same" feeling.

[40hz]

Spoiler

I'm split between Baker and Tennant. I probably like Baker slightly more due to his interplay with Leela than anything else, But the Amy Pond character is still my favorite female in Dr Who.

[wraith808]

We should have another poll for companions.  For me it's between Martha Jones and Amy Pond.

[Renegade]

We should have another poll for companions.  For me it's between Martha Jones and Amy Pond.

-wraith808 (October 06, 2014, 09:35 AM)

That's even harder.

Adric?

K-9?

Not all of the Doctor's companions were hot babes.

I really liked Adric and K-9. Adric was a lot of fun. A bit clumsy and all, but smart and a great foil.

[Renegade]

And then we have all the villains!

One of my personal favourites:



Morbius!

He was a great villain! 

[wraith808]

Not all of the Doctor's companions were hot babes.

-Renegade (October 06, 2014, 10:01 AM)

No.  Really?!?   

[Renegade]

Not all of the Doctor's companions were hot babes.

-Renegade (October 06, 2014, 10:01 AM)

No.  Really?!?   

-wraith808 (October 06, 2014, 10:39 AM)

Touche!

[TaoPhoenix]

Both Dr. Who and Star Trek have a slight problem where the big passage of time skews things - "you learn from those who came before you", and production budgets and standards have changed, favoring the new guys. So we giggle at some of the quirks of the older shows, but they are only there to giggle at because they made enough of a name not to be forgotten.

I tended not to follow Dr. Who much at all - just never really got into it. I did watch some of the new stuff idly a while ago in a marathon, but marathons are a bit of a disposable activity.

The only other Doctor I know anything about is Tom Baker, but it's hardly a "scientific" opinion - your favorite becomes the only one you know!
: )

[MilesAhead]

Not all of the Doctor's companions were hot babes.

-Renegade (October 06, 2014, 10:01 AM)

No.  Really?!?  

-wraith808 (October 06, 2014, 10:39 AM)

I always suspected K9 was lulling The Doctor into a false sense of K9's subservience.  Just biding his time.  Sure enough he ended up with his own show.  I gather it only lasted one season?  Probably the human companion didn't show enough skin to buoy the, er, ratings.  I thought the K9 shows were fun though. I guess I would vote for it as Favorite Spin-off.  (Was there another?  I don't remember.)   

[rjbull]

I'm torn; Tom Baker was the Doctor, but I enjoyed the flamboyant exuberance of Jon Pertwee.

As for companions, the luscious Leela has been mentioned, but I also loved Jo, the super-scrumptious Katy Manning in Jon Pertwee days, and liked Nyssa, Sarah Sutton, too.  Some people thought Adric was a pain...

The villains; yes, some of them were terrifying to look at, but some of the more "normal" ones were maybe worse.  Viz., Roger Delgado's elegant megalomaniac The Master, delighting in destruction; and I found the insane militarist the Graff Vynda-K chilling.

I've only watched a few of the "modern" episodes and haven't found them anything like as enthralling.  Perhaps that's rosy-tinted nostalgia, but it just isn't the same show that I used to enjoy so much.  Much more slick production, of course, but what use is that?  It looks much like any other slick modern made-for-TV film.  People used to snigger at the cheap production of classic Dr. Who, but maintaining any sort of willing suspense of disbelief of a big ask with a show of this kind.  I thought the rough and ready, make do and mend look of the cheap production actually helped by making things more like real life.  Now, things seem too bright and colourful; everybody is too well turned out in designer clothes, too clean and tidy; even the modern cybermen look like they're fresh from a cyber boy band.  The classic "big ears" versions were more scary because they were humanoid but a travesty of humans.

[Deozaan]

Who?

[TaoPhoenix]

I'm torn; Tom Baker was the Doctor, but I enjoyed the flamboyant exuberance of Jon Pertwee.
....
Perhaps that's rosy-tinted nostalgia, but it just isn't the same show that I used to enjoy so much.  Much more slick production, of course, but what use is that?  It looks much like any other slick modern made-for-TV film.  People used to snigger at the cheap production of classic Dr. Who, but maintaining any sort of willing suspense of disbelief of a big ask with a show of this kind.  I thought the rough and ready, make do and mend look of the cheap production actually helped by making things more like real life.  Now, things seem too bright and colourful; everybody is too well turned out in designer clothes, too clean and tidy; even the modern cybermen look like they're fresh from a cyber boy band.  The classic "big ears" versions were more scary because they were humanoid but a travesty of humans.

-rjbull (October 06, 2014, 04:18 PM)

Unfortunately, I think there is some serious rosy-tinting affecting how we see SciFi, Fantasy, and some other genres, for all kinds of reasons. Because I'm not a Dr. Who guy, I'll use Star Trek, but I hope my points still hold.

- We were doing more dreaming then. I don't think it's an accident both Dr. Who and Trek started in the 60's. I'm not sure culturally what the British thought about the "American mission to the moon"; I'm guessing they said "well, we can't do this alone like they are, but we can lend them our scientists to help".

- Computing was more exciting. All those big flashing lights, and the things were huge, so you know only important projects got to have them. And maybe they even foresaw the miniturization push, but then if you add back the hardware you get something like IBM's Watson on turbo. So it would still be huge. And marketing wise, you had all those ENIACS and Mark IV's and stuff. Now we get Microsoft who decides to go from Windows 8 to Windows 10.

