Practically I couldn't see it ever being feasible for the BBC. They seem to have enough trouble producing the regular series of Doctor who to any kind of schedule, let alone remaking old episodes. And if they were spending money / time on remaking those episodes I think a lot of people could rightly say 'why can't you make more new Doctor who if you can do this?'.

So, no, I doubt it will ever happen, even if it were desirable, which is debatable in itself.

Apart from the points of Autons, 'Revenge' Cyber head etc. mentioned above, the line between the new & classic really began to blur as soon as Gallifrey got a mention... now that line between the two is virtually non-existent, .... especially even more so to the current 6 year olds of today where the only Doctor they're aware of is Capaldi's, the rest like Tom Baker, Pertwee, Matt, Troughton & Tennant are, to them, in the same pot under 'old Doctors' and will in time see no line at all.

Couldn't they just remake one as a BBC 2 special every Chrismas. I'd start with power of the daleks first, then either the crusades or the highlanders.....

I'm not in favour of re-making the episodes as such but I did read an interesting article about the animated re-constructions some years back. It posed some interesting questions about what they might have done with animations had they continued down that road...

For example for the serials where there are only one or two existing episodes left would they go to the trouble and expense of animating the rest but not the one or two episodes which still exist? Wouldn't it be better to animate the whole lot and then if they're going to do that, why not animate them in colour and widescreen etc and then crop and de-saurate them for the re-constructions.

Then you would effectively have two versions of these serials. A black and white re-constructed version, with the a real episode inserted here and there and a completely animated full colour, widescreen version that could also be broadcast in glorious HD and may entice new viewers to watching more Hartnell and Troughton episodes.

Also if they are producing something for broadcast and it's popular then budgets are less of an issue as they aren't solely concerned with it making it's money back on DVD release which would enable more reconstructions, so in theory everyone's a winner!

But alas the animations weren't financially viable so none of that happened, but it seemed like a nice idea to me...

BTW Does anyone know how well the recently animated episode of Dad's Army did on BBC Store. If releasing episodes in this way is much cheaper than putting them out on DVD then maybe that could give a new lease of life to animating more Doctor Who episodes...

There's no way the BBC would allow a separate TV production of Doctor Who with a different cast and crew. Besides which, a new reconstruction with 1960s pacing and production values would be painful to watch. At the other end of the scale, a slick modern remake would enrage purists.

Animation seems like the only way forward for the remaining missing episodes.

I agree with your points. As time has gone on the C21 version has become a continuation. People on this very forum have already referred to Eccleston, Tennant and Smith as "old Doctors". The line with classic DW has blurred.

I think RTD wanted to establish his new DW in its own terms first, with its own identity before going on to solidify its continuity with the past.

Back in 2005 the audience wasn't sure whether the new Doctor Who was a reboot or a strict continuation. Even the use of the Autons in the first episode didn't prove conclusively it was a continuation.

And Doctor Who has always had "issues" with continuity anyway.

Other shows have re-used the trappings of earlier versions, including the basic premise and original adversary but were, nevertheless, still reboots. The new Battlestar Galactica had the same premise, the same character names and Cylons but was a very different show from the original.

Doctor Who is now a continuation, but it is also quite different visually and in narrative style from the original. Necessarily so to meet the demands of a C21 audience that's much more sophisticated than the 60s, 70s or even 80s audience.

Well there was that video production of Power of the Daleks: Reimagined.
I thought they did a very good job. Did anybody else catch it before it was pulled off from YouTube?

To someone used to watching the Troughton era of Doctor Who, Season 7 Pertwee and UNIT was probably just as much of a change!

But there they actually did change the premise of the show. The Doctor was no longer wandering randomly through time and space - he was stuck on Earth. The production also changed over to colour. I think that was more like the C21 Doctor Who change when it went from RTD to SM and from SD to HD.

They didn't have the rights from the BBC to do it cos the contract to use the Ninth Doctor didn't start until after the Eighth Doctor contract expired.

Now those three stories are just three good reasons why no missing episodes should ever be remade!

The Power Of The Daleks, how you duplicate that? It was and still is one of the most crucially important stories in the show's history. A New Doctor for the first time ever, no amount of remaking the story will ever give us back the impact of Troughton's debut.

The Highlanders, again, another debut with Frazer Hines as Jamie. I'd love to see the original when he first joined, I'm not going to get that through a remake!

As for The Crusades, that is one of the most outstanding wonderfully written and acted stories ever. Even using the same scripts I can't see any remake matching it.

You would also presumably have to remake the existing episodes as well and there is no way any actors could match the intensity of the big argument between King Richard and Joanna in episode three.

I just find the whole idea of remakes incredibly pointless. Nothing that can be made will be as good as the originals, you can't bring back the feel of those episodes through remakes so why bother?

