In the Beginning

I'm an old fashioned kind of guy. I'm only just beginning to pick up the odd Classic Who stories on DVD - I collected them all on video (well, nearly all, at some cost!), before I realised that video really was dead. Rather than buy all the DVDs new, I've decided to give a home to orphaned copies from charity and other second hand shops. All good fun as you never know what you will find and when. Well I was in good old WHSmith the other day, and found The Beginning box set for a tenner. Well I couldn't resist. I've had my eye on this for a while (always a sucker for a box set) and the main reason being the Marco Polo recon. So I'm happily watching all these old episodes and extras, which I probably haven't seen for about ten years, before my video machine broke.

And aren't DVD's great. All the extras and bits and bobs, love 'em. But what am I going to do with the huge box of bloody VHS tapes I have! They are worthless in value these days, and I have contemplated throwing them away and just keeping the paper cover slips, in order to save a bit of space, but just can't bear to part with them all. I mean, what if everyone threw away their videos? Then the ones that are left will be worth more! So come on guys, time to throw out those old videos!

But back to the box set, as this is really just an excuse to post the graphic artwork of the boxset cover, and whilst we are at it, we may was well show you the individual covers as well! I know it's old (released in 2006) but it's new to me. That's the beauty of time travel!

And I'm enjoying the Marco Polo recon. Love that story, I just get so sad that we've lost these old Who episodes! Although I think they've cut too much out of this recon and lost a lot of the magic... shame they couldn't have made it two 30 min, or even 45 min episodes.

Damn, I'm gonna have to go and buy Keys of Marinus now...

Reign of Terror DVD Animated Preview

Nearly missed this - there's an advanced preview of the forthcoming Reign of Terror DVD release, with animated sequences replacing the lost episodes (as with The Invaision). Looks pretty damn cool...

It's a dodgy vid of the clip - hopefully we'll get a proper version soon.

Watch it here...

Invasion of the Dinosaurs DVD update

Here's another story which needs doctoring... after the Day of the Daleks 'Special Edition', with new fancy-dancy CGI scenes, some fans have wondered if we would get an updated version of this story... sadly not. Or perhaps not so sadly.


The missing colour version of Episode 1 has been recreated, but not with great success, and the release will include the black and white print as well. But no CGI dinosaurs. Can't say I blame them realy... lot of work for a naff story. I'm hoping the guys are saving the money for more animated recons of missing episodes from classic stories rather than fiddling around with something which, let's be honest, is always going to look a bit poor. If only we could go back in time and swap these tapes for a story worth saving...

Due for release early 2012...

[Thanks Combom]

Reign of Terror illustration

Soure: Combom

Babs

Babs from the Reign of Terror animation team. Source: Combom target

The Reign of Terror DVD to be animated

2|Entertain have confirmed via their @classicdw Twitter feed, that the missing episodes for the upcoming The Reign of Terror DVD release, scheduled for sometime next year, will be animated.


I'm a fan of any attempt to re-present stories with missing episodes, so will follow developments on this, and especially happy as 2|Entertain had previously stated no more animated Who missing epidodes would be made...

Power reconstructed clips

I meant to post this ages ago when I ran a little series of posts on the missing episode reconstructions. Here's an amazing piece of fan-made reconstruction work on a scene from Power of the Daleks by Jon Brunton.

Read all about and watch a clip here. There's another more recent interview and different clips here.

Here's another clip he's working on:



And a whole bag of stuff here. Amazing work, well done Jon.

War of the Daleks

About time we did this one - the 1975 board game, War of the Daleks, produced by Strawberry Fayre.


War of the Daleks is a kind of sci-fi Space-Ludo with Daleks - the game involves moving card figures around a circular playing area aiming to get to the 'control center' whilst avoiding the Daleks. The Daleks themselves are faithful plastic renditions about three quarters of an inch tall, inserted into concentric slots cut into the board. When the pale blue control centre hub in the middle of the board is rotated, the card disc underpinning these concentric slots also rotate, causing the Daleks to move around the board and 'capture' hapless players.


If a player makes it to the central hub, they have a chance to destroy the control centre by lifting it up. Doing so reveals four panels one of which depicts the 'King Dalek'. If he's next to you he exterminates you and you start again!

