Given the rather sparse commentaries, I’d go for Julian Glover’s theatrical recollections on ‘The Wheel of Fortune’ rather than Peter Purves, Kevin Stoney and Ray Cusick on ‘Day of Armageddon’.

Extras:

-Soundtracks and William Russell’s links for the missing episodes of ‘The Crusade’

-Surviving clips from ‘The Dalek Masterplan’, ‘The Smugglers’ and ‘The Tenth Planet’

-Colour location footage from the making of ‘The Smugglers’

-Offscreen footage from various stories from ‘The Reign of Terror’ to ‘The Savages’

The collection of episodes which makes up ‘Lost in Time’ dividing quite neatly so as to allow one episode for William Hartnell and two for Patrick Troughton, the first disc including half of ‘The Crusade’, a quarter of ‘The Dalek Masterplan’ and the comparatively lonely final episode of ‘The Celestial Toymaker’. When the set was first released, no doubt many purchasers (myself included) went straight for ‘Day of Armageddon’, which was after all one of the main incentives for the set being released in the first place; if we can’t have the whole of ‘The Dalek Masterplan’, then having three episodes covering the main phases of the story is a reasonable substitute, not least because within five years or so of somebody turning up a rare photograph of Celation, we suddenly had an episode which gave us a good look at most of the alien delegates and their various strange ways of moving. Details like this- and Mavic Chen’s bizarre writing- make all the difference and we simply wouldn’t know about them if we didn’t have the episode to watch.

The extras are, quite frankly (with the exception of the four-minute Audio Collection trailer) a fascinating bunch. The surviving clips from ‘The Dalek Masterplan’, ‘The Smugglers’ and ‘The Tenth Planet’ come from three main sources- film footage which was put to one side and then later rediscovered, censor clips and items cannibalised for use in other programmes (Blue Peter being the main source). Add to that the home movie footage showing the making of ‘The Smugglers’ on location (capturing into the bargain many of the supporting cast and not one but two stand-ins for William Hartnell) and the off-screen footage and there comes a point where you realise how extraordinary it is, not just that somebody would point a film camera at a television screen to record a few seconds of ‘The Reign of Terror’ but would then keep it for forty years until somebody else could make use of it. In fact, it’s a testament to just how much Doctor Who meant to some people from the very first days that they were prepared to spend money on expensive film and developing to have a minute or two of William Hartnell on screen, just as the other clips bear witness to the commitment and dedication of the researchers who went through every film can they could find looking for missing Who.

Commentary Highlights:

The only commentary is on the Dalek episode, however Gary Russell and Deborah Watling have a good-natured ramble through some of her recollections.

-Soundtracks for the missing episodes of ‘The Moonbase’

-Surviving clips from ‘The Power of the Daleks’, ‘The Highlanders’, ‘The Underwater Menace’ and ‘The Macra Terror’

-Rediscovered trailer for ‘The Power of the Daleks’

-’The Last Dalek’, an extended version of the footage seen on ‘The Tomb of the Cybermen’ release

-Offscreen footage from several episodes

This is perhaps the poor relation of the three discs, consisting of the six surviving non-’Tenth Planet’ episodes from the fourth season. As so much of the season is missing from the archives, it’s probably fair to say that many if not most fans have a limited awareness of how the various episodes fit into the overall scheme of things, and so it’s often difficult to judge an isolated episode in terms of pace and atmosphere. But with the addition of the censor clips and ‘Power of the Daleks’ trailer, it’s equally true that we have a fairly good outline of how some of the stories felt and looked. The irony of the censor clips is of course that while they show incidents which were considered too strong for vulnerable Antipodean youngsters, this does mean that we have a couple of nice clips of the Macra in action. Still, it’s difficult not to come away with the feeling that the ins and outs of Doctor Who’s fourth season haven’t really been evaluated properly and that although it’s good to have (for example) Victoria’s first appearance, there’s so much missing that it’s difficult if not impossible to claim to know what this particular year of the series was about.

Commentary Highlights:

Another couple of good-humoured contributions from Deborah Watling, although largely in the form of extended conversations with additions from Derrick Sherwin on ‘The Web of Fear’.

-Clips from ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ (largely Yeti stumbling back and forth), ‘The Web of Fear’ (much more impressive scary Yeti footage, including a glimpse of Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart and a chunk of the set piece battle from Episode 4), ‘Fury from the Deep’ (of which more later), ‘The Wheel in Space’ (various fights and Duggan’s electrocution) and film sequences from ‘The Space Pirates’.

-Location footage from ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ (nice clear colour film showing among other things the Abbot’s costume in colour and several of the main cast) and studio film of the climax of ‘Fury from the Deep’.

-An extended version of ‘The Missing Years’, as originally seen on the VHS release of ‘The Ice Warriors’ but with additional coverage of the rediscovery of ‘The Lion’ and ‘Day of Armageddon’.

If the second disc of ‘Lost in Time’ was the poor relation, the third is quite a treat- Season 5’s reputation as "the monster season" means that although there’s about the same quantity of clips and other material, the censor clips are covering scarier material, particularly from ‘The Web of Fear’ and ‘Fury from the Deep’. The recreation of the climactic minutes of ‘Fury’ must count as one of the most impressive feats of restoration carried out to date, marrying up the soundtrack, film trims from the recording and the odd bit of "making of" footage to give an impression of what the serial must have been like to watch. Throw in Mr Oak and Mr Quill subduing Maggie Harris and you’re left with a real sense of what the series could achieve in the Troughton era, and why it’s still spoken about with reverence by those fans lucky enough to see the stories first time around. Without a complete story to help jog the memory, the commentaries tend to take the form of laid-back reminiscing, but Deborah Watling and Gary Russell work well together and the discussion between Derrick Sherwin and Tristan de Vere Cole is also a diverting insight into what it was like to be making Doctor Who in the late 1960s.

Overall, then, ‘Lost in Time’ does an extremely good job of assembling shiny new restored black and white episodes which wouldn’t otherwise have a home and putting them together in a presentable format. It’s far more than a collection of episodes which wouldn’t otherwise have a place in the DVD range- it can also be seen as a condensed illustration of how the series developed in its first six years, from the historical trappings of ‘The Crusade’ to the settings of ‘The Wheel in Space’ and ‘The Space Pirates’, which show a production increasingly comfortable with the technical demands of realising the demands of a series which could and did take a new setting in space and time every four to six weeks. Both in the restoration work itself and ‘The Missing Years’, it also shows how much work has been put in by dedicated individuals down the years to ensure that missing episodes were brought back to the BBC so that later generations of fans could enjoy them. And looking at some of the clips that have survived, you can see why they did.