As we barrel towards the 23rd November with the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, the question of ‘who’s your favourite Doctor’ will always come up when talking with people. Those who are fans or even those who have mild interest. Everyone will have a favourite.
My answer to the question is a little more in depth than others, probably, because I’ve been a fan for a while, during the 90s when it wasn’t so friendly to be a fan of a show that wasn’t even on any more.
‘My Doctor’, the one who I watched on TV was Sylvester McCoy, the Seventh Doctor. He was all mysterious, teasing Davros about rice pudding and facing evil from the dawn of time. All the while making Ace face her fears and playing spoons.
My favourite Doctor for his on screen portrayal is however Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor. He’s just got a something, it’s said in various press that Tom Baker believed he was the Doctor and would often do stuff interviews in-character. But Jon Pertwee, as scientific advisor to UNIT and beyond after that had something of the scientist to him. He was a bit eccentric, he’s got the Venusian aikido moves and he had lots of gadgets. He too also acted like the Doctor at interviews and other things.
The Virgin New Adventures, a book series that continued on from the TV series after it finished in 1989 made me a fan of the Seventh Doctor. In prose form his character became more detailed, more interesting. But I would say I am more a fan of that era, rather than that Doctor. It’s not, in this case about the Doctor but the era he’s a part of, and those books published from 1991 to 1997 are some of my favourite stories and the series as a whole was brilliant and made me think of Doctor Who in a different way. They were also the only new long form prose stories being published during the ‘Wilderness Years’ - the time when there wasn’t any Doctor Who being produced for TV.
On audio meanwhile, the stories produced by Big Finish Productions beginning in 1999, my favourite Doctor from their stories is Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor or ‘old Sixie’ as he refers to his Doctor as.
The Sixth Doctor didn’t get a great run on TV, a fairly grumpy occasionally violent Doctor, he was given a new and fresh perspective in Big Finish’s audio stories. Big Finish and Colin Baker have made me love the Sixth Doctor. It is the Sixth Doctor stories I enjoy the most listening to from Big Finish.
The Eighth Doctor deserves special mention for being my favourite Doctor over multiple mediums, in audio, prose and comic he is a favourite of mine. In the BBC Books, which like the Virgin New Adventures continued the Eighth Doctor’s story after the TV movie in 1996. The audios produced by Big Finish began in 2001 and the comics published by Doctor Who Magazine began shortly after the TV movie.
Considering the writers only had one story to draw inspiration from there is a remarkably strong character of the Doctor in these different mediums. His character gets developed and changed, but there’s still something uniquely Eighth Doctor-y about him, and things that referenced back to the TVM.
In the recent The Night of the Doctor Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor was very much the Big Finish version and, watching him was like having a Big Finish audio come to life. His tone and performance was very much a Big Finish Eighth Doctor performance.
Which makes sense as that’s the character he’d developed of the Doctor since 2001.
My answer to the question is a little more in depth than others, probably, because I’ve been a fan for a while, during the 90s when it wasn’t so friendly to be a fan of a show that wasn’t even on any more.
‘My Doctor’, the one who I watched on TV was Sylvester McCoy, the Seventh Doctor. He was all mysterious, teasing Davros about rice pudding and facing evil from the dawn of time. All the while making Ace face her fears and playing spoons.
My favourite Doctor for his on screen portrayal is however Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor. He’s just got a something, it’s said in various press that Tom Baker believed he was the Doctor and would often do stuff interviews in-character. But Jon Pertwee, as scientific advisor to UNIT and beyond after that had something of the scientist to him. He was a bit eccentric, he’s got the Venusian aikido moves and he had lots of gadgets. He too also acted like the Doctor at interviews and other things.
The Virgin New Adventures, a book series that continued on from the TV series after it finished in 1989 made me a fan of the Seventh Doctor. In prose form his character became more detailed, more interesting. But I would say I am more a fan of that era, rather than that Doctor. It’s not, in this case about the Doctor but the era he’s a part of, and those books published from 1991 to 1997 are some of my favourite stories and the series as a whole was brilliant and made me think of Doctor Who in a different way. They were also the only new long form prose stories being published during the ‘Wilderness Years’ - the time when there wasn’t any Doctor Who being produced for TV.
On audio meanwhile, the stories produced by Big Finish Productions beginning in 1999, my favourite Doctor from their stories is Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor or ‘old Sixie’ as he refers to his Doctor as.
The Sixth Doctor didn’t get a great run on TV, a fairly grumpy occasionally violent Doctor, he was given a new and fresh perspective in Big Finish’s audio stories. Big Finish and Colin Baker have made me love the Sixth Doctor. It is the Sixth Doctor stories I enjoy the most listening to from Big Finish.
The Eighth Doctor deserves special mention for being my favourite Doctor over multiple mediums, in audio, prose and comic he is a favourite of mine. In the BBC Books, which like the Virgin New Adventures continued the Eighth Doctor’s story after the TV movie in 1996. The audios produced by Big Finish began in 2001 and the comics published by Doctor Who Magazine began shortly after the TV movie.
Considering the writers only had one story to draw inspiration from there is a remarkably strong character of the Doctor in these different mediums. His character gets developed and changed, but there’s still something uniquely Eighth Doctor-y about him, and things that referenced back to the TVM.
In the recent The Night of the Doctor Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor was very much the Big Finish version and, watching him was like having a Big Finish audio come to life. His tone and performance was very much a Big Finish Eighth Doctor performance.
Which makes sense as that’s the character he’d developed of the Doctor since 2001.