The What, When, and Why of Who? Part 1: The Classic American DOCTOR WHO Experience

I'm a longtime fan of that staple of the BBC, DOCTOR WHO.  I'm also kind of obsessive about another BBC product,  ARE YOU BEING SERVED? (1974-85)....and I don't know what being a fan of cheeky half hours filled with an impossible amount of rapid fire sexual innuendo has to do with Time Lords or Daleks...or what it says about my personal character, but I do know that there's one thing I can blame my interest in both on: the Public Broadcasting Service, or simply, PBS.

Now, if you are amongst the multitude of readers of my blog....of which I'm sure numbers in at least a dozen, and are somehow unfamiliar with the free American educational television broadcasting network known as the PBS (potentially you are foreigners,  like the savage yet noble Canadians or residents of the state of Kentucky....or, you belong to some Jesus cult that lives underground), here's the lowdown: some hippies in the late 1960s, who were probably broadcasting and theater majors, decided it'd be cool if there was a TV channel that was commercial free, funded by corporate and government grants, as well as by viewers....that presented educational programming.  This idea seemed to catch on with college broadcasting programs, because it appears that every PBS station I've ever encountered transmits out of a local  campus (or at least that's the case here in my native gateway to the Midwest state, Ohio).

The biggest and most recognizable success experienced by PBS is probably the foundation of the Children's Television Workshop and the various educational programs it's produced over it's nearly half century existence.   Two words:  SESAME STREET. Y'know....the one with the loveable Jim Henson puppets and 46 continuous seasons on air under it's belt.  The one with the big goofy yellow bird and his buddy, the (formerly) invisible wooly mammoth only he could see?   Yeah.  That one.

Giant talking birds and invisible fuzzy elephants.  Again,  I say:  Hippies.

Somewhere along the way, the brains behind PBS decided that foreign television, especially stuff produced in the UK, was somehow more cultured, classy and sophisticated than American programming.  That totally explains why they'd start running BENNY HILL and the aforementioned ARE YOU BEING SERVED?.

To be fair, PBS's predecessor NET (National Educational Television, 1954-1970) experimented with BBC programming,  and the syndicated packages of MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS, THE AVENGERS (Steed and Peel, not Cap and Iron Man) and UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS did break up the monotonous atmosphere generated by nature documentaries hosted by bearded dudes from Montana and Gram Parkeresque country rock concerts that seemed to define PBS of the 1970s.

Now, I've spoken to fellow Whovians from the U.K. and Canada in the past about how the perspective of "Classic" WHO differs amongst American fandom from those outside our borders,  and it all can be attributed to how and (more importantly) when we were introduced to it.

I tend to fall within the oldest demographic of fans here in the U.S., folks  who were primarily children when PBS began airing their initial acquisition of syndication packages of the show in 1978.  I've heard of an earlier attempt at syndication to independent TV stations that happened about a year prior that was only moderately successful,  at best.  I can't really comment on that, because in my headspace,  DOCTOR WHO was always a PBS thing creeping into my childhood memories.

Now, the significance of having been introduced to the property in this way tends to play out like this:

First off.....we ugly Americans love us some Tom Baker.  The Fourth Doctor continues to be the primary face of the franchise here, due a lot to the oddball timing and circumstances involved in his participation with the role.  You see, we were introduced to the The Doctor and his antics a full 15 years into the show 's history...and even then, we were still around 4 to 5 years behind in canon , due to the BBC 's insistence on pushing Baker's first few seasons (1974-76) as part of their initial syndication offerings to PBS. This caused us, especially in those early, uninformed years of American fandom, to formulate a few inaccurate assumptions.

I've theorized that those first American audiences, especially prior to witnessing our first Regeneration,  regarded Baker much like how those first, early British audiences who experienced William Hartnell firsthand did :  Baker was our first and only Doctor, what the hell is "Regeneration" , and "There were other Doctors prior to this one?"....

I mean,....I didn't see my first Regeneration  until about three years later....and it was confusing as hell because it was the wrong one.  Around the summer of 1982, during one of the local PBS affiliate's summer pledge drives (WOSU, Channel 41, Columbus,  Ohio...remember. .."funded by viewers...just like you"), they ran a Saturday night Doctor Who marathon that started with "Planet of the Spiders", the previous Doctor's final serial,  and then continued straight into Baker's first few serials.  My 8 year old mind being baffled, I can remember,  at first, thinking,  "These must be newer episodes...and Tom Baker's hair has gotten gray...or maybe his brain got switched into another body and I've missed the episode it happened in...."
It didn't help matters much that due to the shows we were watching were still about two years behind chronologically in canon, so we still had around a two year wait to get to Peter Davidson's Fifth Doctor.

As a matter of fact,  I wouldn't see The next Regeneration until about the summer of 1984, when during another pledge marathon Who marathon, WOSU aired the following in conjunction with WHO'S 20th anniversary:  The Third Doctor serial "The Three Doctors", followed by Baker's final serial, "Logopolis", then Davidson's introduction as the Fifth Doctor,  "Castrovalva", and wrapping up the night with "The Five Doctors", the twentieth anniversary special.

That night not only was I introduced to a new Doctor,  but it was also the first time I ever encountered any of the previous Doctors,  But there's also the fact that, practically,  I never saw any Fifth Doctor stuff until Davidson had left the role in the U.K., and Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor was the current incarnation.

Oh, Colin Baker.    How I disliked your Sixth Doctor.  How I disliked you, so much so that your manic exploits caused me to stop watching the show....but, was back in the fold in high school for Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor.

To compound our confusion,  during the weird lengthy hiatus between Colin Baker's adventures,  we started getting syndication packages of John Pertwee's Third Doctor, which we were finally seeing nearly 15 years after the fact.

So, to summarize: we Americans in early fandom think of Tom Baker as the penultimate Doctor,  Regeneration baffled and shocked the shit out of us, nobody took readily to the Sixth Doctor (which is a shame, because Colin Baker is actually a lovely human being), and nobody actually saw any of the first two Doctors' work outside of the anniversary specials until VHS and DVD releases about a decade and a half later.

What a delightfully wonderful mess....