I'm asking because I know so few, in person or online, and when you do meet one it's always some dumpy girl who only likes it because of David Tennent and Matt Smith. I've been watching since 2005. My uncle, who's been watching since it was on PBS in the 70's, got me into it. We started on Eccleston, then in 06 we got into collecting classic series DVDs. We have ~130 between the two of us. I seen all of New Who and I have to say it's become very crap. The storytelling and characterization have gone downhill so much under Moffat. I mainly watch it out of obligation rather than anticipation anymore. I enjoy the classic series so much more these days. My favorite Doctor is a tie between Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy.
I'm one. My Dad watched all of the original episodes and the newer stuff - pretty much every year he does a classic Doctor Who marathon so I've seen the majority of episodes from when he's recorded them on VHS or on DVDs they released with some of the missing episodes. He's not a fan of Moffat's writing either. Personally, my favorite is Tom Baker though I do however like Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant's episodes I did TRY watching the Matt Smith episodes and the writing was awful, very bland and just honestly too boring for my tastes as it's just all crappy characters coming around with the Doctor, the Doctor constantly making stupid attempts at witty jokes and it's been far too much of an attempt to make the Doctor "quirky" with the whole fish fingers and custard shit when the Doctor already WAS quirky. All I've seen is current pandering for the most part for the newer audiences that keep bitching about the older Doctor Who stuff when stuff gets brought up and they have no idea about it or that they're complaining about the new casting for the Doctor. Now, I will admit that Day of the Doctor wasn't that bad but it could've been done better. ... If a new writer was put in for Capaldi, then that'd be even better too or one would hope.
I'm a big fan, Tom Baker is my favorite Doctor. As far as the current show goes, especially in retrospect the Russell T Davies era was godawful: series 1 was good with only a few bad episodes, series 2 probably had more bad episodes than good ones and series 3 is the low point of the show with only a handful of watchable episodes (although those include my favorites of the entire show: Human Nature/The Family of Blood) and the horrible season finale Last of The Time Lords being most likely the worst episode of the entire show. Series 4 is much better with some good episodes, although the finale is just one big RTD masturbation session with a deus ex machina conclusion. The specials between series 4 and 5 are, except for Waters of Mars, shitty and a waste of time. Series 5 with Moffat at the helm is very good with the only real misses being the Silurian episodes by noted bad writer Chris Chibnall, but after that it's obvious Moffat just ran out of ideas. Season 6 is mostly a mess with an incredibly convoluted story arc, but at least it has The Doctor's Wife. The latest season was mostly just OK, with the lack of two-parters really hindering the ability to tell a well-developed story. Moffat is obviously also incapable of writing woman characters as anything other than "I'm so sarcastic!", although at least Amy and Clara are not as fucking terrible as Rose and especially Martha were. As far as Doctors go, Smith was great, Eccleston was good and Tennant was annoying: it was his character that had an emphasis on being "quirky" (HAVE YOU MET THE FRENCH?!) rather than Smith's.
I kind of liked Tennant in the role, he was the Doctor when I started watching the show but I have to admit that Smith's run was great
If my name doesn't clue you, I'm a big Doctor Who fan. Old School Doctor mainly, but I don't mind the new episodes. Anyways, my name is from The Genesis of the Daleks. IMO the best Doctor Who Episode(s) yet.
I'm a huge fan of Doctor Who (it's my second favourite science fiction program, after Blake's 7) since the 70s (I was born in 1970, and grew up watching the program) and I think that the past few series (Matt Smith and Stephen Moffat) have been the best ever. I really liked David Tennant, but didn't like most of his episodes, as I an't stand much of Russell T Davis' vapid writing. He's no clue about science fiction, and tried to turn DW into a soap opera. Having said that, Tennant had some superb episodes, such as Blink!, Human Nature/The Family of Blood, Silence in the Library/The Forest of the Dead, The Girl in the Planet, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit (this two parter was a lot like the movie of the game Doom should have been, I think), etc, but none of these were by Russell T Davies. I didn't like Ecclestion (he's my least favourite Doctor, which is a bit ironic as I think maybe the best DW episodes ever are the two parter The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. I like all of the other Doctors, except maybe William Hartnell (I don't know, I've not seen much of his), but from Troughton onwards I've liked them all, though if I had to pick a least favourite of the Troughton to McGann, I'd probably say either McGann or Pertwee. It's difficult to judge McGann properly, as he did so little (one film and one short; The Night of the Doctor), but he was fantastic in The Night of the Doctor. It's a shame the film was so badly scripted. My favourite Doctor of the 'old' series was Colin Baker (even though I don't like most of his stories, some of the scripts were awful, and none were great), and my favourite now is either Matt Smith or Colin Baker, again I can't really judge, as Matt Smith has the advantage of working with some utterly superb scripts, as opposed to the drivel Colin Baker had to contend with. To my mind, though, by far the best part of Doctor Who isn't the TV program, it's the books, or rather some of them. In particular the New Adventures, published by Virgin, are often very, very good, but sadly the overall quality dropped massively when the BBC took back the publishing license. Anyone who likes Doctor Who and enjoys reading science-fiction should really try the Virgin novels, but try to read them in order, as there are overall story arcs. The Virgin Missing Adventures are good too. The BBC publications have some great stories too, but like all aspects of Doctor Who the quality goes up and down (though what's bad to someone can be great to someone else, and vice versa).
That's exactly what The Time of the Doctor was, but with Moffat. They both have their problems, but I enjoyed the show when Davies wrote for it. At least after I watched one of his episodes, I wasn't left scratching my head and wondering wtf just happened.
It's interesting to see a fan who only got into it in the new series' lifetime say their favourite Doctor is Sylvester McCoy. He was criticized a lot in his time by hardcore fans and is nowadays, and you can appreciate looking back that some of his episodes are rather cheesy, but I remember him fondly and still enjoy his stories for the most part. I actually have a screen-used robot from his era! As for Steven Moffat, whilst he's the head writer, he often gets a lot of flack for episodes he didn't write! He writes precious few nowadays. Funnily enough, if you sit down and think about which episodes from the last few series you actually enjoyed without knowing the writers, you've probably listed a bunch of Moffat episodes! Mart Gatiss penned some good ones, too.
