Classic Doctor Who: Something Real, Slop Free

In this sorta-review of Classic Who, Sam talks about the importance of human creativity as an antidote to an AI-generated world.

Filming episodes of The Abominable Snowmen for the Dr Who television series at Nant Ffrancon (Courtesy National Library of Wales/Geoff Charles)

Over the past year, I’ve been watching classic Doctor Who episodes in my spare time - usually while recovering from surgery or when I’m dealing with my chronic illnesses.

I started with the black & white pilot, “An Unearthly Child,” that first aired in 1963 (when my Mum was two years old), and just this week finished with the final classic episode “Survival” from Season 26, featuring the seventh incarnation of the titular Doctor.

I was four years old when “Survival” first aired, so it’s safe to say it was new to me.

The author, wearing the iconic Fourth Doctor scarf prior to surgery in January.

For the uninitiated, Doctor Who follows The Doctor, a Time Lord alien with a spaceship/time machine called the TARDIS. It’s shaped like an old British police box, but it’s bigger on the inside, defying all known laws of physics and science as it travels throughout time and space. The Doctor almost always travels with a companion or companions to both alien worlds and historic periods on Earth and across the universe. Due to the longevity of the show, when faced with mortal peril the Doctor can “regenerate” with a new face (and in the real world, a new actor).

Unlike most of today’s television and streaming offerings, Doctor Who seasons are comprised of multiple serials or stand-alone stories, each with anywhere from two to ten episodes (most serials are neatly wrapped up in four). Understandably, some of the episodes are dated, some contain content that would no longer be politically correct, and many episodes are poorly written or just plain bad. There are multiple guides on how to binge watch all 695 episodes and avoid the filler, racism, and the lost episodes.

What struck me most about the show was how real it was. Almost all of the special effects — from explosions to aliens — are practical, not computer-generated. Even when the costumes are ridiculously bad, they’re human-made. There’s a community theater feel to many of the productions, and I mean that as a compliment. Despite the show’s flaws — and there are many — Doctor Who invites viewers to swim in an ocean of boundless, human creativity in a way that seems alien in today’s AI-generated world.

The critical and fan consensus is that the best seasons feature Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor, though I also enjoyed the Second, Third, Fifth, and Seventh incarnations of the iconic character.

Many of the stories are worth your time. “Kinda” (pronounced “KEN-da,” not as a corruption of “kind of”) is a Fifth Doctor story about colonialism, psychodrama, and indigenous peoples that you could imagine as a stage play. It’s well-written and acted, despite some silly practical effects.

“The War Games,” the final episode in monochrome, is ten episodes long and recreates conflicts ranging from World War I to the 17th century Thirty Years’ War. It is ambitious in scope and production, especially for a “kids show” in the 1960s. It marks the end of the “cosmic hobo” known as the Second Doctor, introduces much of the Time Lord mythology. The very next episode, “Spearhead from Space,” introduces the Third Doctor (in color!) and looks beautiful to this day because it’s the only original serial shot on film.

In “City of Death,” the Fourth Doctor, companion Romana, and the Doctor Who production crew visit Paris, and while the story is fun and features some great one-off characters, it’s also a window into France in the 1970s. Another Fourth Doctor story, “Genesis of the Daleks,” features the Doctor’s most iconic enemy and deals with questions of war and genocide.

1974’s “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” (Courtesy BBC)

While watching these episodes, I was inspired by the creativity and work required to create all of these alien worlds and time periods on a meager budget and with the limited equipment of the time. Even when the show looks positively ridiculous — for example, whenever dinosaurs appear — it’s clear how many people took their work seriously and created these worlds as a labor of love. In an era of AI slop and pink slime, the commitment and creativity was refreshing, even during the “skippable” episodes that were often background noise while I was resting.

Classic Doctor Who won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. I wouldn’t recommend watching all 695 episodes — I didn’t — but there are some real gems of human ingenuity in the series. On BritBox, you can start with “Spearhead from Space” or “City of Death” without investing too much of your time. Or consider the Seventh Doctor’s “The Curse of Fenric,” an “Imitation Game meets Doctor Who” period piece and one of the last stories in the classic series.

If you can suspend disbelief and let your imagination run wild, classic Doctor Who may be a worthy antidote to our increasingly AI-generated world.