Whovians attempt to rescue a woman who’s forced to watch all of classic ‘Doctor Who’

Doctor Who is a science-fiction institution. It debuted in 1963 with First Doctor William Hartnell, and will soon introduce its Fourteenth Doctor in Ncuti Gatwa. Over that time, there’s been an eye-popping 870 episodes of the show, together with innumerable audio dramas, novels, comic books, escape rooms, and video games. Following the entire story means Doctor Who fans – known as Whovians – are regarded as one of the most committed fandoms around.

However, there’s at least one fan out there that’s taking things way too far. A post on r/relationship_advice has gone viral as a desperate woman pleads for help after her boyfriend forces her to repeatedly endure the entire run of “classic” Doctor Who (1963-1989):

Even if you’re obsessed with Doctor Who, watching the entire classic run is the sci-fi equivalent of climbing Mount Everest. The early serials are painfully slow-paced, the writing is often iffy, and – without beating around the bush – many of them are just plain boring (we’re looking at you, Jon Pertwee). Watching them once is a Herculean task, but twice? Even diehard Whovians are horrified:

Perhaps a Bond marathon would be shorter and more fun:

Another says that lost episodes make this task nonsensical:

Even more insanely, other people say this has happened to them:

Wasting your life with this sounds like torture:

And if you’re going to watch Doctor Who, why not just watch the generally fun newer episodes:

We don’t want to completely dump on classic Doctor Who. If you research the better-received serials it’s fun to see how the BBC did science-fiction on an incredibly tight budget in the past, and some of the Fourth Doctor stories are genuinely fun. But if your boyfriend is making you watch the whole thing twice… well, maybe it’s time to jump out of that TARDIS and shack up with a Trekkie instead.