When Is the Best Time to Watch Doctor Who?
Guest contributor Joe Waters takes a look.
I have a somewhat mixed opinion on Series 8. This is weird as, looking at the episodes individually, I liked the vast majority of them. So I am beginning to wonder if there were any other factors that helped to carve my overall opinion of it, which has brought me back to a question I have had for a while: when is it best to watch Doctor Who?
The Time of Year
Spring: Being of the age to not remember anything different, I was more used to Doctor Who starting in the spring. Because of this, Doctor Who has somewhat embodied the arrival of summer for me given that, if we had a full series, it filled the space between Easter and the summer holidays. It also meant that each series was closer to the previous Christmas special as it followed them only a few months later.
Being in this slot does have the apparent disadvantage of a larger gap in the autumn but, until recently, this would have been occupied by something like Merlin (and, you may say still is, but, like many people, I can’t stand Atlantis and have no idea why they commissioned a second series, but I digress) which for me had more of a darker, tingly, autumnal feel than the hopeful open-endedness of Doctor Who
Autumn: When Doctor Who first moved to a more autumnal slot it, it caused the fifth series of Merlin to be moved slightly later in the year which, in turn, had the effect of meaning its finale aired Christmas Eve, and this worked really well. So with the format the way it is now, instead of the strange gap between the end of the series and the Christmas special, could this, perhaps, be emulated by Doctor Who?
There would be the added factor of the Christmas special but, if this became the second part of the season finale (the first being on Christmas Eve), then it could work really well (think of the hype it could cause if there was a huge cliff-hanger that was resolved the next day – that could draw in a load more casual viewers, stopping their excitement from dying down within the following week).
Winter: A slot that hasn’t been tried by the BBC with the revival is a start in January. For me, that time is often the most depressing part of the year and Doctor Who could fill that space well. The Christmas special could also act as a kind of series opener, another way of drawing in casual viewers.
Binge-Watch
Last year, I decided, impulsively, to watch the entirety of Series 5 in one week. I watched one or two episodes a day and, by the end, I felt like I almost knew Amy and Rory as people. In ‘olde times’, when there were well over 20 episodes of Doctor Who per season, Doctor Who was a normal weekly fixture. Now that there are quite a lot less than that, it has become much more of an event and, once it starts, I almost forget it is on and spend my week waiting for the next episode which, let’s face it, will not always be absolutely amazing (this is not fault of the production team as, like us, none of them are superhuman) and, sometimes, I come out feeling a bit disappointed.
I’m not one for marathons as, however much I love the show, I come out feeling a bit bloated, like I’ve had a binge on sweets and am feeling sick. Equally, if you eat one sweet per week, just to savour them for longer, then you are probably not going enjoy them as much as eating a few at a time or, say, one (episode/ sweet) a day. Now, obviously, if the BBC actually did this when broadcasting the episodes then it would mean that there would only be two weeks of Doctor Who per year but, once you have got hold of the shiny box set, it is nice to do this.
The chances are that, in the process, you’ll enjoy the episodes more than you did the first time, as well as getting a fuller picture of the season and character arcs and how they fit together. The sensation suddenly becomes a lot more like reading a book – you feel like you are living a double life with the characters in the show. For my part at least, this does enhance my enjoyment of the show.
But what do you think? What is your preference for viewing?
