Oh man, that first series with its stupid "when is a duck pond not a duck pond" rubbish was... rubbish. The first few seasons of Tennant's Doctor were good.
It's probably best to start with his first series. If you can stick it out to the end, you get a pretty decent amount of character development and some standout episodes.
I think the show misses Davies. The writing hasn't been as good since he left which really surprises me when you consider how good Sherlock. I think Moffat is a good writer but I am not sure he is the best to lead this show, maybe Gatiss should do some more as his episodes usually work well enough and again Sherlock is fantastic which he writes with Moffat. Not to say that I haven't enjoyed Dr Who, just not as much as I did with Christopher and David.
I think Moffat is likes to make overly complicated story arcs with complicated tie ins which works for Sherlock because, well, he's Sherlock Holmes. But with all of time and space to choose from, he overreaches himself, I feel. His individual episodes when Davies was in charge were brilliant but being a showrunner seems a bit beyond him. Davies, I think kept things a little more simple which let him concentrate on the characters themselves. None of this, "crack in the wall" or "Silence has fallen" bollocks which get wrapped up in a poor manner. Some episodes I enjoyed recently, like the flesh and The Doctor's wife but what series was it with the Gatiss puppet episode where most of the episodes were solved by the power of love?
Have any of the main story arcs actually been tidied up because I certainly don't feel like any of them have? I think episode endings have probably been the weakest point of the series for the past couple of seasons. They get a good story going in the first 45 minutes or so and then all of a sudden seem to clear it up in 5 because they have run out of time. Perhaps having more 2 or more part episodes would help as I am not sure having a new story every week with a rushed ending is really doing the Moffat/Smith era any good. Sure not every story before had 2 parts but the impression that they were all rushed didn't appear either. Looking at Wiki the remaining 8 episodes for this season all appear to be single parters.
I am still confused about what happened to Billie Pippers character when she fell into that warp. Only zoned in and out of random episodes since Tennent left.
If you're a Tennant fan if you haven't already seen it catch up on Broadchurch on ITV player. The next episode is on tonight, it is a pretty good detective show based in a small seaside community which seems to have one story throughout it's entire season. Tonight is the 4th of 8 episodes. Tennant plays a bit of a bastard who doesn't really care about anyone quite well. It has Arthur Darvill (Rory) in it too so 2 ex Doctor Who regulars.
The classic series typically worked best when the stories ran 4 to 5 episodes, so roughly 2 - 2.5 hours of total broadcast time. They pretty much shifted to that format for most of the story lines during the Tom Baker era and beyond. I think it's really difficult for a show like Doctor Who to compress everything into self-contained one hour episodes.
I liked Season 2, Season 1 was just a bit too campy for me. You should probably really watch it from the beginning though :/ campy might just be your style though so... they all have piper in it! at least the tennant episodes do. Piper is hot but I could only take so much of 19 yr old starring at 40 yr old with googly eyes. I liked the red head that came after (apparantly she's a standup comic so that tells you a bit right there, its good because this next doctor is a bore so she plays off that quite well i think), though it's not with tennant, she cameod for a couple eps (1 and 2) in season 3 but she sort of took over in season 5... I think. It's been a while and I hadn't seen passed what Netflix has, like up to Season 6 (and that Mars thing... Amazon Prime doesn't have it but Netflix did. On the other hand Netflix didn't have Torchwood but Amazon did.)
I don't think you can be a fan of the original series without a tolerance for a certain level of camp being present at times. Low budgets and highly imaginative story lines in the SF/Fantasy genre tend to produce a bit of that.
Because Billie has been around so long I had no idea she was so young (30). I really thought she was a lot older. She must have been really young when she was doing the whole pop star thing as that must have been 1998/9 at the latest.
Everything on Comcast video on demand is free this weekend, so my wife and I have been trying some new shows as it's easier than dealing with torrents. Shameless This show is hilarious. It gives me an "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" vibe, as both shows have a similar brand of dark humor. William H Macy is great as a worthless drunk who's always concocting some ridiculous new scheme. I've tried watching the original British version, but the writing and acting aren't as good. It's also on Showtime, so it gets unbelievably trashy. But it's trashy in a good way. Downton Abbey Should be marketed as a prescription sleep aid. I haven't had a nap this good since I watched Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Veep It's like HBO found a discarded NBC sitcom script in the trash and threw a few "fucks" and "shits" in to make it cable-worthy. Awful. Girls It's Sex and the City with obnoxious, spoiled hipsters instead of obnoxious, spoiled yuppies. The lead actress is fat, tattooed, and all around repulsive. She has a lot of gross sex with a guy who looks like a child molester. My wife and I stopped watching after the second episode, which ends with her being proud that she got HPV, the virus that causes genital warts. Because apparently having HPV means that you're sexually adventurous. I should have known Judd Apatow was involved, because I didn't laugh once even though this show was supposed to be funny.
Piper and Tennant are back for the 50th anniversary episode. http://news.sky.com/story/1072024/tennant-and-piper-back-for-doctor-whos-50th
He is a time traveller, he can bump into himself at any time. There is already an episode called the 5 doctors from Peter Davidson's stint which had the first 5 in it. People have been speculating that something similar would be done again for a while. Eccleston, Mcgann, McCoy, Baker or anyone before could turn up for all we know. The Christmas episode a few years ago he thought he had bumped into himself when Tennant was still in the job. Edit: come to think if it Davidson and Tennant did a comic relief special where they bumped into each other.