Lost in Tears

Having finally received my copy of the Lost in Time DVD, I’ve had a chance to sample some of the delights presented on this most special of releases. I haven’t actually watched any of the episodes yet, only the extras - some of which I’ve seen before, some of which I haven’t – yet I’ve still been prompted to put my thoughts onto screen. However, I’m not about to wax lyrical about how nice it is to see all these classic moments in their best possible quality (though this is undoubtedly true); this is going to be a purely emotional ramble about all those moments which., barring a few miracles which may or may not happen, we will never see.

My thoughts on this were triggered by one seemingly insignificant feature on a DVD menu on one of the Troughton discs – a musical sting. I’m not sure which episode it was from, or whether it’s from a surviving episode or just a soundtrack, but it was one of those sounds which for no rational reason immediately prompts an emotional response.

My initial reaction upon hearing this musical sting was ‘My God, that sounds good – it’s such a shame that we’ll never be able to savour all these lost episodes from the 1960’s!’ We can, of course, through the BBC Soundtrack releases, but it’s just not the same as being able to appreciate the whole package, i.e. the sound and the visuals.

The appetite of fandom to want to savour any form of visual representation of these lost years is such that we’ll unashamedly salivate over a ropey piece of silent film which one of the production team decided to shoot during production. More often than not it doesn’t actually show the series being made, i.e. we don’t see the actors playing out scenes in front of the camera. It’s usually just a few brief shots between takes of an assistant director gurning at the camera, or an actor gratefully being able to take the head off of the monster costume he’s wearing and get some fresh air. My other half came into the room last night whilst I was watching the silent location footage from The Abominable Snowmen and asked what it was, and he sniggered disparagingly when I told him, obviously mentally adding another line to his ‘Why I think Doctor Who fans are sad’ list. But of course, he just doesn’t ‘get it’; only we ‘get it’.

These tenuous snippets of film do give us a glimpse of what it was like to make these lost episodes, but obviously they will never give us access to the episodes themselves. But we don’t care – they’ll do for us, we treasure them because we know we’ll never get any nearer to seeing the actual episodes. And it’s that tenuous connection between watching an episode proper and watching a piece of amateur production/location footage which produces the emotion in me; all it needs is some violin music dubbed onto it and I’d be reaching for the Kleenex.

Wistfully dreaming of watching these lost episodes is something I often do, and I’m sure it’s something which I’ll be doing even more over the next couple of weeks as I work my way through the collection of episodes included in the Lost in Time set. I’m fortunate in never having seen some of these episodes before, notably those from The Crusade and The Faceless Ones, so it’s the loss of the remaining missing episodes from those stories in particular which I’m sure I’ll be mourning.

There’s also something in my mind which is more tragic about the missing Troughton episodes than the Hartnell counterparts. I’m not for a moment suggesting that I would be ungrateful if another few episodes from the first Doctor’s era turned up rather than some from the second Doctor, but for me there’s just something more emotional about the Troughton losses. I suppose it boils down to the fact that I prefer the purely science-fiction oriented stories than the historicals, and that there are relatively more episodes missing from the Troughton era than from Hartnell’s. Another factor is that of all the missing stories/episodes which are labelled as ‘classics’ by fandom, the vast majority of them are Troughton stories. For instance, Fury from the Deep or The Web of Fear are usually pretty high on most people’s wish list, whilst The Savages and the remainder of The Celestial Toymaker don’t receive nearly as much attention. For the most part, as Doctor Who fans we tend to go with the flow with what we’d like to see versus what we’re not that bothered about (and those of you who don’t, please take note that I haven’t said ‘all’ fans!), and so this also has a hand in making those lost monster stories from seasons 4 and 5 seem all the more missed.

I don’t know. I’m just a silly old thing who allows emotion and affection to influence nearly everything in my life, and this includes my love of Doctor Who and especially those stories which we can only dream of seeing again through misty eyes. Having Lost in Time almost makes it worse because it just makes me long for more.