Back in the day ...
Doctor Who was on PBS, but I lived in some areas that would get only 1 or 2 TV channels. So, I never really got into the Doctor Who craze.
I got cable in late 2002. I watched a program called Special Unit 2. It was an off-shoot of the Men in Black genre — aliens living among us. Then, I heard about Torchwood, which was similar. I started watching it. It revealed a lot about the Doctor Who history.
I also started watching the Sarah Jane Adventures [kid show but still entertaining], which were more of the aliens among us. [I didn’t know it at the time, but Sarah Jane was one of the companions in the old Doctor Who series.]
From all that, I got interested in Doctor Who (the newly revised series with David Tennant) which was running on the SciFi channel. I went back to the start of the renewal with Christopher Eccleston and began watching.
Considering the state of science fiction on TV and in the movies, the Doctor Who series is better than most.
Christopher Eccleston is still my favorite Dr
Wow, I followed exactly the same discovery process. Weird.