Streaming Finds: Pluto TV Now Has a Classic Doctor Who Channel

Streaming Finds: Tracking down sci fi and fantasy shows of interest available on the streaming services.

What Is It? Doctor Who follows the mysterious person known as the Doctor who comes from a race of timelords from the planet of Gallifrey. He travels through time and space in a device known as the TARDIS dealing with threats to the timeline and/or to the many planets in the universe (most often Earth) and he changes appearance from time to time as one incarnation dies out and is replaced by another.

Starring: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Elisabeth Sladen

The Skinny: For the uninitiated, Doctor Who is a British sci fi television series that first debuted in 1963 and remained on the air over twenty years until 1989 (and was then revived in 2005). The first run was known as the Classic era for the series and followed seven different actors playing the Doctor and facing off against such nefarious threats to time and space as the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Autons, and of course the notorious Daleks. During the show’s original run, the show had to contend with extremely low budgets that often gave it a very cheesy look and feel. But when it was at its best, the actors and the stories managed to transcend the show’s production limitations and deliver some excellent sci fi / horror stories (and U.S. television had little in the way of genre entries that could compare to it). You can read more about the series at this link.

Pluto TV has added Channel 77 that is running two hundred episodes from the classic era, spanning across all seven doctors. Pluto TV is a free live-streaming service that has multiple channels that run television shows, movies, sports, news, and more. It is ad-supported and runs about the standard amount of ads for this type of services. It was recently purchased by Viacom, so it also runs archives from channels that company owns such as MTV, VH1, Spike, Nickelodeon, and more. Other channels of interest to genre fans would include 54-Action Movies, 66-Cult Films, and 59-Horror 24/7 which run sci fi, fantasy, and horror movies. There is also Channel 264 which runs episodes of MST3k and Channel 265 which runs Rifftrax (similar to MST3K and with some of the same creative team). Also, Channels 322 and 323 offer a fair selection of Anime. Surprisingly, there is not a dedicated sci fi channel, but maybe we will get that at some point. You can watch at Pluto.TV and the service also has apps for Ruko, Apple, Android, and more.

Watch Classic Doctor Who on Pluto TV Channel 77

Click on the following links for a comprehensive list of the Sci Fi TV Shows available on Netflix | Prime Video | Hulu | Other Services