Doctor Who: From Zero To Sixty In Fairly Short Order

Just a few short months ago, I blogged about Vicki and I giving Doctor Who a try. I'd watched it a bit as a teenager but not since, and Vicki was pretty much a blank slate when it came to the good doctor.

We've now seen the entirety of the first two seasons of the returned series as well as all of the just-completed fifth season, and are working our way through season number three (almost done it, actually). The reason we're seeing things slightly out of order is that Space (the Imagination Station) was showing the current season episodes every weekend but also providing four older episodes each week (Mon thru Thu), starting back at the relaunch point.

It was a little strange seeing both Christopher Eccleston and Matt Smith as our "first doctors", but we're big boys and girls and handled it just fine. We're both of the opinion that Smith is the best of the new bunch (and probably best overall) while Eccleston's the weakest, with three-season David Tennant a very solid version in between the other two.

Neither of us particularly warmed up to companion Rose Tyler, despite the show's best efforts to make us love her over the course of two seasons. I didn't know what to expect from Martha Jones but so far I absolutely adore her. However, it's pretty hard to beat plucky Amelia Pond (the current companion) and her amazing story of meeting the Doctor when she was a child and having him as an imaginary friend until he returned more than a decade later (or, minutes later, from his point-of-view). I'm glad that both she and Smith will be returning for season six, but of course we're learning that to be a Doctor Who fan is to embrace change or go mad, so...

Vicki's a slightly bigger fan of the show at the moment than I am, but both of us are definitely enjoying it. I find the nonsensical aspects of some of the episodes hard to take (whereas Vicki just goes with it); on the other hand, the characters are often delightfully written and that appeals to me.

And how about a nice shoutout to Space for making it so ridiculously easy (and cheap) for us to go from zero to sixty on modern day Doctor Who so quickly? This sort of thing makes the $90/mth that we pay for cable almost seem worthwhile.