Current Classic Who update

The Classic Who marathon on Twitch will soon be over; we've moved into Seventh Doctor era, and to Ace. I've been hearing about Ace for so long and everything I heard made me think I'd love her, and so I was eagerly waiting for this part, and happy to see that the schedules would allow me to see almost all of the Seven & Ace stories. I didn't see much of Dragonfire because I had to work, and I had to skip The Greatest Show in the Galaxy because my eyes can't handle that much marathoning, but I've seen The Happiness Patrol, The Silver Nemesis and Battlefield, which were all great, if occasionally weird. But hey, that's Doctor Who. And I can happily say that I love Ace, she met my expectations, and I love the combination of Seven & Ace. They're one of the best Doctor & Companion duos I've seen in all of the show, new and modern. Also, why don't we usually get told that it's Ace who first had the fez? Eleven is just channeling her when he dons a fez or shouts 'Geronimo!'

I'm going to have to look for a Ace-in-fez icon with the caption "fezzes are cool".

I'm not going to really say anything about the Sixth Doctor era, because those stories aired on work days when my brain was melted by the heat, so I didn't watch a lot. He did seem to get saddled with mostly horrible writing, and not the most engaging companions, and the most awful post-regeneration story, so it doesn't feel fair to say much before I've had a proper view of better stories.

Anyway, back to Seven & Ace. It's interesting that the show actually feels a lot closer to New Who in tone and style and everything than it does to most of what I think of as Classic Who. I suppose it makes sense. Late 1980s are closer to 2005 than they are to the 1960s, and television and storytelling changed a lot in that era. The soundtracks are awfully jarring, though. Oh, late 1980s.

Curse of Fenric and Survival remain, and then it's all over. I'm kind of relieved it is over, to be honest, because it's exhausting to watch this much of it (even if I catch maybe 25 - 30 % of what they actually show) and to speed through Doctors and companions this fast. But it's been awesome to get an overview of each Doctor and era and most companions, and I really have become a Classic Who fan as well. I'll now be one of those who get all pouty when people only like New Who. Though obviously I prefer some eras to others, 26 years is a lot of TV and of course I don't love all of it equally. And obviously I now need to see all (or most) of it.

So I expect that I'll next be gradually watching it story by story, in a slower fashion. I'll start by seeing all of Second Doctor era that I possibly can, because that's where I lost my heart and I can't wait anymore. After that I'll probably have to see all the Nyssa stories, and then I can consider starting from the beginning and going more or less in order (though I really didn't care for Third Doctor era, so I'm likely to skip that on the first time around except for Sarah Jane's episodes. It's where I'd have dropped out of the fandom if I'd been watching the show as it aired, and complained loudly for years that everything went to the dogs when they switched to colour. And then I'd have found myself back into the fandom once Sarah Jane had been around for a while, and been totally pulled in by Leela and Romana. Yes, I mostly sort the show by companions. In this case also because I'm more into Four's companions than I'm into Four himself. Which isn't to say I dislike him, he's just not one of my biggest favourites, so the companions matter the most.)