You're right, I vividly remember that, even as a small kid in the 60's, when watching The Chase I was VERY annoyed that the Doctor's robot double looked nothing like him!

Finished The Reign of Terror Last Night and really enjoyed it. Learnt loads, which I suppose was the idea.

Really wrapped up in the story of Robespierre and the French Revolution in general. Did not expect to see Napoleon turn up in the last episdoe either. Bit of jaw dropper for me. I'd love to see an episode focused on Napoleon, have they ever done that?

And I really liked the ending, nothing too spectacular but lovely parting lines from the First Doctor. I didn't realise that the next episode would have been advertised at the end of this one, being from the next series, but looking it up on line looks like there was only a six week break between series. Not much of a break for the actors then.

I'm awaiting my copy of Planet of the Giants, hope it's here tomorrow.

Planet of Giants! Wow, that's an old fashioned bit of telly!

Good point about the actors not getting much time off. It was tough work, doing DW back in the 60s. Tough now as well, but for different reasons.

Glad the Reign of Terror went down well. i really need to give it another go. those two missing eisodes were so poorly replaced on the VHS that they ruined the whole flow of the story for me and the left episode seemed quite meaningless. I had hoped I'd love the story, but ended up disappinted. it might be better on soundtrack CD, where the missing episodes are not so badly missing!

To be watched on an old fashioned piece of equipment called a video recorder.
I can understand that the missing episodes would let the story down. There are two crucial pieces to the plot there, namely Leon being revealed as a traitor to the group and the conspiracy against the downfall of Robespierre. Oh and the Doctor doing what he does best and taking control of the prison, by tying everone up in verbal knots.

They would take the odd brief holiday during the year, though. That's why Hartnell and various of the companions are occasionally written out of the story for an episode or two at one time or another (as in The time Meddler, where he spends an episode locked in a cell, off camera) so that the actor could have a break. Otherwise, they'd have been working on the show all year round.

So they had Doctor-lite episodes even back in the old series.

Yup. Indeed, one episode (Mission to the Unknown) was not only Doctor-lite but companion-lite; the entire regular cast were otherwise indisposed so they just did an episode with only the Daleks and a couple of Space Security agents who got exterminated before the end.

Oh wow, that's incredible. And was it a good story or did it suffer for lack of the Doctor and regular companions?

Only the soundtrack still exists, but it's a pretty good episode based on that. It acts as a lead-in to the epic The Dalek's Masterplan, which actually started two stories later.

Mmm, would be interested to listen to that then. I guess I'll get there eventually.

Mission to the Unknown / Daleks Masterplan are great.

Mission is just one ep, as Tingram says, and feels quite different. Masterplan is 12 eps (only 3 remain on video), and is wonderful. Occasional lapses and drags in it, but generally epic. I listened to the soundtrack CDs while on holiday last year, and throughly enjoyed it.

The legend goes that the mother-in-law of a BBC Big Cheese loved the Daleks, so the Big Cheese granted DW an extra episode to have Daleks in. The main actors' contracts had already been signed by that point, so the episode went ahead with no Tardis crew.

I hadn't thought of those "Hartnell's week off" episodes as "Doctor Lite" before!

Series 3 I see...I should be there by sometime in May hopefully.

One episode? I didn't realise they had any one episode stories in the classics, but without the main actors and going on your comments above, I guess they had good reason to make it just one episode.

Yes Doctor-Lite started in the very first series. Ha! RTD did not get first dabs on it.

I've seen the LC recons. Mission is all right, but Master Plan is great! I thought only the Christmas episode suffered because the stills they had weren't always enough to explain the chaos you could hear in some of the scenes.

The Christmas episode described as "chaos" is quite fitting. It just seemed like a load of noise and nonsense on the soundtrack CD ...

Mission to the Unknown is the only one-episoder (unless you count The Five Doctors, or the McGann movie).

Good luck with showing The Old Stuff to Mrs CNA.

Mrs Chuff's first encounter with DW was Horror of Fang Rock, when it first came out on video (10yrs-ish ago), and we never looked back!

Mmm interesting. I've got along with both the recons so far, so hopefully it'll work for me.


Oh yes, of course. Seen both of those.


Think C.N.A is in the other classic thread Chuff.

How bizarre. I have never posted a reply in the wrong thread before. That's just weird! Sorry Tiggs ...

Haha, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's easily confused.

I start Planet of Giants today, all being well.

What happened to the last episode of Planet of Giants? It was like they'd cut whole chunks out. Really didn't make much sense.

Really great special effects though. The giant fly was brilliant and all the other objects they'd magnified. Really enjoyed the story with the Tardis crew, although Smithers and Farrow and co bored the pants off me.

I'm waiting for my copy of The Dalek Invasion of Earth to arrive. Humph! Should be here by now.

It was originally planned as a four parter but was cut down, so it ended up a bit disjointed.

They did - 'Planet of the Giants' was at one point four episodes long, parts three ('Crisis') and part four ('The Urge to Live') were edited together to form a single episode before broadcast.

Don't know why, though.

Presumably it was just really boring.

I think it was the loss of the forth episode that led to the production team having to do a single episode without any of the regular cast ('Mission to the Unknown'). Something like that, anyway...

Mission to the Unknown was in the following season, so I'm not sure that was the reason.

Suggest you post under 'BARROWMAN! *shakes fist*'.

Oh I see. I don't think they made a very good job of it then.


Oh yes, Mission to the Unknown has been mentioned further up thread.

Can you still see it in 4 episodes now?


Good idea, I have yet to post in that thread.

According to the About Time books that was the reason, apparently the combination of needing an extra episode after losing the Planet Of The Giants one, the production teams reluctance to do stories with an odd number of episodes, the main casts contracts being up for renewal and that they were due a holiday led to the decision to do a one off story.