Reverse Engineering Doctor Who Into Color 171
Lanxon writes "In 1967, the BBC set about junking its Doctor Who archive: a moment sci-fi fans wish they could travel back in time to prevent. There are 108 vintage episodes missing, but since 1978 a number have been rediscovered as 16mm black-and-white films. The BBC shot many of these series in color, but made monochrome copies for countries such as Australia, where many TV companies were still broadcasting in greyscale. The reels had sat in archives since. Now, the Doctor Who Restoration Team, an independent group contracted by the BBC, is using a new technique to regenerate The Doctor in color."
Re:Rev the wrong thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people like Pyramids of Mars, and the Talons of Weng Chiang, though the latter isn't particularly culturally sensitive.
I agree, but there's a wonderful moment when Tom Baker exclaims something like, "Wait a minute, you're Chinese," as if that visually obvious fact had eluded him up to that point. Made quite an impression on my young mind, that an alien -- even a super intelligent one -- would be less capable of seeing our trivial differences. To be truly unprejudiced, we must see through better eyes.
Re:colour (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There's Good News and Bad News... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but what if someone convinced the BBC to knock off 6 more copies [wikipedia.org], then sealed them up in a wall so they could be picked up later and sold to collectors?
Yeah, sure, they'd have "This is a fake" scrawled all over them, but since a copy by the original producer can't really be a fake...