No, they wouldn't just throw it away; such a common fate would negate its value in their eyes. People like that would want their wealth to be entombed with them or be burned in their funeral pyres. Something elaborate and pharaonic like that.
The rumor pot is starting to bubble again as the fall opening of the BBC (digital download) Store draws near. Current rumors now say ALL BUT 4/5 of the missing episodes are back, restored and waiting to be put online. Of the five remaining, two (The Invasion parts 1 and 4) were already animated. Philip Morris is reportedly convinced that those, The Wheel in Space part 2 (Zoe Heriot's introduction) and The Space Pirates parts 3 & 4 are probably gone for good. (Not so much missing, perhaps, as deteriorated beyond salvage.) Yeah, I know, sounds WAY too good to be true. Either way, grab your popcorn. Real or hoax, this is gonna get very entertaining.
What about all the other shows that would supposedly have also been recovered? Whole bunch of BBC programming from the 1960s and such. Not just Doctor Who.
Your guess is as good as mine, Ithekro. If the rumors about the DW episodes are true, there's probably a ton of surprises waiting as far as other series. I do know two episodes of the Monty Python predecessor 'At Last the 1948 Show' (the first and last episodes, respectively) were recovered last year from David Frost's personal archives.
*Groan* Not again! And if there are more episodes available, why not release them on DVD? More money wouldn't have saved "The Horns of Nimon." The only thing that could have saved it would be the director telling the actor the played Soldeed, "Dude! Dial it down a shade!" I'd definitely like to see special edition re-releases of those stories. There are also some others that are out of print in the U.S. that I'd like to see become available again, like "The Web Planet," "The Time Meddler," "The Invasion," "The War Games," "Frontios," & "Planet of Fire."
I don't know. Soldeed was the best thing about Horns of Nimon. Without him, it might have been a very forgettable story.
Is it merely fannish rumor the actor who played Soldeed was one of those considered for the role of the Doctor when Jon Pertwee left? Sincerely, Bill
IF the rumor is true (and that's a very big IF) I would suspect that once everything that can be gleaned from the BBC download store has been, then they would put out the classics as series sets since that would probably make the most economic sense these days. If so many stories are recovered then they would be able to do full series with recons or (hopefully) animates of the few missing episodes. The only stumbling block I see with this venture would be all those extras they included on the individual releases, plus more for the new stuff. That's ALOT of extra material (if one disc covers one story (usually) then it would mean 8/9 discs for Hartnell and Troughton's individual seasons with al least 8 more discs per set for extra material alone. (The number decreased starting with Pertwee who had 5 stories per season). I would hope that TPTB would be kind enough to give fans EVERYTHING but it may be a case of "you had your chance, we're not repeating".
Since it's BBC that would be putting out the money to generate the sets (And considering how many sets would have to be sold), they'd probably want to keep the cost (Producing and selling) down, so, I would imagine Season sets would be mostly Generic with just the episodes. A good portion of Classic Fans already have a great deal of the Stories they would want, so, I'm not sure the market would be very big.
Depends on what's missing. BBCWW can't find anybody to animate missing episodes cheap enough, and they don't think recons will sell (hence why The Underwater Menace was cancelled). They're out of print because they weren't selling well enough to justify printing more. I would be surprised if any special editions had more than a limited release here, quickly going back out of print.
Another option for season sets (whether or not more episodes have been found) would be to use bluray discs. Not for HD content, but for their larger storage capacity. Mr Awe
that is true but I can hear the complaints now once people see the discs are Blu-ray (they'll need Blu-ray players to play them after all), but discover the episodes haven't been remastered for high-def. such a venture would be pointless, especially for the b&w stories.
No, I've read that elsewhere as well. Graham Crowden was an excellent, funny character actor (he and Stephanie Cole were great together on Waiting for God), but history has obviously proven that Tom Baker was the right choice for the Fourth Doctor.
Nonsense! It would be a great space savings and you could still get all the episodes and special features! Mr Awe
The reason I have read for why the Classic Series were released on DVD, not Blu-Ray, laid in the filming techniques used for those old episodes. The production team would use one film for indoors and another film for outdoors. The "Spearhead from Space", the only Classic Series released on Blu-Ray, was filmed using only one kind of film. If BBC does release the Classic Series in the future, I don't know if they will incorporate the VAM. BBC is skimping on the extras for the Doctor Who range. Compare what came with the first series of the New Doctor Who and the eighth series of the New Doctor Who. I think that, if I didn't like Doctor Who as much as I do, I would be more miffed with the series 8 Doctor Who DVD release. Whose terrible idea was it to place three episodes on one disc and four episodes on the other disc, when there might be at most two commentaries and no VAM on the discs? I choose these two products as represenative of the downward trend in Doctor Who material. When Series 1 was released, the Classic Series DVDs were beginning a run wherein they were chock-full of extras. In nine years, the extras became sparse, with the last two serials having no extras to speak of.
^ I'm talking about using Blu-Ray for SD content, not HD content. The reason is that Blu-Ray discs have higher storage capacity and could hold a lot of SD content in a small physical space. Mr Awe