Tag: tom baker

Caution: This Post is Going to be Ultra Nerdy

Spoiler alert: This post is about to be as nerdy as I can possibly get. Ultra nerdy. Uber nerdy. The zenith of nerdy.

I started my Doctor Who journey with the current series because that’s the one my step kids have watched. I didn’t know it at the time but they actually both skipped the three most resent season due to reviews that state the quality of the writing took quite a dip after season 10. The reviews were accurate, but I still really enjoyed the last three seasons.

My decision to start watching the original show too was based on a laugh. I thought it would be funny if I watched the old show and the kids watched the new show and then we could debate which was better. That was before I knew that the old show was 26 seasons and a TV movie, and that the first bunch of seasons were 40+ episodes each. There are so many seasons and so very many episodes. Suddenly the idea of watching the whole show felt very intimidating.

When I was a kid, the PBS network used to air Doctor Who reruns. Every now and then, when there was nothing else on, I would try to watch an episode. I never got terribly far. I just didn’t know what was going on and I didn’t care to do the background work to figure it out. There was no internet then so I couldn’t go to wikipedia and get the info. I’d just have to piece it together an episode at a time. No, that was too much work for me. My friend Mike was a fan and he encouraged me to try, but I never did.

The actor who played The Doctor on those PBS reruns was Tom Baker. I didn’t know it then, but he was the 4th Doctor. From my point of view he was the only Doctor. None of the other actors were known to me. It was Tom Baker or nothing. When I started my original series binge watch I thought about only watching his episodes and just skipping everyone else. In the end I decided against that, partially because I am a completist, but also because I am an idiot. No, I started with season one, episode one and just put my head down and powered through.

Last night I watched the last episode of season 11. At the very end of that one, Doctor #3, Jon Pertwee, dies and is regenerated into Doctor , Tom Baker. At last, I have arrived. I have now seen every episode (that still exists) with Doctors through 3, and 9 through 13. I have now watched the first eight episodes (two four episode serials) of season 12. The first two serials with the 4th Doctor. Maybe it’s a weird sense of misplaced nostalgia talking, but in those few episodes Tom Baker has catapulted to the top of the list of my favorite Doctors. There’s something about the attitude he brought to the roll. It’s the way he faces the end of universe with a smile and a laugh. He seems like he’s having a blast trying to keep everything around him from falling into chaos. It’s just fun to watch the guy having fun.

So if I had to rank the doctors I’ve seen so far from favorite to least favorite, the list would look something like this:

  • Tom Baker
  • #10 David Tennant
  • #11 Matt Smith
    • Note, second and third place are a dead heat. They could easily be swapped. I enjoyed both of them equally
  • #2 Patrick Troughton
  • Peter Capaldi
  • #3 Jon Pertwee
  • #13 Jodie Whittaker
  • #9 Christopher Eccleston
  • William Hartnell

This doesn’t imply that I did not enjoy the performances of the actors at the bottom of the list. It just means I enjoyed the other folks a little more. If you like your science fiction on the cheesier, campier, budgetarily-challenged side then I would recommend each and every one of these Doctors. They are all worth a try.

Just for completeness sake, I still have the following Doctors left to see. #5 Peter Davison, #6 Colin Baker (no relation), #7 Sylvester McCoy, #8 Paul McGann, #14 David Tennant (again), and #15 Ncuti Gatwa. Doctors #14 and 15 haven’t aired yet so I will have to wait for them. 14 will get three episodes starting in November and 15 will get season 14 starting sometime next year.

So there you have it, the nerdiest post in wordpress.com history. May Tom Baker continue to be the best Doctor for the next 6+ seasons, and may the Doctors I haven’t seen yet live up to the expectations. Nerd.

Zombies and Music

I’m still thinking about an album in a day challenge for tomorrow. I started working on the first song idea at 9:45 this evening. That means I have until 9:45 tomorrow night to finish about half an hour worth of music. It’s already feeling like a failure. I started too late to have enough ready to go for a car music in the morning. that means I’ll probably have to do a late morning car music and maybe an afternoon as well. That doesn’t seem likely.

Another roadblock was having to watch tonight’s new episode of The Walking Dead Daryl Dixon show. Did anyone else notice that the woman who played the nun who sets Daryl on his mission is the same woman who played Fleur Delacour in the Harry Potter movies? I guess there are only so many French actresses around but still, she fought the Death Eaters so I bet she can take out zombies with the best of them.

Another impediment to the album in a day thing is the Doctor Who binge watch. I started season 12 tonight. That means I have finally reached the Tom Baker 4th Doctor era. He’s the Doctor I used to see on reruns on PBS back in the 80’s. He’s more or less the reason I wanted to binge watch the original show in the first place.

So I probably won’t finish a full album in a day, but I will add a lot of new stuff for the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. So it’s all good.