Doctor Who premiered on November 23, 1963, a day that will live on in infamy for any Doctor Who fan.  For this part of my Doctor 101 series, I will discuss the early years of the series, covering the first 3 incarnations of our favorite Time Lord.  There had never been a show like Doctor Who before, and when they faced the issue of their main actor leaving, they handled in a way no one had before. Regeneration.  The single greatest idea in television history.  It is the thing that has allowed the show to last as long as it has, in my opinion.  But it does make it confusing for anyone new to the series.  So, hopefully, by running down all the Doctors I can help you overcome the confusion.

When Doctor Who premiered in November of 1963, this was our Doctor.  The name of the episode was “An Unearthly Child.”  The premise of the first episode was that some teachers followed one of their students home from school, a girl named Barbara who seemed to know things that no girl her age should have known, which piqued their curiosity.  What they found was an innocent looking police call box that was bigger on the inside and the girl’s grandfather, the Doctor.  He was a stern, no-nonsense kind of guy.  There was nothing really playful about him.  Despite that, he did care for his granddaughter and their human companions and for their safety.  He also cared about the people they visited.  He was basically the stereotypical grandfather or older uncle of the 1960’s.  He was played masterfully by William Hartnell.  We can thank the first Doctor for the TARDIS, the sonic screwdriver and the Daleks.  All of these premiered during the first Doctor’s run.  If you want to see great coverage of the beginning of the series, check out the movie An Adventure in Space and Time, which chronicles the beginning of the series.  It was released last year for the 50th anniversary.

In 1966, for various reasons, William Hartnell’s time as the Doctor was coming to an end, but the BBC had a hit on their hands that they wanted to keep going.  They went out and hired Patrick Troughton to take up the role.  Then they came up with an idea to explain the difference in appearance.  At the time they called it “rejuvenation.”  Basically, on film William Hartnell changed and transitioned into the new Doctor, Patrick Troughton.  The real genius part was that this new Doctor was the same individual, but he looked different and acted differently.  The second Doctor was more erratic, more fun, and less serious.  He traded in his dark coat and hat for plaid pants and recorder.  He often pulled out his recorder to play music to help him think.  Despite his sometimes strange behavior, he was still the Doctor and took saving the planet or universe very seriously.

It was 1970.  A new decade, and a new Doctor for the decade, live and in color (minus the live part).  Enter Jon Pertwee.  His Doctor’s appearance was dramatic to say the least.  It was the early 70’s in Britain, so in that context his fashion made sense.  With this third incarnation of the Doctor, they also brought some changes to the series.  The Doctor was now banished to Earth.  The TARDIS could still move in time, just not off the planet.  Because he was stuck here he worked very closely with U.N.I.T., a relationship that continues to a lesser degree today.  This Doctor was a mix between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond.  He had mad karate skills, the only Doctor in the bunch with a mean chop.  He was also the first incarnation to meet the Master for the first time.

Obviously, there is a lot more to these Doctors than what I have written here.  I have always maintained that I am not as familiar with the classic series as I am with the newer stuff.  The pacing of these older episodes is a lot different, slower.  Most of the stories are over 3 or 4 episodes, and sometimes they are hard to sit through.  The point of this post is to help you get a taste of who the first 3 Doctors were and begin to see how they might all tie together.  The next part will be Doctors 4-6, followed by 7-8 and the War Doctor.

Here it is, part 2 of our Doctor Who series-The Doctor 101.  Today’s post will outline some of the big bad monsters you will find in the Doctor Who series.  I decided to do this post as a good old-fashioned top ten list.  A couple of disclaimers before we start the list.  First, this is my list, and I am by no means an authority on Doctor Who, so you may completely disagree with me, which is fine.  Second, I am a recent newcomer to the series, so I am mostly familiar with the newer Doctors and their foes.  I have tried to include some of the classics in here, but I admit that I am biased, so keep that in mind.

10. The Ice Warriors of Mars: Martians.  You know, the little green guys that we all believe live on Mars?  This is the Doctor Who version.  The Ice Warriors.  Their first appearance was in 1967, so they have been around for a while.  But these aren’t the little green men.  These are giant dangerous warriors.  They take battle pretty seriously, and winning is the only option.  They appeared most recently in and episode from series 7, entitled Cold War,  and for the first time we got to see a glance of what these monsters look like under the armor.  That disappointment is what landed these guys at the bottom of the list.

9. The Zygons: These big uglies appeared in one, count it, ONE story for Doctor Who, back in 1975 called Terror of the Zygons.  Their planet has been destroyed and they need a new home, and hey, Earth looks pretty nice.  Unfortunately, they would stick out like a sore thumb among humans.  Or, they would, if they weren’t shape shifters.  Of course the Doctor was able to foil their plans for world domination.  That was all these guys contributed to Doctor Who, until they were brought back for the 50th anniversary special.  In the special, they have learned a few more tricks, and in the end, you may be sitting next to a Zygon as we speak.  More on the 50th later in the series.

