His name is Dr. W. Ho.
Dr. William Ho.
It's actually Doctor Who, but spelled H-O-O.
Doctor Hoo!
Like an owl.
Doctor Hoo.
Nina, who are your favorite and least favorite Doctors from the TV show?
Doctors Who?
Yes.
Like attorneys general.
The name is-
I'm pretty sure that's what it's called.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I should start this with a disclaimer, which is that I watched only the new, modern
iteration of Doctor Who.
And then I stopped...
I think I might have watched one or two episodes of Peter Capaldi, but not much.
I kind of fell off at the end of the Matt Smith era.
I'm going to of jump in and say that that almost exactly mirrors my experience, except
I precisely stopped watching about halfway through the first Peter Capaldi episode I
watched.
Oh, halfway through.
Okay.
Strong statement.
Yeah.
So go ahead and tell us what you think.
So the...
It's funny, because the first Doctor Who that I was exposed to was my least favorite.
And I feel like this is probably going to carry some controversy.
But I didn't like Christopher Eccleston.
And it's not because I don't like Christopher Eccleston.
It's because...
And I think he's a great actor, and I loved him in The Leftovers.
G.I.
Joe: The Rise of Cobra, anybody?
That's right.
Yes.
Another classic performance.
He was Destro?
Oh boy.
And he was-
I'm like, "I know these two know what his-"
... Malekith in Thor: The Dark World.
Yes.
God, he was in Thor: The Dark World.
Another movie I don't like.
He also didn't like it.
So that's why I don't like him as Doctor Who.
Is he didn't like doing it.
And you could tell.
He just was kind of unhappy to be there the whole time.
Oh, Nina.
You can't say he liked it as Doctor Who.
This is...
This is exactly how wars start.
You can't go on the internet and call the character Doctor Who.
What are you doing?
What are you doing, Nina?
You want us dead?
His name is Dr. W. Ho.
Hi name is Dr. W. Ho.
Dr. William Ho.
It's actually Doctor Who, but spelled H-O-O.
Doctor Hoo!
Like an owl.
Doctor Hoo.
He's part owl.
Yes.
He's the character from the Tootsie Pop commercials.
He hated playing The Doctor.
I know what his not-name is.
I don't recall that he hated it, but I think that there was friction that made it less-
There was friction, and he left after one season, and it was like...
It just...
I always...
Maybe this was biased and colored by the fact that then I read a bunch of stuff of Eccleston
being like, "I really didn't want to do it for more than one season.
And I felt pressured."
Just because, typically, people stay a lot longer than one season.
Right.
For the majority of the people who have played The Doctor.
So I would say out of the modern iterations, just because he had the least fun with it.
I mean he took it super seriously, and there's something to be said about that.
And he plays a very grizzled, angry, harsh Doctor, but it just-
He's the PTSD Doctor.
Yeah.
But I was also like, "This is, a, originally it is a show for kids."
A lot of things that are for kids are also enjoyed by adults.
Harry Potter is a kid series, for God's sake and plenty of adults like Harry Potter.
Star Wars.
Lord of the Rings.
Everything.
Everything we all like is, originally, probably for kids.
Comics!
Spider-man.
Right.
And I was just like-
Sports.
... I don't want to see a-
Sports.
I don't want to see a grizzled PTSD veteran travel through time.
I want to see someone with some levity and some humor about it, which is why David Tennant
is far and away my favorite Doctor Who.
Sure.
He also has-
Favorite Doctor.
... Some of the best companions.
As The Doctor, which is his name.
That's his name.
The Doctor.
No, he has...
I think he has, of anyone, the most fun with the role, which is also a nice contrast to
that I think he has the saddest exit and some of the saddest moments.
I remember bawling when he and Rose, Billie Piper's companion, have to split up.
He also has some of the best companions.
I know that nobody liked Martha, least of all me.
I loved Martha.
Really?
You liked...
I thought she was the best.
I felt like she was really unpopular.
But I really liked Donna, and I really liked Rose.
And so I was like, he has two of the strongest companions.
He has some of the best episodes.
He has episodes like Blink, which is...
Blink is the best one.
Yeah.
The best episode.
That's the one you show to people who've never watched Doctor Who and never will watch Doctor
Who.
You're like, "Just watch this one episode, and you'll be into it."
Fun fact, I have a Funko Pop of a weeping angel, and it's lost in my apartment, and
I haven't been able to find it in years.
So that's how I'm going to die one day.
Is that-
You'll...
Yeah.
It'll get you when you're least expecting it.
It's going to get me.
It's for saying the wrong name for this entire episode.
That's why it will get me.
It'll send you back in time.
Yeah.
To a time when I knew better.
But yeah.
I mean, David Tennant is such a charming actor anyway.
