DOCTOR WHO

The return to the BBC archives of The Daleks' Master Plan: Day of Armageddon earlier this year meant that no sooner had the BBC fulfilled their promise to issue every surviving episode on video, than they had another one to issue.

Obviously fans wanted to see the episode as soon as possible, but VHS is a dying medium, so releasing it on that format would have been pointless. But what would form would any DVD release take? A revised Daleks - The Early Years, or perhaps a Daleks' Master Plan special with the three extant episodes and surviving clips?

Either would still have left the BBC with the problem of the other "orphaned" episodes. Stories where more than 50% of the episodes survive can be released in their own right, but what about the odd ones? Tagging them onto the preceeding or succeding story would have been fine for some episodes (especially The Celestial Toymaker: The Final Test, which leads straight into The Gunfighters), but what about seasons 3-5 which have huge gaps in them?

Lost In Time is the BBC's solution to the problem - a triple DVD set containing all the surviving episodes from stories which have at least half of their episodes missing - a total of 18 episodes from twelve different stories from the series' black and white years, with the Hartnell episodes on one disc and the Troughton ones spread over the other two. Naturally the episodes have been restored to the high standards we expect from the Restoration Team, six have commentaries and there's a slightly updated version of the Missing Years documentary from The Ice Warriors VHS set.

The set opens with The Crusade: The Lion, the only episode which hasn't been VidFIREd. However, the quality has been improved from the version included as part of the The Space Museum boxed set. Episode 3, The Wheel of Fortune, shows the sort of restoration that has been carried out on the rest of the episodes, and as you'd expect, they look very impressive. As with the VHS release, audio versions of episodes 2 and 4 have also been included, as have William Russell's introductions (but you have to select the "play all" option to see them). I'm a big fan of the historical stories, and this is one of the series' very best.

Day of Armageddon is the next episode, and it's the one most of us have been waiting for. The first "new" episode of Doctor Who since The Lion was recovered five years ago certainly doesn't disappoint. I've always thought Peter Purves' character of Steven an underrated companion, so it's good to have another of his episodes. We also get a look at short-lived companion Katarina, as well as Nicholas Courtney's first role in the series. William Hartnell is on fine form, Kevin Stoney's Mavic Chen is an excellent villain, and there's also a chance to check out the interplanetary delegates.

Episodes 5 and 10 of Master Plan were included on the Daleks - The Early Years tape, and The Celestial Toymaker: The Final Test on The Hartnell Years, but all have been cleaned up and look a lot better than the versions we're all used to.

The 12 Patrick Troughton episodes have been split over two discs, along with two audio-only episodes and the Missing Years documentary.

The Underwater Menace:3 is the earliest surviving Troughton episode and is, quite frankly, a load of old tosh. The Second Doctor has yet to lose his habit of dressing up, Joseph Furst overacts terribly and there's a reasonably nice looking but ultimately pointless "ballet" from the Fish People. It's typical of Who to cast someone of the calibre of Colin Jeavons and then waste him in a story like this.

The two audio-only Troughton episodes are the first and third installments of The Moonbase, the Second Doctor's first encounter with the Cybermen. Episodes 2 and 4 were included on the Cybermen tape, but have been impressively restored for DVD.

The story is basically a retread of The Tenth Planet, only less impressive. Some good film scenes are offset by plot holes, an uninteresting moonbase crew and some awful modelwork. You also have to wonder why the Cybermen come up with such convoluted schemes (although The Wheel in Space is even worse on this score).

The three Troughton episodes - The Faceless Ones:1 and 3 and The Web of Fear:1 - that featured in The Reign of Terror boxed set are all included here although, of course, they look better on DVD.

The Cybermen were the Second Doctor's most common foes, and The Wheel In Space was their second appearance in season 5, although only episodes 3 and 6 have survived. The story sees a ludicrously convoluted Cyber scheme to invade Earth and the metal monsters' voices are the worst of any of their sixties stories. On the plus side, the story sees the debut of Wendy Padbury's Zoe, who has some good scenes with the established Doctor and Jamie double act.

