Doctor Who ? (1 Viewer)

[Julie K]

It's been a long time since I saw the movie, but I remember how upset I was with it. In addition that major screw-up, there was also this:

A romantic relationship between the Doctor and a human woman. My hazy memory (which I'll admit I've tried to repress) seems to recall a kiss or near kiss as well.

Just what they think American audiences must have :rolleyes
Actually, the more I think about, I don't think I will cave when this makes it to DVD. Yuck!
But back to the Cushing movies: At the time I don't believe the Doctor's origins had been explained. I don't think we really know he's non-human until the first regeneration. And even then, it's not firmly established until the Pertwee years. So I'm willing to forgive the Cushing movies a bit

 

[PhilipG]

I am a huge Dr Who fan (or at least, I used to be).
With regard to the Paul McGann movie, I bought it on VHS before it had premiered on British TV. I've only watched it once. I was, frankly, disgusted by nearly every aspect of it (all save for the casting of McGann), and especially the script. This is as non-canon as Dr Who gets.
As for the Cushing Dalek films... They are non-canon also, but still rather enjoyable as 60's Monster Movies. Never liked them much as a child, but they've grown on me somewhat since. For the non-fans, these two were big screen remakes (w/s and in colour!) of earlier Hartnell serials, made to cash in on Dalekmania. The Dalek design was different, the Doctor's companions were different, and big liberties were taken with the scripts - but the stories were broadly the same.
My choices for future DVDs would be (in rough order):
Hartnell: The Aztecs (coming 2002!!!), The Keys of Marinus, The Space Museum, The Time Meddler
Troughton: The War Games, The Mind Robber, The Seeds of Death, Tomb of the Cybermen (2002!)
Pertwee: The Curse of Peladon, Death to the Daleks, The Ambassadors of Death, The Time Warrior
Tom Baker: Pyramids of Mars, City of Death, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Logopolis
Davison: Kinda, Castrovalva, Enlightenment, Earthshock
Colin Baker: The Two Doctors, Revelation of the Daleks, Timelash, Attack of the Cybermen
(okay, or The Trial of a Time Lord )
McCoy: Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, Silver Nemesis, Survival
Finally, as David mentions, do visit the Restoration Team site - to check for DVD release news, but their newsgroup is pretty snotty, and I don't advise getting into a conversation with the mutant-fans there J/K

 

[Mark_Wilson]

Well, we'll never have all the Doctor Who episodes. According to this site Link Removed 109 episodes are still missing from the time BBC decide to purge their archives to make room. Sad!

 

[Patrick Cate]

Matt, yes unfortunately many early Dr. Who episodes have been lost, probably for good. Forever I had heard that they were lost in a huge BBC fire, not by the BBC intentionally. Can anyone confirm?

 

[Jeff Cooper]

David-

Thanks for the info on the Cushing movies. I was quite the Dr. Who fan when they were airing on PBS a long time ago, and had never heard of these movies.

 

[Nigel McN]

no good Doctor Who thread can be allowed to pass without a link to these guys http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/ . they also detail what happened to the lost episodes. To put it very simply storeroom A throught storeroom B had a copy of everything so started burning off surplus stock, while storeroom B thought storeroom A had duplicates of everything,...

 

[David Lambert]

Hey! I did link to the Restoration Team!

 

[Bill Buklis]

The two Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies were extremely loose remakes of the first two Dalek stories - "The Daleks" and "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" (hence the similar titles for the movies). The basic plot of the story is the same, while they changed a lot of the details (and not for the better).

As someone here stated the origins of the Doctor were not known in the 60's, but they did know the Doctor was not human right from the very first episode ("An Unearthly Child").

Don't worry at all whether or not the two movies fit within the Doctor Who canon/history. They don't and aren't meant to. Consider them for what they are - B-grade 60's monster movies loosely based on Doctor Who.

Although these movies are no where near as good as the original stories, they're still interesting in their own quirky way, so I expect I'll still pick them up.

 

[Nigel McN]

whoops, sorry David, missed that!

 

[Jeff Kleist]

"...Paul McGann doesn't count"

-Vince Tyler-Queer as Folk(UK)

 

[Michael Sliger]

Warner Home Video has finally confirmed the titles and exact date for the next set of Doctor Who DVD releases. April 2, 2002 is the date for "Remembrance of the Daleks" and "The Caves of Androzani" to reach store shelves. Two more releases dates with two disks each are expected in August and December of 2002. Expect very similar features in comparison to the Region 2 disks, but with most of the errors fixed.
http://www.gallifreyone.com/news.shtml

 

[Eric Wood]

Where is the best place to buy these discs? When did the BBC purge there libraries? I watched Dr Who religiously between 1983-88 in Seattle. I loved watching the whole story right thru. Have I never seen the lost episodes then? Pertwee is a great classical actor.

Happy New year all!

 

[Brian E]

Where is the best place to buy these discs?

Since Warner Bros. is doing the distrobution here in the states you can get them just about anywhere. B&M I've seen them at Best Buy and Best Buy owned stores (Suncoast, Sam Goody, On Cue). Online pretty much everyone carries them.

 

[JulianK]

Eric -
This link will tell you all you need to know - and more! - about how many episodes of Doctor Who (and many other early BBC shows) came to be lost, which ones survive, and the efforts that have been to recover the ones that are missing.
Link Removed

 

[Bill Buklis]

Have I never seen the lost episodes then?

Unless you lived in Great Britain and were of TV watching age in the 60's, then you've probably never seen the lost episodes. This also includes some colour versions of a few Jon Pertwee episodes from the early 70's (namely "The Ambassadors of Death", "The Silurians", ep. 3 of "The Planet of the Daleks", and ep. 1 of "The Invasion of the Daleks").

