"You should know by now, young lady, that you can't get rid of the old Doctor as easily as that!"
So I have watched my first reconstructed "Who" episodes, the fourth and fifth eps in the First Doctor serial "The Reign of Terror."
( Of Reconstructions and Revolutions )
( Of Reconstructions and Revolutions )
I have only recently gotten over the intense, seething anger I began feeling when I realized that I was never going to be able to actually see a majority of the episodes with my "back-up" Doctor and my favourite Companion. It's an absolute shame that so many of the reportedly quite extravagant* historicals and vast space epics of the Hartnell Era have been lost, of course - and obviously the fact that the first regeneration episode was taped over is just _criminal_** - but it just BURNS me that, of Troughton's 127 episodes (counting the three multi-Doctor stories he was in), 63 were destroyed. The first episode we actually get to _see_ with Two? The penultimate episode of his _third_ serial!
::siiiiiigh::
Since the reconstructions are unofficial fan-made things, there are several different methods used in piecing them back together***. There are officially released BBC audios, which I have heard a good deal about but have not listened to myself (they are evidently of varying quality, as well - the early releases are basically just the audio from the telecast, whereas later ones had narrations from original cast members). There are ones like "The Reign of Terror" with some helpful stage directions scrolling across the screen and occasional video clips. There are far shabbier ones with hardly anything but a handful of stills and the audio without narration. There is one serial with I think only one missing episode that I actually really love (though I can't remember which story it is) that cuts out all of the pauses and links the relevant plot points together with narration, so you get this quick little "good parts version" and can get back to the full episodes without losing the thread of the story (mind you, this doesn't sound all that fabulous until you've sat through stretches the length of entire seasons where there are NO FULL SERIALS). And then there's my absolute favourite reconstruction, "The Faceless Ones," that has a couple of beautiful moments where the captions make what is happening infinitely more amusing than it would have been if we had the original video. Kinda like the door, really.
(I need to remember, btw, to take the spoilers off my big Spreadsheet o' Who Eppies and send it your direction... "[Doctor Who fans] list lists.")
> I have absolutely no idea how they managed to get random handfuls of footage to intersplice with the stills, but then again I don't really understand why they have the stills themselves, either, so it's all good.
It's my understanding that the stills are promotional materials and production photos taken for one reason or another, the audio (and we do have audio for _every story made_, thank Rassilon) came from fans recording it for their own purposes, and the video clips - including at least a few full episodes that were destroyed by the BBC - were saved for us by fans with video recording capabilities. It's nice to see some _positive_ things coming out of fandom, wot?
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You've had the Moment already! The one where The Doctor makes you suddenly realize that things you take for granted as an American looking at history don't hold true everywhere! It was much later in the show when I had my mind blown like that. I knew from The Scarlet Pimpernel and Blackadder and Horatio Hornblower and various other stories that, in general, the British were (and, to an extent, continue to be) sympathetic to the deposed French nobility, so I knew from the start where Our Heroes stood. "The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve" was the serial that did the best job of teaching me about a period of history I didn't know anything about beforehand. But the political mind-blowage? That happens in one of the Troughton serials. I don't want to spoil the moment for you, but I will say this: that isn't who would have defeated the baddies on an American science fiction program in 1970...
(Have I mentioned that I LOVE this show?!)
> "... we need to listen to 'Doctor Who' more often."
PLEASE AND THANK YOU.
^___^ So, so, so glad you're enjoying them!
* Of course, it's easy to say how beautiful and impressive something was after it's no longer around to prove that your memory has embellished things...but the still shots from stories like "Marco Polo" and "The Crusades" do seem to support the claims.
** We do, however, have the clip of the regeneration itself, shabby as the footage is...
*** One of the better teams that does them, if I recall correctly, is Loose Cannon.
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