When did Doctor Who first air in the United States? Which Doctor? Was it Tom Baker? That was my first exposure to any of the series, first on VHS and then on PBS. And I'm guessing it first aired on PBS in the US?
shareAll I know was that it was before 1982 when I first started watching it, on PBS.
shareI believe the earliest showings were in 1972 with Jon Pertwee, but I could be mistaken.
shareIIRC, my local PBS station first showed Doctor Who with Robot: Part One (1974) circa 1980.
They went through most, if not all, of Tom Baker's era, then went back and aired Pertwee's entire run, and then went further back and showed the black and white episodes starting with An Unearthly Child (1963).
My PBS station started with The Five Doctors in 1988. Then, right after that on the same night, they showed Robot. It got enough pledges that Sunday night, the night before I started my freshman year in high school, and so a few weeks later, they started showing the Tom Baker run on Saturday nights at 9 PM CST. They showed the Baker run twice and then people stopped donating because they didn't want to pay for what they'd already paid for. IMO, if the station had bought other Doctors, people probably would have continued supporting Doctor Who.
shareMy PBS station started with The Five Doctors in 1988... IMO, if the station had bought other Doctors, people probably would have continued supporting Doctor Who. - Dr Wily
I started watching on a UHF independent channel in 1978, but the first 2 or 3 years of Pertwee ran in some markets in 1972 or 73.
In the kingdom of the blind, you're the village idiot.
I remember seeing one episode from "The Ambassadors of Death" (as I later found out) back in 1972 or 1973. This was on PBS. I just happen to remember where I was living at the time and the circumstances that led me to watch it so I can date it within a year or two.
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Trust me. I’m The Doctor.
The first time I saw was on WOR about 1977. I didn't see it on our local PBS stations in the metropolitan NYC area until a few years later.
No blah, blah, blah!
Don't know the definitive answer to your question, but I first watched Tom Baker stories around 1982 or 1983 on San Jose, California's, PBS affiliate KTEH (now KQEH) when I lived in the Silicon Valley. "The Seeds of Doom" is the first one I remember. A few years later, I'd moved to Southern California and rediscovered DW on one of the PBS affiliates, probably KCET or KOCE, as they were airing the Sylvester McCoy stories. "Paradise Towers" was the first one I remember then.
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Pertwee episodes shown in the early 1970's seem correct to me.
Living in the Philadelphia area I started watching Dr. Who - soon joined by my nephew - on my grandmothers's TV on Sundays on a local PBS channel with the first Tom Baker episodes in the mid or late 1970s.
But years earlier I had seen the last scenes of "Dr. Who and the Silurians" on a Philadelphia area TV station sometime after 1968 and probably about 1972 or 1973 I guess.
well, apparently ... 1965 ?
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Balotelli...Aguerooooo! I swear you will never see anything like this ever again!
Yes, I recall watching it in the Wash., D.C., TV market in the mid 1960s when I was in high school. It was a weird new experience for me, unlike anything else that was on at the time.
And that intro theme music was mesmerizing. The music was done before electronic synthesizers arrived. They did it by recording single notes on bits of analog tape, along with some electronic oscillator sounds, and then splicing them together.
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.–J.B. Haldane
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My local Retro TV affiliate couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a Retro affiliate or a Telemundo affiliate. It kept alternating back and forth between both, pre-empting Doctor Who for me many times. I think they've finally settled on being a Retro affiliate, though.
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My Retro TV affiliate? It's 15.1 out of Evansville, Indiana, I believe. I think they're WYYW.
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And knowing is half the battle! G.I. JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOE!
shareFor us in Chicago back in the mid 70's, it was a late nite Sunday PBS (WTTW) telecast; end of a British comedy invasion with lead-ins of "Monty Python's Flying Circus, The 2 Ronnies, Dave Allen, & maybe Bennie Hill!" I'm strange and appreciate their humor collecting episodes of "Agony" & "Are You Being Served?!" Unfortunately it's on BETA format so donated them with a 'player' to local library! Too old to carry around those heavy tapes; not like my VHS collection is any lighter!
- - http://scifiblogs3.blogspot.com/ - - Sci-fi, Batman, & E:FC
- - http://www.childrenofrassilon.com - - Homage to DW & B7
I had to go through the process of converting my Beta tapes to VHS when they stopped mass producing Beta VCR's. I still have my Beta tapes and VCR, too. The VCR plays, but doesn't rewind. If you insert a tape, it starts by fast forwarding it a bit, stopping, and repeating until you press play.
shareI saved the mechanisms in multiple machines by have a re-winder at every TV/Player station in my home! I blew a lot on players and tapes 35 years ago! It was a bargain to get tapes on sale for $9.95 for an L750! Now they're giving away T120's under $2! The only thing I have converted to DVD is all 52 episodes of "Blake's 7" a friend made for me for Xmas 10 years ago!
- - http://scifiblogs3.blogspot.com/ - - Sci-fi, Batman, & E:FC
- - http://www.childrenofrassilon.com - - Homage to DW & B7
Someone I knew got in the ground floor of VHS when tapes were $20 apiece. She figured she'd hold on to them and sell them when the price went up for a good profit. Of course, the prices went down considerably and she lost a lot. It was a benefit for me because she was left with a lot of tapes and was taping anything off of TV to use them up. I got access to these tapes around 1995, with tons of stuff taped from local and network programming in the early 1980's. There was even an original, first run broadcast of The Day After.
shareI guess I'm a lot older with the main part of my collection sci-fi and tennis! Have all the 'Doctor Who' episodes going back to Pertwee, mentioned "Blake's 7," and I have the mini-series and epis. of "V!" That goes back to the 80's! Have tons of movies and recorded NBC sat. line-up of "227, Amen, The Golden Girls, & Empty Nest!" Have a little of just about everything; even stuff I didn't want! More for friends and family! Gotten rid of half this junk, but still holding on like they'll make a comeback!
- - http://scifiblogs3.blogspot.com/ - - Sci-fi, Batman, & E:FC
- - http://www.childrenofrassilon.com - - Homage to DW & B7
One of the earliest things I ever taped was an episode of The Cosby Show as it premiered. I was testing to see if the timer worked. Since I got a VCR in youth, a lot of my Beta collection was episodes of The Transformers. In fact, the first thing I ever taped to make sure the VCR worked was an episode of Inspector Gadget.
I managed to get the US edited version, with new inserts, of The Evil Of Frankenstein from a local NBC affiliate when they aired it at 10:30 one Sunday night. That same affiliate was where I taped The Cosby Show episode. It still has never been released on home video, to my knowledge, and probably never will be. The DVD version is the original UK cut.
Besides collecting movies, my passion was SCTV; recording those from beginning to end in '81! I could still crack up over Guy Caballero, Edith Prickly, or Lola Heatherton! "I want to bear your children! Haaaaa!" Catherine O'Hara was crazy funny!
- - http://scifiblogs3.blogspot.com/ - - Sci-fi, Batman, & E:FC
- - http://www.childrenofrassilon.com - - Homage to DW & B7