This week on It Was a Thing on TV it’s Week 3 of the Doctor Who 60th anniversary celebration!
First, by the mid 1980s, Doctor Who had emerged as one of the BBC’s longest-running brands, but even then it was getting long in the tooth. In 1986, they tried something big – a season-long arc, resulting in “The Trial of a Time Lord”. Will the Doctor be brought to justice? Will audiences be brought to watch?
Then, “Doctor Who” has had a storied history these past 60 years, but thanks to the economics of television at the time, it – much like that of any TV show at the time – is sketchy at best. But recently, the BBC has ramped up efforts to find and restore episodes long lost to tape wiping by any means necessary. We look at how this piece of TV history is being preserved and what is still missing media.
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Timestamps
0:11 – Correction from Episode 424
2:02 – Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord
50:27 – The Missing Episodes of Doctor Who
1:25:02 – This Week in Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour History