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 watched Doctor Who in the early '80s, but not on PBS. An independent TV station out of New Jersey, WWOR showed four episodes on Saturday mornings starting at 9 or 10. I don’t think our local PBS station (channel 13) ever showed it, but channel 21 out of Long Island eventually did.
Edit: The American TV movie was 1996.