User Reviews

An entertaining, informative, sometimes breathtaking documentary. Thanks to all those involved for making the 35th anniversary a date to remember.

In the 1970s, the BBC destroyed many of the early episodes of Doctor Who and, despite the efforts of fans and later, more enlightened, BBC regimes, 110 episodes are still missing presumed lost forever.

"The Missing Years" assembles practically all of the surviving clips from these missing episodes, ranging from about 6 minutes of an episode of serial 3.1 'Galaxy Four', to many clips of only a few seconds duration (many of which were saved by the Australian censors when they were cut from the series in the 1960s and '70s, so that ironically the censored scenes are sometimes all that now remains of some serials).

The video is hosted by Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling, who played Jamie and Victoria in the mid-60s, and many of whose episodes were destroyed. Fortunately, the commentary is short and to the point, allowing the clips themselves -- which are what we really want to see -- to dominate the production, and minimising the impact of Ms Watling's... "eccentric" performance. It also includes interviews with some of the fans responsible for finding missing episodes and clips.

This video, a labour of love for ther BBC's "unofficial Restoration Team", is a must-see for anyone interested in the early years of Doctor Who.

I was quite happy to see The Missing Years as it is a compilation of various existing clips from the classic junked stories of Doctor Who.

The one of the most notable items on the tape is the recently recovered home movie footage of the final destruction of the Daleks in Evil of the Daleks which is quite shocking. The effects are much different and to a much higher standard than I had expected and indeed show several nuances that would be reinvented only much later in the 80s. Also quite notable is the color home movie footage from Fury From The Deep which shows the weed creatures on the attack.

I found this to be a somewhat dull documentary which relies too heavily on the clips of missing footage and not enough on the story behind it. I thought this was going to be a detailed account of how the episodes were recovered, but nope. You do get a little information from various people like Ian Levine and Frazier Hines but then it's right back into a another clip that runs way too long. Also, the running time of 58 minutes is incorrect, it's only 37 minutes. Your better off reading Richard Moleworth's book "Wiped! Doctor Who's Missing Episodes".