8. The Sontarans: Let me sum these guys up like this: With the helmets and full suit of armor they look pretty big and tough and are nigh invincible (except for one spot on the back of the neck).  Without the helmet and armor they look like giant talking potato heads who are almost as smart as spuds.  These guys are formidable foes.  They are clones and are bred for one purpose only: War.  That is all they understand.  But they don’t mean anything by it, it’s just their nature.  In later seasons, the Doctor has begun palling around with one on occasion, and the li’l spud provides great comic relief.  These guys appeared for the first time in 1973, and have been reappearing ever since.

7. Omega: Omega is not a race, but an individual.  He was an ancient Time Lord who was behind the science that gave the Time Lords their powers.  The science?  It was basically creating supernovas.  On his last outing to create the supernova that continues to power the Time Lords’ abilities to time travel, he was thought dead. In actuality, he was transported to the antimatter universe, and in 1973 he was back to seek revenge on the people who abandoned him.  To stop his evil plan took all three Doctors.  He had gone insane sitting all alone in his own universe.  Any time it takes 3 doctors to stop someone, they can make the list.

6. The Great Intelligence: The Great Intelligence is a disembodied being who can control physical forms and bring them to life.  His first appearance was in The Abominable Snowmen in 1967.  He appeared again in 1968’s Web of Fear,  and then that was it.  I don’t know much about those appearances, but he showed up again in the Christmas Special The Snowmen in the middle of Series 7 with Matt Smith’s Doctor.  He showed up again throughout the rest of the series, with his final appearance coming in The Name of the Doctor where his endgame plan was revealed.  We will cover that episode later in greater detail.

5. The Silence: These guys were as scary as it gets.  They looked like the typical gray alien, but they always had a suit on.  They didn’t make a sound and had a knack for sneaking up on people.  The worst part?  Once you looked away from them you totally forgot they existed.  It’s hard to stop an enemy that you can’t even remember is there?  They came up with a way.  The Doctor and his companions would keep tick marks for every one they saw to remind them that they had seen some. So, when you are at the cons and you see some people running around with a bunch of tick marks all up and down their arms and their faces, now you’ll know why.

4. The Master: The second Time Lord on our list.  The Master seems like he was designed to be the opposite of the Doctor, his arch nemesis.  The Joker to the Doctor’s Batman, the Lex Luthor to his Superman.  He was the villain chosen to appear in the Doctor Who movie which came out in 1996 (TV Movie).  It was meant to reboot the series.  The reality is, he falls short, in my opinion, and although he reappeared during the 10th Doctor’s run and was somewhat formidable, he was never the main baddie.  He gets a top 5 nod, but not much more.

3. The Cybermen: Another classic monster that has continued to appear again and again throughout the series.  The Cybermen were like the Borg before the Borg were cool.  They are machines that need organic lifeforms to survive.  They come to a planet and begin assimilating all the life into their own collective.  Well, not all the life.  Sometimes the life form is not suitable, in that case “DELETE.”

2. The Weeping Angels:  I may be biased on this one.  They appeared for the first time in one of my favorite episodes of all time Blink. And they are creepy.  They could be anywhere.  Disguised as statues, this alien breed feeds off the energy created during time travel.  If they touch you, you get sent back in time, never to return.  You live out the rest of your life in another time.  You’re safe, as long as you’re looking at them.  If someone can see them, they can’t move.  That’s why they are usually covering their eyes, so they don’t accidentally look at each other and be stuck forever.  So, as long as you stare at them, you are safe. But if you look away, if you blink, they are fast and they will get you.  So, Don’t blink.

1. The Daleks: There could be no doubt about who would be number one on the list.  The Daleks are the original Doctor foe and the baddest.  They are his arch nemesis.  The Daleks and the Time Lords having been waring for eons in a series of wars called the Time Wars, and in the last great Time War, both species ended up destroying themselves and half the universe.  But somehow, the Daleks keep popping up to take down the Doctor.  He is their greatest foe and maybe the one being in the universe who the Daleks fear.  When he enters the picture, the Daleks go running.  They are the one group in all the Doctor’s travels that he seems to have zero compassion for.  These two do not like each other.  EXTERMINATE!

As some of you may know, I really enjoy a little British show called Doctor Who.  I am a relative newcomer to the series that has been around since 1963, but in the short time that I have followed the series I have become quite the fan.  I don’t consider myself to be any kind of super fan or anything like that, but I really like the show.  I was always intrigued by it.  Here was this show from England that played every Saturday night on my local PBS station.  It seemed like it should be really cool, but it also always seemed really old. At least, when I was a kid.

