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."

Comments

Not lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Just misplaced in time. They'll show up eventually.

Re:Not lost

[Frymaster]

1. "lost" in time is what we call "late"
2. the adjunct to which is the etymology of "tardy" - which is just an old anglo-saxon mispronounciation of "tardis".

the things you learn at a liberal arts college!

Re:Not lost

[chunkwhite86]

2. the adjunct to which is the etymology of "tardy" - which is just an old anglo-saxon mispronounciation of "tardis".

So that's why everyone in high-school always called me a "tard".

It's because I showed up late to class!

I get it now!!!

Re:Not lost

[IroNick]

Well, if there's intelligent life out there - they'll probably send us a copy some day.
My firewall blocked me from logging in as I posted this. Too bad - I thought this comment was quite well put. Yes, yes - now I'm off topic again.

Re:Not lost

[websaber]

There is inteligent life saving the next generation of media. What is the most used record of early human history? The bible. It was preserved because so many human beings had copies. While countless records were being destroyed by the fire of the great library of alexandria the ones that were saved where the popular plays that were widely distributed. We won't have to worry about losing star trek one day because so many trekkies have almost every copy of every episode. Large portions of old time radio exsist to day because people broke the rules and copied them off the air and donated them after the originals were lost.

Re:Not lost

[hummassa]

Helen Girardi: (to a late student) What is the reason for your tardiness?
Grace Polk: Take a guess. He's still in his jammies.

Re:Not lost

[smasher]

Actually, they may not.

One notorious example of lost BBC programs: Most of the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore series "Not Only... But Also..." (As in, "Not Only [Peter Cook] But Also [Dudley Moore]".) This was brilliant stuff, filmed segments as well as great improvisational theater, in the grand tradition of British comedy.

The NOBA stuff was about two or three years before Monty Python. Cook and Moore graduated from Beyond the Fringe (with Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett) to do NOBA. Alan Bennett went on to become one of the most respected playrights of his generation. After NOBA, Moore went on to a career in Hollywood, while Cook (the more dominant personality of the two) went on to drink himself to death.

Anyway, most of the NOBA stuff was lost, after the BBC decided to unceremoniously ERASE THE TAPES FOR REUSE. When they found out (a few years after the end of the show's run) about the BBC's intentions, Cook and Moore begged, pled with the BBC to sell them the tapes, or at least give them copies, but the BBC replied that the tapes were their property to do with what they wished. So all of the original NOBA tapes were unceremoniously erased.

Some of it survives. They shot some stuff on film; most of these skits survive. Other stuff was copied during broadcast (I forget the term; essentially pointing a video camera at a TV monitor) by people unconnected with the BBC. Some of this stuff survives as "The Best Of (What's Left Of) Not Only/But Also." It's hilarious stuff, but it's sad to watch it and think that most of the show was lost to dreadful bureaucrats at the BBC.

For more info, check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/n/noton lybutalso_7774870.shtml

To their credit, the BBC owns up to its huge mistake in erasing these tapes, but it was more disasterous than they let on on this page. Virtually ALL the tapes were erased.

collection

[mpost4]

They should take all the "lost" ones and put them on a dvd collection.

Re:collection

[NanoGator]

"They should take all the "lost" ones and put them on a dvd collection. "

Do you realize how many episodes of Doctor Who were made? You'd need a police box to store them all!

Re:collection

[mpost4]

Well they could do it as DVD sets for each season like they do for many of the TV shows that make it to DVD. I have the Star Trek TNG on DVD's and it came in 7 boxes of 7 DVD's each. So why not one set for each year that it was out. and a set for each doctor that they find the Lost shows from.

Re:collection

[blincoln]

Dr. Who had 26 seasons.

That's an awful lot of boxed sets =).

To be honest, a lot of the earlier ones wouldn't sell enough to justify the manufacturing cost. Space (the Canadian sci-fi channel) showed the early episodes while I was going to school up there and the ratings were abyssmal.

Re:collection

[strech]

Yes, but 26 large boxes of DVDs + however many "Lost" sets would look rather odd.

Re:collection

[pla]

Do you realize how many episodes of Doctor Who were made? You'd need a police box to store them all!

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.

For an idea of this, check out the size you can fit most VCDs into - Somehing like the old Dr. Who episodes would realistically count as "perfect" quality at VCD bitrates (and I say that as someone who finds even modern Hollywood blockbusters distractingly artifact-ridden on most DVD releases). Stick that on DVD-sized media (rather than CD, as with most VCDs), and you could probably fit an entire season on a single DSDL disc.


However, I do have to point out a small problem with the original question, as asked:

They should take all the "lost" ones and put them on a dvd collection.

Forgive me for noting the obvious (which I suspect the author might have intended as a joke), but you can't release the lost episodes, by definition. Only the unlost ones.

Re:collection

[kfg]

They should take all the "lost" ones and put them on a dvd collection.

You can get the complete set of "lost" episodes at any Best Buy.

They call them "blanks." :)

Reminds me of an old LP entitled "Requiem For Silence."

Yep, 45 minutes of groove without so much as a wiggle in it.

KFG

Re:collection

[mpost4]

Well if you look I did put some "" around lost, but you are right maybe I should have said unlosted ones.

Re:collection

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, a lot of the earlier ones wouldn't sell enough to justify the manufacturing cost. Space (the Canadian sci-fi channel) showed the early episodes while I was going to school up there and the ratings were abyssmal.

Well, outside of extreme hard-core British science fiction nerds, nobody watches Dr. Who. It's pretty easy to spot the potential audience... if you think Red Dwarf is funny then you probably like Dr. Who. It's like a perverse subculture among Americans who think they are somehow "cool" because they watch crappy British science-fiction from the 1970's.

Personally I'll stick with my crappy American science-fiction from the 1960's. Live long and prosper!

Re:collection

[bucky0]

But would you want to take already grainy and probably worn footage and then compress it even further? It would almost seem like you would want to lose less information just to keep what little detail there is in the final DVD.

Re:collection

[WIAKywbfatw]

You do realise that the US Doctor Who fan club dwarfs it's British, Canadian, Australian, etc counterparts by an order of magnitude?

There far more extreme hard-core US science fiction nerds who watch Doctor Who than British ones. I doubt their watching re-runs, buying books, videos and DVDs to look "cool". Believe me, as sci-fi goes, Doctor Who is as far from "cool" as you can get. Doctor Who's appeal was never "cool", it was a focus on storylines that deviated from the "Captain kisses alien girl, crewmember in red uniform dies" variety.

Re:collection

[Highlander]

Or "found" even.

Re:collection

[NanoGator]

"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!

Re:collection

[interiot]

• You do
• realise that the US Doctor Who fan club dwarfs it's British, Canadian, Australian, etc counterparts by an order of magnitude?

  There far more extreme hard-core US science fiction nerds who watch Doctor Who than British ones. I doubt their watching re-runs, buying books, videos and DVDs to look "cool". Believe me, as sci-fi goes, Doctor Who is as far from "cool" as you can get. Doctor Who's appeal was never "cool", it was a focus on storylines that deviated from the "Captain kisses alien girl, crewmember in red uniform dies" variety.

For someone who claims to be so knowledgeable about americans and storytelling, you seem to have a lot of problems writing in a version of english that americans can understand.

Re:collection

[WIAKywbfatw]

OK, so the apostrophe and the "their" were mistakes but "realise" is how the word is spelt (yes, "spelt", not "spelled") virtually everywhere around the world.

Besides, it's 7.40am now, I posted that at 7.07am and I've had all of 30 minutes sleep in the last 24 hours. I'm not a robot, so sleep deprevation does have its effects.

Re:collection

[TomV]

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 ;)

Re:collection

[NanoGator]

"For someone who claims to be so knowledgeable about americans and storytelling, you seem to have a lot of problems writing in a version of english that americans can understand. "

A criticism of one's grammar is not a rebuttal.

Re:collection

[TomV]

Not on DVD, but a collective called Loose Cannon has been doing 'reconstructions' of the lost episodes using surviving soundtracks and 'telesnaps' (a chap called John Cura was contracted to take stills approx. every 30 seconds throughout the filming in the 60s and 70s and most of these still survive) plus, more recently some computer animation. The idea is that you buy the official BBC VHS of the surviving episodes of your story of choice (to keep it ethical) and then get someone on the Loose Cannon tape tree to dub you up the recon for the missing parts.

It's a surprisingly satisfying solution. At least, it is if you're an obsessive fan ;)

Ironically, they only finished up their recon of Daleks' Masterplan last week, so it'll be interesting to see how their take on Ep 2 compares with the original. (Eps 5 and 11 of the 12 were the only ones believed to have survived until yesterday).

Re:collection

[interiot]

Damn. That's the last time I listen to MS Word. It does't even get the words right. :)

Re:collection

[tiled_rainbows]

No, you've got that the wrong way round: "realize" is an accepted alternate spelling of "realise". Thanks.

Re:collection

[kf8vn]

It would be great to watch them all, in the order they were made. Not hit and miss the way our local PBS Station broadcast them.

Re:collection

[Orion442]

I loved Red Dwarf, but never got into Dr. Who. The movie wasn't bad though.

Re:collection

[jd678]

13 hours a season? Where d'ya get that from. BBC seasons are traditional 6 half hour shows.

Current trend though is 8 episodes a season, with 24-26 minute shows rather than 29 minutes to allocate space for adverts on other networks.

Re:collection

[Anonymous Coward]

"Heck, I might even install RealPlayer!"

Hey, let's not get carried away here...

Re:collection

[operagost]

Now, I will avoid escalating the conflict by not pointing out the hilarious use of periods (yes, "full stops") instead of colons in your time designations ...

Oops.

Re:collection

[operagost]

He's pointing out that sampling the video at a higher resolution than that it was originally recorded in would be pointless. While the the originals are of course analog film, there's still a granularity to them and a point of diminishing returns when making a digital conversion. Of course, there's the fact that they're black & white as well. Not having the chrominance information would save huge amounts of space.

Re:collection

[TomV]

I get that from a 30-year familiarity with Doctor Who.

For example, Season 1 ran from 23rd November 1963 (An unearthly Child ep 1) to 12th September 1964 ( Reign Of Terror ep 6). The stories that season were:

An Unearthly Child (4 parts)
The Daleks (7 parts)
The Edge of Destruction (2 parts)
Marco Polo (7 parts)
The Keys of Marinus (6 parts)
The Aztecs (4 parts)
The Sensorites (6 parts)
The Reign of Terror (6 parts)
giving a total of 42 half hour episodes.

Season 2 had 39 episodes.
Season 3 had 45 episodes.

By Jon pertwee's time (seasons 7 to 11), things had settled down to a fairly routine 26 episodes per season.

In Tom Baker's first season (season 12, 28 Dec 1974 to 10 may 1975) this dropped to:

Robot (4 parts)
The Ark In Space (4 parts)
The Sontaran Experiment (2 parts)
Genesis Of The Daleks (6 parts)
Revenge of The Cybermen (4 parts)
giving a total of 20 half-hour episodes.

Seasons 13 to 17 were stable at 26 episodes, Season 18 had 28 eps.

