Hey everyone,

I am a big Doctor Who fan, but im only 20 and have only seen episodes which are from 2005 era onwards. I have been recommended to buy the old series for years on DVD but now i think is the right time to start.

Basically i want to start from the beginning onwards. I am aware that a large chunk of episodes are missing so i obviously cannot purchase them.

So from the help of wikipedia and looking at the episodes in order, i just ordered "The Beginning" boxset and looked for "Marco Polo" but is missing. So i went for "The Keys of Marinus" next" and next was "The Aztecs"...but then got stuck on "The Sensorites", is that not released? is it missing? will it be released?

I mean have the BBC not released all the past episodes by now?

Anyway just thought i would express my excitement with this and enjoy Doctor Who right back to the beginning which will be fun to watch.

The Sensorites isn't out on DVD - it was released on VHS if you're desperate. All the complete stories, plus the incomplete ones (ie. the ones with missing episodes), were issued on tape but they've not all been spruced up and shoved back out on disc yet!

Personally, I wouldn't bother buying them in order - there are a lot of great stories from the original series you must see immediately!

To be honest I'm not sure Doctor Who is worth watching in chronological order & some of it isn't worth watching at all.

Personally I'd recommend watching the Hinchcliffe era first as there is a high proportion of classics to be found therein.

Pyramids of Mars is my favourite story of 'Classic Who'

Just got The Key to time box set from zavvi for £29 I thought it was a bargan considering its £70 every other place.

I sold my Dr Who VHS's just under 2 years ago had them all and ive been slowly building the dvd's up since then.

I wont do it again if another format comes out.

I asked this question some time ago in an earlier part of the New DW Fan thread and the lovely folks over there were a great help, they recommended the following

The ark in space
Black Orchid
The Caves of Androzani
City of Death
Curse of Fenric
The Deadly Assassin
Earthshock
Enlightenment
The Five Doctors
Green Death
The hand of fear
Inferno
Mawdryn Undead
The Mind Robber
The Movie
Pyramids of Mars
Resurrection of the Daleks
The Sea devils
Seeds of Death
The Silurians
Spearhead from Space
Talons of Weng Chiang
Terminus
The Three Doctors
Tomb of the Cybermen
The Two Doctors
Vengeance on Varos
The War games
Warriors of the deep

There were others that I can't remember off the top of my head, like the silly billy that I am I crossed them off as I bought them

Edit: oops, just re-read the OP, sorry wasn't the question, but it may be worth getting those anyway

I know 10 years ago apparently there were 150 episodes of Dr Who still missing, but some could have been found since then.
The Troughton years are more affected than Hartnell's though.

I looked on amazon for the best rated DW DVD's for each Doctor.
So we have:
Hartnell - The Beginning
Troughton - The Invasion
Pertwee - Spearhead From Space
T.Baker - Genesis of the Daleks
Davison - The Caves Of Androzani

haven't bought any dvds for C.Baker or McCoy as that's when I stopped watching it.

There are 109 missing episodes from the Hartnell and Troughton years, but the soundstracks of the missing episodes exist and are available on CD. I can heartily recommend.

The DVDs are not being released in any particular order. All that exists is out on VHS.

You are probably best to hopscotch through the series, but some are essential:

Hartnell
The Beginning boxset includes the first three stories (13 eps). The documentaries are unbeatable.
The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

Troughton
The Invasion
The War Games

Pertwee
Spearhead from Space
The Three Doctors (I reckon it's rubbish, but it's the first multi-Doctor story)
The Time Warrior

T Baker
Talons of Weng Chiang
Pyramids of Mars
City of Death

Davison
Earthshock
The Five Doctors (lovely lovely lovely)
The Caves of Androzani

C Baker
Revelation of the Daleks

McCoy
Remembrance of the Daleks
The Curse of Fenric
Survival (final story of old series, neatly ties in with first ep of new)


Those are all on DVD. Give them a whirl and you'll be pretty much set up.

Don't forget Genesis of The Daleks

That's something that has bothered me for a few years now. Why did more Hartnell stories survive in their entirety than Troughton ones??

I would start by watching as many Tom Baker classics as possible. I find his portrayal of The Doctor to be the most contemporary by today's standards, and the most consistent quality. My personal favourites (available on DVD) are:


The Ark in Space
Genesis of the Daleks
Planet of Evil
Pyramids of Mars
The Brain of Morbius
The Masque of Mandragora
The Hand Of Fear
The Deadly Assassin
The Face of Evil
The Robots of Death
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
Horror of Fang Rock
Image of The Fendahl
The Pirate Planet
The Androids of Tara
City of Death
State of Decay
Warriors' Gate
The Keeper of Traken
Logopolis

Nothing like 150. Ten years ago it would have been 109. One more has turned up since then.