I'd rather go without and just keep my fingers crossed the originals may one day turn up. Or watch the animations as they are the next best thing.

I was going to say that if a show was missing, you could remake it in a modern setting. You would use the current doctor and companions and update the script accordingly and then restage it.

Then I remembered that that is basically what was done with the recent Silurian eps and I had this "been there done that, why are we doing this same vibe again?" feeling through the whole thing that kind of ruined it for me.

BBC bosses dislike Doctor Who because they have been shown up a few times now with them being shown wrong about cutting it off our screens wrong in allowing tape and film to be wiped or thrown away both items lost money for the BBC...

BBC also dislike that the show cost to make is high per hour then the cheap rubbish like One show, Homes under the hammer, Escape to the country, Doctors, Bake off, Pointless, The Graham Norton show, Master Chef and Apprentice.
Highly over priced rubbish is Top gear yet they spend £ millions on it....

A remake of the stories that are not full should be made as they are part of story of Doctor Who and history of the BBC .

These 'BBC bosses' making Top Gear and all those other hugely popular shows that you personally don't like, are very different from the bosses who sanctioned thousands of hours of telly to be junked back in the 1960 & 1970s. This was the common policy back then. Storing film and especially videotape was costly and wasteful as back then there was absolutely no money to be made from old shows. None. Junking these tapes did not lose money for the BBC, on the contrary, back then it saved a lot of money. You can't criticise the BBC for being unable to see a marketing opportunity from way in the future!

The junking of episodes is part of the history of the BBC. Remaking missing episodes won't change that.

In my early days at the BBC, in the early 70s, one of the jobs I sometimes did was "tape servicing", which assessed videotapes for possible re-use. Those deemed below standard were routinely junked. We used to hold razor blades against them sometimes for fun while they were winding to make streamers! Thankfully I never saw any Doctor Who transmission tapes junked!
There wasn't even an inkling in anyone's wildest dreams then that there would ever be a mechanism for people to play tapes of TV programmes in their homes, letalone DVDs or internet downloads and streaming. A videotape recorder was a huge thing that filled a room! There was also the issue of rights, and until the coming of home video eventually forced the actors' union Equity to make agreement for old shows to be released to the home market, once the original contracts expired any repeat showings would have been prohibitively expensive, and in fact in many cases impossible.
So you're right, appalling though it seems now with hindsight, there was really no reason for old programme tapes not to be junked at that time.

The BBC managers of yesterday or today should be thinking of ways to make things better for all not just an idea or two to just keep their job and there high wages.....
We do not want an idea that is good for one thing like to save money for one year like not making doctor who one season or delay it for a time as that idea is rubbish as they is no return in the long term..

Now the idea of a remaking of shows that were lost etc. is a money making idea as people like my self would buy the DVD / Blue ray etc. on top of watching the BBC at the time of broadcasting.
Also remember that BBC has the rights to the stories so that would make it cheaper and design ideas have already been done too .

Also the market is there around the world for Doctor Who so BBC can easy sell the one off stories and specials and the DVD etc...

Also the stories were in 25 min' parts so the stories could make films like.....

Marco Polo was made for 7 weeks.
The Crusade was 4 weeks
The Daleks Master Plan was made for 12 weeks of shows ( that would make a great film )
The Power of the Daleks was made for 6 weeks ( another film ? )
The Evil of the Daleks was 7 weeks at 25 min' ( another film )
Fury from the deep 6 weeks...

And others that all would make great Easter / New years day specials or any Bank Holiday and BBC could make them one or two a year easy....

I agree with what you are saying in general. I think that all of the missing episodes should eventually be animated and released on DVD just as the rest of the classic serials have been. Many of them already have and it is the closest that we will probably ever have to seeing those lost episodes. They are great and the animation is much more palatable than the reconstructions.

If the BBC wasn't willing to pony up the dough, it should be Kickstartered. It wouldn't take a week to blow the lid off of any kickstarter amount that was set for the full animation of all of the missing episodes. The fact that the BBC is unwilling and/or unable to lease out the rights to some animation company to do this frustrates me to no end.

The only thing the BBC need to finish and add bits to is Shada with the original actors. Explain their aging between scenes as being the result of the Professor's time experiment or faulty Tardis.

Absolutely agree.

Just 'watched' my first ever full recon, 'The Massacre....' (I know. Call myself a 'fanboy') and was pretty much blown away by the quality of the script and the acting. Hartnell is unsurprisingly superb; okay, he's absent in episode 2 and he's playing the horrible Abbott in episode 3, but Purves carries things brilliantly whilst the Doctor has b*ggered off.

Now I know why this story has such a good reputation! Could that brilliance be duplicated in a remake? Doubtful. I'm with Daveyboy..."Why bother?" It'd just be a duplication of what was done so well anyway.

