Recently, Rob Shearman and Toby Hadoke embarked on a marathon project, the kind of thing that is only really ambitious for Doctor Who fans: They agreed to watch the entire series. It’s amazing to think about, really; what would be the baseline for fans of most other science-fiction/fantasy show, “Have you seen every episode?”, is considered to be the mark of utter devotion to Doctor Who fans. They’re actually writing a three-book series about their epic re-watch, “Running Through Corridors” (full disclosure: I’ve hung out at cons with Lars Pearson and Christa Dickson, and they’re really nice people and I enjoy plugging their stuff.)
But it’s more complicated even than that. Because if you read “Running Through Corridors”, you’ll notice that they don’t actually watch every episode. They can’t. They listen to audio recordings, they look at still photographs that another devoted fan has formed into a sort of slideshow, and occasionally they’ll view short clips, but for 108 of the episodes they write about in Volume 1, no recordings exist. Think about this for a moment. If you were to define a “true Doctor Who fan” as someone who has actually seen every single episode, they would have to be fifty years old at a minimum (and older, if you want them to have coherent memories of the missing episodes.)
It’s hard, I suspect, for fans of other shows to really wrap their heads around this. Sure, ‘Firefly’ or ‘Star Trek’ gets canceled (frequently, in the case of the latter…) but they can console themselves by watching and rewatching the old stories, creating a shared experience based on the show throughout their fandom. While Doctor Who fans…Doctor Who fandom is generational. Older fans share fond memories of stories younger fans cannot, by definition, experience, and must discuss solely based on received wisdom. (It was even worse in the pre-video days. ‘Star Trek’ might have been endlessly re-run, but there were many Doctor Who stories that were not seen for decades due to a lack of rebroadcasting. Even the stories that the BBC saved, they didn’t decide to show again until home video made it a lucrative moneyspinner for them.)
Which is why Doctor Who fans experience an unprecedented excitement when, as was the case today, new episodes get discovered. It’s not just that there’s more Doctor Who for us to watch; as mentioned, it would take a solid year of two-a-day watching to get through the whole series, and probably several thousand dollars of financial outlay to buy them all. (To say nothing of the books, the audios, the films…I’m not sure how long it would take you to watch “all of Doctor Who”, but suffice it to say we’ve never been short of it.) It’s not even the sense of joy that something we consider to be part of the world’s cultural heritage has been restored. I don’t hold any illusions that Doctor Who is high art, even though I do consider it to be significant and worthy of preservation.
It’s the sense of discovery. For decades, all we’ve ever experienced of ‘Galaxy Four’, visually, is what other people have told us; fans who’ve described it, writers who’ve novelized it, reviews that have discussed it. Most of us don’t even know what the Rills or Chumblies look like; only a couple of still photos exist of either of this episode’s principal “monsters”. (Although, not to spoil, the real monster is prejudice!)
It is exciting, to finally get a chance to see for yourself what you’ve only heard about from others your whole life. Of course, it probably won’t live up to those excited, fannish descriptions; what does? (Certainly not ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’.) But it’s the joy of reclaiming some of the series for ourselves, away from the “fan consensus”, that is unique to Doctor Who and one of the reasons why days like today are such an event. An event that seems unlikely to be repeated; the number of attics and cellars containing lost episodes has to be growing smaller by the day, and these discoveries are rarer and rarer each time. This may be the last…but we thought that last time, too.
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I’ll just leave this here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgMM1eJCvB4
You want to post a link, or some details, or something of that nature? That is traditional in the blogging form.
Hey, never say die. After all, the longest known print of Metropolis was found 81 years after the film’s release.
That intro theme sounds like a crossbreed of the ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘The Prisoner’ themes conceived on a pile of synthesizers.
A friend of mine used to do volunteer work for Kentucky Educational Television. When KET wanted to show all the then available _Dr. Who_ episodes about twenty-five years ago, they had trouble convincing the BBC they knew what they were talking about.
The conversation went approximately like this:
“You know that would include stuff which isn’t with Tom Baker, right?”
“That’s right. We want all of it.”
“But there’s hundreds of non-Baker episodes!”
“Exactly. We want all of it.”
“But… Why?!”
Rinse, lather, repeat for every layer of BBC management.
That, of course, should be “Lather, rinse, repeat.”
I really shouldn’t post first thing in the morning.
The episodes found were one episode of Galaxy Four and one episode of The Underwater Menace
Trek’s only been cancelled three times (TOS twice and Enterprise). TNG, DS9 and Voyager all ran the full length they were supoposed to.
For another guy doing the “I will rewatch and critique all of Dr. Who” (plus he’s also dipping into TV Comics, books, and other media), check out Tardis Eruditorium.
@BringTheNoise: I’d say that any series no longer on the air was canceled. Some series are canceled for different reasons (actors want to move on, budgets become prohibitive, et cetera) but shows that are not running are not running because the production company has decided not to renew them. That’s the definition of “cancellation”, regardless of the reasons.
That’s the definition of “cancellation”, regardless of the reasons
By that logic, Preacher and The Sandman were also “cancelled”.
All I can say is this: I hope the guy gets his two life-sized Daleks.
After all, Blue Peter promised…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes#Continuing_search
The spottiness of the early Who video archives is a great counter argument to all the people complaining that a possible Doctor Who movie wouldn’t be starring the current TV Doctor, and be in continuity with the current series.
A feature film series is a PERFECT way to condense, clean up and retell the old stories in a form accessable to modern audiences. If the movie is about the First Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara, and closer to the original series than the old Cushing movies, then why not be happy at the idea?
That a 50 year old series, with much of it’s early content destroyed, and a lead character who has been recasted for the screen no less than 13 times, could not possibly support a film series concurrent to a television series is laughable.
Disagree about “Tomb of the Cybermen.” The story was what it was for its time and budget (nobody will notice if we run the film backward!) However, it revealed why Jamie, in his time, was considered to be the best Doctor Who companion, until he was dethroned by Sarah Jane Smith. “Tomb” contained some classic Hynes/Troughton shenanigans and classic Jamie!smartmouth, and was enough to convert me instantly to Jamie fandom. “Tomb” will always be worth it for that.
Technically, “rinse, lather, repeat” and “lather, rinse, repeat” converge on the same result.
And that’s not just because there’s a lot of it: it’s because a lot of it is stunningly dull. Seriously, if you’ve sat through all available episodes, nothing short of Tarkovsky’s Solaris has even a chance of defeating you.
I came back to this article today to celebrate. 9 more found, 97 to go!