Interesting seeing the very first companions. Ian kicked some major Aztec butt in tonights episode. Barbara is a bit pushy for my taste. At least thats how she was playing the Aztec goddess and she kept trying to change the Aztec’s history. I didn’t get much impression of Susan in this one episode.
I can see why the series became popular. There were some good ideas even in this very early period.
I’m not sure what you mean here. The Daleks was a serial, but so was The Aztecs – all the stories were in those days. The only difference between them is that Daleks had seven 25 minute episodes, and Aztecs only had four.
As did the first DW, this one featuring cavemen.
Hartnell’s Doctor is a bit of a prick. None of that gushy-wushy, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey “I love humans, they’re so great” attitude of #10. Kind of refreshing, actually.
AAAARRRRGH!!!
Any idea when they’ll reshow the special? (The Aztecs is on Netflix streaming.)
Hopefully, they’ll do Tomb of the Cybermen for number 2. That’s a good, scary one.
Word. Kind of enjoy the whole standoffish Doctor personality. I’d imagine that at least some of the personalities of such an advanced alien would look at humanity with disdain for our primitiveness.
I have joked that it’d be fun to have the next Doctor be played by Hugh Laurie who can reprise his House, MD attitude, but with his actual speaking voice ;).
They’ll have to pick from the shorter serials. Aztecs was a good length. I was disappointed BBC America only ran the special once Sunday night. I missed the first 45 minutes. Sure hope they run it again. It was three hours long so it probably won’t get run too often.
Hope they run a full Patrick Troughton serial too. Wasn’t a lot of his shows lost? I’ve never seen him before.
Not quite.
Back in the 60s, film was reusable. Many American shows were lost as they aired them and then reused the film to make more episodes. The BBC was keeping all of their shows intact until around 1973/4. At that point, they had a LOT of film to store and it was taking up a warehouse worth of space. It was at that point that the BBC decided to get rid of some film. They labeled everything on a system that went from A = save it all to F (could be a different letter) = save nothing. Dr Who was labeled a C, which meant save the most recent and save the older until As and Bs need the space.
Now, they were sharing some of the episodes with other countries at this time and some of the prints went all over the world. But it wasn’t until the late 1970s, iirc, that Dr Who really took off in other countries, especially the US. When they found they could make a lot of money with it, they finally stopped destroying it and went about actively trying to preserve it. Obviously at that point, the damage was done.
So, yes, most of the second doctor is gone. I think Tomb of the Cyberman is the most complete and I think it is still missing an episode. There are pieces of the first doctor gone, most notably big ones like Dalek Masterplan but also episodes from here and there. They even got rid of the some third (then current) Doctor by mistake, for example the color episode of the Invasion of the Dinosaurs episode but still have the b&w. (I’m not sure why they had two different versions of the third doctor but they did.)
So, sorry for the TMI, but that’s a better description of what happened. From what I can glean in the Dr Who magazine, they sometimes get clips or episodes back as they are found. And some of the stories are very interesting! A reel being found in an attic in New Zealand from the estate of the people’s parent who worked at the TV station and didn’t want to send it back. Things like that.
It’s unfortunate because a LOT of TV from the 50s and 60s just doesn’t exist anymore, except in people’s memories. At the time, it was deemed too expensive and they didn’t have reruns!
vislor
Heh, I always really enjoy The Aztecs, one of the more cerebral episodes 
I have it on DVD.
Granted, probably not an ideal one with which to introduce Old Who with - but it is a good example of how the BBC envisaged the purpose of early Who.
I am so glad they are doing this. Drat that I have to enjoy vicariously, not getting BBC America.
Been watching DW for years and still remember a load of the classic stuff.
I have loads of the Video’s and DVD’s of old and new but some of the stuff really annoys me with NuWhu, like tailoring it to the American audience - us guys in the UK still enjoy it but you know.
