TV Series: Doctor Who

William Hartnell

"Doctor Who" is the world's longest running science fiction television series. It was originally broadcast from 1963 to 1989. After a 16-year gap the series was started again in 2005 and still continues today. Some people describe the 2005 series as a "reboot", but that is incorrect. A reboot refers to a series that starts again from the beginning (like the new Spider-Man film), but in 2005 Doctor Who continued where it had left off.

Patrick Troughton

The biggest problem for Doctor Who fans is that a large number of the 1960's episodes have been lost, due to the original master tapes being erased for reuse. In forums it's asked again and again why this happened. There are two answers for this.

One answer is the costs. Doctor Who was a low budget series. The first few episodes were made with a budget of £65 each (approx $170 at the time), which had to cover the wages for the actors, the crew, the special effects, the props, everything. Videotape was very expensive at the time. The cost of the tape to store a single episode was £17, more than 25% of the episode's budget. Simply put, reusing tapes was good business.

The other answer, certainly the main answer, is that the attitude of people towards television was different in the 1960's. It was considered an inferior form of entertainment, throwaway entertainment. Nobody, neither the television studios nor the general public, could imagine that anyone would want to watch a television show more than once. Many other television episodes were deleted, such as the first season of "The Avengers", "Adam Adamant" and the first two seasons of "Callan". Even music shows such as "Top of the Pops" were deleted, meaning that live performances of groups like the Beatles have been lost forever. Any forward thinking entrepreneur with sufficient capital could have bought the tapes for these shows and made millions at a future date after the invention of VCRs and DVD players. This did happen in one case: the musician Dave Clark, drummer in the Dave Clark Five, bought the original tapes of the ITV music program "Ready Steady Go", preserving their content forever.

In 1963, when Doctor Who was first broadcast, the taping of television series still wasn't the norm. Many tv series were broadcast live. For instance, Patrick Troughton starred in the first Robin Hood series, performing live in the studio. In this case the tapes weren't lost, they never existed. This is such a tragedy.

Over the years previously lost Doctor Who episodes have been rediscovered. In most cases this is because copies were made of the original tapes to be broadcast in other countries. The contracts stated that the tapes were on loan and had to be returned, but in many cases, fortunately, they weren't. Let's hope that many more tapes are found in basements in African warehouses.

Advertising a lost adventure

To finish off, here's an amusing little story:

Many years in the future time travel has been invented. A group of Doctor Who fans travel back to the 1960's and steal the original tapes from the BBC vaults to prevent them being deleted. They're about to leave when they're confronted by another group of people.

"We come from the future, five years after you. We've found out that the tapes were never erased. They were only lost because you stole them, meaning hundreds of years of suffering for Doctor Who fans".

The first group puts the tapes back in the vaults. They're about to leave, when another group of people comes and confronts the first two groups.

"We come from the future, another five years after you. You have to steal the tapes. Because you didn't take them they were erased, meaning hundreds of years of suffering for Doctor Who fans".

While the second and third group argue, the first group takes the tapes out of the vaults again. They're about to leave, when another group of people in ragged clothing comes and confronts the first three groups.

"We come from the future, another hundred years after you. For the last 100 years you have been stealing the tapes and putting them back. This has led to temporal paradoxes that have plunged the world into chaos. It's been decided that the only solution is for all of us to unite and return to 1963 to assassinate enough people to prevent Doctor Who ever being made".

Katy Manning and a happy Dalek