"Disgusting!"

"Disgusting!"

"Many of the Doctor's early television adventures are lost forever. Enormous pressure on storage space forces the BBC to 'wipe the tapes' of a large proportion of its output. A number of Doctor Who shows have been preserved for the Television Archives, but many more are gone for good..."
That's a quote from the 1976 version of 'The Making Of Doctor Who' and it's interesting how this is still news to a fair number of people.

I never saw a copy of the 'Doctor Who Monthly' special from 1981 that listed everything that survived in the BBC Archives, but Peter Haining's 'Doctor Who : A Celebration' had a Missing Episodes List at the end which illustrated the situation in all its gory detail.

Still, at least 'Doctor Who' was in a much healthier situation than series such as 'Dixon Of Dock Green' or 'Z Cars'. And be thankful that 'Bullseye' fandom has never risen up in protest about all thosee missing editions from 1986...

We had the CD of 'Galaxy 4' on in the car this afternoon and it reminded us just how well this story works on CD. Brian Hodgson's assorted Chumbley noises provide a subliminal soundtrack that you'd probably overlook if the story existed in full. But we couldn't help thinking whether 'Disgusting!', 'Metal Mesh', 'Leaves' or 'Leader's Things' would be the new meme in the chatroom if it actually existed in full...

But with the new recruits to 'Doctor Who' fandom about to hit the massive gaps of Season Three, we thought it worth highlighting the other ways you can experience the missing episodes.

Target Books made a valiant attempt to get everything in book form in the late 80s and the CD releases were the backbone of our 'Everything In Order' marathon of 2003 and 2004. The dedication of people such as the late Graham Strong (who recorded them off the telly in the first place) and Mark Ayres (who spent ages removing annoying clicks from 'The Celestial Toymaker') cannot be overestimated, and we owe them a great debt of gratitude.

With the Blu-ray release of Season Twelve getting ever closer, it's worth giving a bit of free publicity to the DVD range in the hope that there will be a spike in sales.

Money talks, as they say, but even more so if it's only available on audio!

Today's video may be seen here...

(By Andrew Trowbridge)