Fans looking to start catching up on the current run of Doctor Who (2005-present) can stream it with Amazon Prime, but it hasn’t always been easy for the viewers who wanted to explore the more than 50 years of Whovian canon until now.
While other streaming services such as Netflix have offered serials—multi-episode stories—of Classic Who (1963-1989) in the past, it was difficult for viewers to access those episodes until now. BritBox, a streaming service that offers new and classic BBC and ITV television shows for American audiences, will now offer more than 550 Classic Who episodes for subscribers.
“It will be the most comprehensive offering of Classic Who,” BritBox president Soumya Sriraman said. “These (episodes) have been different places before (to stream), but never as many and never as comprehensively.”
Although it does offer an overwhelming number of Classic Who episodes, there are still dozens missing from BritBox. That includes 90 “lost” episodes—of which no known copies exist after the BBC reused tape containing the sole recording of episodes, largely in the early years of Doctor Who—and 20 episodes that BritBox couldn’t obtain the rights for. According to Sriraman, available audio from some of those “lost” episodes are also available.
Depending on what you’re looking for with Classic Who, BritBox’s Classic Who landing page has a variety of ways to explore. You can search by Doctor (William Hartnell up to Sylvester McCoy), by companion, or whether you’re in the mood to look at older episodes featuring the villains like the Daleks, the Cybermen, or the Master. It features a playlist of best episodes for fans who are looking to get into Classic Who or the work of Who alum. While it doesn’t appear to feature the 1996 Doctor Who movie starring the Eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann, it does extend to Who-related properties such as the TV movie An Adventure in Space in Time, which dramatizes Doctor Who’s beginnings, and other videos.
A subscription to BritBox costs $6.99 a month after a seven-day free trial and also has other offerings such as Blackadder, EastEnders, and the 1995 television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (the one with Colin Firth). You can search for other British offerings without a subscription.
H/T USA Today