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Tom and I are bingeing old old Doctor Who—we started watching at the beginning of the Tom Baker years and still have several seasons to go. We subscribe to Britbox through Amazon Prime largely because they have ALL the old Who, in addition to various gardening and house-buying shows that we really enjoy because they are so much more relaxed and fun than the American versions.
We first saw Doctor Who back in the early '80s when we were living in Los Angeles—Tom was in grad school, I worked. The local PBS station showed a complete show of Doctor Who (four to six half-hour episodes) every Saturday afternoon. We had a very early VCR and recorded them so we could watch them together (Tom was in the lab 7 days a week, of course). It was one of our secret pleasures. During pledge weeks, the people breaking into the show to beg for money were always going on about how weird it was and how, by association, so was anyone who enjoyed it, so we should pony up so they knew SOMEONE was interested. Somehow it kept going.
So now we're seeing them as originally broadcast in the UK, in 23- to 25-minute episodes with four or six making up a complete story. The quality is much better than what we saw in L.A. (we were watching on a 10-inch color CRT television!), and it's fun to just tuck one or two of the episodes into an evening as the mood strikes us (or more if the Doctor and, at present, Romana are in truly terrible jeopardy).
Yes, the effects are mostly primitive, and it's not as well-put-together as the modern Who, which we also like a lot. But there's a feeling to it. Comfort food for the brain. With some actual thrills and chills and laughs mixed in. The writing can be excellent.
They say your first Doctor is always likely to be your favorite, and in this case I agree. Tom Baker can be over-the-top goofy, but he does menace and rage pretty well, too. And the stories can be seriously dark and sinister.
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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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