Even when he's playing a villain in Jessica Jones, I'm like, "Oh, I don't know.
He's..."
I just like to watch him.
And he just has that irreverence and that joy and so much good spirit as The Doctor.
And I was sad to see him go.
And I thought Matt Smith was pretty good, but he was also younger and sadder, which
was a weird mix for me.
But yeah.
I mean, David Tennant is far and away my favorite Doctor.
I think that's probably a pretty standard response to that question.
I have a similar response, which is yeah.
For me, David Tennant was the guy who made me love the show.
He is The Doctor to me.
When I think of that show, I think of David Tennant.
Not anybody else.
Right.
I like Christopher Eccleston just fine.
I liked him a bunch, actually.
Yeah.
That's fine, yeah.
And I love it if he...
Like, there was...
They did that special where Matt Smith and David Tennant teamed as their respective versions
of The Doctor and hung out with the War Doctor, the secret one.
Yeah.
John Hurt.
Yeah, yeah.
Played by John Hurt.
The late John Hurt.
And there were rumors that Christopher Eccleston would come back, but it just didn't work out.
And that would've made my day.
So for me, my favorite also is David Tennant.
I really liked him a bunch.
I liked Matt Smith next as The Doctor, but I don't think I liked his episodes very much,
on the whole.
I would agree with that.
I think his storylines were super unnecessarily confusing at a certain point.
They got really confusing, yeah.
And I was like, "What is even going on?"
Yeah.
So it was-
Even though I love River Song.
And so I was disappointed because I was like, "I love watching River Song interact with
The Doctor, but I don't know what's happening."
Right.
How to take a character who's interesting and make her less and less interesting, because
everything's getting confusing.
Everything's going up its own butt in terms of continuity.
The stories made less and less sense.
So I think for me, even though I have fond memories of Matt Smith as The Doctor, overall,
those storylines were the ones that started making me less and less interested in pursuing
it.
So that's when...
That comes to, when I started watching the Peter Capaldi Doctor, I literally...
It had been maybe a year or two since I'd watched Doctor Who, and Peter Capaldi had
already been on for a couple seasons, and so...
It was on Netflix at the time.
And so I was like, "Let me get back into Doctor Who.
Let me check this out.
Let me see this Peter Capaldi as The Doctor."
And so for the first chunk of the episode, he's in bed, unconscious.
And he's in Victorian England.
And there's a...
The dinosaur lady's just like, "Ah, The Doctor needs to heal.
But there's a dinosaur loose in London!"
And then he wakes up, and he's wandering through the streets of London, and he hears the dinosaur,
roaring.
And he's like, "I'm coming!
I'm coming to help you!"
And he was really sad about this crying dinosaur.
And I literally...
At that point, I was just like, "I don't care about this at all.
I don't...
I have no emotional connection to a sad dinosaur in England in the 19th century.
This is dumb, and I'm not interested in this anymore."
And I just quit.
And I had watched a lot of the modern era, at least, of Doctor Who.
I followed along.
I really cared about the characters.
I was really into all of it.
And then, by the time this rolled around, I just was like, "I'm done."
So for me, my least favorite is Peter Capaldi.
Because in the few minutes I watched him be The Doctor, I stopped watching the series
as a result.
I'm sure he's fine.
I'm sure that, overall, there's a lot I missed out on.
But at the same time, I don't feel especially compelled to go back.
Yeah.
And I feel guilty that I can't bring Jodie Whittaker into it because I truly have not
watched any of her episodes as The Doctor, which is a shame, because I really like Jodie Whittaker.
She's great on Broadchurch.
She's great in Black Mirror.
If you've watched any of the other British gritty TV stuff that she's done, she's great.
And I also want to give a shout out to...
I was talking about companions earlier.
My favorite are Amy and Rory.
Which is funny, because my favorite Doctor is David Tennant, but Amy and Rory are far
away my favorite companions.
Amy and Rory were great.
That was when the show started...
It was on the edge of it was believing its own hype too much, but also...
It was delivering, but also not.
Where it was getting like more and more cinematic, more and more bold, but at the same time,
the story was really just kind of going in and out of Doctor Who lore instead of just
telling good stories.
And needlessly confusing stories about The Doctor rather than stories that The Doctor
is participating in.
Yeah.
I was like, "I don't need that much of The Doctor's backstory."
I'd rather just see him explore time.
Right.
It's tough because I think...
Part of me wants to say Matt Smith is my least favorite because that was the run that I got
less and less interested in.
But I think he's so fun.
And I always give him a pass, no matter what he's in.
I even didn't mind him in Terminator: Genesis when he was Skynet.
He shows up as Skynet at the end.
Oof.
Right.
And I was just kind of like, "All right, Matt Smith.
This movie's awful."
No.
I mean, I didn't even mind him in The Crown.