The Daleks (four red & silver and four blue & gold) stand around 5cm high and have revolving domes.

See here for some more pictures.

And here's the TV advert - well, sort of. Here's the sound to the TV advert with reconstructed images. Yep, that's right, a reconstructed Who toy advert. Watch it on YouTube here (for some reason they've disabled embedding, so I can't show it here).

There's quite a few of these around, on ebay and the like, usually for between 50 to 100 quid, but there's one on ebay at the moment for 150!

Mission to the Unknown comic recon

Here's an interesting idea - a comic reconstruction of the missing Who episode Mission to the Unknown. It's really well done - just a shame the Dalek speech isn't done in the traditional 60's font. Find it here.

Telesnaps

A few posts back we looked at missing episode reconstructions and the use of 'telesnaps', together with surviving audio soundtracks, to rebuild lost episodes.

Audio soundtracks exist for all the missing stories, which have now also all been released on CD with supporting narration.

Telesnaps exist for the majority, but not all, missing episodes. No original telesnaps are known to exist for the first Doctor stories The Reign of Terror, Galaxy 4, The Myth Makers, Dalek Masterplan, The Massacre, or for the later second Doctor stories The Invasion and the The Space Pirates.

Some stories are incomplete - no telesnaps are known to exist for the fourth episode of Marco Polo, The Wall of Lies, although records indicate that they were taken. Telesnaps aren’t known to exist for the fourth episode of The Enemy of the World.

Many telesnaps were published in Doctor Who Magazine (DWM), and their Classic Comics (DWCC) spin off magazine, and also appear on the Beeb's classic series website in the photonovel format (here).

First Doctor

Marco Polo - DWM 342 – 347 (missing Episode 4)
The Reign of Terror - no telesnaps surivive
The Crusade - DWM 280 and BBC Website
Galaxy 4 - no telesnaps surivive
Mission to the Unknown - no telesnaps surivive
The Myth Makers - no telesnaps surivive
The Daleks' Master Plan - no telesnaps surivive (remade for Episode 2, on BBC Website)
The Massacre - no telesnaps surivive
The Celestial Toymaker - no telesnaps surivive for episodes 1-3
The Savages - BBC Website
The Smugglers - DWM 217 and BBC Website
The Tenth Planet - DWM 207


Second Doctor

The Power of the Daleks - BBC Website
The Highlanders - DWM 233 – 236 and BBC Website
The Underwater Menace - DWM 220 – 223 and BBC Website
The Moonbase - BBC Website
The Macra Terror - DWM 251 – 254 and BBC Website
The Faceless Ones - DWM 260 – 264, 266 and BBC Website
The Evil of the Daleks - DWM 237 – 243 and BBC Website
The Abominable Snowman - DWM 224 – 229 and BBC Website
The Ice Warriors - DWCC 24 – 26, DWM 217 – 219 and BBC Website
The Enemy of the World - DWM 273 – 277 and BBC Website (missing Episode 4)
The Web of Fear - DWCC 18 – 20, DWM 211 – 213 and BBC Website
Fury from the Deep - DWCC 15 – 17, DWM 208 – 210 and BBC Website
The Wheel in Space - DWCC 21 – 23, DWM 214 – 216 and BBC Website
The Invasion - no telesnaps surivive
The Space Pirates - no telesnaps surivive

There's an excellent detailed article on Who telesnaps here.

The Invasion!

Having just mentioned the Invasion reconstructions, an excuse to show the covers and talk through this classic second doctor story in more detail...

Even though 'The Invasion' is an incomplete story, with episodes 1 and 4 missing. It is, to date, the only incomplete story to be released in audio CD, video and DVD format (I think!). The story was sold abroad, so the optimistic Who fan can hope that perhaps one day these missing episodes will be recovered from a foriegn TV station clearing out their archives... perhaps.

The Who Script project introduces this story as follows:

The Invasion was to have been a sequel to a story in the previous season, The Web of Fear, and it was also intended to feature the return of two characters from that story, Professor Travers and his daughter Anne. As these actors were unavailable this lead to the substitution of two similar characters, Professor Watkins and his niece, Isobel. Further changes resulted in replacing the Yeti used in "Web" with the Cybermen, and expanding the story to eight episodes. Invasion was the fourth occasion Patrick Troughton's Doctor encountered the Cybermen, more than any other adversary. (Get the story scripts here.)

