Tom Baker was my first Doctor, and my daughter's as well—I videotaped almost all of his episodes when they were showing on public television in Los Angeles back in the 1980s, and my kids grew up watching them, grainy and deteriorating as they were. Our family has a deep affection for the fourth Doctor.
I wish the BBC did not have such a silly pricing policy on
Doctor Who. As dearly as we all loved the Baker episodes, we own exactly two on DVD: "Pyramids of Mars" and "Genesis of the Daleks." A single four- to six-part episode (and the parts are less than half an hour long) costs the same as an entire season of a modern, non-BBC show. If they cut that price in half, even, I would immediately buy five or six more episodes, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Changing Doctors is always hard! I never warmed that much to Peter Davison, and we moved to a Who-less location before that changed.
I remember being so disappointed by the change from Christopher Eccleston, the first 21st-century Doctor, to this David Tennant guy who seemed so doe-eyed and silly. And yet he turned out to be very close to Tom Baker in my affections (and a better actor, and darker and scarier as well as easy on the eyes). Matt Smith I also doubted at first, but he was awesome. But what I really treasure in the Doctor is a dark side, and I suspect Capaldi will deliver.
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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King