How long does it take to watch classic Doctor Who?

Classic Doctor Who was made as 25-minute serial parts rather than standalone episodes, so 695 episodes is roughly 290 hours — comparable to The Simpsons. The complication is that you cannot watch all of it: the BBC wiped its videotapes through the 1960s and 1970s, and around 97 episodes no longer exist in any form. What survives of the missing stories is off-air audio recorded by fans on domestic tape recorders, later paired with stills or animation. A genuinely complete watch of what exists is therefore about 250 hours, not 290, and the difference is the single most important fact about this number.

The numbers

Total

12 days 1 hour

In hours

290 hours

Non-stop

12.1 days without sleeping

Covers

695 episodes made between 1963 and 1989

At a realistic pace

an episode a day

That works out as

about 695 days

What this assumes

695 episodes at about 25 minutes, the standard serial part length. This counts episodes made, not episodes that survive.

About 97 episodes are missing from the archives, so roughly 598 are actually watchable — some 40 hours less than the figure given.

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