Originally Posted by jabalong:
“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.”
“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.”
To be honest the show was huge even when it first started, the ratings William Hartnell got are some of the best in the show's history, and with the Daleks first appearing as soon as the second story, it seemed to capture people's imaginations immediately.
Though I suppose if you were to pinpoint the show's most popular and most memorable time, it would probably have been during Tom Baker's era from 1974 to 1981. Every actor in the main part had been beloved up until then, but Tom Baker took it to the next level.
I don't know when the BBC started removing their vaults though.