I also feel that they have dumbed it down, no-one seems to be thinking their way out of problems, just sonic crewdriver it! – for some reason the sonic screwdriver has turned into a magic wand, that and the Dr has become too powerful – he can destroy the entire Cyber fleet on his own – Come on…
Things like this irk me and the reboot made me happy that it was being brought back but sad that the TARDIS was being changed into something of a crap plumbers mess.
I have been known to rant a bit about this (even in my blog) but I do still like it. Just don’t treat us as dumbo’s, make it smart. That’s all we ask.
http://glesga.blog.co.uk/2012/11/22/dr-who-old-and-new-15234428/
Well, no, not quite; but I’m sorry, **vislor **– you’re actually making things worse.
Film has never been reusable. As a recording medium, that is – you can probably make guitar picks out of it, or something. Videotape was reusable – as it still is – and that’s what Doctor Who was recorded on. The episodes were subsequently transferred onto film for export to other countries, because video standards vary, but any TV station would have the ability to broadcast film. The tapes were kept by the VT department for domestic repeats or reuse, and the film prints went to BBC Enterprises (the commercial arm of the BBC).
BBC Enterprises were selling Who all over the world, and made a tidy profit throughout the sixties. By the early seventies, they were running out of takers for older episodes – most of the viable markets had already seen them, and the advent of colour TV meant that the profitability of black and white shows was falling quickly (this is why there were b/w versions of Jon Pertwee stories, incidentally – for sale to countries without colour TV yet).
Of course, when BBC Enterprises started dumping their old films, they did it on the understanding that the original VT was still safe in the archive.
Except there was no archive – the BBC had no mandate in its charter to retain everything it broadcast, so it didn’t have a budget for it, either – and 18" reels of 1" tape take up a lot of storage space – so, yes, they wiped and reused a lot of the tapes. After all, what possible use were they? And, naturally, the VT department were under the impression that anything worthwhile was safe on film at BBC Enterprises.
So is “The Doctors Revisited” a special about the first doctor? Or is it simply a replaying of “The Aztecs”? Or some combination of the two?
Combination of both.
Yeah, I realized that after watching the special. The Aztecs set of shows was the last I watched since it was the first complete set I think after the Marco Polo series that was mostly lost. I had forgotten that it too was a series - probably because hadn’t gotten through the whole thing before I had to put it on hold.
But I still have all of those old epi’s on disk and plan to get back to them - maybe this summer.
Nope, they’ve got the whole thing now. They found the one missing episode in Hong Kong in 1992, so it’s one of the few Second Doctor series that exists whole and complete. And since it’s only 4 episodes long, I bet that’s what they show next month. It’s a good one, and there are some genuinely creepy moments.
They’ve managed to restore the missing color version episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs by combining the color information from a crappy recording with the black and white master. (Not that anything about the Master is ever black and white … .)
Oops. Yes. My bad. Videotape was reused not film. Not sure what I was thinking there.
As for the retention policy, that is from some of my old Dr Who books on what happened to them. They knew some of the older Dr Who were destroyed because, as you said, the b&w stuff wasn’t marketable as much anymore. And they knew they needed the storage space. The book had specific stories about how tough it was to pick which episodes were worth saving as they were good representatives of the show for that season or time period.
I think it was Dr Who The 70s hardcover. Unfortunately, I don’t have it anymore to do a good cite on it and my google fu is failing me. My point is that the BBC knew they were destroying “originals” that they didn’t have anywhere else.
vislor
Ah, okay. My knowledge of Dr Who has its own holes!
Thanks!
vislor
Okay, now I’m bummed. I DVR’ed the special, but when I went to watch it I discovered that it had recorded “Casino Royale,” which was on before Doctor Who, even though the title of the recording claimed it was Doctor Who. I’m certain that it was recording during the actual special since I watched the first hour of it and noticed the “record” light was on.
Anybody else (particularly Comcast users) experience this?
I don’t know how accurate this is, but according to the BBC-Am site FAQ:
So in theory you should still be able to catch it. Although since it’s a special and not a regular series, maybe not. IDK. Worth checking anyway. Good luck.
Will they be showing the ten part adventure “The War Games”?