Doctor Who The Collection is a Blu-ray release of all the show’s classic seasons. But things get a bit complicated with the earliest black and white episodes, as 97 are still missing. Will the range ever embrace the First and Second Doctors?
One of the most complete early seasons of the show is Doctor Who Season Two, and thankfully this series has already received the Blu-ray treatment, made possible by the fact that only two of its 39 episodes are missing. But things get a little trickier for the Doctor Who The Collection range when we get to the other series.
Believe it or not, the very first season is the next most-complete. This is because it was widely sold abroad, and many film copies of the missing episodes have been returned to the BBC. To date, the only missing episodes from Doctor Who Season One are the seven instalments of ‘Marco Polo,’ and two episodes of ‘The Reign of Terror,’ which have already been animated for DVD. So it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the BBC to animate ‘Marco Polo’ too, given that its soundtrack still exists.
The biggest problem facing the Doctor Who The Collection range is the very first story, ‘An Unearthly Child.’ The BBC doesn’t hold all the rights to this adventure, as it is shared with the story’s author Anthony Coburn. Today, Coburn’s son holds some of the copyright, and at the time of writing he has withdrawn his permission for the BBC to release the adventure commercially. So unless the BBC and the Coburn estate can strike a deal, we’re unlikely to see this story on the Doctor Who The Collection range anytime soon. Otherwise, Doctor Who Season One would be an obvious choice for the BBC to release next.
But we also have to bear in mind that, whilst there are indeed a great number of missing episodes, we do know that some have been recently rediscovered. However, we haven’t been told how many, or which ones. Plus, an organisation called Film is Fabulous is still negotiating their return from a private collector which, worst case scenario, may not happen at all. In an ideal world, though, these would be remastered and restored for the Doctor Who The Collection range, and it wouldn’t make sense for the BBC to put out a box set today only for some missing episodes to turn up; the collection would no longer be ‘definitive.’
As such, Doctor Who The Collection is in a state of limbo until it has more information on the missing episodes front. And there’s little point in trying to predict which episodes they might be, as all bets are off; anything is possible.
But if we assume that nothing is returned to the BBC anytime soon, the next obvious candidate for Doctor Who The Collection would be Season Six. Like the very first season, this one has relatively few episodes missing – remarkable, given that it’s 44 episodes long. Currently, we’re missing two episodes from the Cybermen story ‘The Invasion,’ and five episodes from the penultimate adventure ‘The Space Pirates.’ Now, ‘The Invasion’ has already been animated, so this would leave the relatively simple task of animating the missing parts of ‘The Space Pirates.’
Granted, it’s not an overly popular story, but there aren’t many fans who would pass on an opportunity to ‘watch’ this classic adventure. And even if the BBC decided that it wasn’t worth spending money to bring this story back to life, it could always stick to a photo reconstruction to accompany the surviving audio. Although, in the case of ‘The Space Pirates,’ this wouldn’t be the easiest task, as there aren’t many pictures or telesnaps to draw from, so the BBC would effectively have to create ‘new’ images. They could us AI, but this would doubtless prove controversial.
It would still be great to see Season Six added to the Doctor Who The Collection range, though. Fans were recently treated to a colourised, movie-length edit of the final story ‘The War Games,’ featuring a new regeneration sequence for the Second Doctor, and this would be a great feather in the collection’s cap. Similarly, ‘The Mind Robber’ has been recently re-released and repurposed with new sequences filmed by Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury, which would be nice to see. Then there is ‘The Krotons,’ the first ever story by Robert Holmes – one of the most popular Doctor Who writers of all time.
Other seasons would be much trickier to add to Doctor Who The Collection, simply because of the large numbers of missing episodes. But one season that would be guaranteed to do well is Doctor Who Season Three, as this features the celebrated First Doctor story ‘The Daleks’ Master Plan,’ of which the BBC currently has three episodes in its archive.
But the problem with ‘The Daleks’ Master Plan’ is that it’s 12 episodes long. The Doctor Who The Collection range would have to animate some nine episodes for a Season Three Blu-ray release, plus its introductory episode ‘Mission to the Unknown,’ plus the four missing episodes of ‘The Myth Makers,’ and ‘The Massacre.’ That’s 18 episodes in total, and it would be a costly endeavour.
At the same time, these are very popular stories. ‘The Massacre’ is particularly sought-after, owing to its inclusion of William Hartnell in a dual role as the mysterious Abbot of Amboise. It would be an expensive addition to the Doctor Who The Collection range, but it would also probably be the best-selling.
Otherwise, we’re in a fortunate position in 2026 where the vast majority of missing episodes have already been animated, and made available on Blu-ray – even obscurities like ‘The Savages’ have received the cartoon treatment, making it relatively easy to bring some of the other seasons to the collection. Season Five, for example, is only missing four episodes of ‘The Wheel in Space’; everything else has been animated.
But again, this would be a tricky one for the Doctor Who The Collection range as one of its episodes – ‘The Web of Fear‘ episode three – is missing, but known to exist, and there’s some uncertainty as to whether it will ever be returned to the archive. It makes sense to wait and see what happens.
So tell us, reader: do you think Doctor Who The Collection will add any more black and white seasons to the range? And if so, which season would you like to see first? Let us know in the comments below.
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