A Post-Afterword: So You'd Like to Popcorn Classic Who...

Whenever I tell people I've seen all of Classic Who, the first question that I always get from interested parties (after they express envy or whatever) is confession that they don't know where to start. Conventional wisdom with the Classic Series is to watch what sounds interesting. Or start with the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era because those are the best stories. Or start with the 7th Doctor/Ace stuff because it's the most modern. Or you could be bold and start from the beginning (which a friend of mine is doing without having seen any of the new stuff. I'm still pulling for him).

My gut reaction is to give those curious an order that would popcorn through the whole damn thing.

Now I have one I feel comfortable sharing.

Warning: What follows is my insane thought process for all of this. If you're just here for the list, keep scrolling. You can't miss it.

When I started my own personal quest to watch all of Doctor Who popcorning was the only way I was interested in experiencing the show. Jump from one Doctor to another. Do it all out of sequence. The Doctor doesn't follow a linear timeline So why should I?

Originally, the plan was to evenly spread them out. Do a 1st Doctor, then a 2nd Doctor, then a 3rd Doctor, etc until you get to the 7th Doctor. And then repeat. Quickly I figured out that that would mean running out of 7th and 6th Doctor stories very, very quickly and then you'd be stuck with a ton of 4th Doctor stories, which, is not bad if you like the 4th Doctor, but leaves a distinct lack of variety.

And I'm all about variety.

(Hell, that initial list was the first draft of the final blog order and included Inferno within the first four months and look how THAT worked out in the end.)

So I went in and restructured. The initial version of the blog was not interested in stories that didn't exist and weren't out on DVD. Which made the order interesting. It made me take my time with the 2nd Doctor (because only like five were out at the time) more appealing because there were so few of them. There were also like... 100 DVDs out at that point. I decided to delay the gratification on "Caves of Androzani". It was the story I wanted the most, made sense to give it the special hundredth slot. That would take me through two years of the blog. And then I could post whenever new DVDs came out and talk about them here.

Then I watched "Caves".

And decided that wouldn't do.

Because what could you DO after "Caves of Androzani"? What is the point of continuing? It is easily one of the greatest Doctor Who episodes of all time. It is still my uncontested favourite.

So I looked at what I still had left to cover and completely changed everything for the next year, added the sixty stories I'd not planned to cover, extended the blog by an additional year, and did a ton of masking tape and glue to figure out how to re-assemble something that had already been locked for a year (and to reference the blog again, I kept the order locked up through "Castrovalva", so everything post-"Castrovalva" through "Caves" is the best order I could manage considering I'd not seen large swaths of it yet. "Talons of Weng-Chiang" (which was immediately pre-"Caves") took the "Caves" slot. Stories I'd avoided became must-see/discuss. It became a huge mess.

Around this time I got an offer from Scott Carelli to co-host "The Doctor's Companion". He was looking to cover the Classic series but needed an order and a guide. I happily stepped in and offered to come up with a new order in which to view with the stipulation that it would include the 9th and 10th Doctor as well (because he hadn't covered those).

Basically it was all I did at work the next day. Turns out, splitting the Classic series with the 9th and 10th Doctor makes the list easier to breakup. There's as much 10th Doctor as there is 4th. And it's easy to intersperse the few Dalek or Master or Cybermen stories in there because there aren't that many.

Unfortunately, there was still a large contingent of Doctor Who I simply hadn't seen yet. And one small reason (of the several many) I stopped doing the show was because I had hit almost the halfway point in the trek, saw that there was about a year of stories I wasn't terribly excited about, and couldn't get excited enough to partake in a year of middling after being exceedingly burnt out on the show I had once loved.

I should also mention, that doing all of the Doctor Who I did between 2010 and 2013 essentially burnt me out of the show I had seriously so loved. I'd watched all of Doctor Who more or less two and a half times in the span of four years. Hell. I basically stayed away from the show from "Time of The Doctor' through "Deep Breath" because of how much time I needed away. And I think my time away is one of the many reasons I loved Series 8 as much as I did (nevermind the fact that it was, in fact, one of the best seasons of Doctor Who that's ever been produced). 

But I've always gotten the question about the order. "Where do I start?" "How do I watch?"

When I did the list for the podcast, I started the popcorn with a slightly modified version of the popcorn start I did for the blog. That's always been locked down. And then the next couple were always variable if not consistent (leftovers from the podcast order). I would even tell people to just do the order we did on the podcast. But "The Doctor's Companion" is still another few years away from completion and still includes the crutch of the New Series. No. My conscience needed to do a full Classic list that was pure Classic that I could be proud of.

Wow. I sound like an egomaniac. And look at me type. It's like I am. Ew.

Regardless. I've tried making this list many times. One friend even asked me to patch together what he hadn't seen into a list that didn't include any of my top ten stories or the bonified Classics he knew about and watched up front. I was pleased with the final result, but it had way too many gaps because of what he'd already seen.

I've never been satisfied. Stretches of bad stories and doldrums. Too much bunching of certain elements (Master stories in large clumps; saving Robert Holmes or David Whitaker stories for the end because sometimes I delay gratifications too much). Too much of the great stuff up front so the middle is soggy. Always with pen and paper. Always dissatisfied.