By the mid-80's Colin Baker 'hiatus' phase the seasons were getting a lot shorter admittedly. Season 23 (Trial Of a Time Lord) only had 14 episodes. Each of Sylvester McCoy's seasons (seasons 24 - 26) had just 2 4-parters and 2 3-parters, or 14 episodes a season. Hence the average over the 26 year run comes in around the 13-hours per season mark.

In any case, current trends in 2004 (which incidentally don't seem to match the BBC I watch) aren't all that relevant to a show that ran for 26 years from 1963 to 1989.

For the new series starting in 2005, Mal Young (Exec Producer and Head of Drama Serials at the BBC) has said there will be around 13 episodes of 45 minutes each. I suspect he may have some clue as to the nature of current trends in Drama Serials at the BBC ;)

Re:collection

[CGP314]

You do realise that the US Doctor Who fan club dwarfs it's British, Canadian, Australian, etc counterparts by an order of magnitude?

Not surprising since the US population is an order of magnitude greater than those places as well.


--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor?

American Weblog in London

Re:collection

[NickFitz]

...crappy British science-fiction from the 1970's

Doctor Who started in 1963.

Re:collection

[Darth23]

As long as you have a dimensional stabalizer you can put them all in your backback.

Re:collection

[squidfood]

Doctor Who started in 1963.

(Which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterly ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Re:collection

[dylan_-]

If you didn't understand it, how did you know where the mistakes were?

Re:collection

[ToSeek]

>> You do realise that the US Doctor Who fan club dwarfs it's British, Canadian, Australian, etc counterparts by an order of magnitude? That's pretty amazing, considering there is no US Doctor Who fan club. The last one was the Friends of Doctor Who, which disbanded about five years ago.

Re:collection

[ToSeek]

%^$%^#$^#$ Slashdot formatting (or lack thereof). Try again:

>> You do realise that the US Doctor Who fan club dwarfs it's British, Canadian, Australian, etc counterparts by an order of magnitude?

That's pretty amazing, considering there is no US Doctor Who fan club. The last one was the Friends of Doctor Who, which disbanded about five years ago.

Re:collection

[torpor]

no shit dude, i'm australian, grew up on the good dr., and about had a heart attack when i attended a los angeles-area dr. who 'video club', after a 10-year stint away from all things bbc. sheesh.

those guys knew how to party. i'll never, ever forget the tardis they had.

nothing is more hardcore than a dr. who fan in los angeles.

Re:collection

[Baikala]

Who said he wrote that comment just for the American's sake?

I'm not a native speaker so I didn't notice those minor glitches. I'd like to think I'm a little more careful when I post; I don't have enough time to run the spellchecker every time.

I don't mean to degrade your sacred language (which I like very much, thanks). I welcome orthographic and grammatical corrections when done in a polite and constructive manner. I don't think that applies to you making fun out of someone's writing without commenting on the content.

Re:collection

[gnomeproject]

I wish the BBC would consider taking the early seasons of Dr Who and allowing me to watch them for a modest subscription fee

The BBC is doing exactly this : see Dyke to open up BBC archive

Get 'em ready!

[BTWR]

Get your 100 tacos ready!

(sorry, had to be said...)

Re:Get 'em ready!

[NanoGator]

"Get your 100 tacos ready!...(Score:2, Funny)"

Sorry to be a square, but could somebody explain the reference?

Re:Get 'em ready!

[DJTodd242]

Simpsons reference.

http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F12.html

Re:Get 'em ready!

[NanoGator]

Okay, I get the reference now.

Here I'll digest it for everybody:

The executor gives them each $100 (except Maggie), and the rest goes
to Ann Landers, as was stipulated in Hortense's will ...

Marge: What are you gonna spend your money on, kids?
Bart: There's a special down at the Tacomat: a hundred tacos for a hundred dollars. I'm gonna get that. ...

Marge wants the kids to put their money in the bank. When they get there, Bart spots the Tacomat and wishes he could get those hundred
tacos. The comic book guy comes out with a wheelbarrow full of tacos for the "Dr. Who" marathon.

I guess all this Deep Space Nine watchin I been doin has overwritten my Simpsons quote database.

Re:Get 'em ready!

[NanoGator]

" I believe activities like learning another language can impair other skills, or at least while the information is being learned."

I have anecdotal experience that supports that theory. I used to be real sharp in terms of grammar and spelling until I took the study of Spanish seriously. When my knowledge of Spanish expanded, my grammar and spelling skills suffered. I figure one of two things happened:

1.) Memory was overwritten.
2.) In order to easily switch between the two languages, my use of English was simplified.

Okay, this is way off-topic, but I can imagine that Doctor Who fans would generally find the inner workings of the brain rather interesting. I remember an old Tom Baker episode that... well my memory is a bit fuzzy (overwritten by Spanish?) where the Doc and ... oh... heck I think it was Sara Jane Smith were inside a brain. He made a comment about how the computer equivalent of a human brain would be the size of all of London. Then he went on to say a Time Lord's brain would be significantly larger as it is more complex. Then, he figured out which two neurons to touch together to make the brain do something he needed... Well you gotta admit, he must have one hell of a brain if he knows how to hot-wire a human brain on the neural level, heh.

Re:Get 'em ready!

[AoT]

I guess all this Deep Space Nine watchin I been doin has overwritten my Simpsons quote database.

You are my new geek hero! this is the best shit i've read all week.

Re:Get 'em ready!

[fruey]

When my knowledge of Spanish expanded, my grammar and spelling skills suffered. I figure one of two things happened:

1. Memory was overwritten.
2. In order to easily switch between the two languages, my use of English was simplified.

I'm sure that things get selectively forgotten over time, as mid term memory has less capacity for detail. However, what you are saying (Spanish somehow replaced English) is not strictly true. It is fairer to say that you are concentrating on Spanish whilst neglecting your English. Language skills require regular maintenance.

As a bilingual person myself, I am very aware of the need to alternate between reading novels in my native English and in French, to write in English and in French as often as possible, and to generally experience the languages as much as possible; if I neglect one for too long, the other one quickly takes precedence. But I wouldn't say any erasing of stuff is happening, it just goes a little out of focus until you adjust the lens ;-)

Re:Get 'em ready!

[dorward]

It was a miniture clone of the Doctor and Leela, and they were put inside the real Doctor's brain.

So he only had to know how to hot-wire his own brain :)

I think it was The Invisible Enemy (where Invisible reads as Very Very Small)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

My kids love these!

[darnok]

The really old Dr Who shows are being repeated (possibly in order) on the ABC in Australia. I thought my kids (7 & 5) would only be interested once they got to (a) colour episodes and (b) Tom Baker.

Boy, was I wrong! These are kids who still don't understand that Dad once had a *black and white* TV, but they love the shows with the first doctor. Even when I was a keen Dr Who fan, I found the first Dr pretty tough to watch, but my kids never miss it.

I'm still waiting for them to tell me the TV's broken because there's no color...

Re:My kids love these!

[MrRTFM]

Yes, its great they're repeating all the series. I cant really handle the first one at the moment, but I'm looking forward to the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker series.

My kids (teenagers) almost fell out of their chairs laughing at the "special effects" [mind you, they are pretty funny].

Re:My kids love these!

[kubrick]

The really old Dr Who shows are being repeated (possibly in order) on the ABC in Australia.

They are in order, but they're skipping the storylines for which they don't have all the episodes.

This does mean things seem to jump occasionally, and you have to resort to the BBC website to work out what was supposed to have happened in between.

I wonder if they're planning this run to finish up around the time the new Dr Who series broadcasts here, sometime in 2005 or 2006?

Re:My kids love these!

[cranos]

Tell me about it, my five year old loves the show but keeps asking me why they don't use the colour version.

The other things he's discovered is that he can sound like a Dalek if he talks into the fan.

Ahh the Doctor, its amazing what you can achieve with some string and cardboard, oh and the one Welsh quary that was used for so many different barren worlds.

Re:My kids love these!

[vought]

My kids (teenagers) almost fell out of their chairs laughing at the "special effects"

Oh, those effects are "special", all right.

As a kid, I always wondered why half of each Pertwee/Baker/and later episode seemed to be shot on film, and the other half on video. I was told it was a union requirement enforced on the BBC; the unions wanted equal time for film and video cinematography, and that's just what us viewers got.

I'm sure this made life just that must tougher for the special effects folks.

Re:My kids love these!

[Retr0junki3]

Hey... i read wen is uber doctor who marathon started on ABC dat it would last untill May this year. I haven't checked yet but we're 4 and a 1/2 months in and still on the first doc. Does this mean they aren't talking about may this year at all??!

Re:My kids love these!

[Marlor]

Hey... i read wen is uber doctor who marathon started on ABC dat it would last untill May this year. I haven't checked yet but we're 4 and a 1/2 months in and still on the first doc. Does this mean they aren't talking about may this year at all??!

Well, I think I've managed to decipher what you were saying (I used Babelfish's "Ali-G to English" translator).

The ABC said that they will "hopefully be doing a full repeat of all available Dr Who stories" back in November, and I certainly haven't heard anything about it finishing in May.

Re:My kids love these!

[kevcol]

Was all BBC programming in black & white back then? In the US, most TV shows were in color by 1965. I guess maybe it is due to aftereffects of the war..?

Oh, yeah, unexploded ordanance kept all those shipments of colour film stock for decades, not to mention rationing.

Re:My kids love these!

[TomV]

This is apparently due to the BBC Archives storing the recordings in B&W, even though they were broadcast in colour

I think you're mixing up two secenarios here. BBC1 went to colour in 1969 (BBC2 went colour in 1967).

The first Doctor Who to be shot in colour was 'Spearhead From Space', Jon Pertwee's first story, the start of season 7, aired in 1970. Any colour images of Doctor Who from before Spearhead are publicity stills or amateur film footage from behind the scenes.

Now, there *are* several (originally colour) episodes from the 1970s (bits of 'Ambassadors Of Death' and 'The Mind Of Evil' spring to mind) which now only exist as black and white footage, the original colour videotape having been recycled - maybe this is what you're thinking of?

Re:My kids love these!

[Phexro]

I don't believe it was a union requirement, just standard practice at the BBC for ages.

At least one Tom Baker story ('The Stones Of Blood') was shot with OB (Outdoor Broadcast) video instead of a 'piebald' video/film production.

I think it had more to do with the director and the budget for the story than anything else. For example, 'The Young Ones,' which was also shot in the early eighties, was shot entirely on video. Doctor Who didn't go all-OB until the 7th Doctor took over in 1987.

Yes, I am a Doctor Who geek.

Re:My kids love these!

[Paul.Org]

I wonder if they're planning this run to finish up around the time the new Dr Who series broadcasts here, sometime in 2005 or 2006?
It'd be nice if it did time it to run as a continuum of Dr. Who...
Assuming they skip the really bad movie...
I was actually fond of Sylvester McCoy - he seemed the best of the post Tom Baker Doctors...
What would also be very nice would be a re-run of Blakes 7...
Now there was a sci-fi series with guts...
For those not familiar with it I suggest you track it down - the first episode is one of the darkest things ever done in TV sci-fi...
You can thank me later...

Re:My kids love these!

[tiled_rainbows]

If my memories of early-eighties BBC drama areanything to go by (not Dr Who, but other contemporaneous stuff), then they filmed indoor stuff with video, and outdoor stuff on film, reason being that early video was cheap but looked rubbish used with natural light. or something.

