August 16th, 2010 3 comments

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Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes

Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes
Telos Publishing Ltd
by Richard Molesworth

In the 1960s, the BBC screened 253 episodes of its cult science fiction show Doctor Who, starring William Hartnell and then Patrick Troughton as the time travelling Doctor.

Yet by 1975, the Corporation had wiped the master tapes of every single one of these episodes.

Of the 124 Doctor Who episodes starring Jon Pertwee shown between 1970 and 1974, the BBC destroyed over half of the original transmission tapes within two years of their original broadcast.

In the years that followed, the BBC, along with dedicated fans of the series, began the arduous task of trying to track down copies of as many missing Doctor Who episodes as possible.

The search covered BBC sales vaults, foreign television stations, overseas archives, and numerous networks of private film collectors, until the tally of missing programmes was reduced to just 108 episodes.

For full information on this and other Telos Publishing Doctor Who related books please visit their website Here

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