Currently working through the missing episode audios...

[Candlelight]

THE UNDERWATER MENACE
7/10

For the first three episodes I was considering giving this a five or six, but the final episode was actually very good, and it's a shame it's missing. Zaroff's motives - to destroy the world as a scientific achievement - is a bit weird, although it obviously ties into the character. Does raise the big question about what happens to everyone at the end. Not only does everyone fail to depressurise after coming to the surface (which the tardis crew sort of did in the first episode) but apparently it's set sometime in the seventies and all of a sudden hundreds of people who claim to be from Atlantis suddenly appear! The whole Atlantis thing I felt was a little silly, but that's me.

I guess I'll go back and tally the votes again...

[Candlelight]

Right... I've gone back and reassessed some of the scores I gave the serials, some got bumped up, others relegated. So in order, the 27 missing stories are rated (by me, your actual mileage may vary) as follows:

10/10 - THE POWER OF THE DALEKS
10/10 - THE WEB OF FEAR
9/10 - MISSION TO THE UNKNOWN
9/10 - THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD
9/10 - THE MYTH MAKERS
8/10 - THE EVIL OF THE DALEKS
8/10 - FURY FROM THE DEEP
8/10 - MARCO POLO
8/10 - THE INVASION
8/10 - THE SAVAGES
8/10 - THE TENTH PLANET
8/10 - THE REIGN OF TERROR
7/10 - THE DALEKS MASTER PLAN
7/10 - THE MOONBASE
7/10 - THE CRUSADE
7/10 - THE MACRA TERROR
7/10 - THE FACELESS ONES
7/10 - THE UNDERWATER MENACE
6/10 - GALAXY 4
6/10 - THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN
5/10 - THE MASSACRE
5/10 - THE SPACE PIRATES
5/10 - THE SMUGGLERS
5/10 - THE ICE WARRIORS
5/10 - THE WHEEL IN SPACE
5/10 - THE HIGHLANDERS
4/10 - THE CELESTIAL TOYMAKER

Thanks for listening. Been fun going through these. Always wanted to.

Might wait a couple of years and do it all again...

[Candlelight]

Wondering what to listen to now that dr who is done...

Have got all 104 episodes of the BBC radio show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again I could get through. Least it'll keep me in the 60s.

[Pindar]

If you are looking for some classic sci-fi you could do worse than Journey Into Space.

I love that show, 50's sci-fi that still impresses me.

It was on Radio 4 and ran for years.

[Candlelight]

How many of the shows still exist? Will look it up, cheers.

[Pindar]

All of them, it's still pretty popular today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_into_Space

And still gets run on the radio

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00clkyv

Some modern episodes have been commissioned over the last few years but they are not as good as the originals.

[diankra]

Pindar wrote:

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All of them, it's still pretty popular today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_into_Space

And still gets run on the radio

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00clkyv

Some modern episodes have been commissioned over the last few years but they are not as good as the originals.

To be very pedantic, the first season of JiS is missing, bar one episode, but it was remade in a slightly shortened version a few years later, and that version's complete. Well worth hearing, particularly the ultra-creepy Red Planet and the early X-Files-ish episodes of The World in Peril (the last BBC radio programme to out-rate TV).

The quick summary goes:
Journey into Space (A Story of The Future) - 18 episodes, 1953-54, remade in 1957 as Operation Luna - 13 episodes (the remake omits eps 1-4 of the original, and condenses the original eps 12 and 13 into one episode).
The Red Planet - 20 episodes, 1954-55
The World iN Peril - 20 episodes, 1955-56
The Return from Mars - 90 mins, 1982
Space Force (semi-sequel, originally intended as a continuation with the same characters) - 6 episodes, 1982
Space Force II - 6 episodes, 1984
Frozen in Time - 60 mins, 2006-ish
The HOst - 60 mins, 2009-ish


Oh, and ISIRTA is well worth a listen, particularly for Doctor Why and The Thing, and Professor Prune and the Electric Time Trousers!

[Pindar]

I knew that but Operation Luna doesn't feel incomplete when you listen to it.

Also worth listening to is the audio book of the novelisation of Journey into Space.

It has what must have been covered in the lost episodes 1-4 and the reader does a pretty good impression of all 4 original cast members.

[Candlelight]

diankra wrote:

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Oh, and ISIRTA is well worth a listen, particularly for Doctor Why and The Thing, and Professor Prune and the Electric Time Trousers!

My copies of series six - the Time Trousers season - are a bit rough (do you know if there are any better copies in existence?), but it'll be a while before I reach them. Just finished the Cambridge Circus pilot and part way through the first 'prep show'.

[FreddyE]

Christopher wrote:

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Oh, it's too bad that the one erased original they've identified had an otherwise extant episode on it. If it were a still-missing episode, then maybe a palimpsest reconstruction could be attempted. (I suppose they could try it with the one they have just as proof of concept -- since they do have a surviving version to compare their results against -- but it would be kind of pointless if they have no other palimpsests to work with.)

I thought a bit about the palimpsest reconsturction you suggest. I can think of various technical reasons why there might be some reconstructable data left. Different aligment / missallignment of the tape / heads during wiping could have left traces, or how about magnetic traces spilling through on the back of the tape? And of course, work processes aren´t always followed to the letter. Maybe some reals where just recorded over without prior wiping accendently? If the new recording was shorter then the old, then at least a few scenes might still be left.