According to the Who wiki site, the story had a working title of "Return of the Cybermen" and was originally conceived as a four part story - it got expanded to eight when the next story, "The Dreamspinner", fell through (see here).


The audio CD of the original soundtrack was released with linking narration by Frazer Hines.


The video release used linking narration by Nicholas Courtney (again text of which is available on the script project link above). Cover artwork was by Alistair Pearson.


The DVD uses animated versions of the missing episodes 1 and 4 that were made by Cosgrove Hall, which had previously made The Scream of the Shalka. It also contains the linking narration of Nicholas Courtney from the video release.


This last image has been robbed from the Invasion gallery on the Beebs classic series website, here. Strangely, the only way I could get to this page was through google, as I can't find it linked through the site menus.

The Beeb's classic series website doesn't have a 'photonovel' version of this story, which is a shame. But they do have the usual episode guide page with short video clips and the odd 'original paperwork' section which I think is the shooting script (here).

You can read about the reconstruction here.

Missing Episode Reconstructions

Audio sountracks exist for all the missing episodes, which has allowed the BBC to release the audio soundtracks on CD, with supporting narration. The odd surviving episodes from these stories, known as 'orphaned' episodes, were released on video in the Hartnell Years, Troughton Years, Daleks - The Early Years, and Cybermen - The Early Years compilations, and on DVD as the 'Lost in Time' compilation, both of which included many of the surviving clips from lost episodes.


In addition there also exist still photographs taken off-screen by photographer John Cura. Cura was hired by the BBC, and independently by many actors and production staff, to document the transmission of many of their most popular programmes from the 1940s to the 1960s, including Doctor Who. These 'tele-snaps' were generally used to promote BBC programmes and for actors, directors, and other production crew members to keep a visual record of their own work in the days before home video recorders. In many cases, they form the only visual record remaining of several Doctor Who serials and other missing episodes of many programmes.

You can view the telesnaps online in a 'photonovel' format for most missing episode stories on the Beebs classic series website here. Notable exceptions include Marco Polo, the Daleks Masterplan and The Invasion.

Since the late 1990s, reconstructions of the missing serials have been made by fan groups such as Loose Cannon Productions (visit their website here), who distribute them free. These "recons" are based on the directors' original camera scripts, and use a combination of the surviving soundtracks, surviving footage, photographs, still images (especially Cura's tele-snaps) and specially-recreated material. Although technically infringing copyright, these recons have been tolerated by the BBC, provided they are not sold for profit and are only distributed in degradable, non-digital formats such as VHS.

Officially released high-quality reconstructions using the same methods were made for the BBC Video releases of The Ice Warriors (a 12-minute 'highlights' reconstruction bridging the missing Episodes 2 and 3) and The Tenth Planet (a full reconstruction of the missing Episode 4).


Abridged VHS releases, with the surviving episodes and linking material recorded by actors (The Reign of Terror, The Crusade, and The Invasion) or with audio CD recordings of the missing episodes (The Crusade and The Ice Warriors) were also released, and subsequent DVD releases should see improved formats.

In 2005, BBC Audio released a reconstruction in an "MP3 CD" format. Under the 'Doctor Who: Reconstructed' banner, the CD included the same audio portions as the previous audio CD release, but on a single disc with Macromedia Flash-animated and synchronised slideshow of tele-snaps and other (publicity) photographs. (The surviving clips could not be included.) The Power of the Daleks was the first and last such reconstruction to be released: a mooted release in this form of the following story, The Highlanders, did not go ahead, due to poor sales of the initial release.


In 2006, The Invasion, an eight-episode Second Doctor serial of which six episodes survive in the archives, was released on DVD with the missing Episodes 1 and 4 animated by Cosgrove Hall, matched up with a newly-remastered soundtrack.

The DVD box set Doctor Who: The Beginning consisted of the first three serials and a 30-minute reconstruction of Marco Polo, of which no footage exists.