Re:My kids love these!

[91degrees]

I love those early episodes. Something that was good from a story point of view, that they didn't do so much later on, was to separate the Doctor from the companions. It made the companions seem to be in much greater danger than if they had The Doctor easily able to save them.

Re:My kids love these!

[BLAMM!]

What would also be very nice would be a re-run of Blakes 7...
Now there was a sci-fi series with guts...
For those not familiar with it I suggest you track it down - the first episode is one of the darkest things ever done in TV sci-fi...
You can thank me later...
I always thought the *last* episode was the darkest thing in SciFi TV. I'm resisting the urge to spoil it for folks who've never seen it, but it's the best series finale I've ever seen.

Re:My kids love these!

[Anonymous Coward]

If my memories of early-eighties BBC drama areanything to go by (not Dr Who, but other contemporaneous stuff), then they filmed indoor stuff with video, and outdoor stuff on film, reason being that early video was cheap but looked rubbish used with natural light. or something.

The videotape machines and the cameras themselves were also huge and unwieldy compared to film equipment - hauling them around was a major undertaking. When a large proportion of an episode was going to be shot outdoors - like the aforementioned 'Stones of Blood' - it was worth taking the video equipment out for a spin because the videotape could be reused after the episode had been edited down, while film couldn't.

The interior shots, at least for Doctor Who, were always recorded on video in a multi-camera studio. Only sitcoms and game shows really use this method any more. Anyway, as you say, it wasn't a requirement or anything - just practicality.

Re:My kids love these!

[ToSeek]

>> At least one Tom Baker story ('The Stones Of Blood') was shot with OB (Outdoor Broadcast) video instead of a 'piebald' video/film production.

Tom Baker's first story, "Robot," was the first to be shot using all OB video. That was so the special effects shots of the robot would be consistent throughout.

Re:My kids love these!

[Fishstick]

Yeah, I seem to recall this as well. I can think back to any number of series (upstairs downstairs, all creatures great and small, etc) where the indoor looked different from the outdoor and I always wondered what the deal was.

Looking back, it does seem that the location sequences always looked filmed where the in-studio stuff always looked taped.

Interesting observation -- I wonder if the issue was really quality via lighting vs portability of the film cameras and equipment over studio video equipment, though.

Re:My kids love these!

[Paul.Org]

Hmmmm well yes the last episode is dark - but only on an all-dark palette...

It's the first episode that sets that palette...

I don't want to spoil anything either...

Can we like argue this privately?

Re:My kids love these!

[B3ryllium]

What if they did the movie "Alien" without showing any space imagery or aliens?

Re:My kids love these!

[GeoGreg]

To be fair, there was more than one quarry used for Doctor Who location shooting. And in "The Hand of Fear", they actually used a quarry location to represent a quarry, complete with blasting. I've wondered if there was a little in-joke there.

"Eldrad must live!"

Re:My kids love these!

[Noren]

Troughton appeared as the second Doctor in color in both "The Three Doctors" and "The Five Doctors"; that could where the memories are coming from. There are numerous color still photographs as well from the time.

Re:My kids love these!

[TomV]

In any case, it will be a while until we see the colour episodes in Australia again, as I'm pretty sure we are still on episodes from 1964.

Sadly, it won't be as long as it 'should' be - the Troughton era suffered terribly from the Great Videotape Cull, and the only surviving complete stories are Tomb of the Cybermen (4 episodes), The Dominators (5 eps), The Mind Robber (5 eps), The Krotons (4 eps), The Seeds Of Death (6 eps) and The War Games (10 eps).

So, only 6 complete stories from 21 originally made (110 episodes).

I vaguely remember Troughton in colour from when I was a kid, although I'm sure that's just my memory playing tricks on me.

Your Troughton memories may very well be correct - he reprised the role in the increasingly unimaginatively-titled commemorative stories The Three Doctors (1972 into 1973), The Five Doctors (1983) and The Two Doctors (1985), all of which were in colour.

Re:My kids love these!

[RyatNrrd]

The Beeb conducted week-by-week viewer feedback on the earlier episodes of Doctor Who. A recurring theme in the responses was that having the Doctor and his companions split up like that made the characters seem stupid, as if they hadn't learned from last time that there is safety in numbers. So they stopped doing that.

Re:My kids love these!

[arwel]

Was all BBC programming in black & white back then? In the US, most TV shows were in color by 1965. I guess maybe it is due to aftereffects of the war..?

Err, no. European broadcasters decided to wait for a better colour TV standard than NTSC, so the BBC were the first European colour broadcaster when BBC2 started transmitting in colour in 1967 (the channel opened in 1964). BBC1 and ITV started colour broadcasts in 1969, but it was quite a few years later before all programmes were in colour.

If I remember correctly, the first UK programme to be produced in colour was Stingray in 1964 (cue another nostalgia thread!). John Logie Baird demonstrated his Chronoscope 3D colour TV in 1944 -- perhaps we'd all have been watching in colour much earlier if he hadn't died in 1946!

Re:My kids love these!

[CaptainAvatar]

There is a schedule available which takes us to the end of 2004, though I think it is projected rather than confirmed (it still hasn't been updated for the week Who was off-air because of the tennis). On the other hand, it does say the ABC had confirmed the 2003 schedule, so maybe they have confirmation that it will be showing until the end of 2004. (From the original announcement, anyway, the ABC did say it was going to be showing ALL of Who ...)

Dalek Masterplan

[Cosmik]

Could the episode appearing just now, out of the blue, be part of their masterplan?

EXTERMINATION is near!

Re:Dalek Masterplan

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'm thinking that the Dalek's master plan is to finally build some damn legs for themselves so their plans to conquer the universe won't be thwarted by stairs or fallen trees.

Re:Dalek Masterplan

[Rethcir]

Not to mention the ol' "hat on the eye stalk." I think if I learned one practical thing from Tommy B, it was that you can always escape killer robots by putting your hat over their eyes.

Re:Dalek Masterplan

[madpierre]

That plunger comes in handy if you've got a blocked toilet or sink though.

Re:Dalek Masterplan

[TomV]

My Vision Is Impaired! I Cannot See!
My Vision Is Impaired! I Cannot See!
My Vision Is Impaired! I Cannot See!

BANG!!!! :-)

Dalek's operating system?

[Debian Troll's Best]

Here's a question for all those die-hard Dr Who fans out there. Is there a mention in any publications (The Dr. Who Technical Manual, for instance) what software the Dalek's ran? I know at their core they were the shrivelled remains of a Kaled, but all those servo motors, life support systems and weapons had to be running some type of OS. Might it have been Debian? apt-get install davros? Just a thought.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[BasilBrush]

Windows 2150 AD.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[NanoGator]

"Is there a mention in any publications (The Dr. Who Technical Manual, for instance) what software the Dalek's ran?"

MacOS. See that plunger on their hand? What else would run such an elegant prosthesis?

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[Muggins the Mad]

> Is there a mention in any publications (The Dr. Who Technical Manual, for instance) what software the Dalek's ran?

um, DavrOS?

- Muggins the Mad

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[VivianC]

Sorry. It was closed source. Davros never liked the GPL. Besides, he didn't want any Thrals getting their hands on the source.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"um, DavrOS?"

That's a bad pun, but it made me laugh. I just hope nobody makes a TarDOS joke.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[fermion]

I think the software was the Kaleds. Like so much old scifi, there was really no concept of electronic circuits capable of branching, loops, and error correction. At best, it was a Babbage machine. More than likely, it was on the level of a mid-20th-century tank, albeit one with lasers. The technological innovation, and basic function, of a Dalek was to provide life support for the mutated life forms. The practical purpose was to provide an attack vehicle. The organics were in complete control of the vehicle.

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.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[stefanlasiewski]

but all those servo motors, life support systems and weapons had to be running some type of OS.

Yes, I believe it was called "Black string attached to sticks and some dude named Irwin who went 'Pssshhhbbb! Psssshhhb! Beep!'" Version 3.1.1

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[NanoGator]

"That's a bad pun, but it made me laugh. I just hope nobody makes a TarDOS joke."

Time And Relative Disk Operating System? Hmm yeah, I can see why they shortened it to Windows.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[NanoGator]

"Sorry. It was closed source. Davros never liked the GPL"

That explains why it took a while for Daleks to traverse stairs...

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[slasher999]

...or worse yet, TardOS/2.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[HorrorIsland]

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.

Okay, I'll embarrass myself here. I had thought of that when the series was airing here, and decided that the kaled mutations must have bred true. I mean, there was no one to build another facility while Davros was out of commission, but the Dalek numbers kept increasing.

All of this lead me to the mental image of Daleks chasing one another around, screeching "Inseminate! INSEMINATE!"

There, I said it.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[flewp]

And it's even better that they didn't leave out the Operating part. Or maybe it would have been more appropriate?

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[darkewolf]

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.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[siliconbunny]

No, it was Linux ...

... owned by SCO even back then ...

... which is why they were called Darleks

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[obeythefist]

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.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Private Eye" (UK satirical news magazine) suggested a Dalek on Viagra would screech "Fornicate! Fornicate!"

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[Phexro]

What happened was that the Daleks decided they didn't need Davros[1], and started breeding via genetic manipulation[2]. They also developed a way to convert other species to Kaleds[3].

Oh, and The Doctor in 'Genesis of the Daleks' was Tom Baker. And it's 'Davison,' not 'Davidson.'

[1]: 'Destiny of the Daleks,' I believe. They needed Davros again in this story.
[2]: Big Finish's 'The Mutant Phase.'
[3]: 'Revelation of the Daleks.'

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[darkewolf]

Thanks :)

I sort of realised after I posted that I made a mistake or two.. Alas its been a few years since I have seen the lot of them :(

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[hplasm]

Windows==ReTardOS

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[Walt Dismal]

(Image of Dalek smoking a cigarette in bed)

(My head explodes)

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[bob_jordan]

Maybe they use Macs as well. I guess with one big plunger, they would want a computer that only has one big mouse button.

Bob.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[Greyfox]

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...

Neither will anyone else :-P

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[jldrew]

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

[insert joke about Dr. Who fans not getting dates]

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[TomV]

It's pretty much impossible to get a handle on the Daleks' history because their timeline is terminally bugg3r3d.

They have two contradictory origins, depending on whether you prefer the 1963 The Daleks story, of the mutated survivors of a nuclear war, the Dals, slowly evolving to the point where they needed radiation to survive and were no longer human, and developing those pepperpot Travel Machines themselves, or the 1975 Genesis Of The Daleks version involving Davros experimenting on mutants force-bred from the existing Kaled people at the end of the war, creating a Travel Machine for them, then wiping out all the surviving Kaleds to ensure his mutants' survival.

Davros unequivocally died at the end of Genesis. He was retconned back in for Destiny, in which Terry Nation this time decided that they were emotionless machines, even though we'd seen the nasty green mutant several times before. Then in Resurrection, Davros decides to mutate humans into Dalek mutants, again to breed back in some cunning. To the extent the timeline makes any sense, they seem to have been mutants, then machines, then mutants again later, all the while squawking on and on about how they're the ultimate genetically perfect master race.

As if this doesn't mess up their timeline enough, they had Time Machines in several 60's stories, and that's never healthy for a coherent history.

