Lost Doctor Who episodes found
bbc.co.uk279 points by edent a day ago
279 points by edent a day ago
There are a lot of known lost episodes out there that collectors saved from thrash. The BBC knows it, everyone knows it, but the collectors won't come forward because they are afraid they are going to be prosecuted. They basically stole property which was meant to be destroyed.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/11/lost-do...
The cost to make a digital copy from film stock has gone way down, to the point that fan groups [1][2] frequently encode and clean up old copies of film:
[1]: https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k77/ [2]: https://www.youtube.com/c/kinekovideo
This of course has various IP implications...
This seems like a weird hangup. Is it likely?
Taking these films back in the 60s might’ve been illegal, but has anyone actually been prosecuted for it in modern times? Haven’t other lost episodes been recovered from ‘illegitimate’ sources without issue?
If it’s a real risk, it also seems weird to me that it’s apparently known that some people have these. Like, if there was really appetite for prosecuting them wouldn’t that be enough to start an investigation?
The BBC can be very pigheaded, i.e. offering no incentives for people coming forward.
Even without losses, they have a trackrecord of stockpiling a lot of old content but not making it available to the public. I doubt this would happen to Doctor Who but it would elsewhere. You would think with streaming that the BBC could make a lot of obscure old content available, but they don't.
It is a big world out there. Surely there are archivists who would make a digital copy outside of BBC jurisdiction, and then said digital copy could be similarly provided via sneaker net to a (presumably) friendly Swedish seaman.
It feels very doable, given the downstream effects of Brexit.
That's not just the BBC, it's any broadcaster, because it costs nonzero dollars, time, and effort to move something online that they have no idea whether anyone cares about. Our national TV archives are like that as well, tons of stuff in vaults but if you want to see it you need to contact them and ask for it. I did that for some zany 80s comedy that they had listed but wasn't online, a few weeks later it was online, they just needed an indication that there was some interest in it.
I don't really understand, it seems like if this was the main thing preventing people from returning them there would be ways around it. Couldn't they return them anonymously or upload them to the internet or something?
I remember when Eccleston's version came out and all the nerd blogs were crying cause this means these episodes were never gonna be released.
You are so right.They are never gonna be released.
The original... takers of these films are dying off. It's well known that many episodes exist within private collections. The prevailing belief in the fandom is that they will be get released as the owners pass away. Indeed, that's likely where these two came from.
I would have thought there would be parties willing to anonymously rip and upload any such materials?
That seems a bit overblown. Can you really imagine the BBC prosecuting someone over this? It'd be PR suicide. And if you read TFA they were thrilled to get the two lost episodes back, no mention of prosecution or anything else.
Some of the people who've been involved in getting previously found episodes returned/restored have stated that they know of collectors who are likely to have copies of other episodes but are worried about how they'd be treated.
Film cans? I thought the whole reason the series was missing was because it was shot on video, and then the tapes were wiped after shooting?
You're correct but as Uvix has said, BBC Enterprises made film copies for overseas sales before the original tapes were erased.
The earliest episode to survive on its original videotape is Ambassadors of Death episode 1 from 1970. None of the original 60s tapes still survive, though I believe there is at least one tape that we know used to have Doctor Who on it but which now has another programme.
The earliest episode to survive in its original medium is possibly The Dalek Invasion of Earth episode 5 (The Waking Ally). That's because, while this was shot on electronic studio cameras as usual, there were no videotape machines available to record.
Instead the output of those cameras was telerecorded straight to 35mm film. AIUI the negative of that telerecording still exists.
> there is at least one tape that we know used to have Doctor Who on it but which now has another programme.
Recording over another recording does not completely erase the other. I wonder if it could be recovered.
I worked in a broadcast company archive (doing database work). Tapes were often reused. Fragments of previous recordings -- sometimes just a few frames, occasionally many minutes -- may remain at the beginning or end of the tape. AFAIK tapes were never completely erased before recording over top.
I was invloed in a digitisation project, the scanning companies were instructed to process the whole tape in case there were fragments of older programs at the end. A 30 minute tape may have 15 minutes of program, then a period of blank/black, then the remains of an older program for several minutes after that.
It has been suggested numerous times, but the BBC didn’t just record over the top - the tapes were erased with a degausser before reuse.
The BBC used a kinescope much longer than the US. (A kinescope recorded TV to film.)
The US pushed a lot harder than Europe for videotape because kinescopes dropped frames off of American 60i frame rates, but worked really well for European 50i frame rates. Thus the BBC continued to use kinescopes for a long time.
