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!!!

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

[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

[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

[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

[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 ;)

Get 'em ready!

[BTWR]

Get your 100 tacos ready!

(sorry, had to be said...)

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.

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...

Dalek Masterplan

[Cosmik]

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

EXTERMINATION is near!

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[siliconbunny]

No, it was Linux ...

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

... which is why they were called Darleks

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...

[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: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: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:Wow, "lost" episodes?

[bucky0]

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

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.