They should be invading to steal the Earth's magnetic core and turn the planet into a giant spaceship pretty soon, if I've got the hang of it...

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[freeze128]

It would likely be more of a Tar-DIStribution joke.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[Sabalon]

Simple one - they ran SCO

LIT-I-GATE!!! LIT-I-GATE!!! Linux is the enemy!!! It must be LIT-I-GATED!!!

Damn stupid lameness filter blocking out my joke.

Re:Dalek's operating system?

[Tom_N]

The answer seems pretty clear.

The Daleks ran the Dalek Operating System (DOS), a descendant of the Quick-and-dirty Dalek Operating System (QDOS).

You didn't really think that the dominance of DOS was a result of Bill Gates' master plan, did you?

video tape was expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

they used to record over stuff all of the time.

Re:video tape was expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

The old Doctor Whos were on film, not video tape. You can't record over used film. The BBC tossed them out to save space.

Re:video tape was expensive

[NanoGator]

"The old Doctor Whos were on film, not video tape. You can't record over used film. The BBC tossed them out to save space."

I have a question about that. When I was about 11 I used to borrow DW tapes from a friend of my dad's. I noticed some quality issues with the older episodes and asked about them. He said something like there was a metallic element in the film that they extracted from them for use elsewhere, which resulted in degraded quality. Was he full of shit, or was there some truth to that? Anybody know the story, if there is one, behind that? Were the old films 'recycled' in some sense?

Re:video tape was expensive

[TomV]

The old Doctor Whos were on film, not video tape

The original studio work was on videotape, with film used for outside broadcast footage, and everything transferred to video for final editing and domestic broadcast.

The film prints were taken from the videotape for overseas sales, and fortunately, the BBC film library had much better retention policies than the broadcast departments.

Remember that there was no domestic video market back then, TV shows were 'fire and forget' - nobody believed anyone would ever watch this stuff after the original broadcast, so expensive videotape was recycled. The film prints in the library survived rather better, and most of the 'lost' material recovered recently has been in the form of film copies returned from overseas broadcasters.

Re:g37 3m r34dy!!!!!!!11

[Deraj DeZine]

Best. Joke. Ever.

Re:Added bonus

[Deraj DeZine]

30 something nerds can live again!

Zombie nerds, eh?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Won't Happen Again

[lukior]

In this new digital age where lots of people collect every episode of their favorite TV shows we won't have to worry about this again. Long live P2P.

Re:Won't Happen Again

[NanoGator]

"In this new digital age where lots of people collect every episode of their favorite TV shows we won't have to worry about this again. Long live P2P."

MST3k is living on this way. Since the Comedy Central episodes aren't being re-aired, and few of them are making it to DVD, people have taken it upon themselves to digitize whatever episodes they can get ahold of and put them on P2P. The project is called the MST3K "Digital Archive Project".

If anybody ever needed a reason to use a home-brew PC as a PVR as opposed to a TiVo, this is it.

Re:Won't Happen Again

[0123456]

"In this new digital age where lots of people collect every episode of their favorite TV shows we won't have to worry about this again."

Well, not for another few years, until all TVs and VCRs have to be DRM-crippled to receive new broadcasts, and collecting and sharing the recordings becomes impossible.

Re:Won't Happen Again

[koreth]

If anybody ever needed a reason to use a home-brew PC as a PVR as opposed to a TiVo, this is it.

It's not that hard to extract video from a TiVo. Certainly no harder than putting together a home-brew PC as a PVR. And if it's a DirecTV TiVo, the image quality is much better than you'll get from most cable systems, no matter how good your PC is.

Re:Won't Happen Again

[MrWa]

What won't happen again? Finding lost episodes or being able to watch them?

If, by chance, something made today is lost and it was stored on some digital medium, the likelihood of it being usable 20, 40, or 50! years from now is very, very unlikely - you're right.

Personal storage and P2P will help, to some extent, but what happens when people get bored of storing these episodes that they never watch? It is much easier to delete things now as well...

Re:Won't Happen Again

[RyatNrrd]

Even so, the space required to store an episode of a TV show has reduced from a pile of bulky film reels right down to a corner of a hard drive, so the producers won't go around destroying old shows because of storage problems, which is what they say happened at the BBC.

Re:175 4 7r1ck... g37 4n 4x!!!1

[NanoGator]

"You do realize that they just witheld this episode so that the demand for new material would go up"

Seeing as how reruns didn't really exist when Hartnell was the Doctor, no I didn't realize that.

Faster than Light Travel

[zambuka]

is what we need to recover a the old episodes. Just zip out 30 to 40 light years record the old broadcasts and then bring it all back.

that or build a time machine.

Re:Faster than Light Travel

[Flingles]

Its sad that you got modded DOWN for pointing that out. Shame on you slashdot!

Re:Faster than Light Travel

[alien_blueprint]

Just zip out 30 to 40 light years record the old broadcasts and then bring it all back

This might just explain why they're missing in the first place. Some time-travelling fanboy takes the "missing" tapes out of the BBC vault, and transports them safely to the year 3001 :)

Re:Faster than Light Travel

[bucky0]

Maybe there could be a cameo in Futureama? Maybe the ruler of Omicron Persei 8 could watch it and then we could see it too...

Or, maybe it's too late and I should sleep more...

Re:Faster than Light Travel

[alien_blueprint]

Maybe the ruler of Omicron Persei 8 could watch it and then we could see it too...

"We demand to know what happened to this Doctor and his companion with the compellingly short skirt!"

Re:Faster than Light Travel

[CBDSteve]

Excuse my total lack of knowledge on this subject, but is it possible the broadcasts would rebound of celestial bodies in some way - similar to a radar or sonar echo?

If so, would it be possible to record the rebounded signal and use that??

Re:Faster than Light Travel

[protogeek]

Not my area of expertise, but I don't think you'd get much reflection. Planets and whatnot (especially if they have atmosphere) tend to absorb as much as reflect.

Even if you did get rebound, the signal degradation would be appalling. Remember the days of broadcast TV, when if you were more than ten miles from the station the picture got static-y? Multiply that by a few hundred light-years.

Re:Faster than Light Travel

[isorox]

Yes, but you're talking about a really weak signal. You are trying to pick up something that originally came from a 250kW transmitter on earth, which only leaks a tiny ammount of its trasmission, then travelled 100 trillion miles, bounced off a planet, got re-radiated at a slightly different frequency in all different directions, then travelled another 100 trillion miles back to earth, gathering interference all the way, and then manage to get a viewable signal? I struggle to get wireless across the street!

Re:Faster than Light Travel

[isorox]

Or, maybe it's too late

Yes, I'm afraid Futurama (god rest it's soul) has gone. Strange, since I stopped using Zapp's chat up lines I'm having a lot less luck with women....

I've always...

[iswm]

Wonderd how they lost TV episodes. They sure seem like a really strange thing to lose.

Re:I've always...

[DJTodd242]

Man, I'm gonna have a field day with this thread.

http://nitro9.earth.uni.edu/doctor/lost/lost.htm l

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.

Re:I've always...

[aberkvam]

There is an updated version of that article available at http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Lot/8256/l andf.htm.

Re:I've always...

[sakusha]

hey brainiac, nitrate cellulose film stock was discontinued by 1950, Doctor Who didn't start filming until 1963.

Anyway, I was horrified when I read the Doctor Who Lost Episodes FAQ, because I had taped some of the lost episodes, and then LOST them. I had one of the first VCRs on the market, I bought it specifically so I could tape Doctor Who, and I taped everything, for years and years. Then my psychoexgirlfriend stole my entire collection of tapes and destroyed them all. Oh man was I pissed off. But I didn't really realize what I'd lost until I read the FAQ many years later, and saw the list of lost episodes included stuff I had in my now-destroyed collection. Then I got REALLY pissed off.

Re:I've always...

[bhima]

Then now would be excelent time to find this woman, go to pay phone and remind her just how you feel.

Re:I've always...

[BigBadBus]

Yes, and film collectors are very unhappy about returning "their" property, even though it isn't reall there, and the indeminty of returning stolen material doesn't appeal to them. One thing I have always thought of as a good suggestion for finding lost TV is to contact overseas film collectors and TV fans. After all, people do migrate and take their stuff with them, or pass it down to their children, who might be anywhere in the world....

Re:I've always...

[Fancia]

There's a further problem for some old colour television shows... colour degradation. For instance, complete* 16mm reels of Kimba the White Lion (from its 1966 American television run) have been found, but the stock used for all existing copies of that dub has faded horribly, most of the blue and green fading out of the image. Some scenes are barely recognizeable as their original scenes because the red is so predominant and the other colours almost non-existent. * Some parts of the alternate dub of episode 1 are missing, and other alternate episode dubs/cuts may be missing

Re:I've always...

[DJTodd242]

Actually, the BBC has had an amnesty for years. Basically, all they want is to borrow the file or videotape and make a copy. The original material is returned to the collector.

Re:I've always...

[Hatta]

After all, why bother storing old episodes when you can make a new one with 8 bucks, some twine, and a toilet seat.

Re:I've always...

[BigBadBus]

Yes, but many collectors don't want to return material because they feel proprietorial about "their" material. And if they've spent a lot of money to get some lost material, why should they give it back to the BBC if the only thing they're going to get back in return is a copy of the programme, a day in the archive and a VHS of any programme they want?!

Re:I've always...

[TimeHorse]

"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."

Except Iran.

Since they showed Marco Polo in Iran there IS a possibility that it may still exist intact deep within some television vault in Tehran...

Re:I've always...

[sakusha]

What ever gave you that idea? I last attended college 8 years ago, when I was 40. My local PBS station ran lots of old Who episodes that were sent back to the BBC and ended up in the Great Erasure. I had em on tape.

Doctor Who

[darkpixel2k]

I know I'm a young, but Doctor Who?

;)

Re:Doctor Who

[BasilBrush]

Sounds like you are ill-educated, uncool, humourless and non-British. That does put you well out of the main Dr Who target market I'm afraid.

Re:Doctor Who

[kfg]

I know I'm a young, but Doctor Who?

Ummmmm, first base?

KFG

Re:Doctor Who

[BasilBrush]

Yup, all the cool kids watched Dr Who. :P I bet you told yourself that while the popular kids gave you wedgies. There's a novelty. A non-nerd posting on slashdot. Hey guys, come and have a look over here, somebody with a double digit IQ!

Re:Doctor Who

[hplasm]

That's correct.

Re:Doctor Who

[griffeymac]

Funny that I am moderated as the troll when I never made any comment regarding any other specific person on this website. I have a bachelor's degree from a pretty good university. I don't necessarily think I'm cool. I did used to run a bar when in college, however. ;) As far as humor goes, I think I do pretty well. And I can spell it the non-French way too! Ill-educated, uncool, and humorless. The penultimate definition of the British. Calling me non-British is *hardly* an insult. Have fun watching your Dr. Who-Cares. :D G.--

Re:Doctor Who

[BasilBrush]

Funny that I am moderated as the troll when I never made any comment regarding any other specific person on this website.

That's not what a troll is.

And I can spell it the non-French way too!

Though obviously not the English way.

Calling me non-British is *hardly* an insult.