"My flabber has never been so gasted." - Pete Purves
I remember wanting to love Dr Who even before it was broadcast. The TARDIS was great, but the first series was disappointing. Like so many others, it was the first sight (and sound) of a Dalek which vindicated my hopes.
It's strange for formerly lost media to get a whole news story about it. This should, but still strange.
Hope more are found sooner than another 13 years from now.
I think there's LOTS of media out there, but there doesn't seem to be easy ways to convert it.
There was probably a renaissance period when conversion equipment was being actively developed and available, but that time is probably gone. For example I think a good film scanner would be the Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED, but current state of the art falls far short. For film, vcr tapes and more we should be doing so much better.
I have old family super-8 films that are kind of convertible, but not the magnetic sound strip.
If you have something precious on home movie film, this lab in Burbank, CA that does a lot of the movies will have sometimes deals on film transfers for holidays, or you can call them for a quote. No relationship, but I did have some done and they were very good. https://www.pro8mm.com/
Wait, what's wrong with Cintel? I've not used it myself but got a really good impression back when I worked at BMD a few years back.
There are several "holy grails" in British TV history.
Lost Doctor Who episodes are one of them. Dad's Army also has lost black and white episodes (the colour ones have been repeated ad nauseam all my lifetime).
I can think of a few others. Scotch on the Rocks was a political hit piece written by Douglas Hurd showing an armed Scottish uprising along the lines of Northern Ireland. It was supposed to frighten people away from Scottish nationalism, but ended up causing copycat incidents. It vanished shortly after being broadcast probably because of its unintended effects.
The ultimate would be some of the pre-WW2 television broadcasts. Most of these were broadcast in the London area and practically nowhere else. Almost no one had recording equipment back then and they were often broadcast live.
> the pre-WW2 television broadcasts. Most of these were broadcast in the London area and practically nowhere else. Almost no one had recording equipment back then and they were often broadcast live.
The "Phonovision" recordings made by Baird (which were unplayable at the time) have been recovered:
I just wanted to mention at this opportunity that some British TV series from the late 70s, early 80s are absolutely brilliant and some of the best stuff I have ever watched. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley's People, Danger UXB, Sandbaggers and Sherlock Holmes are some of my favorites.
One of my favorite Youtube channels I've come across in the last year is BBC Archive. Not fiction, but a mix of documentaries, interviews, human interest stories, and educational content from the 50's to the 80's and a little bit of 90's. This 1970 short film on a Scottish boy's last carefree days before starting school is probably my favorite that I've seen so far.
One video in that archive is about a family day out to and island by ferry. You'd basically arrive in the morning, climb to the top of the hill on the island, have lunch and meet the ferry in the afternoon. The first thing that strikes you is that no-one is fat. The second that everyone is fit enough to make it to the top of the hill regardless of age.
I grew up with Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes, by far, in my opinion, the most accurate representation of the stories.
Only in my adult life did I read the stories, finding large chunks of the dialog in the TV show being word for word taken from the stories. And when not word for word, the tone and feel of the scenes so well portrayed on screen.
> I grew up with Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes, by far, in my opinion, the most accurate representation of the stories.
Yeah, I grew up watching that on PBS Mystery! and love it. I rewatched some of it as an adult and it holds up very well.
I also really liked David Suchet's Poirot. I still have yet to watch the last few seasons though.
Brett's Sherlock Holmes is definitely the definitive one in my book.
There is a Soviet version of Sherlock Holmes which is surprisingly good starring Vasily Livanov. The locations sometimes don't quite look like England etc, but I really enjoyed it.
I was just thinking about Danger UXB recently and remember watching it on PBS with my Mom. Another show of that era that I remember loving was the miniseries of the Barchester Chronicles (adapting the first two of Trollope’s Barsetshire novels). During the DVD-by-mail era of Netflix, I revisited that one and it still held up, although I did not at the time realize just how star-studded the cast was.
I should mention that all of the programs that I mentioned are things that I watched for the first time about 7 years ago at most. So in my case, nostalgia doesn't play into it. There aren't many things that I watched as a kid that I'd consider brilliant today. The (original) TV series of Das Boot comes to mind and Todesspiel, a docudrama about a crisis situation with the RAF aka Baader-Meinhof group, of the eponymous effect ;)
Sherlock Holmes is great. Tinker Tailor was repeated through my childhood, so I saw it a few too many times. I watched it again recently and found it slow... However the cast of it and Smiley's People are great. Karla is a notable early appearance of Patrick Stewart.
