The TV show Doctor Who is now over 60 years old. The question remains for some: Why Watch Doctor Who? If you know, you know; if you don’t know, click that link to learn about the time-traveling madman in a blue box.
But the question we’re here to answer is not why, but how. Unfortunately, you can’t watch the entirety of Doctor Who, all the way back to the first episode that aired in 1963, with just a Disney+ subscription alone. In the US, you’ll need access to a few different streamers to access all the adventures. This might seem daunting, but it’s a lot easier than decades ago when you had to wait for your local PBS channel to air repeats of the show on Saturdays at 11 p.m. after Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Here's where to find everything:
Classic Who (1963 to 1986)
In the 23 years of the original run, the BBC created 26 seasons (“series” in UK parlance) featuring seven different actors playing the Doctor. That happens because the character would regenerate into a new actor each time the current star wanted to leave, got sick, or got sacked.
Where can you stream Classic Doctor Who?
Tubi
Tubi has all 26 seasons, but each Doctor’s episodes are grouped, so there’s one for the Frist Doctor, and other for the Second, and a different for the Third, and so on.
Tubi has a Classic Who “live channel” that is constantly streaming the show, though not in the order of airing. There’s also a “New to Who” section that features seven “seasons;” each one has the episodes that are considered the best of each Doctor with the corresponding season number. Because yes, it’s true, there’s a lot of Who from the last 60 years worth skipping, even for die-hard fans.
BritBox
BritBox, the streaming home for much of the BBC’s content viewable in the US, has the same 26 seasons of Doctor Who. Some services like Reelgood list it as 27 sessions—that so-called 27th is a set of specials created in 2013 called “The Doctors Revisited,” — one special for each of the 7 original Doctors.
BritBox also has two specials that come up when you search: The first is an edit of an unaired pilot from 1963. The second is a comedy short called The Five(ish) Doctors; it stems from the 50th anniversary in 2013, following several classic Doctor actors trying to break into the modern Doctor Who set.
Doctor Who’s first six seasons, starring the First Doctor (William Hartnell) and Second (Patrick Troughton), are riddled with missing episodes. In the 60s, the BBC would simply record over master tapes to reuse the media. Many episodes that were lost have been recreated thanks to fans who recorded the audio, and those have been used to make new animated versions of the episodes themselves. Some, but not all, of those animated recreations are streaming. For example, BritBox has all the animated Power of the Daleks episodes. However, many are only available in home-video-DVD sales.
Doctor Who: The Movie (May 1996)
The 1990s were a dark time for Whovians, with no original, in-canon content featuring the Timelord from Gallifrey at all—except for this one movie. (In fiction, canon means it’s official and really happened. With franchises like Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Star Wars, that means it had to happen on screen.)
The movie was made for TV. Weirder still, it was made for the United States. It was meant to be a starting point for a whole new series, but it’s canon since the seventh Doctor, actor Sylvester McCoy, did a cameo at the beginning to regenerate into star Paul McGann.
McGann has solidified himself into the part over the intervening years, using his unmistakable voice to play the Doctor’s eighth incarnation over and over in audio dramas created in the UK by publisher Big Finish. The Eighth Doctor later got a short film during the show's 50th anniversary year in 2013. It entrenched him completely, showing his regeneration.
Where can you stream Doctor Who: The Movie?
YouTube
Technically, legally, you can’t stream it for free. However, there is currently an upload of the full film on YouTube. It probably won’t last long after this article is published.
It’s not legally on any US subscription streaming service at the moment. You can’t even buy it. It is only official on Prime Video and Stan in the UK, according to Reelgood.
You can also watch the 50th anniversary short, The Night of the Doctor, on YouTube, totally legally. It’s on the BBC channel if you're interested.
Want more background on the movie? Watch Doctor Who Am I, a 2023 documentary, streaming on Tubi, Plex, Fandango, Hoopla, Kanopy, or Prime Video. It’s all about the screenwriter for this “infamous” movie when he returns to the world of Who fandom to see if he’s still despised. (Why was he so hated? Back then, the Doctor didn’t give kisses or claim to be half-human…but sometimes such ideas have a way of returning.)
Modern Who (2005 to 2022)
Doctor Who returned to TV proper in 2005 with a much more Buffy: The Vampire Slayer approach to storytelling, better budgets, and yet fully accepted its past. Since that relaunch featuring actor Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor, the show managed to go through several more Doctors, introduce a couple of previous incarnations we didn’t previously know about, such as the War Doctor (John Hurt) and the Fugitive Doctor (Jo Martin), and deliver on the promise that Time Lords can regenerate into any gender.
They even went so far as to make the Doctor the “timeless child” who’s mystery was the basis for everything the Time Lords ever accomplished. It’s a bit much, but the show is sticking with it. For now. The future is a mystery, and Doctor Who is never above a major retcon.
Where can you stream modern Doctor Who?
Max
In the US, the rights for the shows featuring the Ninth to the Thirteenth Doctors are entirely with Max if you want to watch via a subscription. That includes all the holiday specials and even the “non-season” from 2009 when David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) bid farewell to the roll by starring in four “specials” over the course of the year (all are tacked on to the end of Season 4). That way, you can see them all in the same order as they were transmitted originally. (You can also buy or rent all 13 seasons on Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, Microsoft, Fandango, and YouTube.)
There’s a couple of short films that are canon to the tales of the Doctor during this time, such as the aforementioned The Night of the Doctor above. The first and most fun is Time Crash (2007), which you can watch below. It managed to bring together the Fifth Doctor from the 1980s with the Tenth—two men who also happened to be related, as actor Peter Davison is David Tennant's father-in-law.