Yes, but I didn't feel mean enough to call you American. ;-)

What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[Timbotronic]

Was when they lost the ability to write good plots. As far as I'm concerned, the "golden age" of Dr Who was the Tom Baker era. "Seeds of Doom" and "Genesis of the Daleks" were absolute classics - every show ended on a cliffhanger, the stories were original and supporting characters were well developed.

Things started going badly south during the Colin Baker era and the Sylvester McCoy episodes were just awful. What a shame that just as they finally had the ability to create decent special effects the writing fell apart.

Re:What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[Drantin]

just as they finally had the ability to create decent special effects the writing fell apart.

This may not have been a coincidence!

<--To Be Continued-->

Re:What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[Zeinfeld]

Things started going badly south during the Colin Baker era and the Sylvester McCoy episodes were just awful. What a shame that just as they finally had the ability to create decent special effects the writing fell apart.

One of my cousins used to do the special effects for Dr Who. He did K9 and wrote some of the scripts. He even spent some years trying to get another series off the ground after Terry Nation died

In their time they were not that bad. If you compare them to the Star Trek 'effects' of the same vintage there is no comparison, the BBC effects were low budget but they were much more imaginative. Star Trek's idea of originality was a new pattern of ridges on a new kind of alien's forehead.

Of course over in the UK we teach this thing called evolution in the schools so there is kind of an assumption that aliens are likely to be completely different.

The other thing is that the BBC still does a lot with radio, we are quite used to seeing stuff that leaves much to the imagination.

Re:What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should see K9 and Company... it was an attempted spinoff series with a really hideous theme song. It featured Sarah Jane and K9 (or a duplicate of K9, I forget which) and lasted for only one story.

Anyways, it was created during the Tom Baker era, but that didn't stop it from being pretty poor stuff. (At the time, I ate it up of course, on account of having a huge crush on Sarah Jane.)

Re:What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[Timbotronic]

The other thing is that the BBC still does a lot with radio...

Which is why it was so disappointing when they lost the ability to write cliffhanger endings. That's been a staple of radio series writing.

Re:What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[timelady]

never! i LOVED the ace/dr storylines....despite growing up and adoring the tom baker yrs, id say sophie and sylv had something magic!!!

Re:What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[bobobobo]

The other thing is that the BBC still does a lot with radio, we are quite used to seeing stuff that leaves much to the imagination.

That, and an English accent is much more pleasing to the ear than an American one.

Re:What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[0123456]

"If you compare them to the Star Trek 'effects' of the same vintage there is no comparison, the BBC effects were low budget but they were much more imaginative"

Well, I have to say I was amused to watch an old episode of the show that scared me to death when I was a kid, and discover that the 'monster' was just a guy wrapped up in bubble-wrap and painted green :).

Re:What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[Greyfox]

Douglas Adams wrote a few of those Tom Baker episodes and you can tell. Pirate Planet and Shada come to mind. Douglas Adams seemed to write specifically for Tom Baker's delivery (Notice that Tom Baker would make a great Ford Prefect?) and pirate planet is one of the best episodes I've seen.

No one would date me, either heh heh heh.

Re:What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[billtom]

To paraphrase the quote about the golden age of science fiction: the golden age of Doctor Who is whatever Doctor you were watching when you were thirteen.

Re:What was worse than losing a few episodes...

[Damn_Canuck]

Douglas Adams, when he was the script editor for Who during the Tom Baker era, did a great job in making sure the stories were fun and exciting at the same time. Hell, he tossed in some of his own humor from time to time as well...

Remember the episode with the Movellans vs the Daleks during the Tom Baker era? The Doctor is trapped under a pillar, and decides to pass the time reading a book. What book? The title eludes me but it was written by Oolun Caluphid (sp?), Douglas Adams' famous philosopher from THHGTTG - you know, the guy who wrote such famous books as "Where God Went Wrong", "Some More Of God's Greatest Mistakes", and "Who Is This God Person Anyway".

Whee!

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our rediscovered Dalek overlords.

Re:Whee!

[NanoGator]

"I, for one, welcome our rediscovered Dalek overlords."

I hope this joke runs out of regenerations.

Re:Whee!

[TomV]

You'll change your tune when they've got you working in their giant mine in Bedforshire in their quest to steal the Earth's magnetic core.

Don't say I didn't warn you...

yeah yeah

[Mantorp]

Only place I've ever heard the good doctor mentioned is on this site. If the show was that good, why haven't I seen it? I watched a lot of TV in my day, channel surfing till my AAAs went bad, never came upon a Doctor Who episode. I have BBC America now, is it on there?

Re:yeah yeah

[Bitsy Boffin]

If you were channel surfing at all, let alone with a remote control, you are too young to remember Doctor Who.

Re:yeah yeah

[Sockpuppetofdoom]

It's not on BBCA due to licencing and such

Re:yeah yeah

[archen]

When I was a kid _I_ was the remote control. That was part of the point of having kids - making them change the channel. The advent of the remote control diminishes the usefulness of kids significantly. =P

Re:yeah yeah

[Greyfox]

Yeah, but unless you jiggled the rabbit ears you could only get one of the three channels. Or you could switch over to UHF and try your luck there...

Re:yeah yeah

[alan_dershowitz]

I'm 26, but for a significant chunk of my childhood Dr. Who was played on PBS every (I recall) Friday night, which I watched religiously with my dad. It's one of the few things we could do together without getting into a fight.

I remember it quite well, albeit in reruns, and in the USA.

Re:yeah yeah

[signalgod]

The good Doctor came on PBS when I was younger (every Saturday night, I believe). But there are only a few states that still carry Doctor Who because they don't have the budget to pay the fees, I guess (check your local listings).

The next time your local PBS does a 'fund drive' you could call and heckle them to show the old Doctor Who episodes, and then you'll donate :)

As someone mentioned, it doesn't come on BBC America due to licensing.

But, I bet if you check your favorite P2P (Kazaa), most of the remaining episodes are available for donwload. Trust me, I know...

Re:yeah yeah

[torpor]

straight up, everyone knows you're supposed to use the sonic screwdriver, damn ..

Re:yeah yeah

[TomV]

I have BBC America now, is it on there?

A good place to look is the This Week page at Outpost Gallifrey (a very fine site, recommended recently by the BBC's own Doctor Who pages and frequented by a lot of the professionals).

The listing shows BBC Kids showing Doctor Who every day at 3:30 am EST, plus local stations for several US cities. Good luck.

Re:yeah yeah

[Bob Davis, Retired]

Wired and wireless TV remotes have been around for a LONG LONG time. Since the 60s.

Oh Come On!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Oh come on! The Daleks are "evil", of course the run Windows. Mod parent up to at least "sort of funny, kind of lame, I'm not sure if it's a troll"!

Re:Oh Come On!

[BasilBrush]

It was a reference to the Peter Cushing movie "Doctor Who : Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150 AD." I was hoping from some cred from true Dr Who nerds. But yes, it was a rather lame effort compared to the DavrOS suggestion.

Re:Oh Come On!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

My mom is a HUGE Doctor Who fan, but I must admit, I'm shallow when it comes to Science Fiction.

Re:Oh Come On!

[NanoGator]

"My mom is a HUGE Doctor Who fan..."

Sounds like she should have stopped at taco #99.

Re:175 4 7r1ck... g37 4n 4x!!!1

[MrLint]

clearly time travel will never exit because someone would go back in time and beat to death the bbc ppl who trashed all the old dr who episodes.

Episode luck

[British]

I'm just feeling lucky that ALL(yes ALL) of the Tomb of the Cybermen episodes were restored. It seemed like the best story that was lost forever.

With the Dalek Master plan, there's only 9 more episodes to go before that's recovered. 5 and 10 are intact, but aren't very interesting since you're only getting a fraction of the story.

As for "The Moonbase", it was a horrible story. The special effects were very 1950s-esque right down to the Cybermen's saucer that looked like a dinner plate. Nowhere near as cool as the Invasion, where most of the episodes of that are intact.

C'mon people, start searching your basements for more DW episodes.

Re:Episode luck

[RyatNrrd]

Tomb of the Cybermen was good...

but imho Evil of the Daleks would be better! The couple of episodes that are still around are great - they're worth sitting through the Dalek Documentary videa for.

Re:Episode luck

[alien_blueprint]

I'm just feeling lucky that ALL(yes ALL) of the Tomb of the Cybermen episodes were restored. It seemed like the best story that was lost forever

I must be the only person disappointed with "Tomb of the Cybermen". I read the novelisation as a child, and *that's* the version I grew up with.

Then the real thing comes out, full of bad effects (the Cybermen were literally coming apart at the seams), some very stilted and generally poor acting and *very* bad staging of the climatic scenes.

In my imagination, the special effects were perfect and there were countless lethal and effective Cybermen rather than a few clumsy and silly looking ones. And the reality just couldn't live up to that.

Terry Nation was the culprit, I think

[A nonymous Coward]

I may have the name wrong. I am talking about the director or producer who took over for the last year of Tom Baker. As far as I'm concerned, he ruined the show. Up til then, it was fun, it did not take itself too seriously, it just did a good job with a piss poor budget, and that was fine. I remember one comment in particular that summed up his regime, that up until he took charge, Tom Baker had used little or no makeup, but he insisted on full makeup. Why mess with success? he got more budget for special effects, but that was a losing proposition. Dr. Who was famous for cheesy special effects, and that was one of the ingredients of its success. When he boosted the budget, suddenly it was competing in a different league. He also brought in lots of gloomy deep thinking kind of scripts, lots of heavy pondering, without the slightest bit of humor.

I blame him for the show falling down. If it had stayed low budget and cheesy, it could have kept going for a long time. Once it got expensive, it had to have sterling ratings to match. It also ceased to be any kind of show for kids.

Re:Terry Nation was the culprit, I think

[wing03]

You're thinking John Nathan Turner.

Peter Davison had great stories. Seemingly less sci-fi but more drama.

Colin Baker and the technicolour dream coat had flakey scripts. Actually, he was too much of a flake altogether.

Sly McCoy was a crazy artsy hippy in Vision On but got way too dark and all knowing as the Doctor. His assistant Mel was an irritating Bernadette Peters wannabe. Later, if I were Ace, I would've kicked his ass out of the Tardis.

Would've been interesting to see Paul McGann develop. Minus all those bits about being half human of course.

Re:Terry Nation was the culprit, I think

[clickety6]

But the greatest balme should be laid at the door of the casting director who thought Bonnie Langford would be a great assistant!!! BONNIE LANGFORD !!! ARRGGHHHH!!!!!!!

Re:Terry Nation was the culprit, I think

[Phexro]

Listen to some of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas.

He develops quite a bit. There are some amazing stories; I highly recommend them for any Who fan.

Re:Terry Nation was the culprit, I think

[Richy_T]

Jeez man, I'd wiped that from my memory.

Rich

Maybe not much use though.

[sbaker]

The touble is that Dr Who was a serial. Finding one lost episode doesn't really help much if the other half dozen that surrounds it are also missing.

Of course if there was a serial with just one missing show - then this should be grounds for much rejoicing and the stamping of large quantities of overpriced DVD's. But with all those early episodes being missing, the odds are not good.

