Starting to watch Doctor Who today can be intimidating. It’s been airing since 2005, focusing solely on its modern iteration. However, wanting to see the 60th-anniversary specials doesn’t mean you have to watch everything released until now. You can watch just a selection of episodes that will give you a clear picture, like the one we’re presenting here.
We’ll be leaving out many things: fantastic episodes, significant pieces of lore, and entire stages without mention. But our goal is to provide you with the information you need to catch up as quickly as possible. And if you get hooked, then you have a fabulous journey ahead of you.
The key piece is David Tennant
Although there’s a Doctor before and three others after him, the primary and most significant for the 60th anniversary is Tennant. That’s why, to catch up, you have two possibilities. You can either watch the seasons starring him, spanning from episode 169 to 202, or opt for a selection of key episodes. Those episodes are as follows:
The first appearance of the character, explaining briefly how the character’s regeneration powers work, is a highly recommended Christmas special called “The Christmas Invasion.” The next relevant episode is 178, titled “Runaway Bride,” where the Tenth Doctor meets his new companion, a pivotal character in his story and in what’s to come for his 60th anniversary: Donna Noble. She will also play a crucial role in the intense two-part finale that marked the end of the Tenth Doctor’s story, or so it was thought then, in episodes 198a and 198b titled “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End.”
Calling oneself Matt Smith is also important
To understand what will happen later, we need three episodes from the Eleventh Doctor that established elements of the lore for the events of the 60th anniversary. These took place in episodes 202, 229, and 240.
The first is “The End of Time,” where not only is David Tennant’s official farewell given, but also the Doctor’s regeneration into a new actor, Matt Smith, takes place. The most interesting aspect of this episode is the resurrection of the Doctor’s great archenemy, known as the Master, and the return of the Time Lords. In the following episode, “The Power of Three,” we discover that a legend from Gallifrey, the Doctor’s planet, turns out to be true and threatens the extinction of humanity. And in the last one, “The Day of the Doctor,” the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors unite to confront a terrible threat, meeting in the process an incarnation of the Doctor that we had never known before: the Warrior Doctor, the Fourth Doctor.
The final key piece
With all of this, we have all the elements to understand, at least in broad strokes, what’s to come in the 60th anniversary. One key piece is missing, though ideally, we should watch the entire era of Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor. But it’s only necessary to watch episode 300, “The Power of the Doctor.” In this episode, it’s explained why the Tenth Doctor returns as the Fourteenth Doctor in an adventure where many of the Doctors throughout history face a terrible threat.
With these seven episodes, it should be possible to follow the three episodes of the upcoming Doctor Who special. Of course, we don’t know what will happen in those episodes, so there might be aspects of lore or history that need to be known to grasp all the details. But with this, you should be able to follow this celebration of one of television’s longest-running series without any problem.
