William Hartnell (1908–1975)

If you're not already familiar with 1960s serialised television, or indeed archive recordings in general, this may not be the place for you. But this remains a valuable archive for those "in the know".

This is the first of five CD box sets featuring the audio recordings of every missing episode of 'Doctor Who' from the 1960s. The audio was recorded from the television set by eager young fans, in the pre-home media, pre-VHS days, sometimes by literally taking apart their early sets and finding a way to plug hefty microphones into the hardware! Luckily a few of those fans kept their recordings into adulthood and loaned them to the BBC once it was discovered that so many episodes had been wiped from the archives. Here they are augmented by minimalist stage directions read by actors from the program. (Not all episodes of every story are missing, but the "orphaned" episodes aren't usually available on streaming services, and are included here alongside their lost brethren.)

As mentioned, the archive quality of the recordings will annoy some listeners. Additionally, the storytelling style here - stories recorded in 1964 and 1965 - will be very different for people my age and younger, sometimes distressingly so. Stories are sometimes quite languid, they can be hard to categorise by genre, and - being for a family audience, which meant something broader than it does now, when we tend to think of "family" as being "for kids but with some hint-hint jokes for adults" - they make use of elements that were reasonable and commonplace for people of the 1960s but completely out-of-touch now. This includes acting styles, musical queues, variations in volume, and of course storytelling tropes; younger listeners may struggle sometimes with the male/female dynamic, or the screaming young women, or indeed the use of white actors to portray Asian characters in Marco Polo and The Crusade. Similarly the educational nature of some of the stories and the sometimes highbrow comedy of The Myth Makers may be challenging for some. Yet those are all inconsequential, being as these are historical artefacts. It should be noted that the general audience for these products is likely to be existing fans of the program rather than newcomers. As a result, the BBC chose not to saturate the stories in additional stage directions but instead to only give what is required; hardcore fans tend to want as much of the original audio as possible. This means sometimes there are action sequences or scene setups that leave much to the imagination, but again if you're familiar with some of the styles of the period you will be able to do so.

Many of the later missing stories fall into more easily definable genres, but this is a real mixed bag of content from the very first seasons of the program. This set is rapidly becoming redundant: Galaxy 4 and The Reign of Terror have their own dedicated home media releases with animation to cover the missing episodes; The Crusade now has an official photographic reconstruction on Blu-Ray; the other two stories will likely follow in that one's footsteps within the next five years.

Still, this set and its siblings are valuable ways to access the storytelling at the heart of these serials. In an age before expensive special effects, when each episode was written to a tight commission and then rehearsed in a single week before being tape recorded over a single night and then transmitted mere weeks later, the story is at the heart of these things. Additionally, listening to these on audio is a great way to connect the dots when watching the surviving serials on home media or streaming services.

An enjoyable collection.… (més)