Doctor Who - Lost In Time (Boxed Set) (3DVD)

If, however, you know all about how the BBC decided back in the mid 70s that they had too many tapes lying around of the show, and decided to incinerate a bunch to save space, and wish the people doing it had thrown themselves in the incinerator instead, this release is for you.

This is your only chance to catch a glimpse of classic stories we, but for bad luck and bad decision making, might be able to watch in their entireties.

One bad thing, you'll be asking yourself when watching part 3 of The Celestial Toymaker "they junked The Web of Fear and kept this?!"....

There are some really good episodes in this set. Your enjoyment of them will be tempered only by the realization that you'll never get to see what happens next.

Excellent set though. I'd give it 6 stars if that were possible!

It's a bit unusual in that, although more of the Second Doctor's (Patrick Troughton) stories are forever lost, the Troughton collection takes up two DVDs, while the First Doctor (William Hartnell) has only one DVD.

Nevertheless, the BBC is to be commended for the production values they've put into this collection. On some stories (The Moonbase, eg.), they've included the entire story, even though only two of the four episodes still exist. For the other two episodes, the BBC have included the original audio soundtrack, so it is possible to at least listen to the entire story. Audio and video quality is surprisingly good. (It's often interesting to compare the sharpness of 1960s B&W video with the dreadful quality of late 1960s and early 1970s colour video - anyone who can receive a CHUM-CITY station such as VR or PL can check out the washed-out prints of Ironside or Kojak, or hockey fans can compare the quality of the recent Canada Cup rebroadcasts on TSN.)

The DVDs contain existing episodes from a number of stories which are incomplete, and also hold a number of gems such as original BBC trailers for stories, including a trailer for Troughton's first story, "Power of the Daleks".

An often-overlooked gem is the "Who's Who", biographies of some of the key actors in various stories. Some people who went on to bigger and better things appeared in the series in the Sixties, such as Julian Glover and Jean Marsh. It's also interesting to note how many actors in 1960s British TV played guest roles in Doctor Who, The Avengers, and Z Cars.

Certainly, this release is very specialized in nature, given its fragmentary condition. However, no fan should be without it.