Orphan Episodes
Surviving episodes which do not form complete stories – referred to as "orphan" episodes – have been released by the BBC in the following ways:
- The Hartnell Years, The Troughton Years, Daleks – The Early Years, and Cybermen – The Early Years on VHS tapes, released in the early 1990s.
- As extras on other releases, such as The Faceless Ones episodes 1 and 3 and The Web of Fear episode 1 on The Reign of Terror boxset.
- Abridged VHS releases, with the surviving episodes and one or more of the following:
- Linking material recorded by actors (The Reign of Terror, The Crusade, and The Invasion)
- Audio CDs with recordings of the missing episodes (The Crusade and The Ice Warriors)
- Reconstructions with photographs, surviving clips, and soundtrack (The Tenth Planet and The Ice Warriors)
- The Lost in Time DVD boxset in 2004.
Starting in the early 1990s, the BBC began to release existing audio recordings of serials with all or a majority of episodes missing on audio cassette and compact disc, with linking narration provided by former series actors such as Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Colin Baker, Peter Purves, and Frazer Hines. Serials with only one or two episodes missing have also been released in complete soundtrack format. Some serials (such as The Evil of the Daleks) were re-released during this time with improved audio restoration, changed linking narration, and in some instances with scenes unavailable in the first release. Music clearance problems did, however, result in the Evil of the Daleks release not having some background compositions which played on its original soundtrack. These were replaced with more generic tracks.
By December 2005, the soundtracks for all of the missing episodes were released, albeit with copyright-uncleared music replacements where necessary, slightly rejigged sequences for reasons of clarity, and with overdubbed narration.
Read more about this topic: Doctor Who Missing Episodes
Famous quotes containing the words orphan and/or episodes:
“The obvious parallels between Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz have frequently been noted: in both there is the orphan hero who is raised on a farm by an aunt and uncle and yearns to escape to adventure. Obi-wan Kenobi resembles the Wizard; the loyal, plucky little robot R2D2 is Toto; C3PO is the Tin Man; and Chewbacca is the Cowardly Lion. Darth Vader replaces the Wicked Witch: this is a patriarchy rather than a matriarchy.”
—Andrew Gordon, U.S. educator, critic. “The Inescapable Family in American Science Fiction and Fantasy Films,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Summer 1992)
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)