The BBC had a nasty habit of wiping old recordings to reuse the tapes. Had it not been for one heroic BBC staff member, armies of fans and occasional discoveries in foreign TV archives it could have been a lot worse, but the fact remains that we are still missing 106 episodes.
There are few tales as heart-warmingly, iconically festive as the traditional story of a lonely young boy who builds a snowman in his back garden, only for it to come to life and lead him on an exciting adventure... to destroy humanity.
They say the creators of the film Snakes on a Plane started with the title and worked backwards. I know, that's a surprise, right? It's so good, you'd think they spent ages brainstorming which kinds of animals would feature.
Of course, death in the TV world is as inevitable as it is in the real one, especially in soaps or in Spooks, where the mortality rate seems to be worryingly high. Especially on public holidays.
Daleks. It was as if I'd been waiting for them. Like they were an inevitable discovery, not something somebody had just dreamed up. And meeting one for real - that didn't seem then, as it does to me now, like the most incredible and lucky privilege. It seemed like it was naturally bound to happen.
With the 50th Anniversary coming up next year, Doctor Who fans are feeling even more nostalgic than usual and many would welcome such a nod to the show's past.
I will gladly fight anybody who calls for its dismantling or questions its pedigree. I will gasp at a Doctor Who slur, rebuff a Blue Peter insult and smack down a Monty Python dismissal. The thing I've been taking issue with lately is the BBC's bizarre course of re-branding exercises.
It took me a while to find out that Russell Hoban had died. Sadly, the author of one of the finest books in the not-quite-English language passed away in December, aged 86.
If we are to believe Tolstoy, happy families are all alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. This is certainly true of the famil...
As mentioned in a previous Huffington Post blog, last century I interviewed Terry Nation, who created the Daleks for the BBC TV series Doctor Who. We...
All we know so far is that Yates wants to take the character in a new direction, distancing himself from not only the current 11th Doctor Matt Smith, but from the whole post-Russell T. Davies (the man who revived the series in 2005 after a long hiatus) era.
Yesterday, someone read my Huffington Post piece about Doctor Who in which I mentioned that the series' original budget was £2,000 per show. They p...
Alas, I am old enough to have seen the first ever episode of Doctor Who when it was transmitted. It is easy to remember the exact date - Saturday 23 N...
Today is the 48th birthday of a television show that I can truly say changed my life - Doctor Who.
TV may be primarily a means of entertainment, but its influence in shaping views can't be underestimated. It's a subtlety pervasive and effective way of changing social views, precisely because of its familiarity and entertainment value. I asked some friends if they had any TV show that had shaped the way they think, the things they do or the way they do them. The responses were fascinating.
It's getting very near the end, as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band once sang. The penultimate episode of the current bisect...