Who-athon

I received a text message on Monday which simply read “Nov 23rd 2013 We should be sat round together watching the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special. Agreed?”. The funny thing about Doctor Who is that for all it’s Sci Fi geekery it is very much a communal event. Families and friends will make the effort to gather around to watch together. There isn’t much on TV that will still do that outside of a major sporting event or Eurovision. I checked my calendar and it falls on a Saturday so why not make a day of it? I’m assuming that the BBC will be showing their own programmes (presumably alongside the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination) but how about a marathon Doctor Who session with a bit of each Doctor? The question is, what would you watch? Here is my idea of an 11 Doctor marathon taking in some of the highlights of the show’s long history.
1st Doctor: “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop” as  Lewis Carroll once wrote and what better place to start than An Unearthly Child, the very first episode. In fact two versions of this exist – one of which is referred to as the “Pilot Episode” but was actually just an early attempt that was reshot due to technical issues and the fact that some elements were regarded as too scary for teatime telly (see the “thunderclap” opening titles). This introduced us to the Doctor, his unusual granddaughter Susan and her curious teachers Ian and Barbara as well as the mysterious TARDIS disguised as a Police Box. This is usually lumped into the following story in which our crew find themselves back in the Stone Age but which is nothing like as entertaining as the opening episode so I would purely go for the opening intrigue. It’s also interesting to see William Hartnell’s early take on the Doctor – would you trust this man?

2nd Doctor: Patrick Troughton’s time as the Doctor only remains in patches due to the BBC’s somewhat myopic policy of wiping old video tapes. However, to my mind one of his best adventures was his last, The War Games, which really moved on the Doctor’s mythology as we finally discover where he came from and what he was running from. The only problem from the perspective of a Doctor Who marathon is it’s length: a full 10 episodes. Maybe the last couple would suffice? It also gives us the first chance to see a regeneration – except it doesn’t, really. Maybe that’s one for later but this really sets up the mythology for the rest of the series’ long existence.

3rd Doctor: I’m a big fan of Jon Pertwee (he was always “my Doctor”) but in some ways his were rather atypical adventures: usually contemporary Earth based and with the Doctor often an authority figure as UNIT’s scientific advisor rather than an eccentric alien traveller. However, one story I could come back to time and again is Carnival Of Monsters in which he and Jo go on some space tourism. This has many great elements about it: scary (at the time) monsters, a plot which doesn’t give the game away in the first episode and lots of daft humour from the regular cast and guests alike. This episode wouldn’t have been out of place in the late 1980’s but for some reason they just did it better in 1973.

4th Doctor: Daleks. Did I mention Daleks? We have to have some Daleks in our Whoathon and what better place to see them than in their creation in Genesis Of The Daleks. This was the adventure that really bought me into Tom Baker’s Doctor but it also gives us a great grounding in the Daleks’ origins and introduces us to the Mengele-like Davros. In fact the whole adventure is dripping with Nazi imagery from the underground bunker, the Kaled guard’s uniforms and the creepy Nyder (to my mind a more frightening presence than Davros). This also featured my favourite TARDIS crew with Sarah Jane and Harry joining the Doctor on his mission from the Time Lords. Russell T Davies stated that this story was the basis behind his Time War idea so it’s essential viewing.

5th Doctor: We haven’t had an actual regeneration yet and what better way of doing it than Peter Davison’s last episode The Caves of Androzani? It seems generally accepted that 1980’s Doctor Who lost the plot somewhat but I still think it was on form here. In fact it is often cited as the best story ever which I wouldn’t agree with but it is Davidson’s best. In fact I was quite surprised to see him regenerate at the end as I wasn’t expecting that until the end of the series but it has one of the most intricately thought out regenerations that the series has done.

6th Doctor: I never really took to Colin Baker’s doctor but I blame the scripts rather than the actor for that. From the point of view of the series’ mythology we could have something from the Trial of a Timelord or the Rani but I wasn’t fussed with either of them. We haven’t had any Cybermen yet so I’ll plump for Attack Of The Cybermen. The Cybermen had become some sort of caricature of Darth Vader at this point but the plot hints at events that took place just before the 1st doctor regenerated and I would always go for Peri over Mel anyway.

7th Doctor: Contrary to common opinion, I thought the series rather picked up towards the end. I watched Battlefield recently with the kids and they enjoyed seeing Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor alongside the Brigadier. That last series had it’s moments but for a marathon I would have to go with the final story, Survival, in which we will see the Master and we do, at least, see the original series go out with a bang rather than a whimper.

8th Doctor: We only get the one screen adventure with Paul McGann which is the TV Movie. I watched this with Raymond a few month’s back and it really just demonstrates as to why this is a fundamentally British phenomenon. There is nothing wrong as such with the Doctor and his companion and Eric Roberts makes for a convincing villain. However it looks like a second hand remake of a much loved original. I suppose we will have to watch some of it but I think we would be phoning for the pizzas when this is on.

9th Doctor: There was only one problem with Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor and that is we didn’t see enough of him. There are several iconic stories during his brief year in the blue box and it’s difficult to pick one – but I’m going to go for The Empty Child. This was real proper scary Doctor Who: just as I would (mis-)remember it from my childhood. Definitely one for the back of the sofa.

10th Doctor: My absolute favourite David Tennant adventure is The Girl In The Fireplace, but I’m actually going for Human Nature as the 10th Doctor story. This was one which really moved on the whole Timelord mythology and nicely set up the return of the Master later in the series. It is also one which pulls in all aspects of the series: a historical setting, science fiction, horror and elements of the super-natural into one package but with a script that explores the characters in depth and really gives the lead actors something to justify their drama-school fees with. All that with a rather tear-jerking ending.

That brings us to the 11th Doctor and I am hoping that we will see Matt Smith in the Anniversary special. I’m not quite sure if I have a favourite Matt Smith episode at the moment. His opening story, Eleventh Hour, was joyful and Vincent and The Doctor and Asylum of the Daleks both stand up to repeated watching for rather different reasons. If I had to pick one I’d go for The Doctor’s Wife – mainly because I enjoy Neil Gaiman’s writing. Having looked back over this list there is actually far too much to see in one day so it may be a case of going for individual episodes for each Doctor. That could be tricky with the long episode counts in the 60s and 70s but it would be interesting to see if an actor’s performance could be condensed to one 25 minute episode.So, for a day of Who what would you go for?