Summary

• Classic Doctor Who companions were thinly-written, bland, and often underutilized, lacking the depth of other counterparts.
• Old Doctor Who episodes were excessively long, with 12-part stories leading to forced pacing issues and drawn-out plots.
• Doctor Who's inconsistent lore and production problems make returning to classic episodes challenging, with dated stereotypes and rougher character edges.

Doctor Who debuted in 1963, and has been entertaining audiences for over fifty years — but there are still major elements of the early years of the show that don't hold up over time. As with any show that's been on the air for half a century, certain elements and aspects of Doctor Who have aged better than others. While some adventures and companions remain among the franchise's best, plenty of elements of the series look particularly bad in retrospect. Sometimes, these problems were caused by the filming limitations of the era where it was produced.

Other problems have to do with the content of the show, with many characters left underwritten while stereotypes slip through the cracks. Fans of the modern Doctor Who characters who go back to the early days of the franchise will find plenty to love. However, some harsh realities are worth ing, especially considering that a full run of the entire show is impossible due to the circumstances that befell the show after it aired. Here are all the biggest hurdles that fans have to face when they go back to the classic early seasons of Doctor Who.

10 Doctor Who's Classic Companions Were Very Thinly-Written

The Doctor's Assistants Were A Real Mixed Bag Of Characters

Doctor Who's deep roster of companions over the years has produced some of the franchise's best characters, with the adventurous Sarah Jane, bold Jamie, and blunt Leela among the best. However, there were dozens of companions across the course of classic Doctor Who, and not all of them can match those same heights. Many of the Doctor's oldest companions blend together or suffer inglorious fates during the show. As the show was primarily focused on the adventures of the Doctor and the monsters they encountered, some of the Companions were increasingly sidelined during their adventures.

Even the creatives on the show felt like this at times, with companions like Katarina killed off primarily because the writers couldn't find unique elements to the character. The Doctor's original companions also steadily began to fit into basic archetypes over time, with the exceptions (like Leela or Ace) standing out more as a result. While the best Companions of the era are among the show's most likable characters, it's a bit of a gamble when it comes to reflecting on all of them..

9 Doctor Who's Old Release Format Meant Every Story Was Too Long

12-Part Stories Weren't Entirely Out Of The Question, But They Could Be A Problem

Whereas the modern Doctor Who largely thrives on the hourly episode format, the earlier Doctor Who stories would regularly run for multiple half-hour episodes. Sometimes, this gave the plots the room they needed to feel fleshed out, such as the apocalyptic "Inferno" storyline for the 3rd Doctor. However, this commitment to length severely impacted the pacing of the show overall, leaving some episodes forced to draw out stories longer than they necessarily needed to be.

Even at their best, these long epics would run afoul of the extended pacing, as it required stretching out the plot and making room for near-constant cliffhangers to close out the individual episodes. In weaker stories, the length only exemplified the flaws by drawing them out for sometimes a dozen episodes. This also meant that monsters and threats that don't quite work end up taking an unfortunate amount of time. While some of the early Doctor Who adventures justified their length, having all of them conform to that lengthy approach only exemplifies the problems with the show's weaker entries.

8 Older Doctor Who Episodes Were More Formulaic

An Over-Reliance On A Relatively Basic Storytelling Structure

One of the best elements of Doctor Who as a franchise is the way the series can inherently hop around to any period or location to play with all sorts of genres. That tonal experimentation allowed the best of old Doctor Who to embrace comedic beats, jump into heady sci-fi, or embrace some surprisingly impactful human stories. However, over the years the series became driven by a particular format and formula. The result was episodes that blended together and became forgettable.

The shorter run-time and more consistently self-contained stories of the modern Doctor Who allows for a more flexible ability to play with the story structure of the series. The Doctor and his Companions would arrive somewhere unexpected and dangerous, encounter an alien threat, learn a lesson, and move on. This format of adventure is a solid baseline for the show, but over-reliance on this style of storytelling — especially with the aforementioned long-running plot-lines — could produce forgettable entries that followed the same basic formula way too often.

7 Doctor Who's Old Special Effects Could Be Hilariously Bad

The Special Effects On Doctor Who Are Infamously Cheesy

Doctor Who's special effects during the initial run of the show were indicative of the era, with basic props and costumes meant to replicate the show's ambitious sci-fi settings. However, classic Doctor Who couldn't always keep up with the concepts presented in the scripts. This led the producers to resort to creative solutions that didn't always translate to television screens. The special effects and costumes could be bizarre and didn't always work, adding unintentional comedy to the show.

Old episodes of Doctor Who are infamous to this day for their cheesy effects, with clear puppets and repurposed costumes filling many classic episodes of the sci-fi series. Even when compared to other sci-fi shows of the era, Doctor Who could stand out due to the bizarre nature of many of its enemies. The Daleks were prone to little accidents and mistakes during filming, helping transform the Doctor's most fearsome foes into a punchline in nerd circles.

6 Doctor Who's Inconsistent Lore Can Be Very Confusing

Time-Lord Law Is All Over The Place

The Doctor is a Time-Lord, hailing from the distant and advanced world of Galifrey. Introduced during "The War Games" arc during the 2nd Doctor's run on the show, Galifrey is a setting that invited plenty of unique touches and unexpected lore, especially as Doctor Who went on. However, as the show repeatedly returned to the Time-Lord home world, more revelations and unique touches were added to the setting. Over time, these additions only grew more and more contradictory and confusing.

