My parents were (and still are) fans of British TV. Back in the 80s, PBS aired many shows from across the pond, including Doctor Who. My parents taped quite a few episodes, and I grew up watching them in the 90s. It was like this weird secret show that only my family knew about.
I remember pretending to be a dalek at recess. Who knows what the other kids thought of me. We watched the American TV movie that aired in (I think) 1998. Of course we taped it as well.
Honestly I can’t say I was a fan per se, but the fact nobody else seemed to know about it made it special to me in a way Star Trek and Babylon 5 weren’t.
The 2005 reboot aired a year earlier on CBC before coming to the US in 2006. I was able to watch it thanks to being somewhere that had CBC as a cable channel. I ended up bouncing off the series pretty hard early on. Like I said, I was never a big fan, but the show has a weird nostalgia for me for the reasons stated above.
I hadn’t even heard of Doctor Who until like the 2000s and vaguely remember mentions of the 90s movie that didn’t do well in translation. I guess Doctor Who was in hiatus for like 10-ish years or something, had a movie released, retreated then got a proper continuing series by like 2005 and been going since.
I have the 9th to 11th Doctor series on DVD I’ve yet to watch.