The Doctor Who: Revisited special on the First Doctor was brilliant! I’d be surprised if anyone who watched it didn’t get interested in watching the First Doctor era!
They talked about One’s great character development and they showed some great clips like his “Not for long” from The Dalek Invasion of Earth and the “space helmet for a cow” line from The Time Meddler and some of them all being adorable in The Romans. And William Russell was there! And they talked about how revolutionary it was and how amazing it must have been to see it not knowing anything. And they did a brief overview of about half of One’s companions. They said Susan was the kind of person who made you want to hug her but also had that mysterious quality, they went on about how Ian was a dashing hero and you couldn’t ask for a better teacher, Moffat called Barbara sexy (though perhaps controversially chose this to mention over “badass” and “perfect”), they went over how great Steven and the Doctor played off each other, and how Ben and Polly ended up setting the tone for a lot of the show of the Doctor being well and truly the lead and the young contemporary companions being along for the ride.
Everything was just so great and everyone was fanboying/fangirling so damn hard, over the Hartnell era, and broadcasting it to modern Whovians!
(And then there was Barrowman who was so peculiar and went on about how weird the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon was to happen in the middle of a serial, but I can’t really argue with him, and then Caroline Skinner called The Gunfighters “striking”, in a positive way, so it’s all good).
