The folks at the Twitter account for Classic Doctor Who (@classicdw) have been busy tweeting yesterday and today,
breaking the news that a DVD release of
Doctor Who - Story #008: The Reign of Terror, which is in the works for next year, will have "
missing eps to be animated for DVD." Fans of the original program that collect the DVD releases will recall that this was previously done with a 2007 title,
Doctor Who - Story #046 The Invasion. That one was with the 2nd Doctor, Patrick Troughton, but
Reign of Terror - the story about the TARDIS materializing during the darkest period in French history - features the 1st Doctor (William Hartnell) and companions "Susan" (Carole), "Barbara" (Jacqueline Hill) and "Ian" (William Russell).
The 6-episode story arc was originally broadcast in 1964, and the tapes containing this entire production was
wiped/junked on BBC order in the '70s. Overseas copies of episodes 1, 2, 3, and 6 were later located and have been remastered, restored, but episodes 4 ("The Tyrant of France") and 5 ("A Bargain of Necessity") remain unfound. So according to
one tweet yesterday, the BBC and 2|entertain has commissioned Theta-Sigma/Thetamation and Big Finish Studios to take the existing audio (lovingly saved from the broadcasts on tape recorders by fansall these years!) and restore/remaster it, and marry it up to new animation that will re-create the scenes of the live-action broadcast. They also
have said that Mark Ayres, of the
Doctor Who Restoration Team, will be involved.
By now are you wondering what the results will look like? @ClassicDW
tweeted a character study image (shown below) that gives us an idea of how this will look. A good start, in my opinion. Our thanks to reader Jessie Loflin for the heads-up about this info. It's not going to be ready until 2012, so there's a long wait before we get to enjoy this. But stay tuned, and we'll keep you updated as further developments occur!
Pin It
