48 Years ago today Doctor Who first aired

[von Boom]

I know this is not a Who board but it still deserves to be noted.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/nov/23/doctor-who-anniverary-first-episode


JvB

[SmallBlueThing]

Haha, brilliant! Cheers for that. To celebrate here at chez-bluething, me and the smallest boy watched parts one and two of The Invasion; a Patrick Troughton yarn that benefits from having the first episode as a kid-friendly cartoon only. Great stuff.

SBT

[Colin YNWA]

Haha, brilliant! Cheers for that. To celebrate here at chez-bluething, me and the smallest boy watched parts one and two of The Invasion; a Patrick Troughton yarn that benefits from having the first episode as a kid-friendly cartoon only. Great stuff.

SBT

I love the work they did on patching together 'Invasion' I wish it'd proved more cost effective so we could have of the earlier stories 'completed'

[Lobo Baggins]

Haha, brilliant! Cheers for that. To celebrate here at chez-bluething, me and the smallest boy watched parts one and two of The Invasion; a Patrick Troughton yarn that benefits from having the first episode as a kid-friendly cartoon only. Great stuff.

SBT

I love the work they did on patching together 'Invasion' I wish it'd proved more cost effective so we could have of the earlier stories 'completed'

They are - 'The Reign of Terror' is due out next year with two reanimated episodes; I don't think it's been confirmed but I assume that the other two stories with appropriate gaps ('The Tenth Planet' and 'The Ice Warriors') are being worked on too.

Maybe 'The Crusade' and 'The Moonbase', too, even though their existing episodes have already been released.

[Colin YNWA]

Haha, brilliant! Cheers for that. To celebrate here at chez-bluething, me and the smallest boy watched parts one and two of The Invasion; a Patrick Troughton yarn that benefits from having the first episode as a kid-friendly cartoon only. Great stuff.

SBT

I love the work they did on patching together 'Invasion' I wish it'd proved more cost effective so we could have of the earlier stories 'completed'

They are - 'The Reign of Terror' is due out next year with two reanimated episodes; I don't think it's been confirmed but I assume that the other two stories with appropriate gaps ('The Tenth Planet' and 'The Ice Warriors') are being worked on too.

Maybe 'The Crusade' and 'The Moonbase', too, even though their existing episodes have already been released.

Oh wow I did not know that. I thought I'd read somewhere that after Invasion did sale buckets it wasn't going to be done again. Mind animation may well have moved on since then. That is rather great news. Thanks for that.

[SmallBlueThing]

The Reign of Terror's animation style is very different to The Invasion- and while i really liked that one, im extremely excited about the new release. Google is probably your friend in this instance.

Im not sure sales of The Invasion were the reason we didnt have any more following, as i seem to remember it shifted a great number of units. Other stuff got in the way, i think. It would indeed be great to see some partial stories completed- but my hopes that they'll use the upcoming fiftieth to announce an animation project to do all the missing episodes isnt dead yet. Marco Polo, complete Daleks' Masterplan and The Smugglers? Yes please!

SBT

[Mardroid]

I liked this in the article: (Note, the link appears to take you to an entire page, or section at least. Scroll down for the Doctor Who review.)

"The space ship, for some unexplained reason, remained looking like a police box in the dusty desert. I hope this will be explained later."



I know. I'm easily fascinated.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Well, it was eventually explained. Broken Chameleon Circuit, innit.

[Bat King]

Animation on Invasion was provided by Cosgrove Hall and proved too expensive.

For Reign of Terror they are partnered with Big Finish and Thetamation.  Cheaper one assumes...

[brendan1]

My three year old boy has been dressed as Dr Who for the last few days. He's got a suit jacket (a present from an Antie as a full suit that I thought was fucking absurdly funny and pikey) a flowery shirt, a waistcoat and brown trousers

Kind of a Tennant/ Smith hybrid. Plus a sonic screwdriver and a portable Tardis.

And he's watched the freebie Sun DVD of the last two TennaNt episodes and Matt Smith's first one about 10 times. And I just fucking love Smith's final soliloquy to that eye, with the montange and music

"basically.....run"

Magnificent

[SmallBlueThing]

Just too late for the anniversary, but-

GALAXY 4 episode 3 and THE UNDERWATER MENACE episode 2 are back in the archives. Two more missing Dr Who episodes have been found, just when everyone had given up hope. Okay, so they're no one's favourite stories, and it isn't quite as exciting as if they announced the return of TENTH PLANET part four, the whole of MARCO POLO or some Troughton dalekery, but it's two fewer ones to find. Leaving 106 outstanding, I think.

Good news just before xmas!

SBT

[Bat King]

Any recovered episodes are valuable...  but yeah, you're right there are sme we'd rather see

[Greg M.]

Hey, that's great news. I'd sort of assumed that the days of turning up missing episodes were all but over and all that was lost would stay lost. Gives you hope that one day the rest of 'Web of Fear' might be found in a barn in New South Wales or something.

[Colin YNWA]

Good stuff. Any word on how and where they were found?

[SmallBlueThing]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/news/bulletin_111211_01/Missing_Episodes_Recovered

"Two classic episodes of Doctor Who - thought to be missing forever - have been returned to the BBC archive.

Episode 3 of the William Hartnell adventure "Galaxy 4" and Episode 2 of Patrick Troughton's "The Underwater Menace" were purchased by film collector Terry Burnett at a village fete near Southampton in the early 80s. He had been unaware that the canisters contained material missing from the BBC.

Thanks to the kind loan by Mr Burnett, the classic footage has been shown today at the British Film Institute's annual "Missing Believed Wiped" event at the National Film Theatre in London. Host at the event was Doctor Who writer and actor Mark Gatiss who said: "Christmas has come early for Doctor Who fans everywhere. It's always wonderful when a missing episode turns up but it's been years since the last one so to have two is just brilliant. Add to that a proper bit of action from the legendary Chumblies (and the horrifying Rills!) plus the utterly mesmeric Patrick Troughton on great form. Well, what more could we all ask for?"

Over 100 episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s still remain missing. The tapes were routinely wiped once the rights to repeat them had expired. It seems unfathomable to us today, but before the advent of DVDs and iPlayer, grainy black and white material was thought to no longer be of interest to the television audience. However, many film prints sold overseas have since been returned. These latest discoveries are the first complete episodes to have been located since 2004.

None of the four episodes of the 1965 adventure "Galaxy 4" were known to have survived, although a short extract had been retained.

Research has shown that the returned episodes originated from the ABC channel in Australia. In fact, the copy of The Underwater Menace is still missing a few short sections which were removed by the Australian censors upon its original transmission Down Under. Fresh scans of the missing material have been made by the National Archives of Australia and will be incorporated into the restored episodes ahead of a DVD release.

Details of a commercial release will be announced by 2 entertain in 2012."

SBT