Shame, after the intense Doctor/Steven exchange and Hartnell's sublime little speech to himself, that poor old Dodo gets such a ham-fisted and unconvincing introduction, not even noticing how big the inside of the flipping 'Police Box' is. Rubbish. But, that aside....what a fantastic story.

I agree with nearly all your points about The Massacre but I'm not a big fan of it. I agree about Dodo, her introduction was nearly as awful as her exit, surprised we didn't Steven introducing her and she just appeared....Lol.

This brings me onto another point about remakes. A lot of the stories that are missing have a debut or a departure. I'm watching the recon of Fury From The Deep at the moment(recommend that as well Michael). This is another one of those stories, where Victoria departs and also where her screaming, a key part of her character, actually saves the day. Again, you can't duplicate that, you can't get the feel of a departure or a debut, even as one as crap as Dodo's.

So again I say it is a rotten idea!

There is actually one upside to having a remake: the potential to attract completely new fans to classic Doctor Who.

All the voices here have poured cold water on the notion. All the people here are fans. I'd just point out that there's no way a dyed-in-the-wool, original fan would ever be persuaded a remake, reboot or continuation without the original cast could ever be a good idea and something good in its own right.

When Star Trek was revived with TNG many fans of the original series didn't like it. Similarly with Battlestar Galactica and the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies and Sherlock.

There were many classic fans who didn't like the idea of the 2005 revival of Doctor Who itself. Where are they now? Anyone remember DariaM here on this very forum? Mocked relentlessly in the face of the success of the revival.

When a reboot, continuation or re-imagining turns out to be good and establishes its own identity such voices are relegated to being the "weird old geezers at the back of the convention hall", still wearing the original costumes.

Some people hold on to their treasured fannish things too tightly. Like a religious zealot. You don't have to show your love for the original by disliking the new. And you don't have to ditch your love for the original if you like the new. Love of both can coexist happily.

It's not that I think it's a particularly good idea, or ever likely to happen for a whole host of practical reasons. The 2005 revival has already done it (not actual remakes, I mean, but in the sense of revisiting an old property). I thought a different perspective and a little more open mindedness would be a good thing.

It's really just a matter of how well executed it would be.

Well, a meticulous reconstruction with 1960s pacing and production methods would be painful to watch and potentially damaging to the main series.

Now, modernised remakes would be interesting, but there's the huge issue of it being a separate production of Doctor Who running alongside the main series. It's problematic for the exact same reason that the oft-fantasised Paul McGann "missing years" series would be problematic. There would be two production teams and casts, both making a series called Doctor Who about an eccentric time traveller and his companion(s) righting wrongs in time and space.

There can't be rival productions of the same series. The fact that one would feature a 'younger' Doctor is irrelevant. It's the EXACT SAME FORMAT.

I just don't like remakes in general, not just in Doctor Who.

I'll give you a really good example of one that is not very good. Psycho.

Now they remade this film about thirty or so years later and if you don't know it, they remade it exactly scene by scene and line by line.

It wasn't an awful film, the remake but it really had nothing of the original vibe about it. The big shower scene lacked a lot of the original intensity of the 60's version. So my point is really the same here, you can't ever recaptured the proper atmosphere of anything through a remake and that's why I disagree with it.

Let's say some fifty years down the line they decide to do a remake of The Stolen Earth and Journey's End. Would it ever be so good as the original with that cliffhanger? What about Blink, Midnight or other popular episodes? Would we want someone else playing the New Series Doctors?

So I stand by my point. Just don't see the point.

I did like the 2005 revival by the way though I remember the aforementioned poster who insisted for sometime that New Who was not a continuation of the Classic Series!

Never stopped CSI or NCIS.

I agree that in general, remakes are usually a bad idea. They're often done just to make more money out of the successful original with a lower budget.

I never saw the shot-for-shot colour remake of Psycho. I heard it was bad.

I guess we can both cite examples of both good and bad re-makes, re-imaginings, re-boots and sequels. It just depends on how well executed they are.

When a new version sticks too closely to the original, as in the Psycho remake or how a a remake in the style of 1960s' TV of a Doctor Who serial would be, there's no creative point to it. Fans of the original say things like "it fails to capture the atmosphere of the original" and it won't attract new audiences because it's in an old fashioned style. In any case, no remake can re-capture the impact on the audience of seeing something new for the first time - when it was a new idea and seemed to have originality.

When a new version changes things around (even if it's really just an update to the current style of TV) some fans of the original will always struggle to accept it - like the 2005 reboot of Doctor Who itself.

I think re-making the missing stories is a special case. They could be re-worked in the current TV style with the current Doctor. Like they did with Family of Blood from the original book.