Audio Review: Doctor Who: The Lost TV Episodes: 1967
(AudioGo)
Includes The Macra Terror, The Faceless Ones, The Evil of the Daleks, The Abominable Snowmen, The Ice Warriors
IT is a tragedy that despite being one of the most popular Doctors of all time, the majority of episodes starring Patrick Troughton are missing from the archives.
This explains the excitement generated by the discovery of an instalment from The Underwater Menace earlier this year, as it is now the earliest surviving episode featuring the Time Lord’s second incarnation.
Fortunately, through some strange prescient talent or just serendipity, many of these missing stories exist as off-air recordings made upon original transmission by the show’s early fan-base. So whereas we might not be able to watch these adventures unfold on TV, we can still enjoy them in an audio format thanks to modern techniques in cleaning up the recordings, and with the help of original cast members to provide linking narration.
This latest box set of stories comes from one of the all-time classic runs, as Troughton became comfortable with his portrayal and was able to take his interpretation of the Doctor down new and challenging directions, whether it’s foiling the giant Macra crabs’ in their bid to seize control of an Earth colony, exposing alien duplicates intent on stealing our bodies, triggering a Dalek civil war, uncovering the truth behind the myths of the Yeti, or unearthing a giant frozen reptile man trapped in a glacier for centuries.
With the “base-under-siege” format coming into its own during this era, the creative guns behind the scenes were also firing furiously, with the introduction of many monsters and concepts which would feature in years to come, including the Ice Warriors, the Yeti, and the idea of an ideological split between opposing Dalek forces…
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Former companions Anneke Wills (Polly) and Frazer Hines (Jamie) fill in the gaps when what is happening on-screen isn’t obvious from the soundtrack, but also flesh out the story by providing additional details and descriptions. This set also includes PDF files of the original scripts, ensuring your enjoyment of the stories is as complete as possible without actually watching them on DVD.