- Now we have grown used to a certain level of cinematic competence, it's harder to go back and really let disbelief go like we were kids in the old days. At least for me, subconsciously the contrast just stands out too much. It would be an interesting experiment if they used super-expensive cut-paste tech to "slice out" the actors of old Trek and CGI re-do the entire rest of the show like it would be today.

[MilesAhead]

Much more slick production, of course, but what use is that?  It looks much like any other slick modern made-for-TV film.  People used to snigger at the cheap production of classic Dr. Who, but maintaining any sort of willing suspense of disbelief of a big ask with a show of this kind.

-rjbull (October 06, 2014, 04:18 PM)

I loved the cheesy special effects of the old Dr. Who.  The idea of the Police Box disguise being "stuck" was a brilliant way to avoid spending money.  Sophisticated SciFi is fine but there's something that makes me laugh when somebody is "mind controlled" by a spinning wheel of cardboard with a spiral painted on it.  I guess that's part of the appeal of Tom Baker.  I had the feeling he was laughing at the chintzy props even as he was taping the show.

I think I liked Eccleston in the new show partly because with high production values the camp thing  doesn't work as well.  He played it more straight ahead beat the bad guys.

[TaoPhoenix]

I guess that's part of the appeal of Tom Baker.  I had the feeling he was laughing at the chintzy props even as he was taping the show.

I think I liked Eccleston in the new show partly because with high production values the camp thing  doesn't work as well.  He played it more straight ahead beat the bad guys.

-MilesAhead (October 06, 2014, 06:14 PM)

Maybe, but that feels just a bit dangerous to me - X of us genuinely "put aside" what we knew were cheesy props to get to the "sense of wonder".

I think if we start to drift into "yay, let's play, it's campy!", it becomes amusing, but only on a very light sugary level that doesn't have the power of inspiration I think a lot of us felt. Now when actors get handed a campy script that was supposed to be played straight, and they play it campy anyway signalling to the audience "Hey, I got handed this thing", sometimes they can get a brilliant one-time sendup like Galaxy Quest, but that doesn't change people's lives.

And with the rise of the net and modern video games, we don't get those old "nostalgic" pastimes like watching Rocky Horror 150 times.

[MilesAhead]

^To be honest the only change in my life from Dr. Who was setting aside time to watch the episodes.   

[40hz]

I've only watched a few of the "modern" episodes and haven't found them anything like as enthralling.  Perhaps that's rosy-tinted nostalgia, but it just isn't the same show that I used to enjoy so much.

-rjbull (October 06, 2014, 04:18 PM)

I think it's more we are constantly evolving individuals. And it's hard to maintain that sense of wonder we occasionally have when we experience something for the first time. Our tastes change over time. And every additional experience we have has a direct bearing on our personalities and tastes.

In the case of Dr. Who or StarTrek ( and NG was far better IMHO) I think it's not so much we miss the old versions of the shows as much as we miss the old version of ourselves that got so much enjoyment from watching them.

 '"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." as Heraclitus so aptly put it back around 450 BC.
 

[wraith808]

In the case of Dr. Who or StarTrek ( and NG was far better IMHO) I think it's not so much we miss the old versions of the shows as much as we miss the old version of ourselves that got so much enjoyment from watching them.

-40hz (October 07, 2014, 11:40 AM)

Had to give a shout out for DS9, which was my favorite for various reasons.

[TaoPhoenix]

I think it's more we are constantly evolving individuals. And it's hard to maintain that sense of wonder we occasionally have when we experience something for the first time. Our tastes change over time. And every additional experience we have has a direct bearing on our personalities and tastes.

-40hz (October 07, 2014, 11:40 AM)

Yes this is here, but I think the broader evolution of SciFi is involved here too.

I remember as a child raiding a local chain of used book stores called "Annie's Bookstop" (I think) as a youth. Because their pricing was a bit sweetly-naively based on original cover prices divided by 2, as a youth I could get whole bags full of the "golden" and "silver" age story collections from the 40's-70's for twenty bucks. Harlan Ellison was my own personal holy grail, but the example I want to go into here is Isaac Asimov's story "Nightfall".

It's a fairly simple story, that relies on accurate wording to work. World has some 7 suns and bunches of moons, somehow not collapsing into chaos. (Astronomer PHD heaven!) But it just so happens every big bunch of years, say 400-700, you somehow get a total 7 sun eclipse and the entire world goes dark for a night. Chaos reigns. Civilization collapses in the chaos and looting.

It's a nice little story. But it somehow became its own SuperMeme and ended up being included in some thirty anthologies for thirty years.

We just don't do that anymore. As ______ (media/content/culture/lore) gets older, it feels like it really degrades far faster now.

[40hz]

^I think the subtitle for the original Max Headroom series said it best: "20 minutes into the future."

With the pace of innovation and discovery as accelerated as it is today, it's become increasingly difficult for even the most forward thinking of scifi visionaries to get much further into the future than 20 minutes.
 

[4wd]

Jon Pertwee for me.

BTW, if you're going to have Paul McGann in the list, you need to include John Hurt.