It's actually 108 now; part four of The Dalek Masterplan was recovered just after the last VHS release.


Pure luck.

Maybe they worked backwards from the Troughton years. But I don't actually know when the BBC decided to start getting rid of things in its vaults.




Oh I think I meant further back than that. Does anyone have that video 'More Than 30 Years In The Tardis'? I'm sure they say over 150 Dr Who episodes are still missing, but the feature is from 1993, so that's 17 years ago.

They always did it, until the advent of home video. The BBC film library didn't take responsibility for anything not shot on film, so they'd simply wipe stuff at random once it was no longer deemed useful for overseas sales, in order to make space and reuse videotape. The BBC Film Library became the BBC Film & Videotape Library in 1978, when they suddenly realised they were junking a lot of stuff they might be able to flog in the futu...er, I mean which might be of historical interest.
There were 152 missing as of 1978, but that situation didn't last long. 44 episodes have been recovered in the last 32 years.

Oh well I guess I can't complain. I particularly remember when Tomb of the Cybermen was found and then released on video. Very exciting.

Part 2, IIRC.

Sorry, you're quite correct.

Tomb's rediscovery was an epochal moment ... but Tomb is actually quite ordinary. Ironic, isn't it?! The one story everyone wanted to see!

The missing episodes weren't junked in any paritcular order. They were just chucked away because they weren't going to be needed again. They weren't going to be repeated, they couldn't be released on VHS/DVD cos that hadn't been invented yet, they couldn't be sold on to satellite telly cos that hadn't been invented yet, they'd been sold overseas as far as they could go ... there was no reason to keep millions and millions and millions of tapes that would never be used again. There wasn't the space to store all that stuff. So they binned it.

A few Pertwees went, too. All Pertwees exist in B&W, and nearly all in colour. There's a few Pertwees that don't have colour copy remaining.

It's sheer good luck in Bill Hartnell's part that more of his episodes remain than do Pat Troughton's.

After Planet of the Daleks part 3, I'm hopeful they can find a way of releasing the remaining Pertwee black & white episodes in colour.

I didn't realise that had happened! I stopped collecting the videos long before they were near the completion of the adventures that existed in their entirety, so had not idea they realised all the incomplete ones were issued too? How did that work?
Isn't there also adventures that no episodes are left of? I'm assuming that these weren't released in any video format?

A couple of incomplete stories were released with the missing episodes either reconstructed from the surviving soundtrack and stills/film clips or bridged by linking narration. The other random surviving episodes were released on compilation videos (the Hartnell Years, the Troughton Years, Daleks: the Early Years, Cybermen: the Early Years and a final, untitled one in the last VHS box set release). The few stories that have no surviving episodes at all on video (and all the incomplete ones) have been released as soundtrack CDs with linking narration from actors involved with the original stories. Doctor Who is pretty much unique in that every single story that doesn't exist on video still exists as a soundtrack, so none of them are completely lost.

Whatever you do buy Pyramid of Mars! Its a excellent story and written by the best ever Doctor Who writer Robert Holmes. You should look up other stories he wrote.

Spearhead from Space
The Deadly Assassin
The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Those are 3 other brilliant stories.

I think what you're remembering is Ian Levine's famous comment (which I believe is on that documentary) where he confidently says "There will always be 110 missing episodes of Doctor Who", but two more have been found since then.

Hello, I'm a new fan since the 2005 series and have also been thinking about going back to explore the earlier Who, so thanks to all who are posting on this thread.

This is the first I've heard though about missing episodes, which is kind of shocking. On one hand, I can kind of understand how this would have happened, as the medium was evolving and archiving wasn't necessarily foremost on people's minds. Yet on the other hand, the BBC wasn't operating in a vacuum, in the sense that there were other networks out there around the world, and I'd think ought to have known better.

I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like the American networks were tossing stuff, judging by the availability of old shows now. Maybe it was a funding issue with the BBC? Here's another question, Doctor Who seems to be something of a beloved national institution in the UK (I'm from North America), I'm wondering at what point did the show start to achieve this place in the popular culture? Just wondering if matches up at all with the point at which they stopped tossing shows.