There were some great period dramas at the time, if a little set bound (like I, Claudius)
>The collector did recognise what he had, but how he acquired them has been lost to time.
It sounds more like it was unavailable to the average person than lost.
I was afraid this would never happen again. Two very good episodes, too.
I just pray that we'll get to see a few more Troughton episodes. He's the doctor that set the standard that all future doctors followed, yet the least known because the moronic BBC wiped basically his entire run, and now we only have about half of it.
Tom Baker was "my Doctor" because he's the one who made me love the show when I was a kid, but Troughton (and Zoë and Jamie) are my favorite era.
edit: Zoë and Jamie are from way back when the companions were expected to be useful, before Sarah Jane. Zoë was better at math than the Doctor; imagine them doing anything like that now.
Would you like a jelly baby?
The Tom Baker doctor had the best companion in K9. I was disappointed as a kid at the time when it chose to stay with his other companion.
I largely stopped watching from the "Five Doctors" episode onwards. Didn't like the 6th and maybe watched only a few episodes of the 7th doctor before not watching much free-to-air TV at all after that.
I'm hoping for more Troughton too some day. And speaking of Jamie: https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/images/2025/brendan_hines....
Companions are still useful, they just bring different skills to the Doctor (humanity?).
The problem with a lot of current companions is that they get dragged into soap opera. I have always seen the doctor as pretty much asexual and as a father figure to the companions, not a lover. (Or mother. I didn't take to Jodie Whittaker but I've never had an issue with a female doctor as such.)
No, they're cute, neurotic, complain a lot, and fall in love with the Doctor (who is a Great Man with the weight of the universe on his shoulders.) They're all Sarah Jane.
There was the one companion where both elements happened at the same time; the last primarily useful companion, the first companion to be in love with the Doctor: Jo Grant, the UNIT agent with a certificate from an "Escapeology course," but would look up at the Doctor with puppydog eyes. She had suddenly replaced Liz Shaw, the super-competent UNIT scientist who sometimes seemed like she could barely tolerate him. They made Jo Grant a rookie and a klutz.
Up to Jo Grant, the companions were primarily there to do things, so the Doctor didn't have to be everything. Jo Grant was the one who would free them when they were tied up and locked in a storeroom; like how Zoë would make fun of how bad the Doctor was at driving the Tardis. Sarah Jane, by contrast, was as helpless as a fetus, constantly complaining, and hopelessly in love.
Leela, Romana, and Adric (although Adric was constantly humiliated, then killed) were still left to come, and Ace allowed the useful companions from the original series to go out with a bang(sorry), but in Nu Doctor Who it was to be strictly Sarah Janes forever.
People even thought Donna Noble was a breath of fresh air because even though she was useless and constantly complaining, at least she wasn't constantly simpering and crying over him. The absolute nadir of this trend was when Martha Jones, actually a medical doctor(!), was nearly suicidal with lust over him and he was just not into her at all. Doesn't like career women, I guess.
It's not you, Martha, it's me. Now I'm off to haunt a little girl's bedroom and cuck the sweet, perfect boyfriend who would be willing to wait 2,000 years for her. Maybe you should look up Mickey, that other guy whose fiancé I stole while I let him ride in the backseat. He's single; I ruined his girl for anyone else.
That era of companions was a response to the eras before then when companions were expected to just look pretty and scream on cue.
No companion was like that until Sarah Jane. All companions were like that after the revival. It was decided by the person behind the revival that they would be women, never any more useful than Teagan, never as obviously hot as Peri but always cute. They would never be a threat to super Doctor and his magic screwdriver, or hot enough to make women angry.
Just sort of a cynical calculation by somebody who thought of women as tasteful accessories.
The literal reason for including companions from day one was so that the husbands had something to watch. The BBC have never hidden the fact that the companions were always there for eye candy.
When you look at the pre-UNIT episodes (before Dr Who went colour), the actors often left after only one season because they were fed up with their role just being there for the doctor to rescue. It’s something they’ve commented on in interviews since.
And you can see that when you watch them.
There’s also the the running joke of bringing in a female character who was supposed to be a computer programmer yet she never seemed to use a computer.
And there was another companion who used to talk pseudo-science with the doctor but they slowly dumbed her down as the show went on.
Unfortunately back then, female roles weren’t written to be strong and independent like they are now. Not just in Doctor Who, but in TV in general. And while things did improve in the 80s, you’re still greatly overstating things.
To talk more about that last point, let’s look at Ace. She really wasn’t written any differently to modern companions.
