How to turn New Who into The 11th Doctor Show

[hmpf]

I think I've found a workable arrangement of episodes to get a new viewer (with some patience and some geek cred) into 11th Doc Who, while allowing them to catch all or most of the most important thematic and emotional resonances. Essentially, this means treating eps from earlier series like flashbacks (with the fifth series as the present from which to flash back):

Preface/Introduction:

Human Nature
The Family of Blood
(These first two are decidedly optional, and may not be advised for every new viewer. The Eleventh Hour will be a bit jarring after them, so, depending on the viewer, you may want to watch them as part of the encore instead. On the other hand, viewers who may need convincing that DW "can be serious, too", may benefit from putting these eps at or near the beginning. In my particular case, the potential new viewer is a history nut and a romantic who loves angsty drama, so I think these eps might work to lure her in. - You may also substitute or add The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.)

Main series:

The Eleventh Hour
The Beast Below
Dalek (9th Doctor)
Victory of the Daleks
The Empty Child (9th Doctor; may be added to intro section)
The Doctor Dances (9th Doctor; may be added to intro section)
Silence in the Library (10th Doctor)
Forest of the Dead (10th Doctor)
Blink (10th Doctor)
Time of the Angels
Flesh and Stone
The End of the World (9th Doctor; optional)
The Vampires of Venice
Amy's Choice
The Hungry Earth
Cold Blood
Vincent and the Doctor
The Lodger
The Pandorica Opens
The Big Bang

And, for an encore:

The Girl in the Fireplace (10th Doctor)
A Christmas Carol
The Runaway Bride (10th Doctor; adding this here not because it's particularly awesome in itself, but because I really like Donna, especially in this)

Comments

[beccadg.livejournal.com]

Pound for pound "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" are still my favorite episodes of New Who. The only other story that is close is "Vincent and the Doctor," and it's an hour rather than two.

Strangely enough...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

my favourite bit of Who kind of oscillates between Human Nature/Family of Blood and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead. This is strange because Ten is probably not even in my top five favourite Doctors.

Re: Strangely enough...

[beccadg.livejournal.com]

I don't like "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead." I can't stand River Song and the monsters are one of the New Who ones like the Angels that I find more silly than scary. The prevalence of River Song in Moff's Who is one of the reasons I haven't enjoyed it a lot more than I did RTD's.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting idea. I think you mostly hit the right notes there. Personally I honestly believe that the Eleventh Doctor's run is really quite self-contained emotionally and all you need need is the Silence in the Library episodes and maybe Dalek and/or the End of the World for the Time War.

But since you list a lot of episodes I just really like, I enjoy the idea of framing them as flashbacks while still tying into the current series.

Also, your comments on how you dislike the Tenth Doctor yet find two of your favourite stories are his is kind of apt for me too. I mean, I'd probably throw the Curse of Fenric into that threesome, and maybe S5 two-part finale (but also, that's probably my favourite, but because of context whereas I think the others stand much better alone). But still, I'd go so far as to say that Tennant is one of my least favourite doctors. Not so much because of what he could have been, but because of the general tenor of his run and how much bits of it pissed me off. But you already know that rant. ;)

The point is, if you haven't seen it, behold this amazing vid which largely focuses on the Human Nature/Family of Blood arc:

Marble House

The Eleventh Doctor's run is indeed very self-contained.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

However, I do think that without some background, it reads essentially as The Amy Pond Show. Don't get me wrong, I do love The Amy Pond Show ;-) - but I also think the Doctor himself is a rather interesting character, and for all the unevenness of the previous seasons, there are a number of eps from them that - aside from simply being frelling fantastic television - really add all kinds of resonances to his actions and encounters in the present series. So, for a new viewer of a certain mindset, I think the show really does get a lot more interesting if you add that background for the Doctor.

Re: fave stories. I haven't seen The Curse of Fenric yet, so I can't say anything about that. As for the S5 finale - well, I *love* that finale, but it's inseparable from the rest of the season, really. The Rory bits in it wouldn't work well at all without knowing how he died; the River bits wouldn't work well without knowing about her history with the Doctor so far, etc. So, rather than seeing the finale as a story in its own right, I tend to group it with the entire fifth series/season/whatever you call that nowadays in DW. (I'm kind of in favour of calling it series 32, incidentally. ;-)) And yeah, that *is* my favourite series/season/etc. so far. :-)

Re: Tennant's Doctor's relative position in my affections ;-) The more I see, the more on-the-fence I am about him. Tennant did get some amazing eps and scenes, and sometimes he really knocked them out of the ballpark. And then in other eps all he does is stare melodramatically in close-up, and, I'm sorry, but that doesn't work at all. (And then, of course, there's the eps that are just disastrous from start to finish, but I tend to not blame that on Tennant but on the showrunner. So, when Tennant-Doc does something annoying in those eps, I tend to see him as RTD-Doc in those moments, rather than Tennant-Doc. ;-))

Speaking of RTD - I've watched Midnight and Turn Left today and I think I'd add Midnight to the "encore" section of my list above. That was a pretty great ep. (Turn Left was great, too, but too dependent on series 4 continuity to appear in a series-5-focused selection like the one above.) It boggles me how the same man who wrote Midnight and Turn Left could have written The Sound of Drums and The Last of the Time Lords... It's like RTD is the Dr. Jekyll of scriptwriting.

Re: vids. I'm not in a vid-watching mood right now, but will happily bookmark vids for later watching. I currently only have a handful of DW vids, so feel free to link me any and all the remarkable ones that you can think of!