There are two kinds of people in this world: those who like love (watching) Doctor Who and those who don’t. This article is written for the former group as well as those who have yet to watch the popular BBC show. Because for one reason or another, Doctor Who is not freely available to watch online outside of the UK. In other words, you will need a good VPN in order to join the party and watch the show from anywhere.
Before we go into how to do that, let’s take one step back and explain…
What Doctor Who is all about?
Doctor Who is a British television show produced by the BBC since 1963. The series follows the adventures of a Time Lord called “the Doctor”, which is an extraterrestrial being, to all appearances human, from the planet Gallifrey. The Doctor explores the universe in a time-traveling space ship called the TARDIS — which stands for “Time and Relative Dimension in Space.” The ship’s exterior appears as a blue British police box that was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired.
Accompanied by a number of companions, the Doctor combats a variety of foes while working to save civilizations and help people in need. Doctor Who is a significant part of British popular culture, and elsewhere it has gained a cult following. It originally ran from 1963 to 1989.
There was an unsuccessful attempt to revive regular production in 1996 with a backdoor pilot, in the form of a television film titled Doctor Who. The program was relaunched in 2005, and since then has been produced in-house by BBC Wales in Cardiff.
Doctor Who has also spawned numerous spin-offs — including comic books, films, novels, audio dramas, and the television series Torchwood (2006-2011), The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007-2011), K-9 (2009-2010), and Class (2016), and has been the subject of many parodies and references in popular culture.
The Doctor is currently portrayed by Jodie Whittaker, who took on the role after Peter Capaldi’s exit in the 2017 Christmas special “Twice Upon a Time”.
How to watch Doctor Who from anywhere?
This article is, obviously, not written for those living in the UK, except if they want to keep their access to BBC’s best shows when traveling to other countries. In that case, they too will need a VPN — which is the right tool for the job.
Due to licensing restrictions, the BBC doesn’t let overseas viewers watch its content. They are using geoblocking and in order to get past these restrictions, you will have to connect to a server located in the UK. But even that may not work, with BBC constantly making life harder for people trying to access its content via a VPN. They are updating the database of IP addresses in an effort to prevent VPN users from getting their Doctor Who fix. It’s an ongoing race that sees major VPNs continually beefing-up their networks with new servers and new IP addresses — all in an effort to make the BBC content available to the larger audience.
BBC’s streaming service, called BBC iPlayer, is notorious for being hard to connect to, but the top VPNs can do it. For the best experience, we suggest you check out our page with Best VPNs for BBC. Get one of the services from that list, and connect to a UK-based server. Now register for a BBC iPlayer account and enjoy the show. You will need a valid postcode in order to access, but this is something you should be able to easily find online.
For what it matters — and it’s actually important — Doctor Who is just one of the great shows the British media company has to offer. But wait…
A good VPN has much more to offer
In addition to letting you access BBC shows such as Doctor Who, a VPN app can also do other things for you. For start, it will let you anonymously surf the web so that governments and corporations can’t track your online whereabouts. You will also be able to access other websites and services that could otherwise be outside of your reach — think Disney+, Netflix, Hulu Plus and so on. Furthermore, a VPN will encrypt all your online data, thus shielding you from hackers and spies — which is especially important when connecting to public Wi-Fi hotspots.
A VPN app can be installed on your computer, smartphone, tablet and other devices. Also, some services include router support, allowing you to protect your entire home or office network so that smart TVs, gaming consoles and streaming boxes also benefit from a more secure connection. Heck, you may want to enjoy Doctor Who on your big smart TV rather than on a (comparably tiny) computer screen.
In conclusion, we think everyone should run a VPN app on his/her computers and mobile devices. And if you’re into Doctor Who, we suggest you start by checking our list of Best VPNs for BBC iPlayer. All of them offer top-notch service and you can hardly miss by choosing any one of them. So check out that page and never get locked out of the TARDIS again. 😉