Why You Should Stop Saying Don’t Skip Nine
Background and Disclaimers:
I’ve pretty much been a Doctor Who fan my entire life, I was 2.5 in 2005, never missed an episode from the time I was ~10, although the bulk of my argument is about newcomers, thats not my experience with the show, so take it with a pinch of salt
I’m a huge fan of the ninth Doctor, he’s in my top 3, I’ve watched series 1 more than any other, I think if someone is a fan of another era of Doctor Who and hasn’t watched, they absolutely should, its fantastic, it enhances everything that comes after it
Saying Don’t Skip Nine and Spreading Posts that Say it is Gatekeeping, and I’m Tired of Pretending its Not
By and large, I would say the Doctor Who fandom, or at least the parts that don’t use Doctor Who as an excuse to complain about a non-existant “woke agenda”, is a pretty friendly one. There’s no big cannon arguments because everyone understands its not worth getting into arguments about, nobody minds who you ship, theres no character thats universally hated or loved that people will be shitty about if you go against the grain. Maybe its just the people I follow, but its a good fandom to be a part of.
The one exception to this, the one thing about the (normal parts of) the fandom that I find to be toxic and offputting is the widespread nature of the phrase “don’t skip nine” and its variants I’ve seen over the years, along the lines of “if you skipped nine I dont respect/respect less you/your opinion”, “If someone tells you to skip nine, they don’t respect you”.
The intention is to encourage people to watch Eccleston, who’s considered to be the most overlooked of the modern Doctors. At Doctor Who’s pique in popularity, this was true, and 1 season wasn’t a lot to watch before getting to the stuff you wanted, “don’t skip nine” felt more like an encouragement not to pass him over just because he was less popular, at least within the fandom.
But as time’s gone on, and the number of series has increased, its perfectly reasonable for a person getting into the show for the first time to choose to start from a more recent point. And the show’s designed for that at its foundations, its designed to refresh itself on a regular basis, and in the new show, that period is always treated as though new people will be watching and it resets the continuity it can, and reintroduces the continuity it can’t.
So, let’s imagine you are this hypothetical newcomer, and you started watching with, say, 13, and you liked it enough to join the fandom. Are you going to feel like your welcome if you see a post that says “don’t skip nine”, or worse, one that says people who skip nine aren’t to be respected? Is that going to make you want to explore the show further? Is it encouraging?
At this point in time, in my opinion, the phrase only serves to gatekeep, I don’t see any real difference between something like “don’t skip nine” and “you’re not a real fan unless you watch the show in this specific way”, and at this point i’m just sick of hearing it outside of the context of a recommendation of where to start for people who've never seen the show, which, if you are saying it in fandom spaces, is not the audience a majority of the time.
If you’re a doctor who fan reading this, and you initially skiped nine, hell if you never watched him and don’t plan to, theres nothing wrong with that, your not less of a fan because you started somewhere else, that friend who told you to start at a later doctor didn’t respect you less, they thought you would like another doctor more, there is no right way, no right order, in which to watch doctor who, the way you did it made you a fan, and thats the bit that actually matters.