Recently I buckled down, bought a shitton of post-its. Made it work. And I made it something I'm obnoxiously proud of. One that has a good balance of stories, Doctors, elements. One that matches movements or echoes patterns followed by the Classic Series, that continues with trends that I liked about the initial blog (follow a regeneration story with a post-regeneration story that is not the subsequent post-regeneration story), that takes lessons from the podcast order (all of Davison in order because if you're gonna do ONE Doctor in order (and it's also convenient for mathy reasons)), one that includes Shada, that doesn't break up Key to Time or Trial of a Time Lord, that popcorns bouncily, and that features not only a victory lap, but also gives you an even spread of the spectacular stories and rewards you for hitting major milestones...

All of this to make a Doctor Who experience that you can like and enjoy despite the fact that we might not agree on stories (where I think "The Sensorites" is quite lovely and special if you really look at it and The Celestial Toymaker is pure ruddy bollicks).

It's the list I made. I hope you enjoy. And if you use it, let me know if it works out for you.

Geronimo.

1. The Daleks
2. The Invasion
3. The Silurians
4. Genesis of the Daleks
5. Castrovalva
6. Vengeance on Varos
7. Battlefield
8. The Movie
9. The Gunfighters
10. The Horns of Nimon
11. The Claws of Axos
12. The Underwater Menace
13. The Time Meddler
14. The Deadly Assassin
15. The Green Death
16. Four to Doomsday
17. The Abominable Snowmen
18. The Invisible Enemy
19. The Keys of Marinus
20. The Curse of Peladon
21. The Planet of Evil
22. Delta and the Bannermen
23. The War Machines
24. Kinda
25. The Three Doctors
26. Meglos
27. Fury From the Deep
28. The Mark of the Rani
29. The Sontaran Experiment
30. The Mind of Evil
31. The Crusade
32. The Visitation
33. The Key to Time Part 1 - The Ribos Operation
34. The Key to Time Part 2 - The Pirate Planet
35. The Key to Time Part 3 - The Stones of Blood
36. The Key to Time Part 4 - The Androids of Tara
37. The Key to Time Part 5 - The Power of Kroll
38. The Key to Time Part 6 - The Armageddon Factor
39. The Sea Devils
40. Black Orchid
41. The Dalek Invasion of Earth
42. The Happiness Patrol
43. The Hand of Fear
44. The Dominators
45. The Ark
46. Death to the Daleks
47. The Pyramids of Mars
48. Earthshock
49. The Reign of Terror
50. The War Games
51. Robot
52. Attack of the Cybermen
53. The Romans
54. Remembrance of the Daleks
55. The Image of the Fendahl
56. Time-Flight
57. The Time Warrior
58. The Savages
59. City of Death
60. The Wheel in Space
61. The Aztecs
62. The Invasion of Time
63. The Colony in Space
64. Arc of Infinity
65. The Macra Terror
66. The Leisure Hive
67. The Rescue
68. Dragonfire
69. Underworld
70. Carnival of Monsters
71. Galaxy 4
72. Snakedance
73. The Seeds of Death
74. The Keeper of Traken
75. The Myth Makers
76. Logopolis
77. Spearhead From Space
78. The Celestial Toymaker
79. Survival
80. Mawdryn Undead
81. An Unearthly Child
82. Terror of the Zygons
83. Tomb of the Cybermen
84. The Smugglers
85. The Mutants
86. The Masque of Mandragora
87. Silver Nemesis
88. Terminus
89. The Creature From the Pit
90. The Trial of a Time Lord Part 1 - The Mysterious Planet
91. The Trial of a Time Lord Part 2 - Mindwarp
92. The Trial of a Time Lord Part 3 - Terror of the Vervoids
93. The Trial of a Time Lord Part 4 - The Ultimate Foe
94. The Ambassadors of Death
95. The Web of Fear
96. Enlightenment
97. Nightmare of Eden
98. The Monster of Peladon
99. The Planet of Giants
100. The Talons of Weng-Chiang
101. The Ice Warriors 
102. The Planet of the Spiders
103. The Twin Dilemma
104. The King's Demons
105. The Ark in Space
106. The Space Museum
107. Paradise Towers
108. The Chase
109. The Krotons
110. The Face of Evil
111. The Time Monster
112. The Five Doctors
113. Shada
114. The Massacre
115. The Faceless Ones
116. Day of the Daleks
117. The Tenth Planet 
118. Time and the Rani
119. The Robots of Death
120. Warriors of the Deep
121. The Evil of the Daleks
122. The Android Invasion 
123. Ghost Light
124. The Sensorites
125. Invasion of the Dinosaurs
126. Revenge of the Cybermen
127. Mission to the Unknown
128. The Awakening
129. The Daleks' Master Plan
130. The Space Pirates
131. Frontier in Space
132. The Two Doctors
133. The Planet of the Daleks
134. The Horror of Fang Rock
135. The Highlanders
136. Frontios
137. Timelash
138. The Daemons
139. Full Circle
140. The Enemy of the World
141. State of Decay
142. Marco Polo
143. Warriors' Gate
144. Resurrection of the Daleks
145. Greatest Show in the Galaxy
146. Destiny of the Daleks
147. The Moonbase
148. Terror of the Autons
149. The Seeds of Doom
150. The Web Planet
151. The Sun Makers
152. Planet of Fire
153. The Mind Robber
154. Revelation of the Daleks
155. Inferno
156. The Edge of Destruction
157. The Brain of Morbius
158. The Curse of Fenric
159. The Caves of Androzani
160. The Power of the Daleks