In the one of the most boring seasons of The Crown.
Ah.
Yeah.
Which is the first season.
Yeah.
I like Matt Smith a bunch.
The Crown doesn't get juicy until you bring Diana into it.
I'm sorry.
Come on.
Let's get real.
But yeah.
Matt Smith is a lovely actor.
I'm excited to see him in the House of the Dragon, eventually, when that happens.
But yeah, I just think the writers didn't do him any favors as The Doctor.
Yeah.
It got worse as time went on.
Wouldn't it have been great if he pulled out a Sonic Screwdriver on The Crown?
And just have been like, "I'm here to fix time."
I would've loved that.
Diana's not going to die on my watch.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't even know who he played.
I didn't watch the show.
Played Prince Phillip.
It's fine.
I assume he played Diana's cousin.
I don't know.
Nope.
He played the...
He was in the first couple seasons when Elizabeth and her husband, her late husband Phillip,
are young.
He played young queen's consort.
So by the time Diana's on the scene, they didn't put him in old age makeup.
They just got an older actor.
No, they keep switching the actors.
That's the queen's gambit of The Crown.
And with that, I'm finished.
All right, Tom.
Can you tell us about your...
You've been very quiet this whole time, letting Nina and I dig a Doctor Who phone-booth-shaped
grave.
Yes.
I'm calling it the Doctor Who phone booth.
I know it's called the Tardis.
I don't care.
Thanks for taking this bullet with me, Brian.
Yeah, fine.
I appreciate it.
Tom, who are your most and least favorite Doctors who you like and dislike?
Good one.
That was slick as snot is what that was.
Thank you.
I felt hesitant to say anything.
I think you guys know me pretty well.
You know that I'm not into geek stuff.
So I wasn't crazy familiar with Doctor Who going into this.
So I did 15 minutes of research just to figure out what the show's actually about.
It felt like there were kind of an intimidating number of people that played The Doctor going
into this, so picking which one was objectively the best...
It felt difficult.
But then like I said, I did a little bit of reading, and it's actually...
It's super simple.
I put together like a quick chart.
Every time Tom says he's not prepared, it's never true.
Yeah.
No, I'm totally prepared.
I just I didn't know very much about this thing going into it, so I read into it.
And it is, it's pretty simple, right?
You started out back in the '60s with William Hartnell, then he went to Peter Troughton.
They did the second Doctor.
They developed the whole idea of regeneration.
Then he went into John Pertwee for the third Doctor.
Your had Tom Baker for the fourth Doctor.
He was kind of a fan favorite.
He brought in like the-
People love him.
... Scarf and the yo-yo and the Jelly Babies.
And he was wacky.
He was the one with the scarf, right?
The famous scarf.
Yeah.
Tom Baker?
He had the great big scarf.
Yeah.
People still wear to conventions and stuff.
It's an iconic thing.
Apparently.
Iconic look.
Peter Davison from All Creatures Great and Small.
He took over as the fifth Doctor.
Then he went into Colin Baker, which was kind of a rough period for the show.
Sylvester McCoy.
The show gets canceled.
They go in, they do the Fox movie in the '90s where Eric...
What's his name? Roberts.
Eric Roberts-
Oh, Eric Roberts?
... Plays The Master.
Turns into it-
Oh, that's right.
Ton of eyeliner.
... Just terrific.
If you haven't seen it, it's supposed to be spectacular.
Then there's the hiatus.
They go into the ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, who you talked about a little bit.
And then David Tennant.
And Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, And then of course, Jodie Whittaker, who just recently
announced that she's not going to do the show anymore.
So then, whoever comes next.
But it's really just those 13 people to pick from.
What about John Hurt as the War Doctor?
Okay.
I didn't...
I didn't think that...
Yeah.
Okay.
So I guess in the 50th anniversary special, they introduce John Hurt, and he goes between...
What?
Eight and nine right here.
Okay.
So there's...
And then at the end of the 50th anniversary special, of course, they bring back Tom Baker
playing The Curator.
That's right.
The mysterious employee of the shadow gallery.
So he's somewhere out in the future over there.
Recently, with the Jodie Whittaker years, they introduced the idea of the Fugitive Doctor,
and that The Doctor had a bunch of regenerations before-
Okay.
... The first one.
Which then, of course, you get the seven different iterations of the timeless children.
Those are all in there.
Then you get in to the ancillary characters.
So like, you've got Doctor Who and The Curse of Fatal Death.
That's 1999.
So Tom-
Rowan Atkinson, Richard E. Grant, and-
... I want to reiterate, you're not very familiar with this show.
Yeah, you're not into it?
You've never...
Have you watched much of it?
That's the thing.
Yeah.
Not a huge geek.
Not big into geek stuff.
But-
Okay.
Got it.
Thanks for watching.
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