I remember back in my day (which was 2009), when I was first trying to get into Doctor Who, the sheer pain in the butt it was to try to find legitimate ways to watch a lot of the classic series. A few things were streaming on the nascent Netflix online platform, the DVDs were trickling out over a matter of years and cost $20 a pop, and you can forget about anything for free. Well, how times have changed. Not only do we have things like Pluto TV and Tubi running 24-hour classic Who channels and BritBox with the whole shebang, YouTube is offering full serials without commercials.
The YouTube channel Doctor Who: Classic has a whopping 68 classic serials available in full, spanning all seven of the Doctors from 1963 to 1989. That’s by no means a complete list of stories, but it’s a dark good smattering. I also want to point out that the classic series was serialized, meaning anywhere between two and 12 episodes in a row would be the same story with the same writer, generally 25 minutes per week. Here, each video you click on is the whole story, so anywhere between 50 minutes (“The King’s Demons” from 1983) and four hours (“The War Games” from 1966).
Each Doctor has their own playlist on the channel, but the stories are in no particular order which is, I’ll go ahead and say, infuriating. In order to help you out, I’m going to embed my favorite story for each Doctor from the collections offered. Because why not! Enjoy below.
The First Doctor
The original three seasons of Doctor Who is not everyone’s cup of tea in the year 2025. It’s pretty slow, it’s often very quiet, and, like a lot of British TV, it feels kind of like a filmed play. The more you watch, however, I think William Hartnell’s avuncular, often irritable take on the character he originated will grow on you. Now I can confidently say I love him and most of his run.
As for which of the stories I’d recommend, it’s kind of a no-brainer. While “The Aztecs,” “The Romans,” and “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” are all iconic in their own way, they can’t hold a candle to “The Time Meddler,” the final story of season two. This is the first story where the Doctor encounters another Time Lord (race unnamed at this point) other than his granddaughter Susan (who left the show earlier in the year). It’s a brilliant little snapshot of everything great about Hartnell and what writer Dennis Spooner brought to the series.
The Second Doctor
Not to bog you down with a lot of television history, a great number of episodes from the 1960s are missing, likely completely destroyed. A number of Hartnell episodes are gone, but Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor got hit much harder. Of his 19 serials, only six aren’t missing any episodes at all. That number used to be even higher. Over the years, several episodes have been recovered and the BBC has commissioned animated reconstructions for a great number of the remaining ones.
The YouTube channel has eight serials on offer and it’s an odd smattering. While my very favorite Second Doctor story is his final one, the 10-part epic “The War Games” which culminates in the Time Lords (now named) catching up to the Doctor and forcing exile and regeneration, it’s hard for me to recommend that one if you haven’t ever seen him before. (But do go watch it when you feel ready!)
For our purposes here, I’m going to embed “The Mind Robber,” a) because it’s fully intact, and 2) because it’s relatively short.
The Third Doctor
The Third Doctor era, starring Jon Pertwee, is my personal favorite. It’s the first in color, takes place almost entirely on Earth with the Doctor as part of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, investigating alien invasions and mad scientists and the like. It’s very heavy on action and clearly took inspiration from the James Bond franchise.
The channel has all four stories from season seven, easily the best single season in the classic era. The stories are mature, intelligent, intense, and compelling all the way through. Three of the four of them are also really long, seven episodes apiece. So if you have nearly three hours, you can’t go wrong with “The Silurians,” “The Ambassadors of Death,” or “Inferno.” “Inferno” is my very favorite story ever.
But for embedding I’ve chosen a very atypical and very fun story from Pertwee’s third season. “Carnival of Monsters” is the work of Robert Holmes, to many the most important and best writer on the series ever. I won’t say too much more about it because the unfolding mystery provides half the enjoyment.
The Fourth Doctor
Everybody loves Tom Baker’s portrayal of the Doctor and was for many years the Doctor and era most Americans knew. He also stuck around in the role for a whopping seven seasons, far and away the longest tenure. As a result, in my estimation, his run had the biggest variations and not always for the better. Luckily, of the 16 stories on the channel, most of them are good to great.
Stories like “Genesis of the Daleks” and “City of Death” are stone cold classics and others such as “Full Circle” and “The Sun Makers” are lowkey fan faves. But I am always partial to the show going in horrific places so I’m embedding “Horror of Fang Rock,” a gloomy alien slasher movie set in a Victorian lighthouse. Runner up would be “The Image of the Fendahl,” a downbeat Lovecraftian mystery. All good!
The Fifth Doctor
Once we hit the ’80s, I have to say the script quality starts to dip and dive at times. Peter Davison, the youngest actor to play the character before the modern era, had stories where he and his three companions would just bicker for no reason quite a bit. Because conflict is drama, I guess. And while stories such as “Kinda,” “Enlightenment,” “The Five Doctors,” and “The Caves of Androzani” are among his best, none of them are on the YouTube channel as of now.
So I’m left to choose a weird one that I nevertheless enjoy. “Mawdryn Undead” from season 20 is one of the few timey wimey stories of the entire classic series and sees the return of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) playing the character in two separate time periods while the Doctor has to contend with aliens who want to steal his regenerations, and a villain forcing a new companion to assassinate him. It’s a strange story, but I like it.
The Sixth Doctor
Far and away my least favorite years of the series, though almost entirely not the fault of star Colin Baker. Behind-the-scenes issues, low ratings, and an ever-greater reliance on violence and death make it feel way less like Doctor Who. Such were the Thatcher 1980s.
All of season 22 is on the YouTube, and none of season 23 which was much better overall. “Attack of the Cybermen,” “The Two Doctors,” and “Timelash” should be avoided like the plague. “Vengeance on Varos” and “Revelation of the Daleks” are good, but with caveats. The only story I would say is legitimately good (and maybe others would disagree with me) is “The Mark of the Rani,” a historical-set adventure which sees the Doctor square off against both the Master and the amoral Time Lady the Rani. It’s fab.
The Seventh Doctor
Finally we have Sylvester McCoy’s whimsical yet eldritch take on the Doctor, which rounds out the original run. His era got better as it went along, though only one story from the brilliant final season (“Ghost Light,” my least favorite, interestingly enough) is on the YouTube channel. And while “The Happiness Patrol” and “The Greatest Story in the Galaxy” have a lot to recommend them, there really is only one answer for embedding here.
Season 25 began with the banger “Remembrance of the Daleks” in which the Doctor and new companion Ace end up back in the 1960s, just after he initially left in the series premiere, and has to contend with two warring factions of Daleks. It’s so good and might well be the best Dalek story in color. I said what I said!
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.