Doctor Who

The key thing to understand is that The Doctor is on a constant rotation. Some are really liked, some are not. So if you start watching one doctor, and for whatever reason it just doesn't hit for you, try another one. :)

Right now, for a brand new viewer, Disney+ is treating the new Doctor as "Season 1" and it's not awful. I think there are better seasons, but I'm biased.

It IS better than the last few though.

Free streaming services have a "Doctor Who Channel" which is all the old classic Who, I like to put it on as background noise.

If it's black and white, that means it's either Doctor #1 or #2. All the others are color.

White hair and velvet jacket? #3
Long scarf? #4 - My first and favorite.
Cricket Jacket? #5
Multi-colored jacket that makes no sense? #6
Straw hat and umbrella? #7

After that, #8 was a TV movie.

Then the show rebooted with #9. Bald, slick leather jacket.

#10 - Skinny guy, current popular favorite. Brown or blue suit, converse sneakers.

#11 - Kind of goofy looking, bow ties are cool.

#12 - Angry attack eyebrows.

#13 - First female doctor.

The show kind of started losing steam at the end of #11, and never really recovered. #12 and #13 were fine, but they needed better writers.

#14 - the current doctor on Disney+, has writers and show-runners from the #9 and #10 eras, so a big up tick in quality.

I started with the new one and have since gone back to watch the original. From my experience this will be the best for a new viewer as I found that the charm in many of the original episodes was lost in not having lived at the time they aired. And I may not have as much appreciation for how the show began if I didn’t have the knowledge of how the Dr Who series has evolved that the revival goes to lengths to give.

I'd start with the 9th Doctor.

Start with the modern reboot. First episode is a little dry, but later episodes rely heavily on sneaky references to events prior. Especially the specials. Don't be afraid to rewatch episodes as well. The dialogue can move quickly and I've always picked up on details I missed during the first playthrough. Definitely worth it.

I agree with Audrey0nne that the charm of the original has not aged well, and also not all of the episodes are available due to archive policies and legal restrictions of the day.

The first season of the reboot suffers from the same uncertainty that Star Trek TNG first season did. Nobody knew if the show was going to be a success and also they were trying to balance new techniques with old expectations. Christopher Eccleston was cast for his name recognition and star power and he already knew going in he was only committed for one season.

I say start with the season finale of the reboot’s first season to see David Tennant come in and see where that takes you.

You have the opportunity to start with the latest season. The show just got soft rebooted, and currently 4 episodes are out of this new “season 1”. Then if you like it I recommend checking out “Nu-Who” which is the 2005 reboot of the series. Usually fans divide the show into eras of who the main actor is instead of seasons, and I see most people loving David Tennant, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi, and I would definitely recommend you checking them out.

Just upfront, hopefully not here (you never know) but definitely elsewhere, you're going to run into a lot of the usual bigots telling you that DOctor wHO EnDED wiTH cApaLDi. Coincidentally, the end of Capaldi's run basically dovetails with when social media algorithms started giving these people brain worms, so everything after that is wOkE gArBaGe while everything before it, with exactly the same messages and techniques, is galaxy brain stuff. They can't deal with a woman or Black man being on screen so just ignore them, please. (That said, the Thirteenth Doctor's run is...not great, but certainly not because of those reasons.) If you are concerned about things like a "woke agenda" then Doctor Who is very, very much not the show for you - this has been an important part of the show's DNA since the 60s.

I've loved Doctor Who for thirty years, and seen nearly every episode of every Doctor. The thing about Doctor Who is that it's goofy and campy, and that ends up with it being dated sometimes, sometimes moreso than other shows. This isn't a bad thing! It's charming and fun, but depending on the kind of viewer you are, that might mean that you want to start with the current series (it's loads of fun and the current Doctor and companion are exceptional), and then watch the older ones in context.

However, that's going to get you only about six episodes so far. If you really want a project, I'd say start with the 2005 series (the Ninth Doctor) and go from there. You're going to run into quite a bit that's very early 2000s, but the fun, camp, and drama, are all on display. I know others will say you can start with the first series of the Eleventh Doctor, but to me you'll run into a really turgid arc of the showrunner tediously and self-referentially mystery boxing over and over far too soon. This is stuff you ignore when you've been watching for a while (or can skip) but it might demoralize you to get into it and then get to molasses so soon.

The classic series are very different - not in terms of story, but format. I love them, I started with the Fourth Doctor, but it's not to everyone's taste. They are shorter arcs or four or six twenty-minute episodes, with drastically lower production values and slower pacing. One of the best stories involves the Doctor fighting essentially spray-painted green bubble wrap on a set that sort of looks like a bathroom. If you're up for it, it's wonderful, but it's very different visually and structurally than modern shows.

