Doctor Who archive expert shares positive update on missing episode

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-missing-episodes-update-teases-announcement-newsupdate/

49•gnabgib•6d ago

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giancarlostoro•3h ago

My biggest annoyance is that it wasn't until Matt Smith that they started recording the new Doctor Who episodes correctly with film, everything including David Tenant was all camcorder.

afavour•3h ago

Who is such an interesting show, in the sense that it’s cultural footprint has always stood in contrast to a relatively tiny production budget.

goalieca•2h ago

Disney blew the budget up and the quality went down.

tredre3•2h ago

Uh I didn't realize that Disney was involved in production, I thought they were merely distributors.

But yeah, since 2023 Disney has been co-producing. It certainly explains some of the choices, but I don't know if they can be entirely blamed for the decline of the franchise.

pndy•44m ago

Bad Wolf-Disney co-op was seen by some people as salvation which would bring new fresh approach but in the end they just speed up the decline of this franchise. And that started most likely somewhere around Capaldi's time - with prolonged focus on Clara.

BBC should back then pause everything and let fans take a break but instead they decided to continue with new companion. When that didn't go as expected they tried with new showrunner and Doctor; Moffat knew how to run this playground, Chibnall despite earlier good contributions did not. Then pandemics happen which resulted in delays - they tried with shorter series a'la classic show format of story split into parts but it was already too late. Not mention the stinking bomb Chibnall decided to launch to get few minutes of cheap thrills, nullifying over 50 years of creative contributions to this franchise.

Then there are socio-political elements but that just a minuscule of the whole problem.

pndy•1h ago

I'd say that happened already with 13th Doctor. Bad Wolf-Disney DW comes with this "plastic oversaturated filter" effect that plagues media productions for 10 years if not longer.

FridayoLeary•2h ago

The old episodes are very quaint. They are quite clearly produced on shoestring budgets, some of the plots are quite weak and i found it hilarious how bad the actors were at faking violence. But none of that mattered, because the team were clearly passionate and enjoyed what they were doing and did a good job so the end product is charming. Production standards have obviously moved on massively since the 1980's and we are better off. The modern episodes are much more highly polished and coherent but not necessarily more popular. Like someone else pointed out the massive influx of disney money did nothing and only exacerbated the train wreck which was the recent doctor who seasons.

Another film that had a huge impact was monty python and the holy grail which was produced with a budget of 75p and ends abruptly because the money ran out. But they just turned that into a running joke throughout the whole movie.

scubbo•1h ago

> ends abruptly because the money ran out

It is a literal cop-out.

wcarss•1h ago

That cop was later my landlord -- he was also the art director of the film, and a wonderful storyteller.

pndy•1h ago

The 2005 return/reboot had a small budget and that could be seen in the props which mostly were ordinary items repurposed as out of this world technology. But that worked on the overall charm of this period - I dare to say that show felt realistic in that cheapness.

The regained interest surely allowed to assign more money to the series. DW was at the peak during 11th and 12th Doctors tenure with BBC America involvement in production - the low-quality is mostly gone and more CGI was utilized, and so the stories were good. Not mention the good chemistry between all main actors.

ocdtrekkie•8m ago

This is a pretty common scifi thing. The Borg antennas being built on the Enterprise's deflector in First Contact were bird feeders. Odo was once contained on DS9 in a bread maker.

MathMonkeyMan•2h ago

I remember seeing Doctor Who for the first time circa 2011 when it was on Amazon Prime. First few seasons were very much early 2000s TV, and then suddenly it got all big budget Netflix style in season five.

The older look doesn't bother me, though. The same thing happened with The Expanse.

hinkley•2h ago

The Eccleston episodes are a bit on the rough side.

cm2012•1h ago

But, some of the better storytelling.

astrange•51m ago

I watched some of it at the time and thought it was cool, but never paid much attention. When I checked in again around the Matt Smith era it seemed to have become, um, unwatchably twee[0]. Was that on purpose or are the people who work on it just permanently like that?

[0] if you need an American English translation, maybe "theater kid energy".

cm2012•33m ago

Theater kid energy is a great description of the Matt Smith era onward.

dylan604•2h ago

Season 5 makes it sound like it was a this century show the way you've stated it. Dr. Who is older than I am, and we don't need to get into how old that is. "Who" has been restarted so many times that it seems strange to refer to season five without any more info. In fact, not being a Who follower, how do they differentiate just by the actor playing the doctor? Season 5 of actorName?

tredre3•2h ago

I also got caught on how GP said Season 5 which would have been from the 60s, not the 2000s. But apparently it is correct (unless you want to be pedantic about the choice of word Series/Season).

The listing of seasons on Wikipedia goes:

Season 1-26 (1963-1989)

Series 1-15 (2005-2025)

MathMonkeyMan•3m ago

Yes, I meant the 2005 series.

alternatetwo•1h ago

That’s not true. With Planet of the Dead it was filmed in HD. And no NuWho was ever shot on film.

JKCalhoun•2h ago

Related? There are also missing Beatles performances that were also recorded over by the BBC — one of which (do I have this right?) made an appearance in an early Doctor Who episode? I think that Doctor Who episode is still in tact.

mikehall314•2h ago

Correct. The Beatles appearance on Top of the Pops survives only because a clip from that show was used in episode 1 of The Chase.

Ironically, The Chase often has rights clearance issues when it comes to home release because of this. Beatles music costs a fortune to clear, making releases untenable.

Double ironically. This is because the Beatles chose to mime to their studio record for Top of the Pops. If they had played live, it would have been less of a problem.

maxfurman•53m ago

FYI pretty much nobody played live on Top of the Pops

qingcharles•14m ago

I seem to remember looking into this once. Aren't large swathes of TOTP itself missing? Like, entire early decades?

ant6n•1h ago

The irony is that the animated versions of lost episodes are probably much more watchable for most people today than the actual episodes, should they ever be found.

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Doctor Who archive expert shares positive update on missing episode

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