New to Who: a Nerdist Call to Action

Any Doctor Who fans out there? Oh, hi! There you are! If you have yet to see this, here is an important message from our artistically nerd-tastic leader Chris Hardwick:



I am so glad he made this video! I'm not exactly "new" to Doctor Who, but I certainly don't claim to be what a hard-core WHOvian would consider an expert on the Doctor. Nevertheless, a fan is a fan, and I agree that we should be embracing newbies and not shunning them for being "a little late to the party" (as Susan Arendt told me once.)
We were all new to something that we are currently passionate about at one time in our lives, and my own first experience with Doctor Who was not quite welcoming. 

One evening in the summer of 2006 after I had moved home with my parents after graduation, I was bored and didn't want to go to bed, so I turned on the TV and flipped through the channels. I didn't get very far before I stumbled upon one nerdily dreamy David Tennant in The Girl in the Fireplace episode of Doctor Who. My interest in British TV and movies had made a resurgence with the re-releasing of Monty Python's Flying Circus on DVD (I already owned the VHS box set) and after becoming obsessed with Shaun of the Dead and Harry Potter in college.  So, I thought, "This is handsome British fellow with a fancy magic wand that fixes everything! I will watch this." And watch I did.  I missed the first part of the episode and had never watched Doctor Who before, so I was a little lost on some things, and had no clue what I was watching, but I loved it anyway. It was funny and goofy and heartfelt, and starred a cutie British chap in a stripey brown suit.

*le fawn*

When the credits rolled on my TV screen and I discovered the name of the show was Doctor Who, I instantly recognized the name, but I didn't know why. I racked my brain to try to remember why I knew the name of the show.  Eventually, I recalled that it was generally considered a "nerdy" show like Star Trek (at this point I still had mixed feelings about "outing" myself as a nerd.) I casually asked around to see if any of my (so-called)friends had watched it or knew more about it. My (now-ex)boyfriend sort of pshaw-ed me 1)for not knowing what Doctor Who was and 2)for wanting to watch more of it because it was "a lame sci-fi from the 70s that [his] dad tried to get him into." (This ex was referring to the 4th doctor, Tom Baker, whom, I later learned was in fact, not lame.) Well, I decided to try to ignore this ex, whom I'd been testing the waters of my nerd-dom with, and tried to find other episodes of Doctor Who to watch. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember what channel I found it on, so I would subsequently stumble upon bits of episodes featuring the 10th Doctor, the 4th Doctor, and the 8th Doctor for the next few years until Boyfriend and I made friends who were in love with Doctor Who and not only encouraged our interest in the show, but got Boyfriend hooked starting with the 9th Doctor.  I watched a handful of episodes with him on Netflix, but I couldn't fall in love with it again.  As great an actor as Christopher Eccleston is, he wasn't my Doctor.


ThinkGeek

 Sadly, I didn't even know who my Doctor was. I didn't know enough about the show to tell people which Doctor I liked best, (in fact, for a long time, I didn't know there was more than one Doctor) but all that has changed thanks to better/informative friends, better access to British television, and the internet's vast reach. So, in honor of Chris Hardwick's #newtoWHO challenge (and also because we wanna) Boyfriend and I started a Doctor Who marathon this week to get me all caught up. So far, we've watched the first 7 episodes of the 9th Doctor and plan to watch until we are current with the Matt Smith episodes (which I have seen far too few of.) Then, we plan to watch as many of the classic Who episodes as possible, or we may just pick from my buddy Kanderson's list of favorite classic episodes.

So many Doctors, so little time!
BBC America

So, if you are #newtoWHO, welcome! Even if you don't remember what T.A.R.D.I.S means yet, or why Daleks are bad, or why Donna and/or K9 might be the most despised companions of the show's history, you are one of us (one of usss) and we will help you navigate the WHOniverse.  Also, if you're interested in learning a more in-depth history of Who, I will pimp out my friend Kanderson again and tell you to check out his series of articles on Nerdist, Doctor Who For Newbies. Allons-y!!!