Dr. Who "Erased Episodes"

[laserpotato]

I've heard that some episodes of Dr. Who have been erased. Is this true? And if so, what was the content of them?

[thecooler]

Blimey, you must be new to Dr Who! They've been hunting for the missing stories for years. In the middle of the 1970s the BBC had the idea that it would never re-broadcast most of the old shows it had stored and decided to junk a lot of them to make space. All of the Dr Who shows from the 1960s and a fair number from the early 70s were lost. However, BBC enterprises, which handled overseas sales, had kept film copies of quite a lot of these episodes and these were returned to the main archive when the BBC realised its mistake. Since then, a worldwide search has recovered a few more stories and odd episodes. All the missing episodes are from the black and white period, although a few of the colour episodes are only held in monochrome. There is a list of the missing episodes here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/episodeguide/missingepis odes.shtml

[J. Yossarian]

During the time of production of the early series of Doctor Who, it was the policy of the BBC to save money by reusing the tapes and so many TV shows from the time ceased to exist. This is a list of all the episodes of Doctor Who that are still missing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/episodeguide/missingepis odes.shtml

[Mattk]

never mind that......is the movie going to be any good ?!!

[bernardo]

It wasn't just Dr Who - there was a wholesale genocide of tapes of many programmes for the reasons given above. e.g. there are c.12 episodes out of 80 of "Dad's Army" which were lost in the same way.