Well, I went to to Anglesea, which is to Wales what Wales is the Britain. It's a large island connected to the mainland by two bridges. A couple of millenia ago it was druid central, the place it took the Roman Empire 25 years to conquer from the time of their second invasion (the one that stuck). The place we were staying, a 17th century converted stable looking out onto a field of ponies and donkeys and a lake, had vaguely heard of the internet but not wi fi or cell phone connection.







Given the value such products now have to the BBC, the decisions to dump old material is even more heartbreaking. When episodes of the 1968 serial "The Web of Fear" turned up two years back and were put on itunes, they jumped to the top ofr the world sales chart!







Oh, it gets better. Back in 2012, rumours started circulating that a Doctor Who enthusiast who also runs a film restoration company might have comne across some missing episodes in some lost corer of the world. Specualation ran rife. Eg: A huge crate of material had just arrived at Liverpool. He had retrived episodes but was now holding the BBC to ransom for their return. It was a huge con trick. The episodes had been found but were in the middle of a war zone and likely to be destroyed. Every single missing episode had been retrieved but the BBC was hoarding them. By summer 2013 when it was confirmed that this guy had returned to Nigeria on business, the webpage thread about this subject topped its 1000th index page.

Meanwhile "senior fan" Jeremy Bentham (he of the previously described dumpster diving) announced that he knew for a fact it was all a hoax. Others swore to have seen the retrieved episodes and even listed them (the lists were wrong). A photograph was posted showing some film cannisters on Liverpool dock, clearly displaying the old 60s BBC logo. The businessman himself posted an ALL CAPITALS Twitter message denying he had any episoded at all. Fans began to prepare to burn him in effigy, or possibly not in effigy.

The real story eventually came out. While working for a Nigerian TV station to restore some old film from a now-defuct other Nigerian TV station, this guy had come across a bunch of cannisters of old BBC product, including six episodes of "The Enemy of the World", of which four had previously been lost from the archive, and all five episodes of "The Web of Fear", along with dupicates of some existing archives stories. He had photographed them and returned to the UK to negotiate their return.

The problem is, this stuff is valuable. The more people freaked over its possible discovery the more convinced the Nigerians were that they were sitting on a fortune. The BBC just doesn't have the money that a major studio might have to buy back copies of their own product. Eventually "a deal" was done. In the interim, episode 3 of "The Web of Fear", introducting popular supporting cast member Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, mysteriously vanished and has not been found since. Fans remain convinced of a conspiracy but are not united in agreeing a villain.

Three years on, there is still a hardcore minoroity convinced that this movie restorer guy found more than he's admitting but is holding on to it for a better offer. Or that a milionaire collector in Australia has swiped the goodies for his own enjoyment. Or that the Nigerian government is holding them hostage. Really, just google it.







Bentham was then a pop music producer and had the cash to pay £5,000 to the BBC for copies of some material. He remains a controversial figure in Who fandom, having been "an official consultant" to the show during the turbulent 80s and very vocal against other factions of fandom, including the one led by opiniated youngster Peter Capaldi. Allegedly.




Doctor Who Magazine tracked her down and interviewed her. She was quite unrepentant.




Of course, it wasn't called a renegeration until eight years after that, when Jon Pertwee morphed into Tom Baker.







I think there's scope for new versions.

60s television storytelling was very different to today's product. Most BBC output, including Doctor Who, was performed like a play, in order, before four or five constantly-rolling cameras, with a director calling which monitor would actually record onto the film tape.The cost of splicing film meant a minimum of cuts and the tightness of the schedule (a 25-minute epsiode 48 weeks of the year) meant little time for retakes. This lead to some excellent flubs, including Hartnell mispronoucing "fault locator" as "fornicator".

Additionally, the series had a tiny budget for what it was trying to achieve, no higher than the budgets accorded other shows set in doctor's surgeries or solicitors offices with recurring sets. While this led to some amazing improvisation - the TARDIS was stuck as a police box to prveent having to manufacture a new shape at each destination, its materialisation sound was a key scraped on a piano wire in a toilet bowl etc - it also means that some FX really do not hold up well these days. For example, some Dalek hordes are cardboard cut outs.

So vintage Doctor Who might well benefit from an edited cut with more modern graphic values and better music soundtracks. Some DVDs have been put out with "improved" visual effects to mixed response, but I think a talented team might be able to run with an animated version of some older material.

Another option might be to animate some never-before-filmed stuff from the extensive audio collections out there, some of which includes full-cast material featuring stars that are no longer alive.