I'm currently trying to catch up on the Tom Baker era, but finding good material is fucking impossible.
Netflix hard-copy rentals has the majority of Classic Who if you're willing to spend a bit more money. Their collection isn't perfect, but it's certainly better than the
pitiful amount of Classic Who that their streaming service offers. >>
Or if you're willing to step outside the limits of legal options, they're not too difficult to find online if you do a bit of digging. DailyMotion in particular usually has a lot of the episodes.
Anywhoooo on another note, I for one would like to say that I'm not a Moffat-hater. The show's certainly
different in his run than it is in Davies' era, but I don't think that means the show "isn't itself" anymore because the show is
always changing. I can see why a lot of people might think it's too different when they only knew the 2005 era prior to that, but, really, change of this sort is natural for the show. Davies was just one showrunner. He didn't define the show. Neither will Moffat. Things just
change. Really, the entire show runs on change -- the Doctor, his companions, and all the writers -- nothing stays the same for too long. And that's why it just seems silly to me to give up on it so easily, because, I mean, come back in a few years and you might find that you love it again -- because whatever it was that you didn't like is already long gone. That's just how the show is.
I will say, though, that I think the transition from Tennant to Smith was horribly executed, and probably the reason why so many people stopped watching at that point. Because unlike in the case of
nearly every other regeneration the show ever gave us ever, they just changed too many things at once. Most of the time, when the Doctor regenerates, they make sure he still has a companion that stays with him through it, and for good reason -- it gives the audience something familiar to hold onto while they adjust to a very new Doctor. This is what they did for the majority of the Classic Who regenerations, and even the other two New Who regenerations: from Nine to Ten we still had Rose, and from Eleven to Twelve we still had Clara. Even if you don't like Rose or Clara, the point remains that it's easier to take in such major changes in the show when other major things remain constant.
But with Ten to Eleven, though, we got: new companions, a new TARDIS interior, even a new
screwdriver, not to mention a completely new showrunner who would bring a very different feel to the show. It's very easy to see how a lot of fans would see that as too much to adapt to, especially when most of those fans have only seen New Who, and therefore have not only probably gotten rather attached to Tennant, who had been around for so much longer than Eccleston, and when their only prior experience with regeneration was Nine to Ten and, once again, not only was the Nine-Ten transition much more smoothly done, but Nine was around for such a short amount of time that it's harder to become as attached to him. And, all of this gets even worse when you realize that people who have only seen New Who would not only see Tennant as their only long-running Doctor, but they would also see Davies as the only showrunner the show's ever had
at all. So this was probably the
worst possible regeneration to fuck up. And yet, they fucked up.
I feel like a lot of people might've stuck with the show for longer if the Davies/Moffat trade-off wasn't so awkward and jarring. Oh well. >>