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Lost Doctor Who Episode Found
JSDopefish writes "In an event that most Doctor Who fans thought couldn't happen, another lost episode of Doctor Who has turned up. It's Episode Two of the 1965 William Hartnell serial, 'The Dalek Masterplan.' No word yet as to how it will be released, this news is just breaking today apparently. This is great news for fans, as the last time a lost episode was turned up was in 1999, and most folks had given up hope there were any others left to be discovered. For those who don't know, in the '70s the BBC routinely junked old stories. Not just Dr Who, but all their shows. Repeats and sales weren't an issue then. There's something like 115 or so lost Doctor Who episodes total."
The question we can ask is were the Daleks meant to live forever, or was there some facility for biological reproduction of the software. We know the original facility that grew the mutated kaleds and produced the containers was destroyed. Presumable another facility was created, as we know that the original produced could not have produced the numbers that were to later antagonized the universe.
In summary, this is a really dorky and embarrassing post. My only defense is that I grew up with dr. Who. I will not date myself by indicating how much of my life the series covered. I think we need a poll of our most embarrassing trivia knowledge.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Man, I'm gonna have a field day with this thread.
m l
http://nitro9.earth.uni.edu/doctor/lost/lost.ht
Essentially, after the episodes were initially transmitted they were stored in a warehouse. As the early 70s approached the re-saleability of old black and white shows was decided to be essentially nil. So, the tapes and films were scheduled to be destroyed. Old cellulose is a bit of a fire hazard.
Many old shows like Z-Cars and Softly, Softly were destroyed as well.
They're being recovered VERY slowly these days, as all of the foreign stations that episodes were sold to have been searched, etc. The above URL explains a lot.
From memory (and much much geekiness) there were many many more daleks created than were destroyed by 'peter davidson' (i think) in Genesis of the Daleks. Some were sent off-world.
Also in later stories it was discovered the Daleks worked out ways to convert 'humans' into Daleks. This resulted in two 'races' of daleks, one lot who were loyal to Davros (the Emperor darlek) and the other lot that were humanized and somewhat insane.
Also, I understand they have lifesupport built in that lets them live indefinately until some twit blows them up with Nitro-9.
Yes, I have watched far too much Dr Who in my life.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie...."
Nimheil
Actually, what happened was the Dr at some point froze up old Davros in suspended animation as a kind of imprisonment. The Daleks at the time were commanded by the Emperor Dalek, successor of the Supreme Dalek (not a pizza).
Now, the Daleks were at war with the Movellans, a race of very humanoid androids. Since both the Movellans and the Daleks were entirely logical creatures, they were at a stalemate. The Daleks then went in search of Davros, their creator, because they knew he was illogical and therefore could break the stalemate and allow them to win.
Davros, being the ultimate evil genius mad scientist that he is, really knows his stuff so he managed to "hack" the Daleks sent to get him, so he could set himself back up as leader of the Daleks. The Emperor didn't like this. Davros grew himself a new bunch of Daleks, and set himself up as the new Supreme Dalek, as the civil war raged on.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
"Old, low-quality B&W TV footage wouldn't take up anywhere near the same space as a modern show shot in color and on (reasonably) high-quality film."
Actually, old low-quality footage, in many ways, would be worse. Though the imagery would be considerably softer (easier to compress), it'd also be noisier as well. The more noise to the scene, the harder of time the compressor has getting a decent pixel-per-data-rate ratio. They would undoubtedly have to use some modern technology to make the footage useful. Noise reduction, image stabilization, etc.
I don't you'd get that many more minutes of acceptable quality on the DVD. This is especially true if they're going to go through the effort to restore as much of the footage as possible. Remember, DVDs are supposed to be very clear. They'll try to adhere to that.
However, I think you'd be absolutely right if we were talking about internet downloads. I wish the BBC would consider taking the early seasons of Dr Who and allowing me to watch them for a modest subscription fee. I would whip out my cc right now to do that. Heck, I might even install RealPlayer!
"Derp de derp."
26 seasons of, on average, 13 hours each. There's some debate in fandom about the box set approach.
;)
At present, we get single stories (mostly 4-6 half hour episodes per story) per DVD, with heavy restoration / rework by the BBC's Restoration Team (descratching, cleaning up the soundtrack, a wondrous process called VidFire developed by Peter Finklestone to restore the original smooth 50 fps video look to grainy 25 fps film stock, on The Ark In Space and Dalek Invasion Of Earth, alternative CGI'd versions of some of the grottier FX), plus usually a good hour or so of extras, commentaries, old documentary footage, newly filmed documentaries and so forth.
It takes a while to make a package that lavish, and I for one would be very disappointed to see the approach change to 'slap it all onto disc as quick as possible for a quick buck'.
Also bear in mind that only two seasons of Doctor Who were Arc-based (Season 16 'The Key To Time' and Season 23 'Trial Of A Time Lord'). Otherwise it's all standalone stories.
Though the 12-part "Daleks' Masterplan" and the ten-part "War Games" could be considered Arc-y, they're not complete seasons.
Only 108 lost episodes to go. It's 5 years since 'The Lion' was found, so we should have the lot back by 2544, just in time for the Dalek-provoked Galactic War against the Draconian Empire
"the last time a lost episode was turned up was in 1999"
Several short clips from lost episodes have turned up as recently as 2003.
The original broadcast of Fury from the Deep was censored in New Zealand. Certain scenes (eg, "the weed creature attack" scene) were deemed to be too violent or explicit. Ironically for the censors, these censored clips are now all that is left of some episodes.
A selection of scenes from episode six of the 'lost' Troughton tale Fury from the Deep have been found.
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THE DOCTOR WHO CLIPS LIST by Steve Phillips
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