Yes I know I did that same intro last time, but it's worth repeating just to let that big old number sink in. Eight hundred episodes. Eight hundred days. The longest running science fiction TV show in history - and now I can say that I've watched them all, because on 10th March 2016 I finally made it.
I've finished watching "The Time of the Doctor". Goodbye Matt Smith. Hello Mr Peter Capaldi and his new kidneys. "The 800 Day Project" is complete.
I'm going to save my more detailed thoughts for individual posts, but what have I learned over the last 800 days?
- Well firstly, the greatest challenge challenge wasn't keeping my interest from waning during the lows of the Hartnell years, or even the huge swathe of reconstructions. No strangely enough it was the midst of the "Trial of a Timelord" season and the second David Tennant series with Martha Jones. Eyelids growing heavy...
- That if Tom Baker is *my* Doctor - the one I grew up with and made me fall in love with the programme - then Matt Smith is *my* New Series Doctor. I just loved everything he did with the part and even the lesser stories were made better by his performances.
- That "received fan wisdom" is often wrong. I quite liked "The Sensorites". "The Celestial Toymaker" has some redeeming qualities. "The Dominators" has Ronald Allen. "Horns of Nimon" is unashamedly bonkers yet brilliant. "Fear Her" is still terrible though.
- That I never would have guessed that "Enemy of the World" would be a better story than "Web of Fear".
- That the rose-tinted wonder at a story from childhood can be wiped out when you are forty-eight. "Invasion of Time" I'm looking at you.
- That Mary Tamm really deserved a second season. Dodo maybe deserved one less.
- That Colin Baker's Doctor definitely works better on audio. It's not the costume honest.
- That Richard Briers really isn't that terrible in "Paradise Towers" and Alexei Sayle in "Revelation of the Daleks" is far, far worse.
- That at some point I'm going to go back and do it all again except with the commentaries and production notes turned on.
If I'm forced at gunpoint to choose just one (and I really, really don't want to but it's kind of an old tradition or charter or something...), these are my "favourite" stories from each Doctor:
- Marco Polo
- The Enemy of the World
- The Claws of Axos
- The Robots of Death
- Mawdryn Undead
- Vengeance on Varos
- The Curse of Fenric
- The Movie
- The Empty Child
- Silence in the Library
- The Impossible Astronaut
So what now? Well it's not really the end is it? There's tons of stuff sitting there looking at me from my groaning shelves. I've still got the mighty "Shada" to watch (at least two different versions). The animated stories, "The Infinite Quest" and "Dreamland". The apocryphal webcast serials like "Scream of the Shalka", "Real Time" and "Death Comes to Time". The unofficial spin-offs like "Wartime", "Downtime", "P.R.O.B.E", "Auton" and "Shakedown". The sideways universe of "The Stranger". Let's not forget the charity specials "Dimensions In Time" and "Curse of the Fatal Death". Plus of course the official spin-offs: "K-9 & Company", "Torchwood" and "The Sarah Jane Adventures".
Then there's the extras from the official DVD releases - the 'Value Added Material' (VAM). I tried to keep up as I was watching the episodes - I really did - by adding in some extra viewing time at weekends, but I just couldn't maintain the pace by the time I got to "Vengeance On Varos". I think it was because by that time the serials were only a couple of episodes long so that would have meant watching two or three DVD's worth of VAM at weekends. Too much even for me.
Oh and there's the little matter of 36 further episodes of the series starring Mr Peter Capaldi. I don't even own those ones yet. I know - bad fan.
Loads to look forward to. But you know what? I feel that I'm going to save Doctor Who for the weekends for now. I need a change. Saying that, I've found that 30-45 minute slot every morning before work a really good way of watching something regularly without subjecting my wife to the kind of genre TV she has no real interest in. My Sky+ hard drive is groaning under the weight of all the other thing's I've recorded but not got around to watching yet, let alone the Netflix / Amazon Prime series I want to see - like "Daredevil" and "Sense8" and "Ash vs The Evil Dead", etc, etc. So I think that will be the agenda for the next few weeks at least. Catch-up time.
But after that? Well I've got a hankering for some shorter runs of series. There are shiny new Blu-rays of "The Prisoner" and "Space 1999" that have been sitting on my shelf since Christmas. Then there are those series which I bought on DVD, started watching but somehow never finished - "Carnivale" and the Richard O'Sullivan "Dick Turpin" for example. Let's not forget the classic short series that I haven't watched in their entirety in an age - "Firefly" and "Star Cops" and "Sapphire and Steel". Alan Bleasdale's "GBH" for a little non-SF flavour. Incidentally, I'm saving "Twin Peaks" for a special re-watch leading up to the new series in 2017...
But in between all of that that I've still got the bug to start another massive series marathon. I toyed with "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" as I have all the DVDs. Or the Jeremy Brett "Sherlock Holmes". Or even "Farscape" - I've never seen all of that.
In the end it was a recent television "event" mini-series that made the decision for me - that plus the fact that there is a fantastic new Blu-Ray box set of all nine seasons just out and I've never seen around 75% of the episodes. Yes, for my next trick I am going to attempt to watch every single episode of "The X-Files". All of the way from "Pilot" to "My Struggle II" with a couple of movies in the middle. Don't worry - I won't be calling it "The 210 Day Project" That doesn't have quite the same ring to it. I'll come up with a better name before I start.
Except it's not of course. In a typical timey-wimey Doctor Who way, this blog is going to be dealing with my thoughts from watching all of the episodes for a long time yet. At the rate I'm going I'll have completed watching everything else I've mentioned before I get round to writing properly about "The Time of the Doctor". I don't mind.
There is also the little matter of an essay on the Target novelisation of "The Robots of Death" to come out in the "You On Target" charity book later this year. I've also realised that I've made no mention at all of the fact that I'm now doing monthly Twelfth Doctor comic book reviews for the "Doctor Who Show" podcast. I'll do a separate post about that soon.
Doctor Who is never far from my thoughts it seems.
Onwards...
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning" - Winston Churchill
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