Last up is the second episode of Patrick Troughton's penultimate story, The Space Pirates. Even this lone episode demonstrates that it's hardly a classic Robert Holmes story, something that isn't helped by the largely awful Space Corps characters. More successful is Gordon Gostelow's old-time prospector Milo Clancy, while Zoe's shout of "you murderer!" at least provides the episode with a strong cliff-hanger.

Restored versions of these episodes, and the chance to see Day of Armageddon for the first time in nearly 40 years would be reason enough to buy Lost In Time. However, an impressive list of extras has also been assembled.

As well as the episodes, all surviving clips from sixties Who have been included. These are a mix of clips used in other programmes, film inserts, censored clips, 8mm off-screen recordings, location and studio behind-the-scenes footage and the recovered Power of the Daleks trailer.

Some only last a couple of seconds, and none are presented in context (on the subject of which, some introduction to stories for which the first episode is missing would have been nice, if only to let us know who's who), but the longer ones give us an idea how the episodes looked. It's especially good to be able to watch the surviving Master Plan clips and episodes in order, particularly since the first five all have at least some extant material. The only real complaint I would have is that Galaxy 4: Four Hundred Dawns should have been included as part of the clips, and not just as part of the Missing Years documentary.

That documentary first appeared on The Ice Warriors and a slightly updated version telling of the recovery of The Lion and Day of Armageddon. Unfortunately, presenters Fraser Hines and Deborah Watling haven't been updated. The latter is especially awful, pausing in all the wrong places and failing dismally in her attempts to make her narration sound dramatic.

There are also six commentaries, with the two on the Hartnell disc the best of the bunch.

The Crusade: The Wheel of Fortune has a talkative Julian Glover chatting with Gary Russell, who will hopefully take Glover up on his wish to have played the Doctor.

The Daleks' Master Plan: Day of Armageddon has three commentators - Peter Purves, Kevin Stoney and Raymond Cusick. It certainly benefits from this, and as Purves has watched the episode beforehand (as well as narrating the BBC Audio CD), he's able to keep things moving along nicely, effectively moderating the chat as well as participating in it.

Gary Russell also moderates three of the Troughton episode commentaries. The Evil of the Daleks: 2 and The Abominable Snowmen: 2 feature Deborah Watling, while on The Web of Fear: 1 the pair are joined by story editor Derrick Sherwin. Finally, Sherwin and director Tristan de Vere Cole take over for The Space Pirates: 2.

To be honest, these largely demonstrate why I don't believe that commentaries should automatically be included on Who DVDs, as these (especially the ones featuring Watling) would have worked better as interviews rather than commentaries. However, all of them are worth at least one listen, although as you'd expect, the Watling ones don't really contain anything that we haven't heard before.

Not only does Lost In Time provide us with an insight to these largely missing stories, it also contains some cracking episodes, some top-notch restoration and a surprising amount of extras. Even those who are picking and choosing their Who DVDs will find little at fault with this set. Highly recommended. back to the top

LOST IN TIME

Starring WILLIAM HARTNELL, PATRICK TROUGHTON

Written by DAVID ELLIS,
MERVYN HAISMAN &
HENRY LINCOLN,
BRIAN HAYLES, ROBERT HOLMES
TERRY NATION, GEOFFREY ORME,
KIT PEDLER, DENNIS SPOONER,
DAVID WHITAKER

Directed by MORRIS BARRY,
GERALD BLAKE,
DOUGLAS CAMFIELD,
TRISTAN DE VERE COLE,
MICHAEL HART, BARRY LETTS,
DEREK MARTINUS, GERRY MILL,
BILL SELLARS, JULIA SMITH

Produced by PETER BRYANT,
VERITY LAMBERT,
INNES LLOYD, JOHN WILES

BBC DVD

REGION 2/PAL
CERTIFICATE PG

RATING: 10/10