Rules on Doctor Who's regeneration were introduced but then tweaked by other characters, and the firm rules of the Time-Lord society were often changed. Character archetypes would repeat, lore would be changed with little warning, and the hard sci-fi setting often gets lost in the minutia of its inconsistent roles. The Time-Lord society was an interesting way to expand on the lord of early Doctor Who, but a lack of clear and consistent world-building made these aspects of the show more confounding than they needed to be.

5 Older Doctor Who Is Missing Some Important Episodes

Fans Will Likely Never See The First Full Regeneration Episode

As was customary at the time, the BBC had a habit of erasing old content that they didn't intend to air anymore — including classic episodes of Doctor Who. Due to the lack of regularly available technology that could record these broadcasts, several episodes of Doctor Who ended up expunged, seemingly forever. At the time of this writing, almost a hundred episodes of classic Doctor Who are believed to be lost. Every once in a while, recordings of the lost episodes have been discovered.

Meanwhile, certain episodes have been given animated fillers that help flesh out the episodes. This means that many of the serialized storylines from the early seasons of the show have survived in some form. However, this makes it impossible to do a complete run of the show, including several notable early entries in this series. This includes the concluding episode to "The Tenth Planet" from the fourth season of the show, which included the debut of the Cybermen and the very first regeneration in Doctor Who.

4 Classic Doctor Who Episodes Had Production Problems That Impact Watchability

It's Really Hard To Understand The Show Sometimes

Doctor Who wasn't working with a budget anything near what the show receives now, even when taking inflation into effect. Beyond that, the show's production in the 1960s and 1970s meant the producers behind the series didn't have technology that compares to the filmmaking gear of today. The result was that many early Doctor Who episodes suffered from technical woes that couldn't simply be fixed in post, leaving them harder to digest by modern standards. Many early episodes of Doctor Who had to be re-recorded due to on-set audio problems.

This resulted in a disconnect from the visuals and the audio in certain episodes. The production woes only got worse in the early seasons of the show, leaving many episodes full of bloopers and mistakes that are hard to miss from a modern viewing perspective. The result is that many classic episodes of Doctor Who are far harder to watch than they should be. Attempts to fix these issues have been somewhat successful with the animated fill-in episodes produced to replace the missing episodes, but it still serves as an unexpected hurdle of returning to early episodes of the show.

3 Doctor Who's Morals Can Be Too Blunt For Their Own Good

Some Morals Landed With The Subtlety Of An Anvil

Doctor Who's expansive journeys all across the cosmos featured some of TV's best sci-fi villains and monsters, using those stories to explore powerful metaphors about life and society. However, the show also tended to be blunt in a way that could be unintentionally hilarious, especially when it came to the moral lessons of the show. At its heart, Doctor Who has always been a children's show, so having moral-driven plots makes sense. However, there are some episodes of the original show that were incredibly blunt about their attempts to include messages in plotlines.

The eco-friendly elements of episodes like seasons 10's "The Green Death" and season 22's "The Two Doctors" stand out years later, whereas the Seventh Doctor's adventures featured multiple blunt (if accurate) appraisals of Margaret Thatcher, who was in power at the time of the show's production. The most infamous example of this is the four-part season 15 story "The Sun Makers," which pitted Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor against the sci-fi version of a taxman to make a harsh appraisal of the very idea of income tax.

2 Older Doctor Who Episodes Sometimes Have Dated Stereotypes

Doctor Who's Use Of Certain Stereotypes Are Perhaps Its Most Dated Element

As with any show produced in older eras, there are elements of Doctor Who that just haven't aged well. Society has marched forward, and the insulting stereotypes featured in the show directed toward certain communities were never okay — although they weren't likely intended to be offensive at the time of its production. Still, it can make returning to certain classic episodes uncomfortable. While the show featured many strong female characters throughout the show, some companions like Polly were often treated as glorified secretaries for the Doctor.

More frustrating are the occasional rough portrayals of ethnicities in the history of the show. Some stories, like season 19's "Four To Doomsday" featured portrayals of Indigenous Australians that some consider ignorant. Season 14's "Talons of Weng-Chiang" featured white actors playing characters of Chinese descent, and even included a slur. This even goes back to the villain known as Toymaker. The villain, played by Michael Gambon in a costume meant to evoke Chinese styles, was updated into a far more benign European character when he was reintroduced in the modern era as the villain of "The Giggle."

1 Classic Doctor Who Isn't Always A Heroic Character

The Doctor Used To Have A Lot Of Rougher Edges

The Doctor has been many different characters over the years, with the built-in ability to simply regenerate the character to introduce other actors as the Doctor allowing the creatives to tweak and change the character over time. However, a constant of the character has always meant to be his curious and noble side, defining his decision to go by the moniker of the Doctor. However, many stories in the classic Doctor Who feature versions of the Time-Lord who's downright heartless, which gave the character some genuinely harsh edges.

The 1st Doctor wasn't afraid to insult his allies and belittle them for failing to keep up with his brilliance. He even came close to murdering a caveman they encountered on his journeys in the very first adventure, "An Unearthly Child." Other versions of the character had harsher elements as well, with the 6th Doctor infamously lashing out at his companion and trying to strangle Peri. It's one of the most surprising elements of the old show especially when compared to the modern iteration of Doctor Who, and a harsh reality for fans to contend with.

Classic episodes of Doctor Who are now streaming on Tubi.