My mother tells me that I used to have to watch Dr Who from the safety of a large cardboard box T.A.R.D.I.S down behind the sofa so I could hide when the scarey bits came on. (That would have been the Hartnell episodes - not the later stuff - which was much more tongue in cheek)

Re:Maybe not much use though.

[mlush]

The touble is that Dr Who was a serial. Finding one lost episode doesn't really help much if the other half dozen that surrounds it are also missing.

Then keep looking till you have found the other 5 (I don't think there were any 7 parters :-) till you get to

Of course if there was a serial with just one missing show - then this should be grounds for much rejoicing and the stamping of large quantities of overpriced DVD's. But with all those early episodes being missing, the odds are not good.

...which may have something to do with the rejoycing

Re:Maybe not much use though.

[Phexro]

Missing episodes are reconstructed through the soundtrack, extant footage (clips from other BBC TV shows, or fan footage made by pointing a 8mm camera at a TV screen), and still photos.

More info at recons.com

Re:Maybe not much use though.

[TomV]

7 parters were quite common during the early Pertwee era (early 1970's) - the move to colour constrained the budgets, and if a story which would have been a 6-parter was done in 7, you could save on sets and costumes (and maybe actors fees to?). A lot of season 7 was 7 parters - Ambassadors Of Death, Silurians and Inferno spring to mind.

Unfortunately with Daleks' Masterplan, we now have thee episodes, but there were 12 in all, or 13 if you count the standalone prequel "Mission to The Unknown" broadcast a month earlier.

other than that, 'The War Games' was a 10-parter, 'Invasion' was an 8-parter and i can't off the top of my head think of anything else longer than 7 parts (unless you count Season 23, Trial Of a Time Lord, but that was really several four parters plus some top and tail stuff).

Re:Maybe not much use though.

[Fred Or Alive]

Erm, The Daleks[1] and Marco Polo were seven parts as well, both in the first season. [1] Or The Mutants, but there's another story called The Mutants, so everyone calls it The Daleks.

Re:Maybe not much use though.

[TomV]

Absolutely right :)

I wasn't so much trying to list the 7-parters comprehensively as to identify those stories *longer* than 7 parts. But you're quite right about the other 7-parters. I've a niggling feeling there may have been another 8-parter other than "The Invasion", but I'll have to check that in the Television Companion when I get home.

re: The Mutants / The Daleks: you could call it "The Dead Planet (the one after The Tribe Of Gum and before Inside The Spaceship)" if you really want a fan-war...

Re:Maybe not much use though.

[starling]

I used to have to watch Dr Who from the safety of a large cardboard box T.A.R.D.I.S down behind the sofa so I could hide when the scarey bits came on

You too, huh. We didn't have a TARDIS, but all the kids in our family basically hid behind the sofa as soon as "World of Sport" finished and watched Dr. Who from between gaps in the cushions.

Come to think of it, so did everyone in my age group that I've ever mentioned it to. Group consciousness?

Quality?...

[centralizati0n]

I've seen projects like this (Digital Archive Project) where people recover old shows and release them, but does anyone know where they found this "lost" episode? A recorded tape? An old master somewhere? It would be interesting to see the quality of it when it gets released in comparison to the other "non-lost" episodes. Also would be very interesting to hear the whole story of this episode... how it got lost, where they found it, how they updated it. Maybe a good idea for a book.

Oh no..

[adeyadey]

Another evening of dodgy old b/w film on the BBC soon folks..

Huh?

[jargoone]

Dr Who? I'm not familiar with this show.

guess they learned something from Tupac...

[sTalking_Goat]

ust keep finding them lost epiusodes every couple months...

Dr. Who AND Star Trek DvDs are ripoffs

[Anonymous Coward]

I was looking up the DvDs for Tom Baker episodes and its two episodes per DVD for $20-30 a piece. Same thing with the new classic Star Trek DVDs, which look great but are also a ripoff considering other series like the X-Files gives a whole season for $70-90.

Re:Wow, "lost" episodes?

[bucky0]

Depending on how long ago it was, there might not have been VCRs around.

Re:Zzzzzzzz . . . what a snooze

[RyatNrrd]

Go on then, tell us what you prefer. Step into the ring.

yay. just yay.

[timelady]

its about time...

Is this really a very good story anyhow?

[alien_blueprint]

This story was published in novelisation form around 1989, in two parts due to the length of the original story (12 episodes). This was basically done via scripts and the author's memory of the show, and no doubt a fair bit of research.

Anyway, based on the hype surrounding this supposed great epic lost story, I bought and read the two books that year as soon as possible. And it really isn't very good. An extremely thin plot padded by endless chapters of the Daleks chasing the Doctor through time and space, which had already been done by "The Chase" in the show the year before - and "The Chase" *itself* was mostly padding.

Honestly, the entire thing could be told in 2 or 3 episodes, and it still wouldn't be much to write home about. It's full of holes and is ultimately just lame.

It's nice that this was recovered for historical and completeness reasons I guess, but the article is trying to hype this story up as a lost classic and it just isn't. It's filler to reach the episode count for the season, using the ever-popular Daleks, pure and simple. There are some really good Doctor Who stories, and some are missing, but this isn't one of them in my opinion.

As for describing it as "an all-round masterpiece" ... that's just garbage. "The direction of Douglas Camfield combined with the scripting of Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner gelled in... a way that defied description," - now *that* I can agree with ;)

Re:Is this really a very good story anyhow?

[CaptainAvatar]

No, it's a masterpiece I tell you! Just look at the cliffhanger ending from episode 7 (SPOILER WARNING):

The travellers journey on in the TARDIS. Realising that they never got a chance to celebrate Christmas during their recent visit to Earth, the Doctor produces a bottle of champagne and some glasses. He toasts Steven and Sara and then turns and wishes everyone at home a happy Christmas as well.

Gripping stuff!

Re:Is this really a very good story anyhow?

[alien_blueprint]

He toasts Steven and Sara and then turns and wishes everyone at home a happy Christmas as well.

Amazing!

I'd forgotten about this infamous scene. I can't remember how it was worked into the novelisation. The author probably just dropped it. The episode itself, "The Feast of Steven" was there in all its "glory", but I don't recall the "cliffhanger" being present.

Re:Is this really a very good story anyhow?

[CaptainAvatar]

Heh ... I haven't seen the story in question nor read the novelisation, but reading the description of it on the BBC website did remind me of an even-more padded out version of The Chase, as you suggested, which I have seen now and didn't think very much of. But it would be almost worth seeing it just for that Christmas greeting!

Eliminating DVD artifacts

[LPetrazickis]

(and I say that as someone who finds even modern Hollywood blockbusters distractingly artifact-ridden on most DVD releases)

I think you need a smaller tv set.;)

Re:Wow, "lost" episodes?

[adavidm]

The BBC made another bad (in retrospect) desision with some of the early colour episodes. They decided to keep only the Black and White version and bin the colour! After appealing for members of the public to come forward with videoed copies, they were able to colourise the high quality black and white masters so that they looked almost perfect. What is also interesting was that some of these videos were NTSC, so they had to do TBC and other tricks just to get anywhere near

YES!

[dalek_killer]

I think that I have died and gone to Sci-Fi heaven. Isn't time travel wonderfull.

The lost episode

[patricksevenlee]

The lost episode wasn't lost at all. It's actually one of the pieces of the Key to Time :D

Wow I am shocked and amazed

[Orion Blastar]

that Doctor Who does not have its own Slashdot topic. What is up with that? :)

26 seasons, wow, Tom Baker is my favorite Dr. Who actor. Favorite line "Harry Suluvan is an imbecile!" from when Harry tried to remove a bomb from Dr. Who's body that was rigged to explode if tampered with. :)

Re:Wow I am shocked and amazed

[Scrameustache]

that Doctor Who does not have its own Slashdot topic.

There used to be one, but it got lost...
: )

If you cannot wait until 2005 for Dr.Who

[Orion Blastar]

Point your browser at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/webcasts/index .shtml and watch a webcast. I think you need Realplayer to view them.

Re:If you cannot wait until 2005 for Dr.Who

[fractaltiger]

Good thing I found Orion Blaster's comment. Hey, friend, I suppose you have followed the Scream of the Shalka Series they did in Flash, right? Is it over? About two weeks and I haven't seen new eps posted.

It's http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/shalka

Re:If you cannot wait until 2005 for Dr.Who

[Orion Blastar]

I think they are negotiating the rights to host it or something. It might be online later on in the year. I totally missed it, and did not view it yet. I am still trying to view the Cybermen "Real Time" episode when I find the time to finish it.

Correction

[Lelon]

The BBC did not "junk" its episodes. It archived them very poorly, and a single wharehouse fire wiped out most of the missing 1st and 2nd Doctor episodes.

Re:Correction

[TomV]

This claim is not Informative. It is, rather, nonsense. An account which actually contains some truth and factual content is available from the BBC's Restoration Team who do the rework on the older material to make it fit for VHS and DVD release.

Re:Huh?

[NanoGator]

"Dr Who? I'm not familiar with this show. "

Doh. Who let the jock in?

Where does this episode fit?

[tqft]

If a copy is sourced from the BBC - is it before or after what has been shown?

Unfortunately I am working too late to be able to watch them (>6pm) each night and will not get time to watch the videos.

Sylvester McCoy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sylvester McCoy was well-cast and actually a very good Doctor; as Timbotronic said, it was the writing and realization of the scripts that was so appalling. I wish he could have had the same quality of writing and production to work with that the earlier Doctors did (and they really could have left out the corny music in his episodes!!).

For those of you who have never watched Doctor Who, don't start with the last ones with Sylvester McCoy. But if you really enjoy a good Doctor and can ignore some of the tackiness, he's at least worth a look-see (and his companion, Ace - played by Sophie Aldred - is a great character too).

[OT] Silence

[Dicky]

Reminds me of an old LP entitled "Requiem For Silence."

Yep, 45 minutes of groove without so much as a wiggle in it.

And the BBC are broadcasting a live performance of the single version, this evening!

Seriously :-)

Re:[OT] Silence

[kfg]

The problem is, of course, that broadcasting 4'33" is rougly akin to broadcasting a Marcel Marceau performance.

You really kinda gotta be there for the full effect.

And I'm trying to imagine the poor, poor people trying to tune in, unaware of the current selection.

KFG

Re:Wow, "lost" episodes?

[docbob]

The only ones that had VCR's in those days were either incredibly rich, or televisions stations. The stations used big real to real tape if my memory serves me right. In 1976 I took a class at a college in Producing and Directing in TV studio. The cartridges that had been developed by that time were quite expensive. The college would regularly go through and delete things that instructors had requested to be taped but had not been used in a while so that they could free up more tapes. The Doc

Doctor Who missing episodes

[BigBadBus]

So, we're now down to 108 missing episodes (in 1982, it was 136)... For more info, look here and here. For some info on lost UK TV in general, have a look at this page.

Re:Wow, "lost" episodes?

[Wildfire Darkstar]

All of these 115 lost episodes were from the 1960s, before the advent of VCRs. It's possible someone could have hooked up an old fashioned camera and recorded the broadcasts manuaully, but it's not like this was something very many people bothered to do.

