Yes. I was sad about their ending too. More sad than about the end of the 11-th Doctor that is to come. Matt Smith was not bad and I liked his somewhat even-more-crazy-Doctor than all the others, but it started to wear off. He wasn't bad, but there are good chances that he will be replaced by someone better.

No Doctor Who fan is truly unhappy, just out of place in space and time

It was news that most of the interweb had already known quite quickly and I kept it vague to purposely try and gather a few whovians for a little innocent discussion. In the future I'll be sure to put "spoilers" in any forum title that may have news of which someone else doesn't want to know, or something related to that at least.

I think Matt Smith is great as the Doctor, but the second part of this season was not very thought out script-wise. Should have a bit more of Clara mystery theme that was kind of advertised but only paid lip service to in most episodes. And the broadcast schedule of the last few seasons really gets on my nerves.
I would have liked Matt Smith to stay on longer if the script would be getting better next season. Hopefully this will happen too. But somehow I wonder if Clara will work with another Doctor, she seemed pretty much tied to Eleven's personality to me.

While I am not jumping for joy by this news, it will be interesting to see who the new Doctor is. I was still getting used to Matt's Doctor and really missed David's Doctor. I'm still a novice Whovian myself, having only seen the last three Doctors. One of these days I will have to check out the old episodes off Amazon or Netflix, but if some episodes are missing off the sites it will irritate me too much. I have to watch things in order and it still irks me that I haven't see the previous Doctors.
Did the Clara arc fully play out with the last episode?

Well I hope you aren't planning on watching ALL of them, because there are several episodes that no longer exist. They're truly most sincerely dead: the BBC taped over the masters.

As for Netflix, they a huge variety of the old shows, but only for delivery. Their streaming selection is quite thin.

There are quite a few of the first and second Doctors stories completely irretrievably missing I'm afraid.

There's still some extant audio, fortunately, thanks to people taping stuff they weren't supposed to. Keep circulating the tapes!

I do remember reading about that. I guess I will have to start with whatever is available.

I think you're fine with this particular news, it's nigh-impossible not to know. The BBC issued a press release and are reporting it openly on the official DW site's front page, it was also featured on the main evening and daily TV news here in the UK over Saturday night - Sunday when the story broke, and all the papers are busy speculating on who'll take over. In short, they've not kept it a secret and it would be impossible to avoid!

BlueMooner, I hope my comment about preferring not to know didn't make you think it had been spoilt for me - I meant the BBC deciding to issue a press release that Matt Smith's leaving, not Jinsei's post! He didn't do anything wrong :)

I just prefer to enjoy things knowing as little as possible beforehand and it would have been wonderful not to know in advance, but this is definitely public domain news, not some leaked info.

True, but the soundtracks for all 106 missing episodes do exist as they were recorded off-air onto audio tapes by a few 1960s fans when they were broadcast*, so they're still around and you can listen to them all in full, thankfully! We just don't have the picture to go with them... And a lot of them have a series of off-air photos taken every 20 seconds or so and/or publicity photos from the recording or rehearsals, so we know what most things looked like.

It's not so bad and definitely a lot better than it used to be! And more lost film prints might resurface, plus we're now getting some animations to fill some more gaps :)

*if only cheaper video was available back then!

Anyone wanting to enjoy the early missing stories would do well to watch the fan-made reconstructions from ElDoctorio's YouTube channel :D That's the earliest missing episode, episode 14, the opening of the fourth story.

Edit: ninja'd by bevinator on the audios :)

I've always had the close captioning on when watching them, but usually don't have a problem with his accent. Although, I have had problems with some other english accents or at the very least had to google some of the slang used. Actually the accent that I have a hard time with the actor who plays Hannibal Lecter in the NBC Hannibal Series (again CC helps).

You do (probably) have the advantage of being a native speaker though...

Great thread. I'll miss Matt, he really shone in The Name of the Doctor. I was happy with that episode overall.

As for S7, it was weak but it had its good points. I enjoyed how the Cybermen were rendered, they actually looked threatening. The departure of the Ponds was decent, but there are so many gaping holes in that plot it really annoys me. Much better than S6, looking back on that one I can't think of one I'd really like to see again.

Well, if you're not tempted by Let's Kill Hitler (unsurprisingly contains spoilers for the ep, but perhaps the best line ever at the front of it! :) or The Girl Who Waited, there's surely Neil Gaiman's superb, award-winning The Doctor's Wife...

The Rebel Flesh/ The Almost People two-parter was excellent too, but seems to be disliked. Hell, I loved all of the season other than some of Night Terrors and Closing Time (which were still alright), 12 out of 14 isn't bad at all! :D

Oh yes, The Doctor's Wife, I always seem to misplace that episode, the name doesn't help in context with the River Song thing.

I didn't mind the season, don't get me wrong. It was just a little "soft" coming off of S5. The Silence were really cool, the makeup for Nixon in "Impossible Astronaut" was astounding, and "Black Spot" was amusing.

Night Terrors... Ugh. Can't say I have really enjoyed anything Gatiss did.

I was looking forward to "Closing Time" since I really enjoyed "The Lodger" but oy, what a mess that turned out to be.