Like many people here I started watching the revival as a child and didn’t dip into the classic era for years. This meant I had a few misconceptions about the classic era that stuck around for a while like:
I thought for a long time the doctor had always been the last of the time lords and the Time War was always part of the shows lore
I knew Paul McGann never got a full season but took this to mean he never actually got to play the Doctor on screen.
(Perhaps more understandably) I assumed Sarah Jane and K9 were part of the same tardis team.
i straightup thought i had started watching with the first doctor. no inkling of anything before that. and i was somehow surprised when rose left, because although i’d gotten to the point of understanding that the doctor changed, i had not gotten to the point of understanding that the companions also changed.
The Sarah Jane/K9 thing is pretty easy to slip into even if you’ve watched classic who. They were introduced together in School Reunion, they were together in SJA, and in K9: A Girl’s Best Friend, and in classic who, Sarah left the second serial of one season, then K9 was there the second serial of the next season, so if you haven’t watched it in a while, it’d be easy to get blurred together…
Yeah it definitely ‘feels right’. I guess the revival equivalent would be Clara and Nardole. I could definitely see myself placing those two together when I half remember the Capaldi era in the future.
I actually did watch classic who as a kid since the ABC had been doing reruns since 2003 for the 40th and lead up to the revival but I had no idea that there was a doctor between McCoy and Eccleston so my numbering for the nuwho doctors was off for ages until I found out about McGann lol
After Christopher Eccleston left after 1 season, I remember assuming that every doctor only lasted for 1 season, so I was surprised when David Tennant survived the season 2 finale
Ha, I actually thought along those lines - I thought that the last series of Classic Who must have been set during the Time War and been pretty epic. I soon found out that wasn’t the case when I started reading up about it.
Definitely, I thought this too. Why did the Doctor send K9 to Sarah Jane?
I guess my biggest misconception before going into Classic Who was that it would be more similar to NuWho - there would be season-long arcs, the companions would have family and more character development, the companions would die or have other big, epic reasons for leaving, and each season would have a huge epic finale.
To be honest, all those things are precisely why I love NuWho, which I guess is why I don’t re-watch Classic Who much - it’s much more “monster of the week” that you can dip in at any point. Which I understand now that is what the show used to be. I just prefer the modern series
And I think that’s why I much more often watch Classic than New - I love both, but Classic suits my mood more often. Isn’t it wonderful how there’s DW for every mood and everyone!
Whereas I like that classic who is going to be in one particular story for 4-6 episodes, so they have more time on each individual setting and more time to flesh out the minor characters of that particular serial. (Not that they always properly took advantage of this…)
And I actually like that companions aren’t always dying off, no one really knows who the Doctor is, and such.
Mind you, the third Doctor’s run, you actually did have essentially his UNIT family reoccurring, and later you had things like the keys to time arc, or Turlough repeatedly trying to kill the Doctor until finally coming firmly over to his side…
I think generally the idea of a ‘season’ as something that tells a story is less strong in a lot of the classic era. Companions leave (and even doctors) leave mid season, Arcs are resolved mid season and often the final story isn’t the one with the highest stakes or biggest name villain.
From a story perspective, I’ve always taken it to be because they seemed especially close (just for Fourth Doctor companions).
From a real world perspective, I’ve assumed it was because a) Elisabeth Sladen said yes, b) she was a very popular recent companion, c) John Nathan-Turner liked her.
