Lost in Time (Doctor Who)

Doctor Who: Lost in Time, Region 1 boxart with both the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton collections.

Doctor Who - Lost in Time is a BBC three-disc boxset DVD released in 2004. It is a collection of restored Doctor Who episodes and clips from stories that are incomplete or missing from the Corporation's archives. There were, at the time of release, 108 missing episodes, all from the black-and-white 1960s era. Although the search goes on (and eleven complete episodes, plus some clips, have been recovered since the release) many or all of these episodes may be lost forever - hence this collection's title.

The Region 2[1] and Region 4[2] releases are a single three disc set. In Region 1, it is available as two separate releases (a single disc William Hartnell DVD[3] and a two disc Patrick Troughton set[4]) or as a single three disc set.[5]


Content

Footage found in the set varies from complete episodes to extremely short surviving clips that were cut either for time or for censorship reasons. Several episodes in the set include commentary tracks moderated by Gary Russell and featuring actors and crew from the original productions.

For budget reasons, Lost in Time does not feature text commentary or a photo gallery (unlike most other Doctor Who DVD releases).

Hartnell Era

Troughton Era

The Missing Years

The 1998 documentary The Missing Years is included on disc 3. It details the loss and recovery of 1960s episodes and is presented by Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling. It features the longest extant clip from an otherwise-missing Doctor Who episode – over six minutes of Episode 1 of Galaxy 4; a version of "The Final End" recreating the climax of The Evil of the Daleks; fan Ian Levine stating that he believes there will never be fewer than 110 missing episodes, then begging to be proven wrong (which he later was: as of October 2013 there are 97 episodes missing); and a lengthy recreation of the first regeneration sequence put together from all that exists of the end of The Tenth Planet and the start of The Power of the Daleks. The feature was previously released on VHS.

In its original form, this documentary was presented in an earlier VHS boxset (The Ice Warriors in the UK, and with The Edge of Destruction and Dr. Who: The Pilot Episode in North America); both regions shared the tape with the one surviving episode of The Underwater Menace (with Hines' intro as mentioned above), which pre-dates the rediscovery of some of the Lost in Time content.

The DVD presentation includes some new footage documenting the return of two previously missing episodes – "The Lion" (Episode 1 of The Crusade) was discovered in New Zealand in 1999, while "Day of Armageddon" (Episode 2 of The Daleks' Master Plan) was returned in 2004 by a former BBC employee. This addendum ends the documentary.

Material found since the release

In 2005, a year after the set was released, three clips from The Power of the Daleks were found on a 1966 edition of Tomorrow's World (aired as part of the clip-filled nostalgia series Sunday Past Times) and returned to the BBC. The clips were released as parts of extras on the Genesis of the Daleks DVD ("The Dalek Tapes" documentary) and The Trial of a Time Lord DVD ("Now Get Out of That" documentary, disc three).

In 2011, two complete previously missing episodes were returned to the BBC. The first was episode three of Galaxy 4, which was released (as part of a reconstruction of the whole story) on the special edition DVD of The Aztecs. The second was episode two of The Underwater Menace, which was included in a DVD release of that story in October 2015.[6][7]

In 2013, nine more episodes were recovered: the remaining previously missing episodes of The Enemy of the World; and episodes two, four, five and six of The Web of Fear (leaving only episode three missing). Both stories were released on iTunes on the day their recovery was announced. The Enemy of the World was released on DVD in November 2013 and The Web of Fear in February 2014.

Other sources

Audio recordings (made off-air, by fans, at the time of transmission) exist for all of the missing episodes. They have been released by the BBC, with linking narration, and the soundtracks to the missing episodes of The Crusade and The Moonbase are included (without narration) on Lost in Time. These recordings also form the basis of the animated reconstructions of missing episodes included in the DVD releases of The Reign of Terror, The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase, The Ice Warriors and The Invasion. The existing episodes of The Reign of Terror, The Tenth Planet, The Ice Warriors and The Invasion were not included on Lost in Time (although they had been released on VHS at that point) and didn't get a DVD release until completed with animated versions of their missing episodes.

The soundtracks have also been combined with still images (mainly tele-snaps of the broadcasts) to make reconstructions that have been used on commercial releases of Marco Polo (a condensed version, as an extra on The Beginning DVD box set), Galaxy 4 (as an extra on the special edition DVD of The Aztecs) The Tenth Planet (on the VHS release and as an extra on the DVD), The Power of the Daleks (as an MP3 CD), The Ice Warriors (a condensed version, on the VHS release and as an extra on the DVD) and The Web of Fear (the still missing episode three, on iTunes and the DVD) - as well as being produced unofficially by fans.

References

  1. ↑ "Doctor Who - Lost in Time". amazon.co.uk. Retrieved 2015-09-07.
  2. ↑ "Doctor Who - Lost in Time @ EzyDVD". Ezydvd.com.au. Retrieved 2010-05-14.
  3. ↑ "Doctor Who - Lost in Time Collection of Rare Episodes - The William Hartnell Years 1963-1966". amazon.com. Retrieved 2015-09-07.
  4. ↑ "Doctor Who: Lost in Time Collection of Rare Episodes, The Patrick Troughton Years 1966-1969". amazon.com. Retrieved 2015-09-07.
  5. ↑ "Doctor Who - Lost in Time Collection of Rare Episodes - The William Hartnell Years and the Patrick Troughton Years". amazon.com. Retrieved 2015-09-07.
  6. ↑ "Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace". bbcshop.com. Retrieved 2015-09-07.
  7. ↑ "The Underwater Menace to be released on DVD". Doctor Who News. 2015-09-03. Retrieved 2015-09-07.

See also

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