As I got older, it stopped being on PBS, and then when I entered adulthood, it started back again, but it was newer, more appealing visually.  I still had a hard time jumping into the series because I just felt overwhelmed.  It seemed like when  tried to watch some random episode I just had no idea what was going on.  I am a completest, meaning when it comes to collecting things, I want the whole set and can’t stand when one piece or part is missing.  I watch my shows the same way, especially with Netflix.  Netflix was made for people like me.  This made it really hard to really get into Doctor Who for me because there was so much to cover that it would take forever to catch up.  But, I was brave, and jumped in any way.  Sort of.  I still had to go back to the beginning of the reboot, which isn’t actually a reboot per se, but basically the beginning of Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor (Number 9, but we’ll get to that).  I watched all of his one season and then made the switch to season 2 which meant, in this case a new Doctor, which took some adjusting.  As I watched I was trying to keep up with everything that was happening and figure out how everything worked in this new universe.

I think the most difficult thing about getting into Doctor Who is trying to sift through 50 years of history.  My goal with this new series is to help newcomers to the show, as well as others who have been curious about the show, to become more comfortable with it from the start.  I am going to try to cover the basics, the “what you need to know” before starting the show.  I am then going to cover each of the new seasons of Doctor Who and let you know which episodes can be skipped, and which episodes can’t.  The earlier seasons and movie (Doctors 1-8) I will not be covering in as much detail for a couple of reasons.  First, there is just a lot to cover.  I mean a lot.  Second, being a completest, there is literally no way for me to cover all of it.  There are many episodes that are missing, so there’s no way to watch those and familiarize yourself with them.  The third, and biggest reason, I am just not as comfortable with the earlier stuff.  I appreciate it because it set the ground work for the show I enjoy today, but I also feel that almost all of it was before my time.

With this initial post, I thought I would cover some of the common terms that you will need to know when talking about the Doctor Who series.  These are words or concepts that play throughout the series, so it is important to have some kind of base knowledge of them.

First up is Gallifrey.  That’s the planet that you see pictured up above.  It is referenced a lot in the show because it is the home planet of the Time Lords (like the guy pictured above).  This is a race that is very old and they have mastered the ability to travel throughout space and time.  As their name might imply, they do seem to feel a need to meddle in and protect time.  They have set strict rules and guidelines about time travel, which they themselves break all the time.  There is a love/hate relationship between the Time Lords and the Doctor.  At times they look to him to be a savior, and at times they banish him to Earth and take away his ability to travel through space.

Time And Relative Dimension In Space- or T.A.R.D.I.S.  This is the Doctor’s spacecraft/ time machine.  It doesn’t look very big, but along with traveling through space and time and regeneration, the Time Lords also mastered “bigger on the inside” technology.  The TARDIS is very spacious once you get inside, which becomes a running joke in the show whenever someone new comes into the ship they make mention of it being bigger on the inside.  This ship can travel to anywhere, or any time in the universe in an instant.  It disappears when leaving and then instantly reappears in its new location, or should I say her new location, all while making the iconic TARDIS sound.

The last term for today is the Doctor.  This is very important, so pay attention.  The Doctor is our main character.  We don’t know his real name.  It’s a secret, and a powerful one too.  The Doctor is the name he chose to go by as he set out on his adventures.  Here’s the important part:  it is simply the Doctor, not Doctor Who. Doctor Who is the name of the series, and is in reference to the fact that we don’t know who this guy is, and in reference to the instances when he introduces himself as the Doctor and everyone always responds, “Doctor, Doctor who?”  But his name is just the Doctor.  He has been around now for over 1200 years.  He accomplishes this because the Time Lords have learned a little trick called “regeneration”, so they don’t die, they just regenerate.  This means their body becomes a brand new body with a brand new face and new personality.  This is one of the most ingenious things ever done in television.  We are now on our 12th Doctor (sort of, more to come on that later) played by a different actor.  This enables the show to be as long running as they want (like 50 years), without committing to one actor for that long, or the actor feeling like they have to commit for that long.  Plus, it’s like starting a new series every few years.  It makes it fun.  So, because of the regeneration trick, you will hear people talk about their favorite Doctor, and which ones they didn’t like and the whole time you may have been wondering “Which one is Doctor Who?” (it’s ok, because when you did wonder that you didn’t know better). Now you know that all of them are the Doctor. Over the next little while in this series we will talk about each one and you will get to know them a little bit, and maybe by the end you might have a favorite.  That will be coming in later installments, but next time I will be covering some of the classic monsters from the series. “Exterminate!”