NEW OLD WHO

Yesterday there occurred a very, very rare occasion indeed because, thanks to the efforts of Mr Postman, the mail order company, and the publishers of a rather fine product, I was able to watch a classic-era “Doctor Who” episode that I had never seen before…

Okay, when I say “never” that’s perhaps not strictly true…

There is, after all, an outside chance that on the 25th of September 1965, I was sitting in my pram when the programme was on and I drank in every second, but I think that it’s pretty unlikely given that I was slightly over a year old at the time.

Anyway, the point is that, back in the day and as soon as I got the opportunity to do so, I hovered up every single release of “Doctor Who” that there ever was on “official” videotape, despite the fact that, even in those days, there were vast quantities of episodes which no longer existed in any format in the archives.

Ditched… Junked… Wiped… Gone forever…

Then, about ten years ago, another one turned up which had Daleks in it and it made its way swiftly onto a DVD release and that was the first “new” episode that I’d seen since my first look at “The Reign of Terror” as it finally slipped out onto videotape towards the end of the release schedule.

Then, another ten years of nothing new turning up.

No new discoveries, no miraculous “finds” lurking in the back of an archive somewhere.

Then, at the back end of 2011, two more popped up. “Airlock” which was episode three of the serial “Galaxy Four” and which starred William Hartnell, and episode two of “The Underwater Menace”, the earliest Patrick Troughton episode yet discovered. Neither of them are quite the kind of “classics” that fans are hoping will magically reappear one day, but two solid examples that did their bit to chip away at the vast edifice of “missing” episodes which seems to be eking down, decade by decade, towards the “only” two digits mark.

One of them is yet to be scheduled for release to the general public, although it has been shown at one or two of the BFI “Missing Believed Wiped” events, so some more dedicated fans than I am have actually been able to see it, but the other one, “Airlock”, finally made its debut on shiny disc this very weekend and, once it popped through my letter-box, I was able to rip off the cellophane and park myself in front of the TV set and wallow in a 25 minute miracle, in which Mr Hartnell showed what a surprisingly spry old bird he actually was at that point, and Mr Purves had surprisingly big hair.

Granted, as far as “miracles” go, it probably wouldn’t mean all that much to the majority of you, but for me it was just a tiny bit of heaven (even though it would never be likely to become a favourite tale - I am still rather glad that it turned up), and another piece in the jigsaw of hope that one day I might just settle down and be able to finally watch all seven parts of “The Evil of the Daleks” instead of just the one, or all of “The Web of Fear” or, perhaps, a complete version of “The Tenth Planet…”

Well, you never know… We live in hope and all that.

Still, I know that “out there” people are still looking, and, whilst few of us believe that anything new will turn up after all this time, it seems that they sometimes do, and I can only hope that someone is on hand when they finally clear out all of the cupboards at the back of Television Centre as they finally start to redevelop it…

“Keep ’em peeled…!”