Although, interestingly, a number of people did do the best they could at the time. Specifically, they set up audio equipment to record to soundtrack to these episodes, and these sound-only recordings have survived to the present. The BBC, having obtained these soundtracks from the fans who recorded them, has been releasing them, with linking narration, on CD for several years now. Also, a mini-fan industry (not for profit, of course) has sprung up to "reconstruct" the episodes using these soundtracks and surviving clips and still images to give a (very) rough estimate of the original: a sort of semi-animated storybook format.

Interestingly, these fan-recorded audios tend to be of generally high quality, so much so that the so-called Reconstruction Team (the internal BBC group responsible for remastering and touching up these old DW broadcasts for video release) has occassionally used them to redub official BBC copies of extant episodes.

There are dozens of articles and books written on this sad chapter in the BBC's archival history, none of which shine well on them. Apparently, it was a classic case of miscommunication between branches of the company: the warehouses responsible for the wiping of most of these episodes simply assumed that some other branch of the BBC was archiving them, and never bothered to check and find out that no such branch actually existed. Go figure.

Re:My kids love these! - Not Suprised

[Jonah Hex]

Not suprised really, the original incarnation of Dr. Who was actually based towards children, with his "granddaughter", Susan, and her two normal earth teachers Ian and Barbara, as companions. They were able to at least comprehend both the science fact and fiction used in the stories and explained by both the good Doctor and Susan. If I recall correctly one of the reasons William Hartnell left the sho was due to it moving away from children stories towards a more sci-fi bent. I for one am very glad it continued to keep some fact in through out the series.

Jonah Hex

The doctor could get them back

[DrJAKing]

If you had a faster than light transport, you could navigate to the appropriate place in the expanding shell of radio and tv signals around the planet until you found the original transmission (roughly 21,000,000,000,000 miles away and counting).

Mod parent *down*

[e6003]

You're completely wrong. Actors' union contracts at the time the episodes were made specified only one repeat max, and that within 5 years of first broadcast. Also Dr Who was videotaped and later recorded onto film (what the US refers to as "kinescope" recordings) for overseas sale. The main BBC library only had a mandate to keep filmed shows until the late 1970s, and the film recordings mostly stayed with BBC Enterprises (the comercial arm of the BBC). When Enterprises needed space they junked a load of their films, thinking the BBC Film Library had them safe and that these were only their sales prints. Unfortunately, they were wrong...

Re:Dr. Who

[j4ck50n]

your sig...thats Clutch no?

Re:Wow, "lost" episodes?

[nattt]

Blame it on Equity, the Actors union who didn't want the TV stations to repeat anything, thus rendering the archive of recorded TV next to useless - even with the advent of the VCR, the unions still wanted too much money making the first VHS releases unaffordable to most.... And they're also the reason why the current DVD releases of old TV are expensive.

noisy signal = big files

[JackJudge]

Unless the picture was cleaned up to the nth degree (a long and not-cheap process) the older episodes will prolly take up at least as much space as the newer colour ones.
All the imperfections on the source, grainy film, static from a bad TV signal etc all add to the "information" on the screen and will get encoded as such. Given the random nature of such interference compression algorythms won't be very effective on affected parts of the picture.
If the original source is cleaned up a LOT (AFAIK still a manual process) then yeah we'll get more shows per disc otherwise we could end up with even less actual screen time per DVD.

Re:Dr WHO? I guess I am too young to care

[ImWithBrilliant]

No, his pun was: new person: "Dr, who?" Dr. Who: "Exactly"

The torrent, damnit!

[JThundley]

So where's the torrent?

Mod me funny or insightful or whatever, but we all know that a torrent would be really great right about now :)

Wait wait wait..

[xankar]

Doctor who?

evolution irony (was Re:What was worse than ...)

[cascadingstylesheet]

Of course over in the UK we teach this thing called evolution in the schools so there is kind of an assumption that aliens are likely to be completely different.

Er, anybody see the irony in this snarky dogmatic theme?

So, you've done lots of original research and science in the field of evolution, have you? ;) Because otherwise, you're just snidely repeating what you've been told, and thinking that it makes you some kind of independent-thinking iconoclast ...

(and no, for the record, I don't doubt evolution, I just find this amusing ...)

Prediction of future discoveries

[sgt101]

I think the odds must be good - their is a method that uses sighting of a species to derive a date at which the species actually went extinct, normally this is a long time after the final sighting. The idea is that as sightings get rarer the chances of another animal turning up get lower, so if Dr Who episodes are running at one every 6 years I think we can expect a couple more to pop up!

Re:Prediction of future discoveries

[Fred Or Alive]

The increasing use of the internet will help, seeing as people will be able to find out the information on missing episodes far more easily than ten years ago. But I don't think many are going to turn up.

I bet the people who had every existing episode on VHS are pissed though (the last were released in November in the 'Reign Of Terror' collection[1] ('The End Of The Universe' collection in America, as they do things bigger over there)). Just when they thought they'd caught them all, another one comes along. Although I don't think it's going to get released on VHS, as it's pretty dead. Viva La DVD!

[1] With free badge!

clip for william hartnell regeneration

[cmdr_forge]

Does anyone know a place where I can see the regenation for william hartnell to pat troughton...?

Re:clip for william hartnell regeneration

[protogeek]

It's on the "Troughton Years" tape (VHS only, as far as I know) along with assorted single episodes of otherwise-lost stories. Given the tech and budget available at the time, it's pretty cool.

Well then.

[Raven42rac]

I suppose it isn't "lost" anymore now is it? How about "Doctor Who episode, presumed lost, has been found".

Can someone identify this episode??

[Tom Courtenay]

When I was a little kid, I saw an episode that terrified me.

From what I remember, a woman was in a bazaar and went into some sort of funhouse. It was very spooky, and one of the mirrors reflected something like a large snake's skull. The skull kept opening its mouth and saying:

Look. At. Me.

I think it was trying to mesmerise her. Anyway, it scared the pants off me and to this day nobody has been able to identify it. Any ideas??

Re:Can someone identify this episode??

[D'Arque Bishop]

Snakedance.

Hope this helps...

Re:Can someone identify this episode??

[Tom Courtenay]

I can't believe you guys identified it, and so quickly!

You've solved a mystery of my youth! Thank you.

Re:Dr. Who

[chunkwhite86]

why yes, yes it is.

"WHO" cares!

[Mustang Matt]

I hated the few episodes of Dr. Who. I'd much rather watch Red Dwarf.

I was a kid when I tried to watch Dr. Who so maybe that makes a difference.

Link to Doctor Who Restoration Team

[malf-uk]

Here

Doesn't mention this recent news, but is rather interesting as it explains what they do with such old recordings.

Re:Link to Doctor Who Restoration Team

[TomV]

It was the Restoration Team who were given the film reels (Steve Roberts got them on Tuesday) by Francis Watson. The news was originally broken on the Restoration Team's forum at the site you cite. I expect they'll put a proper write-up on the main site when they've stopped drooling.

DVDs from noisy old film are lousy

[raygundan]

That's absolutely right-- I saw a DVD version of the original Metropolis, taken from the old black-and-white film, and it was without a doubt the worst dvd i have ever seen in quality terms. The film noise (pops, scratches, flickering between frames, etc...) was so enormous and so full-screen that there just wasn't enough bandwidth to display it well. As a result, it was like watching realvideo on a 56k modem. Blocks, blocks, blocks, as far as the eye could see.

Re:DVDs from noisy old film are lousy

[pianophile]

I saw a DVD version of the original Metropolis [...] and it was without a doubt the worst dvd i have ever seen in quality terms.

A new Metropolis DVD was released in 2003 containing the best and most complete print of the film released thus far. Its quality is stunning.

Re:DVDs from noisy old film are lousy

[DrLazer]

And let's not forget, for those "quick, cheap and unrestored" advocates out there, that the version of Metropolis that Kino released is the culmination of three years of work (not counting the decades of efforts that came before).

--DocL

engrish

[zontroll]

Am I the only one who had a double take when reading the title of this article?

I guess not being a fan of Doctor Who made the title not click immediately. The way I mis-read it the first time (almost in engrish) was "Lost Doctor, Who Episode Found"...

Full Season DVDS dammit!

[Darth23]

When the hell is te BBC going release full seasons fo Dr. Who (other that the Key to Time)?? Don't they know that the big bucks in in selling full seasons, rather than trying to sell a single episode for the price of a big budget movie?

Re:Full Season DVDS dammit!

[ecs05norway]

If you look at the way the sales work -- really closely -- you'll notice that they're selling full seasons for only a bit more than, say, your Babylon 5 or X-Files seasons, just without the convenient box.

A Doctor Who season ran for, typically, 22 half-hour episodes.

These would be divided into 4-6 serial stories, typically 3-6 episodes each.

It is these individual stories, not "single episodes", that are being sold on DVD at the $22-25 price point. So a full season is around $100-120 US.

punctuation is for a purpose

[shakuni]

Lost Doctor Who Found... sounds like an incomplete sentence. You could have posted it as Lost "Doctor Who" Found.

Help please

[dar]

There was once a popular tagline on BBSs and on usenet that was an ironic comment from Dr. Who. Now I can't remember it. Anyone?

Re:Help please

[dar]

Never mind. I found it.

My favorite Dr. Who quote:
"Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with time travel, you never can tell." -- Doctor Who

Asynchronous unoriginal ST bashing

[Scrameustache]

compare them to the Star Trek 'effects' of the same vintage there is no comparison, the BBC effects were low budget but they were much more imaginative. Star Trek's idea of originality was a new pattern of ridges on a new kind of alien's forehead.

Wrong-o, boy-o.

The foreheads started in the 80's, back in the 60's, it was ears.
Jeez, if you're gonna spew cliche rants about a show, at least get your timelines straight.

Of course over in the UK we teach this thing called evolution in the schools so there is kind of an assumption that aliens are likely to be completely different.

Non humanoid actors are hard to come by.

The other thing is that the BBC still does a lot with radio, we are quite used to seeing stuff that leaves much to the imagination.

So, you got good acid in the UK then? Brilliant! ;-)

Ditto!

[A nonymous Coward]

Almost the same. I took Spanish and French in high school, I was a natural at seeing an unfamiliar word and knowing how to pronounce it, or hearing an unfamiliar word and knowing how to spell it. Then I learned some Japanese, and not just the spelling and pronounciation went to pot, but I started using the wrong {there,their} and other 3rd grade screwups.

I figure the Spanish and French just reinforced my English, what with common roots and all. But Japanese is such a cleaner language from the spelling / pronunciation viewpoint (except for kanji :-) that my brain decided to forget a lot of the complications of English.

John Nathan-Turner, not Terry Nation

[Thag]

You mean John Nathan-Turner.

And yes, I have to agree that he pretty much ran the show into the ground. Mainly because the quality of the scripts dropped off immediately, and continued to sink lower as time went on. If he had done three years and left, things might have gotten better, but he remained the producer until the show's cancellation.

A really nice person, though: I met him once at a Doctor Who convention and he was quite pleasant to talk to.

Terry Nation was a writer, and a brilliant one. He created the Daleks, and also created the show Blake's 7.

Jon Acheson

Re:John Nathan-Turner, not Terry Nation

[RyatNrrd]

Terry Nation was a writer, and a brilliant one. He created the Daleks, and also created the show Blake's 7.

Also McGyver.

