Appropriately for a show about time travel, Doctor Who has ‘started’ several times. In fact, we now have exactly four Doctor Who Series 1s in the back catalogue! How can this be, and where on earth should you begin?
Doctor Who Series 1 (1963)
One way that Doctor Who fans separate the classic show from the modern is by calling all the earlier Doctor Who series ‘seasons’ and the latter series ‘series.’ Does that make sense? So, technically, the very first Doctor Who Series 1 is in fact Doctor Who Season 1, and began with William Hartnell, who is the very first Doctor.
This classic series sees a mysterious old man known as the Doctor living in a junkyard in the swirling fog of London, 1963, with his granddaughter Susan. In the opening story, ‘An Unearthly Child,’ Susan is followed home by two of her curious school teachers Ian and Barbara and, believing the Doctor is keeping Susan prisoner inside an old police box, force their way inside – only to discover that it’s a dimensionally transcendental time machine called the TARDIS.
So this is the very first Doctor Who Series 1 – the original, you might say – and sees the debut of the dreaded Daleks, who helped elevate the programme to the realms of super stardom. Arguably, this is the best place to start with the show, but you might have a hard time watching ‘An Unearthly Child’ at the moment, as the BBC doesn’t own all of the rights. Still, you should be able to find a DVD copy somewhere.
Doctor Who Series 1 (2005)
It made sense for Russell T Davies’ debut series as showrunner to be dubbed Doctor Who Series 1. After all, this was the beginning of a whole new era, watched by swathes of viewers who had never seen Doctor Who before. Plus, the programme had been off the air for some 16 years, so it was logical for the numbering to be reset.
This was Doctor Who for a whole new generation. The eponymous Time Lord was now a shaven-headed, leather jacket-wearing, war-torn Northern hero (because lots of planets have a north) and in this very first series the Doctor came up against the Daleks once more, plus the Emperor, the head of a Cyberman, and some gas mask-wearing zombies, who forever wished to know if you were their mummy.
Doctor Who Series 1 (2005) also introduced the character of Captain Jack Harkness played by John Barrowman, who went on to leave a dent in the Whoniverse big enough to rival those left by the likes of Sarah Jane Smith or the Brigadier. He was granted his own spin-off series off the back of Doctor Who Series 1, and would continue to appear in Doctor Who until as recently as 2021, opposite Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor.
Alas, this turned out to be the only series to feature Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, but in a way this serves to make Doctor Who Series 1 seem all-the-more special.
Doctor Who Series 1 (2010)
The Time Lord underwent something of a soft reboot in 2010 when Steven Moffat took over as showrunner. The continuity wasn’t dispensed with, but everything else was new. There was a new Doctor in the shape of Matt Smith, a new companion in the shape of Karen Gillan, a new TARDIS in the shape of… well, a police box, but it was considerably bigger on the inside than it had been previously. There was also a new title sequence, a whole host of new writers, a new race of Daleks… This version of Doctor Who Series 1 probably saw the show’s most radical alterations since John Nathan-Turner took over in 1980, apart from the 2005 reboot.
Interestingly, the programme was only referred to as Doctor Who Series 1 internally. It’s unclear if there was ever going to be a public renumbering in terms of the DVD and Blu-ray box sets, but the production team were certainly viewing this as a fresh start – a jumping-on point for new viewers.
And for many people, it was. Doctor Who Series 1 (2010) marks the beginning of Doctor Who as far as many fans are concerned, particularly in the United States, where the series made a bombastic debut and saw a huge spike in popularity. For many Doctor Who aficionados, Matt Smith was the ‘original’ Doctor.
There was, a however, a small amount of discontent among the established Doctor Who fans, who were concerned about the rumoured renumbering and were worried that everything that had gone before would be erased, as if sucked through a crack in the skin of the universe. Steven Moffat alluded to all the numbering confusion and affectionally dubbed this season ‘Doctor Who Series Fnarg!’ instead.
Doctor Who Series 1 (2024)
And now we’re at the latest Doctor Who Series 1, with Ncuti Gatwa at the controls of the TARDIS and the start of a whole new era. There is a logic to the renumbering in 2024, as the series is making its debut on Disney+ for the first time, exposing it to a worldwide audience who will never have seen Doctor Who before. And so, as with the Doctor Who Series 1s that have come before, this iteration is meant to be a jumping-on point; the idea is that new viewers can start with the first episode and quickly understand what’s going on, without any prior knowledge of what’s come before.
That being said, in many ways this latest Doctor Who Series 1 has been more faithful to the show’s long, complicated history than any other era before it. So far, we have seen the return of the Celestial Toymaker (1966), Bonnie Langford (1986), Sutekh (1975), not to mention the former costume designer June Hudson, and most of the surviving past Doctors and a good number of their companions, who showed up for the Tales of the TARDIS spin-off.
And, speaking of spin-offs, we now have the return of the Sea Devils to look forward to as well, with the spin-off series The War Between the Land and the Sea on the horizon, starring Russell Tovey and Jemma Redgrave. Who knows which other classic characters may be returning for this bold new era. Will we finally get the Duggan spin-off? The campaign starts here.
(C) BBC
In the meantime, tell us – which is your favourite of all the Doctor Who Series 1s? And where do you think is the best place for new viewers to start? Let us know in the comments below.
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