Category: Doctor Who

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Doctor Who Television

Doctor Who: Survival, Part 3

  • December 6, 1989

Doctor WhoThe 697th episode of Doctor Who airs on BBC1. Julian Holloway guest stars; Anthony Ainley makes his final appearance as the Master in the original series. This is the final episode of the original Doctor Who series, as the BBC quietly keeps the show off the schedule without making an announcement of the series’ cancellation. Doctor Who returns – with Sylvester McCoy briefly reprising his role – as a one-off TV movie in 1996, and then goes dormant again until revived in 2005.

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Doctor Who Lost Episodes Television

Missing Cybermen Tomb unearthed

  • January 20, 1992

Doctor WhoIn what is hailed as the biggest missing episode find in the history of fans’ attempts to recover lost segments of Doctor Who, the complete four-part story The Tomb Of The Cybermen, completely missing from the BBC’s archives, is located in near-pristine condition in the archives of a Hong Kong broadcaster. Since the tapes’ audio is the original English soundtrack and the video requires little significant clean-up or restoration, the BBC’s home video department fast-tracks Tomb for a VHS release in May 1992. As of this find, only 110 half-hour episodes of black & white Doctor Who remain missing.

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Doctor Who Television

The draft of time

  • March 17, 1994

Doctor WhoStar Trek VI co-writer Denny Martin Flinn completes a screenplay draft for Doctor Who: The Movie, which is at this stage a big-screen reboot of the original series stuck in development hell. A British studio, Lumiere Pictures, has assigned several writers to write successive drafts of a movie version of the BBC series, often choosing to reboot the story rather than pick up where it left off. Eventually the series’ revival falls to a one-night-only TV movie being developed seperately by producer Philip Segal.

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Doctor Who Television

Doctor Who: The Movie

  • May 14, 1996

Doctor WhoAfter a seven-year gap since the BBC cancelled the original series, Fox premieres Doctor Who: The Movie as its Tuesday Night Movie (and, if ratings prove to be a success story, a backdoor pilot for a series). Depicting the seventh Doctor’s regeneration into the eighth (Paul McGann), this is effectively the 698th episode of Doctor Who, and guest stars Yee Jee Tso and Eric Roberts as the Master. US ratings ultimately prove to be a disappointment, and this remains the only televised adventure of the eighth Doctor (though this incarnation of the Time Lord is carried forward in novels, comics and audio stories). Doctor Who does not make a full return to TV until 2005.

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Doctor Who Lost Episodes Television

Missing Doctor Who episode recovered

  • January 18, 1999

Doctor WhoPart one of the classic William Hartnell-era Doctor Who four-parter The Crusade is recovered by the BBC, thanks to a fan who obtained it cheaply from a film collectors’ sale. The film is handed over to BBC’s unofficial Doctor Who Restoration Team. There’s initially no word on any possible video release of this segment of The Crusade, since parts two and four are still missing.

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Doctor Who Television

Doctor Who figures, wave 4

  • November 18, 1999

Sontaran feetDapol, the makers of Doctor Who action figures, release a fourth wave of 3 3/4″ toys from the long-running series, including two varieties of Sontarans and the calcified Melkur from season 18’s The Keeper of Traken. Though not the last action figure release from Dapol, it will prove to be the last non-Dalek-related wave of Doctor Who figures before the Welsh toymaker loses the Doctor Who license.

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Deaths Doctor Who Matters of Life & Death Television

John-Nathan Turner, Doctor Who producer, dies

  • May 1, 2002

JNTThe man who could arguably be considered the most high-profile (and controversial) producer of 20th century Doctor Who dies at the age of 54. John Nathan-Turner took over the reins of the Doctor’s adventures in 1980, drastically revamping the show’s look, sound, and feel, and forever altering its course by replacing Tom Baker as the lead actor in 1981; Nathan-Turner personally selected each of the following Doctors – Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy – for the remainder of the show’s tenure on BBC-TV. Always a staunch champion for the series at a point when its support among the BBC brass was at an all-time low, John Nathan-Turner attracted both attention and criticism for getting well-known performers to do guest stints on the show. It was under JN-T’s reign that Doctor Who was put on an 18-month “hiatus” (originally a full-scale cancellation), and eventually was dropped altogether.

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Doctor Who Television

Doctor Who returns

  • September 25, 2003

Doctor WhoWith its hand forced by a scoop in the London Daily Telegraph, the BBC confirms that plans are afoot to relaunch Doctor Who as a full television series for the first time since 1989. As the series has only just been commissioned, no casting decisions have been made yet, but the series is to be overseen by writer and producer Russell T. Davies, whose most high-profile project at the time is the gay-themed drama series Queer As Folk (though Davies also contributed a novel to the Doctor Who New Adventures book series in the late ’90s, and has been approached several times by Big Finish Productions to write a script for a Doctor Who audio story). Production won’t begin until sometime in 2004, with the series set to premiere in 2005. The BBC had planned to sit on the news until November 23rd, 2003 – the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who’s first broadcast.

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Doctor Who Lost Episodes Television

Long-lost Doctor Who episode recovered

  • January 15, 2004

Doctor WhoThe BBC announces that a private collector has returned part two of the mostly-missing twelve-part Doctor Who story, The Daleks’ Master Plan, to its archives. Last seen in late 1965, the episode has been in the possession of the former chief engineer of the competing Yorkshire Television network ever since the early ’70s – when he snatched it from the BBC archives (where he was a trainee at the time) rather than destroying it as ordered. The 25-minute episode, subtitled Day Of Armageddon, is handed over to the Doctor Who Restoration Team, which oversees the preservation and restoration of past episodes for DVD release.

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