Wildfire Darkstar

Too hard to narrow down the entirety of the classic series, so here’s one story for each classic Doctor:

• The Tenth Planet
• The Mind Robber
• Carnival of Monsters
• State of Decay
• Kinda
• The Two Doctors
• The Happiness Patrol

No, but I’m in a somewhat unusual situation. I’m an American fan who was introduced to the show right at the tail end of the classic era. I’d seen one or two serials that my aunt had taped off of our local PBS affiliate (IIRC, The Five Doctors and Revelation of the Daleks were among them), but the first serial I saw as someone with an active interest in the show was the regional premiere of Battlefield, followed that same night by the premiere of Ghost Light (the PBS station in question showed omnibus movie format versions and had doubled up the season 26 stories to get through them in two weeks). So, by that metric, my “first” Doctor was Seven.

But it’s not that simple, because I was technically within broadcast range of two PBS stations, one that aired the show late night on Saturdays, and the other that aired them late night on Sundays. And the very next day after seeing that Seven double feature, the other station was airing a One story, and jumped around semi-randomly after that. And, after the first station got through season 26 in those two weeks, they cycled back around and started showing the extant complete One stories, starting with An Unearthly Child. So I have a fair bit of association with the first Doctor, as well.

Initially, I guess I was a fan of both One and Seven, and they were at least near the top of my list. But being a fan in the wilderness years wasn’t really as straightforward as all that. The closest I had to a “current” Doctor was Seven, especially since I avidly followed the New Adventures novels when they started releasing a year or two after that, but there was never a time when I wasn’t also flitting around and watching other Doctors as they aired on PBS, or as the VHS releases came out, or (eventually) as the Missing/Past Doctor Adventures novels were published. If pushed, I might have named either One or Seven as my favorite, but I might have also named Five or Six, and I never considered them my firsts.

In any case, that was a long time ago, and even if I had felt that way at the time the revived show has given me additional options, and I’m pretty confident in saying that Twelve is my favorite nowadays, with Eleven ranking pretty highly (on par with One, Five, Six, and Seven, at least) as well. 🤷

I don’t know if any of these things are going to doom the game outright, per se, but there’s been a lot of hype building around the game for a long time and I think that’s… potentially ominous. It’s being positioned as the Next Big Thing™, and it’s rare that any game can live up to that. Even if it’s not a complete Cyberpunk-esque disaster, failing to live up to the frankly impossible expectations that are being foisted upon it are very likely to result in backlash.

I used to be a major Tennant fan but since watching some classic who and listening to big finish Tennant just feels a bit like he’s constantly preaching how smart and right he is about everything compared to all the other doctors.

Yeah, I feel that. There’s something I just find slightly grating about 10’s attitude, and as a result he’s at the bottom of my personal ranking of new series Doctors. Still, I don’t hate him in any objective sense, mind you.

I got into the show in the late '80s, just in time to watch the premiere of season 26 on my local PBS affiliate in the US. But other than getting into the franchise just as the show was ending for a decade and a half, I was extremely lucky, really. I had two PBS stations in broadcast range who carried the show at the time and showed omnibus movie-packaged stories every weekend on Saturday and Sunday nights, respectively.

One of said stations pivoted directly from the season 26 showings over two weeks (unusually done as two serials each week) to starting over from An Unearthly Child and working through the whole show (minus the missing/incomplete stories) in order. They showed most of the first two seasons (through The Chase) as an all-night marathon on Saturday night. I was 10 at the time, and that was the first all-nighter I ever pulled.

In hindsight, it’s amazing that the show came back from the mid-80s hiatus after this monstrosity was inflicted upon the world.

Define “console” here. The GameCube was underperforming, but Nintendo was dominating the handheld market with both the Game Boy Advance and the DS. I’m not sure a similarly underperforming Wii would have doomed the company, but I suspect it may have led Nintendo to try a crossover style handheld/set-top hybrid like the Switch a generation early.