"The Terror of the Autons" used to exist only in black and white. But, I believe they were able to successfuly transfer the colour signal from an NTSC transfer.

The William Hartnell and the very few Patrick Troughton stories that still exist have been distributed and shown around the world. Many of these (if not all) have been released on videotape. Hopefully soon onto DVD.

 

[RobertPerry]

Eric Wood
When did the BBC purge there libraries?

In 1970, which is when Jon Pertwee took over as the Third Doctor, the BBC started filming Dr. Who in color. It was also during the 70s that the company archiving Dr. Who decided to keep a few episodes as "representative of the genre" and destroy the rest. (It is claimed that they were forced to reduce their inventory for safety reasons.) A huge amount of William Hartnell's stories and almost all of Patrick Troughton's were destroyed before the BBC discovered what was happening. Fortunately, one of Troughton's works, "The Tomb of the Cybermen" was discovered (I think in Singapore) and returned to the BBC.
Fortunately, every episode of all the Doctors, from Jon Pertwee forward, are intact, although, not all in color. At least 3 Jon Pertwee stories are only availble in B&W. One story, Planet of the Daleks (I believe) is missing the color release of episode 3 (of 5), so it usually airs with about a 20 minute gap in the story, unless they air the 3rd episode in B&W. Likewise, "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" is missing a color copy of episode 1, and rarely airs with episode 1 in B&W.
The irony in it all is that this didn't have to happen. The archival company was supposedly ordered to reduce it's archival stock. At the time, it is believed, they had (at a minimum) the master copy, at least one broadcast quality copy, a copy dubbed in Arabic and a 16mm Kinetoscope (for airing in South Africa) copy of every epiosde. Had they just destroyed the extra copies and kept only the masters, they could have reduced their archive size by at least 75%, while keeping the series intact. :frowning:

 

[Jonathan Kaye]

The story of the destruction of old Doctor Who is a very sad one (and very long, see the Restoration Team website for more). But to correct a couple of the earlier points...
...basically, the BBC Film and Videotape Library junked practically everything in the Sixties and Seventies because (a) they didn't have the room, (b) they assumed BBC Enterprises (now BBC Worldwide) held copies for overseas sales, and (c) it wasn't part of their remit to store anything after three years from transmission, because of clearance problems. Unfortunately, between 1972 and 1978, BBC Enterprises systematically junked a lot of black-and-white stories, because (a) they assumed BBC Film and Videotape Library held copies, and (b) no-one wanted old black-and-white stories on their nice new colour TV sets (colour TV came to BBC1 in 1970, when Jon Pertwee's first story was aired). The only reason BBC Enterprises still had black-and-white film prints of some colour stories was for overseas stations who had yet to progress to colour TV.
All-in-all, a classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.:frowning:
The successfully re-colourised stories (using black-and-white film copies and the colour signal from NTSC off-air copies) are The Silurians, Terror of the Autons and The Daemons (apart from Part 4 of the latter, which still existed in colour). Ambassadors of Death has one part still in colour, and one re-colourised episode but the colour signal isn't good enough to re-colourise the remaining 5 parts. Part 3 of the six-part Planet of the Daleks is only a black-and-white film print, and Part 1 of Invasion of the Dinosaurs likewise (the latter got junked accidentally because it was called 'Invasion' to keep the cliffhanger a secret, unfortunately the junking of an earlier black-and-white story called 'The Invasion' meant that it got caught up with that).
Oh, and Tomb of the Cybermen came back from Hong Kong, not Singapore.

 

[Stephen_Opipari]

I personally have already received my copies of the 4/2 releases of Caves and Rememberance. They look just about perfect and since all the DVD titles went through the restoration team for a thorough clean up, *big* kudos to them. Every title so far looks like it was filmed yesterday.
If you check Gallifrey One which was linked earlier, there's a news tidbit from last week that the US is supposed to see the entire Key To Time Season with Tom Baker as a box set this year, probably November. yay! I was quite suprised that we will see this set before the UK. The article said that the restoration team is also working on the set. It didn't say if this would hinder any other releases for the rest of the year.
I'm pretty sure we will see everything in R1 that was in R2, just somewhat behind them. I'm sure it will include any of the early material like the Cyberman title recently released on DVD in R2.
I've been a fan of the good Doctor for 22 years now and want EVERYTHING on DVD. But, I'd really like to see releases restored via the Restoration Team before they hit the shelves, if that means waiting longer to get it all, so be it.

 

[Stephen_Opipari]

I personally have already received my copies of the 4/2 releases of Caves and Rememberance. They look just about perfect and since all the DVD titles went through the restoration team for a thorough clean up, *big* kudos to them. Every title so far looks like it was filmed yesterday.
If you check Gallifrey One which was linked earlier, there's a news tidbit from last week that the US is supposed to see the entire Key To Time Season with Tom Baker as a box set this year, probably November. yay! I was quite suprised that we will see this set before the UK. The article said that the restoration team is also working on the set. It didn't say if this would hinder any other releases for the rest of the year.
I'm pretty sure we will see everything in R1 that was in R2, just somewhat behind them. I'm sure it will include any of the early material like the Cyberman title recently released on DVD in R2.
I've been a fan of the good Doctor for 22 years now and want EVERYTHING on DVD. But, I'd really like to see releases restored via the Restoration Team before they hit the shelves, if that means waiting longer to get it all, so be it.

 

[JohnS]

DVDfile just gave announcements on more Dr. Who episodes, plus a BRAND new Five Doctors Special Edition(alternative edition)

I have NEVER seen a Dr. Who episode before, an intend to start be a watcher and buyer.

I just wish I could see these in order