A while ago I did a “how old were you when you started watching doctor who” poll, and I thought it would be interesting to cross reference that data with what year people started watching. For our purposes, I’d say “started watching” means when you started consistently watching the show, not if you saw it and then didn’t come back for a few years. Since I did intervals of five for the age poll, I’ll try to stick to that as closely as possible here, but due to timing a few of the intervals will be slightly longer/shorter.
I also think that this poll doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about our ages. I mean you could have started watching in 2015 as a 75-year-old or as a 5-year-old.
2008 was when I became consistent! As I said in the How Old Were You thread, I fell in love with the series with Fires of Pompeii and binged hard during that year to catch up on s1-3 and a lot of classic!
Maybe I started a day or two later than you? Also got into it some time after the 60th specials had come out. They were a very easy and welcoming jumping on point.
I think I must have started on the 30th November? At most two days before that. I’d been sick the whole week and watched good omens before that before deciding I wanted to see more of what that David Tennant is about
Oh, I’m definitely later then! It was the 28th of December when I started properly watching Eccleston’s season, and the specials must’ve been not more than a week or so before that.
Started watching as a fan in 1989 with Season 26 but definitely watched Season 24 and 25 too. I know I saw Trial and have vague memories of as far back as Seasons 18/19. But I went with 84-89 because I know I was watching relatively regularly. (I missed the final episode of Silver Nemesis because I was out and my parents mucked up the tape recording).
The amount of seasons wasn’t that hard actually, I’ve binge-watched my share of long running tv shows, the confusing part was the structure of the show! First I had to figure out that there were actually two shows, that there were different doctors, and then with New Who, the most confusing part were the specials and where those fit! I think I spent two or three hours reading up on doctor who before I even watched an episode, trying to figure out where to start (ended up with the Christmas Invasion because David Tennant, but I went back for Nine after about half the season because I liked Rose), and cross-referenced wikipedia and tardiswiki constantly while watching New Who. And it helped that I saw people on Tumblr excited about every doctor and companion, so I was always looking forward to the next!
I’m really lucky that I found this site just as I started to get into classic who, big finish and expanded universe things in general, it’s been a huge help
12 years and counting!