The classic series was different in many ways to the reboot, as I’m sure you now know if you’ve managed to struggle through the old episodes. The familiar elements didn’t change much from story to story, the main appeal of the show being the fantastic plots. The show only occasionally used story arcs that spanned across multiple adventures, and long term character development was kept to a minimum. I think the longevity of the show owes a lot to it treating each adventure separately, and avoiding any soap-opera style antics with the main cast across stories.

It’s rather amusing to hear you wonder how Susan is affected by the Time War — in those classic days we knew there wasn’t any point in getting anal about the nitty gritty detail, because it was being made a story at a time with only the occasional nod to continuity. In many ways that was its charm.

You get a lot more out of the classic episodes if you understand the era they were made in and what went into making them. For example, studio work in the Hartnell stories was not shot as individual scenes then edited together (as it would be today), it was often shot as-live with actors scurrying between sets and waiting for their cue as the director cut between cameras like on a live broadcast. Only a few recording breaks were allowed, and these were usually written into the script to allow for special effects or set redressing. So, as you can see, once the cameras started running the actors had to get everything right pretty much first time. Add to this the fast turnaround of episodes and you begin to get an idea of why there are gaffs — but also you start to marvel as the ambition of the show, given its constraints.