Ncuti Who (2023 to Present)
We separate out the new Who because it’s got a new streaming home, not only in the US, but worldwide (at least outside of the UK). After the 13th Doctor regenerated in 2023, there were three specials that happened to star David Tennant, again, returning to the role but legit playing a new incarnation, the Fourteenth Doctor, which is fine because they’ve literally all been the same person all these times. It was an emotional nostalgia fest for Whovians, as not only did Tennant return, but so did the showrunner who rebooted the show way back in 2005, Russell T. Davies.
He began this minor reboot post-regeneration with a short called Destination Skaro, to deliver a comedic look at the Doctor having a hand in the creation of his greatest enemies.
What followed were three specials to celebrate the show’s 60th anniversary and right some previous wrongs, in particular patching things up for a previous companion of the Doctor.
They lead up to another major retcon to how regeneration works and the introduction of the positively-electric Fifteenth Doctor, played with gusto and easily-spilled tears by Rwandan-Scottish actor Ncuti (pronounced En-Shoo-Tee) Gatwa. He took the helm in a fourth special for Christmas of 2023. After that, we got a full season of nine new episodes.
Where can you stream the even more modern Doctor Who?
Disney+
Disney decided to call this “season one” of the show even though we all know it’s really, technically, season 15. But you can’t fight the Mouse.
True Who Spin-Offs
K-9 and Company (1981)
Actor Elisabeth Sladen’s character of Sarah Jane Smith was very popular when she starred with the Third and Fourth Doctors in the 1970s. Enough so that she was given a spin-off…but she had to be second banana to the tin-dog. The dog being the robot K-9, also a companion of the Doctor for a while. Together, they were going to fight crime… but the show never progressed beyond the pilot. You can stream it on BritBox.
Torchwood (2006-2011)
Torchwood is an anagram for “doctor who.” It also became the name of an elite force of British secret agents fighting alien incursions on the planet, led by former Doctor companion Captain Jack Harkness. The third season in particular—which features future Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi as a human, is fantastic. You can watch all four seasons of the show on Max.
The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007-2010)
After a guest spot with K-9 on the returned Doctor Who, Sladen got another shot at a spin-off, this one decidedly more targeted at juveniles but very much in canon as it had guest visits by both the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors—plus occasional Who-specific bad guys (Sontarans!), and of course, K-9 was occasionally seen. It was sadly cut short in its fifth season by Sladen’s untimely death. All five seasons are on Max.
Class (2016)
Class was a one-season show that was clearly a spin-off from Who because it took place at the Coal Hill Academy—the school where the First Doctor’s granddaughter went in 1963—and had a guest appearance by the contemporary Doctor at the time, Peter Capaldi. It’s not streaming for free on any subscription service in the US, but you can rent or buy it on Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, Fandango, YouTube. (Free in the UK.)
Daleks! (2020)
This is an animated show made just for YouTube. It’s part of the Doctor Who channel. You can guess from the title, it’s about the fascist killer pepper-pots he’s been fighting since 1963, or time-immemorial, depending on how you measure these things.
Doctor Who: Tales of the TARDIS (2023)
In October of 2023 just ahead of the show’s 60th birthday, all 800+ episodes of Doctor Who ended up on the BBC iPlayer, a major streamer in the UK. They were given a home called The Whoniverse. It also got some exclusive content in the form of Tales of the TARDIS, with six stories that reunited previous cast members—in character— to talk about previous adventures. They went as far back as getting companions of the first and second Doctors, but even brought in a cast member from The Sarah Jane Adventures. The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Docs also put in an appearance with their fan-favorite former companions.
The Tales are also on YouTube, along with run-downs of the emotional episodes they are discussing in each.
There’s a new episode of Tales promised this week, that will probably feature the current stars talking about the backstory needed to understand the new season finale.
Non-Canon Doctor Who
Doctor Who and The Curse of Fatal Death (1999)
The only other legit-feeling Doctor Who content of the 90s was this comedy special made for the Red Nose Day charity. It’s not canon by any means, but was written by Steven Moffat, who would go on to be a writer for new Who and eventually the show-runner for the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors.
It’s entertaining especially if you’re a Whovian, as it has the Doctor cycle through several regenerations into big name actors and comedians in the UK, starting with Rowan Atkinson, and including Richard E. Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, and finally, the first hint that Gallifreyians could gender-swap, Joanna Lumley.
Where can you stream The Curse of Fatal Death?
The Comic Relief: Red Nose Day channel on YouTube has it.
“Dr. Who” (1965 and 1966)
Imagine if, during the first few years of the existence of Star Trek, a couple of movies with essentially the same premise were cranked out to take advantage of the name yet had no actual relationship with the show. Silly, right?
That happened to Doctor Who. The two films featured not an alien Time Lord (a term that didn’t come up until the 70s anyway). In this case, he was a brilliant human actually named Who. He had earned his doctorate, so he went by Dr. Who. He had a granddaughter and a time machine shaped like a police call box that was bigger on the inside. He traveled through space and time and fought alien tank Nazis called Daleks. The budgets were higher, and the star was Peter Cushing—already a Hammer Films horror legend at that point, later to become a legend to a new generation as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars.
Where can you stream the Dr. Who films?
They’re respectively called Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965, trailer above) and Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966). Neither are streaming free. You can buy or rent them on Apple, Google Play, Prime Video, Microsoft, Fandango, YouTube. You can also stream it in the UK via Channel 4.
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