That all said, one thing I absolutely hate about the modern era, or Russel T Davis, specifically, is all the Doctor and Companion romantic plots. There was absolutely no need for any of that.
There are notable male companions such as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as well as Jamie. The Brigadier is one of the best Doctor Who characters, a military man who is adaptable and can deal with strange situations.
The Brigadier got some great lines:
* (To other soldiers) "Chap with the wings - five rounds, rapid."
* "Most of their work's so secret, they don't know what they're doing themselves."
* "Look, just tell me this: Are you or are you not the Doctor that I met during the Yeti business and then later when the Cybermen invaded?"
Hopefully some day somebody will build a Tardis and travel back in time and eliminate the BBC morons who allowed all this destruction.
Perhaps the doctor meant for these to be lost and not found, or that the daleks was afraid of them?
I think Doctor Who was finding its feet in the Hartnell era and it was Troughton who really first defined the character to what he became later.
In the Hartnell era, the Doctor was a grandfather I think, looked old (although Hartnell was much younger than he appeared, thanks to the war etc) and seems to have been human.
right here with me is an old 3/4" brodcast video tape machine I rescued from an arts collective that was shutting down, in it is a tape, labeled Doctor Who
I guess the BBC just has no editors now. There’s no valid way to interpret that headline as grammatical.
You'd have a point if the BBC hadn't capitalized the Who, but they did, so your pedantry is not only needless, but wrong.
Would you expect them to throw quotation marks around Anton Whom in a headline including his name?
Can you explain? It seems like a pretty standard British news/newspaper headline to me.
You may not understand it, but it is grammatically correct.
Only because you read it as Doctor Who (the noun, which should have included quotes or underline or italics).
You always write for an audience. BBC viewers can probably be assumed to know about Doctor Who.
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People have been making the same complaint about Dr Who for at least 40 years, couched in the language of the day. Same with Star Trek.
I view Doctor Who as part of a great tradition of sci-fi that pushes boundaries. Tennant's era was a primetime TV show that featured gay characters (Captain Jack in particular) without treating it like it was a big deal. When at the time it really wasn't that common (particularly in kid-friendly TV).
These attempts overshoot at times, like when Star Trek TNG put male crew members in "skants"[1] but they can always course correct. If you let minor things like that ruin your viewing of the show then that's on you, not them.
[1] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(2350...
> These attempts overshoot at times, like when Star Trek TNG
On the other hand the entire run of the "progressive" Star Trek didn't have a single gay character until 2016 - not even in guest stars (well there was the whole Dax/Trill thing, and the "non binary" character with Riker)
David Tennant was a great Doctor Who. It's definitely still a good show and I'm sure they didn't swap out the entire production cast between those seasons to 'wokify' it.
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We have all the voice recordings, feed that into AI along with the extant episodes and it should be able to regenerate (geddit?) the missing episodes.
Somebody spent a small fortune trying this a while ago with disliked results https://nypost.com/2025/04/13/entertainment/ailing-doctor-wh...
They animated a lot of the missing pieces of the missing episode Shada with excellent results. If AI could do something of similar quality that would be wonderful.
They seem to have been pleased with the results:
> “It has to be worth it for the pleasure it’s brought me to see them,” Levine said. “Doctor Who runs all night in my bedroom, complete, nothing missing.”
Ah I mean others disliked the results.
Make up your own mind I suppose, I doubt you will find them rewarding: https://youtu.be/rQabMPpdQnk?si=Fm9Yqj7EwAjYp5np
Well heck - many don't even like the originals at all :p. On the contrary I found these much more enjoyable than the audio and stills! Of course I'd prefer more of the original copies be found... but for now the AI ones fill the gaps in my collection instead of the audio reconstructions.
Do we also have stills of all the episodes? Or only audio?
There are production stills that are used like a slide show and combined with the recorded audio. Certain episodes have been reconstructed using animation such that the basic scene blocking and events are played out alongside the recorded audio.
Feels a bit like Jurassic Park
The risk of the episodes going wild and kill lawyers seems minimal though.
From a utilitarian pov yes. But that's completely missing the artistic point. Why shoot a film when you could just feed the script into an AI?
It could recreate missing episodes using the extant episodes. That's something worthwhile doing until someone finds them. It's not creating a complete new series.
People want to find the missing episodes because of their historical value as actual human artistic creations, and not because they want to watch a thing that looks like an old missing episode.
There would be as much value in an "AI-recreated" missing episode as there would be in taking the audio of a modern episode and using AI to create a new video track for it.
Even if it's motion comic level animation, it'd still be nice to see combined with the audio recordings.