I agree with the general consensus here so far - every second Doctor seems to have a pretty good jumping-on point, so you could start with the 9th ("Rose"), 11th ("The Eleventh Hour"), 13th ("The Woman Who Fell to Earth"), or 15th ("The Church on Ruby Road"). The first episodes of the 10th and 12th could probably work, too, but not as well in my opinion.

I would probably go with "The Eleventh Hour," but that's because I prefer the storytelling sensibilities of Steven Moffat, who was running the show at that time - the show also looked noticably better by that point than it did in 2005.

But there are no wrong answers - if you get hooked, you'll end up watching it all anyway, mark my words.

My best suggestion is to just start with the 2005 reboot. Start with the Ninth Doctor. It was designed to be a starting place for new fans. And once you get into the show, it gets far less daunting. It's highly bingable. It's got that early 2000s flair of individual stories per episode, but with an overarching story just about every season that will pay off if you're paying attention enough to pick up on the details. Nine's run is short, but sweet. Then you move on to Ten, who I'm sure most people know as the fan favorite. His run is phenomenal and, although my favorite Doctor is Twelve and my favorite era is the Pond era (which is part of Eleven's run) I have to say that Ten's run is probably the best written.

If you're interested in going back to watch the classic stuff, watching "NuWho" will get you prepped for it so don't feel like you have to watch that first. Also, be aware that with Classic Who, you very much so can pick and choose what you want to watch. I'm not personally a huge fan of the First and Second Doctor's eras, but I adore Three, Four, and Five so I have seen far more of their stories than I have the other Classic doctors.

It's really up to you and your preferences, but that's my best suggestion. I mean, anytime there's a showrunner swap, the show kind of tends to get a minor reboot, so any of those times would be a decent one to jump in. But If you skip Nine and Ten and go straight to Eleven, you miss a lot of good storytelling. Same if you skip Eleven and Twelve and go straight for Thirteen. It's worth watching it all. And then if you're hungry for more, going back and checking out the classics.

Since nobody has mentioned it yet, the newest season is yet another "reboot" of sorts, and they re-explain all of the previous canon (as though the viewer isn't expected to know it). So if you want to just watch the current season it's probably as good a place as any and you can always go back to the older stuff whenever you want.

Watch from the 2005 reboot onward, only go back further if you enjoy old shows. There are some background stuff, callbacks, and references that you will miss but they will fill you in at some point, so you don't actually miss anything. There are some plot points that will giveaway some aspect of the story if you watched the old stuff, but then you won't enjoy the reveal as much.

My favorite episode is a two parter, Series 2 episodes 8 and 9, The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit. But who doesn't love series 3 episode 10, Blink.

Nearly a month later, I feel like I need an update. Did you pull the trigger?

You know what? This is a big question for a lot of people, and the vast majority of the responses have been thoughtful and helpful - I'm pinning this.

The 2005 reboot is where everyone else will tell you to start because it's more accessible to today's audience. And I'm not gonna lie, some of the older series episode arcs from the original run are hard to watch for various reasons. But, if you do decide you're ready to check out some older Who it matters almost not at all where you start. The sprawling narrative format of the early show is more like a soap opera than Star Trek.

If you can get access to the episodes on demand, the check out the wiki. My old who episodes total about 200GB, but you may find DVD sets of individual specific story arcs at the library. Pick a Doctor or story arc that looks interesting and try them out. Hop around in the Doctor's timeline. Go check out the introduction of UNIT and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. For the camp, watch a few episodes with K9 his robot dog or Bessie, his hi-tech yellow edwardian roadster. See how awful the original Cybermen and various alien or lizard people costumes are. Who's this guy in the scarf with the Jelly Babies that everyone's always talking about? The time lords weren't always a dead civilization locked away in the Doctor's backstory, they were the story. As you're watching the new Who, you may notice other callbacks to people or places in the Doctor's past, check the wiki and find the original series arc.

My personal suggestion though is to at least give the very first Doctor a real chance. He's my favorite and not just because of nostalgia. He was way before my time. It's almost a completely different show. It's in black and white. Some of the episodes are just missing. But that Doctor is a bit wild in a way the others can't touch. He has a grand daughter for a companion, not a potential love interest. He's a snarky, witty, and sometimes mean old man. He lies. You're not always convinced that he is actually the hero. His series has the first appearance of the Dalek's and their origin story. The pacing of the earliest episodes seems a bit less sprawling than some of the later series before 2005.

Start with the reboot from 2005, and end it with season 10. Everything that came after is not worth watching, just acknowledge that the series ended with Peter Capaldi.