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I was recently asked--by someone who had never watched an episode of Doctor Who--where they should start with the series. If you didn't grow-up watching the show, you may never fully understand how much some people cherish it. On the other hand, it's never too late to get started.

Doctor Who began in 1963 as a British television show to educate children about history while they watched the adventures of a time traveller called "The Doctor" and his companions. The focus of the show quickly shifted to a more mature audience, blending humor, science fiction, adventure, and horror. (Millions of children still watch the show; peering cautiously from behind the sofa to see if the scary bit is over has become one of the universally shared experiences of British childhood.) As of 2009, Doctor Who is still in production.

The Doctor's time machine is called the TARDIS. It looks like a big blue police emergency telephone box, and is far larger on the inside than the outside. Though the Doctor looks human, he is a member of an alien race called the Time Lords. When a Time Lord dies, he is able to regenerate a new body. (This conceit explains why the Doctor has been played by ten different actors.) The Doctor almost always travels with one or more companions, who play Watson to the Doctor's Holmes.

Many episodes of Doctor Who have been produced since 1963. Some are better than others. If you ask ten fans which episodes are the best, you'll get ten different answers. However, in chronological order, here are ten very good episodes, which should give you a feel for the series:

• The Dalek Invasion of Earth (William Hartnell, 1964)
• The Tomb of the Cybermen (Patrick Troughton, 1975)
• Spearhead from Space (Jon Pertwee, 1975)
• Genesis of the Daleks (Tom Baker, 1975)
• The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Tom Baker, 1977)
• City of Death (Tom Baker, 1979)
• The Caves of Androzani (Peter Davison, 1984)
• Remembrance of the Daleks (Sylvester McCoy, 1989)
• The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (Christopher Eccleston, 2005)
• Blink (Davd Tennant, 2007)

UPDATE Since compiling this list, I found quite a good list of the of the top 25 Doctor Who episoces. It's worth a look, particularly because of the brief commentary attached to each recommended episode.

I have only just discovered that Joss Whedon (of Buffy and Firefly fame) will be launching a web series called Dr. Horrible. Excellent. The trailer is available now, and the first episode premiers tomorrow.

I'm really, really digging the new season of Doctor Who. I'm not entirely sure why, but season four reminds me of classic Doctor Who much more than the previous three seasons. Episodes two and three have given me a serious nostalgia trip. I'm not one hundred percent sure I like the new companion, though.

I think I've just had a minor epiphany. It's no good trying to pull plots out of a void. Maybe a better way to say that is that trying to choose what does happen when literally anything can happen is paralyzing. A writer needs to create his own universe by defining what is possible and impossible, likely and unlikely. A fantasy or scifi writer does this more literally when they create a fantastical world, but I think all writers must do it to some extent. There are some thing that can never happen in a Hemingway (or whoever) story, because Hemingway's universe has constraints. I need to define my constraints.

I'm now engaged in reading a lot of science fiction, with the aim of writing in the genre. I have to admit that I'm not a huge scifi fan, if you take fan to its "fanatic" etymological root. (I understand there is some disagreement of the "fanatic" etymology, and some propose "fancier" as an alternative.) I read a lot of scifi in my youth, but mostly stopped reading it around the end of middle school. On the other hand, I never miss an episode of Doctor Who.

I started reading scifi again last year. I happened to notice that there was a scifi convention (Penguicon) happening now only a few miles from my home. I didn't have any plans, so I decided to attend. I admit that my heart was colored with irony and cynicism; I anticipated a sort of nerd safari. The con stripped all that away, though. Once I was there, I loved the con without irony.

The mystery genre gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling more often than scifi stuff, but mystery readers and writers just don't have the kind of community that's grown around scifi. I want to be part of scifi fandom. I want to belong.

I read Robert Silverberg's short story "The Pope of Chimps" yesterday. I found it very excellent scifi—strongly speculative near future hard scifi that talks about humanity. A remarkable story, and Silverberg makes it look easy.