It seems that when Terry Nation died there was a fair bit of bad blood between him and the BBC. His estate appears to own the intellectial property rights for the dalek concept, so the BBC have trouble every time they want to run a dalek show on TV.

It looks a bit unlikely that there will be daleks in the new Doctor Who series they are making.

Besides, we KNOW HOW IT ENDS!

[devphil]

One of the things that's always fascinated me about the Dalek future history is that we've already seen the final episode. We know what happens, some umpteen hundreds of thousands of years from now. All of the Pertwee, Baker (funny), Davidson, Baker (annoying), McCoy episodes are just filling in the gaps between now and then.

So, I don't know what operating system they're running (PepperShakerOS?), but whatever it is, there's a human emotions loadable module for it. And Troughton's Doctor saw what happened after they tried to "insmod human_emotions".

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.

Likewise. I even managed to double-dork myself with the lame insmod joke.

Re:Besides, we KNOW HOW IT ENDS!

[GeoGreg]

Actually, I think the BBC Dr. Who website (too lazy to hunt for URL, but check in the Cult TV section) gives a "dual timeline" for the Daleks. That is, the events of "Genesis of the Daleks" nudged the Daleks into a different timeline (or the Doctor was nudged? or both?). In any event, the events that occur in the Doctor's timeline after Genesis of the Daleks are not necessarily the same ones that occured at dates earlier in his timeline but "in the future" relative to the date of the destruction of Davros' bunker. Thus the absence of both Davros and the Movellans from any of the pre-Genesis Dalek stories. I would assume that in the pre-Genesis timeline, Davros was destroyed by the Daleks and maybe even forgotten. I'm not a reader of the various post-1989 novels (New Adventures, Missing Adventures, etc.), so I don't know if any of this has been thoroughly covered.

Re:evolution irony (was Re:What was worse than ...

[Zeinfeld]

Er, anybody see the irony in this snarky dogmatic theme? So, you've done lots of original research and science in the field of evolution, have you? ;) Because otherwise, you're just snidely repeating what you've been told, and thinking that it makes you some kind of independent-thinking iconoclast ...

True fact: Spock was put in the background during the first 6 episodes of Star Trek because the network thought his pointy ears would get the bible belt fulminating against a character who looks like the devil. The ears were airbrushed out of some early PR photos.

There are pig ignorant folk in every country. But its only in the US that they get to control what the rest of the country watches, or run the country)

Re:Wow, "lost" episodes?

[Darth23]

That's cause they knew they'd get screwed on retransmission, syndication and 'pther uses' compensation. The the people on Gilligan's Island, Brady Bunch, and hundreds if not thousands of other shows don't get a dime for all the re-runs of their shows (or the got a small amount for a few years). Even though their performances are still being used to generate revenue for the media companies who control the product now.

Remember those famous last words?

[slipgun]

"There will always be 110 missing episodes of Doctor Who". --Ian Levine

Now there are 108.

found clips from missing episodes

[bstil]

"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.
link

THE DOCTOR WHO CLIPS LIST by Steve Phillips
link

Storyline

[DrCode]

True. Dr. Who storylines are more like, "Young female companion in miniskirt runs through alien landscape until she trips and is captured by bug-eyed (or mechanical) monster."

I thought...

[DarkRecluse]

I thought this was a case of an episode of some show finding a lost doctor in taping. Perhaps we could put ' 's or " 's around phrases that are easily mistaken for other meanings.

Yes I know that it was pretty easy to figure out the actual meaning even after re-reading the title, but that's like saying spelling isn't important because u can figer ot te meening if yu luk longenuf.

Thank you

[A nonymous Coward]

Thanks to both of you for setting me straight without flamage :-)

And apologies to Terry Nation. Had some of the right initials at least :-)

His comment on Tom Baker's makeup really rankled me at the time, still does ... change just for the sake of his own ego, no rationale. I think hoser really sums him up, pee on everything in sight to demonstrate who is in charge.

Re:Wow, "lost" episodes?

[tiger99]

I'm not so sure that 115 are missing, the earliest series, and some other fairly early ones, were shown several times on one of the UK cable channels a few years ago. Copies had been located abroad, because various other broadcasters had either archived them properly, or left them around to be found by accident. I thought that the number still missing was in single figures now. But, I may be misinformed, although I know what I saw (and enjoyed!).

It is indeed sad that the BBC behaved like this, but corporate disasters are quite common in large organisations (NASA and 2 Shuttles for example) because "the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing", or as someone once expanded, because "the left hand does not know what the left hand is doing". Probably all large organisations suffer from corporate failure, many also suffer from corporate dishonesty, and a few from corporate greed. (Please note that I did not mention any company in Redmond as suffering from any or all of these, but I did not deny the possibility either.)

Bob the Angry Dalek

[poot_rootbeer]

Those who are interested in this story may also be entertained by this week's "Bob the Angry Flower" cartoon:

Dalek Shell

Coincidence

[ProteusQ]

And here this happens just as I'm dubbing my entire DW collection to DVD -- oh wait, did I type that? That was someone else... uh, leaning over from the next workstation and typing on my keyboard. Yeah, that's it.

Thats not fair ...

[madpierre]

Thats bloody typical. All we get on the BBC here in the UK are naff Australian soaps like *ugh* Home and Away. Its not fair WAAAAA. :(

creepy head!

[snot.dotted]

shudder, that creepy head thing again.
Early Dr Who was bloody hilarious, I mean giant bumble bee people. I nearly peed my pants when I saw that on UK Gold (retro cable tv channel insb the UK)

John Nathan-Turner

[Stephen Williams]

I am talking about the director or producer who took over for the last year of Tom Baker.

You had everything right except the name: it was John-Nathan Turner. Terry Nation was the guy who created the Daleks.

-Stephen

Leave 'em lost.

[Asterax]

Most episodes from the first and second incarnations of Dr. Who were rarely good. While some of the episodes provided the crucial background history for monsters, foes, and friends, others just plain sucked. The Aztecs, The Web Planet, The Dominators, The Mind Robber, and Planet of Giants come to mind as total crap.

Download Status?

[nurb432]

How is the BBC coming with offering all their old shows as a download?

One more episode to add to the mix , cant beat that.

Re:ooooooooeeeeeeeeeoooohhhhhoooeeeehhooooeooohhh

[RyatNrrd]

Hey, that's not fair! That was a funny post! Rum-de-dum, rum-de-dum, rum-de-dum, ooo-WEEEE-OO!

Re:ooooooooeeeeeeeeeoooohhhhhoooeeeehhooooeooohhh

[torpor]

its okay, there's gotta be a few dr. who fans in the mod pool who will get it ... give it time ... hah hah!

BBC Treasure Hunt for lost Doctor Who

[johnlunney]

The BBC have a site for their search for lost TV programmes:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/treasurehunt/missing/drw ho.shtml

It lists the missing episodes, what media they are on, whether they actually exist or not etc.

Doctorin' The Tardis (The Timelords AKA KLF - 1989)
johnl

Re:Wow, "lost" episodes?

[arwel]

It is indeed sad that the BBC behaved like this, but corporate disasters are quite common in large organisations (NASA and 2 Shuttles for example) because "the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing", or as someone once expanded, because "the left hand does not know what the left hand is doing". Probably all large organisations suffer from corporate failure, many also suffer from corporate dishonesty, and a few from corporate greed. (Please note that I did not mention any company in Redmond as suffering from any or all of these, but I did not deny the possibility either.)

This is a bit unfair to the BBC. At the time (early 1970s) what they did was perfectly logical -- the old b/w programmes had all been shown, and sold to whatever foreign stations were likely to show them; colour TV had arrived and no-one would want to look at the old non-colour stuff, they thought. Apart from which, transmission videotapes of that era were huge reels of 1" and 2" tape which took up a hell of a lot of space (and the BBC produces LOTS of programmes), and were enormously expensive -- it made perfect sense to wipe old programmes and reuse the tape. Back in 1976-9 I helped at my university's student tv station, and even domestic standard (Philips VCR) tapes cost GBP 20 an hour.

You shouldn't blame the BBC for failing to foresee a time when videorecorders and DVD players would be things you could pick up at the local supermarket, with the consequent demand for nostalgia material!

Re:Wow, "lost" episodes?

[Wildfire Darkstar]

You're both right and wrong. I was incorrect when I stated that 115 episodes were missing, but the number of lost episodes is still in the triple digits. The recovery of this one brought the number down to 108.

The thing is, many early episodes have been recovered. The bulk (though not all) of the first two seasons were returned in the early 1980s, and throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, numerous episodes were discovered in the possession of private collectors, or other television stations, and so on. But after the recovery of all four episodes of The Tomb of the Cybermen in the early 1990s, the speed at which episodes were being returned slowed to a trickle, as most of the obvious channels had been exhausted. The only significant finds in the past couple of years have been an episode of The Crusade five years ago, and now this episode of Daleks' Master Plan.

The thing is, this was all perfectly normal. Every episode of the show (and, indeed, of most BBC programs at the time) were shot on video cassette. Because of the PAL formatting of the tapes, though, these masters were then transferred to film and handed over to another division of the BBC, BBC Enterprises, so that they could be more easily sold to foreign distributors. This was all well and good, except that BBC TV had a relatively small facility for storing tape masters, and routinely had to cycle out older tapes to make room for newer rooms, a process which accelerated in the early 1970s, when most BBC1 shows started switching from black and white to color broadcasts. When Doctor Who made the switch at the start of the 1970 season, BBC TV figured it would be highly unlikely that they would ever rebroadcast the old B&W episodes, and so basically junked the lot of them. With almost no exception, every single video cassette master of every episode of the show produced from its creation in 1963 through 1969 was erased. It was figured that if anyone wanted a copy of these episodes, they could go bug BBC Enterprises for the film transfers.

This left the film transfers being held for oversea sale. The problem here was that the nature of copyright law made it extremely difficult to sort out the rights issue after a couple of years. After this initial period had expired, it wasn't economically practical for BBC Enterprises to store all of the film, and so they were incinerated. BBC Enterprises, for its part, assumed that if anyone wanted copies of the episodes that badly, they could go bug BBC TV for the tape masters because, after all, they created them. This was, in general, a slower process than the video erasing, and took place throughout the 1970s.

There were a few exceptions here, though. BBC TV held onto a more or less random assortment of episodes as examples of BBC work of the time period, so some of these have survived. And, towards the tail end of BBC Enterprises's pyro-spree a number of individuals within the BBC finally figured out what was going on, as fan groups began to ask around at the BBC for copies of early episodes, and managed to put at stop to the practice. After 1978, a new BBC group, the Film and Videotape Library, was created to provide storage for BBC programs so that this sorry experience (which had affected a lot more than just DW episodes) would not be repeated. From abroad, distributors who had purchased episodes from BBC Enterprises had occassionally stored them, and obligingly returned to them to a very humbled BBC in the 1980s.

But this is all incomplete. Not every episode was sold to every foreign distributor, and not every foreign distributor kept every episode they had purchased. So, aside from the few private acquisitions squirelled away from the BBC by collectors, the only real remains of these lost episodes are the audio recordings made (illegally, no less) by fans back in the 1960s, a few short video snippets made on extremely primitive equipment, and the work of a photojournalist named John Cura who had been hired by BBC TV to snap a photographic record of the prod