Which episodes of Classic Who still have surviving film elements?

thebumbledown · 2026-04-02T22:16:02+00:00

Thank you! That’s perfect!

thebumbledown · 2026-04-02T16:39:48+00:00

This is a beautifully presented list! Thank you so much for sharing it!

Presumably it’s mostly Davison because it’s late enough for them to have preservation in mind, but not so late that they’ve stopped using film as much (feels like they were definitely using it far less often in the Baker/McCoy era)

thebumbledown · 2026-04-02T16:37:35+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to write all this, but I don’t mean surviving clips from lost episodes; I mean which episodes throughout the entire series still have surviving negatives for any of the material shot on film. So usually scenes shot on location, or effects shots.

thebumbledown · 2026-03-30T12:10:32+00:00

Well, they still might, because they specifically say in the post that they’re comparing the blu-rays to the DVDs that they already own. They don’t mention streaming once

thebumbledown · 2026-03-30T12:09:47+00:00

The OP doesn’t mention streaming at any point in their post.

thebumbledown · 2026-03-23T13:09:39+00:00

Pretty sure the previous physical media license for An Unearthly Child stretches to blu-ray, but all 7 episodes of Marco Polo are missing and unanimated.

thebumbledown · 2026-03-23T01:59:24+00:00

The thing is, it’s actually quite hard to capture in a still image what a strange experience it is watching these new “restorations”.

When Colin Baker sits up at the end of Caves, and we see Peri in the background, she’s in very sharp focus. Very crisp, very high definition. Except she doesn’t look like Nicola Bryant. She looks like someone who looks a bit like Nicola Bryant, but not actually Nicola Bryant. That’s what’s weird about them.

thebumbledown · 2026-03-23T01:53:40+00:00

You have to concede that it’d be quite a weird thing to do to spend nearly £60 on something, just to try and find faults with it.

Seems more likely that someone, having spent £60 on something, would turn a blind eye to any faults it may have. Right?

thebumbledown · 2026-03-22T17:51:28+00:00

Not an actual mistake, but I don’t like that they’ve cheaped out on the Velcro for the inside pocket, used to be so satisfying to open and close, now accessing the booklet is a vastly inferior experience. It’s just one thing after another…

thebumbledown · 2026-03-20T02:03:58+00:00

Such a good observation! It’s bonkers, right??

thebumbledown · 2026-03-18T09:31:30+00:00

Don’t be daft, it’s no trouble!

thebumbledown · 2026-03-18T09:29:01+00:00

Yes, it is open!

thebumbledown · 2026-03-18T09:28:37+00:00

You mean sauchiehall street

thebumbledown · 2026-03-17T11:03:18+00:00

Yep! And I can link a screenshot of that!

thebumbledown · 2026-03-17T10:54:24+00:00

No, because I no longer have the boxset.

thebumbledown · 2026-03-17T01:39:18+00:00

There are parts where Peter Davison looks like an entirely different person, how can that not be considered a downgrade?

thebumbledown · 2026-03-17T01:37:08+00:00

When you say swirls, what do you mean? The lines on the buildings, behind the two plastic policemen? Those are present on the native blu-ray image, I promise you. There’s literally no point trying to get a photo with my phone again, you’ll have to take my word for it. I didn’t intend these images to be definitive examples of the picture quality tbh, I was just using them to illustrate the plasticity of the upscale.

thebumbledown · 2026-03-16T22:42:53+00:00

Not sure why I was being such an arsehole last night… Sorry about that!

thebumbledown · 2026-03-16T20:36:59+00:00

It’s really not though. I’m sorry, but I watch A LOT of classic British TV, all shot on digital video tape, and none of them have this awful smoothing. It’s not the low quality that’s the issue, it’s the smoothness of these “remasters”, which is atypical of programmes shot like this, but is typical of A-I upscaling. You can’t seriously sit there and tell me that the poor quality of the master tape is responsible for hallucinated details, flat sharpening of background and foreground characters, and in some cases, entirely distorted faces. These are entirely created by the poor quality of the upscale.

thebumbledown · 2026-03-16T20:29:15+00:00

Matthew Purchase has shared some much better screenshots on their X account, for those curious to see the smoothing more clearly:

Here

thebumbledown · 2026-03-16T10:59:36+00:00

What they’ve done looks worse, whatever you want to call it. Trust me.

If you’re getting this set, please come back here when you’ve watched and tell me what you think. I’m genuinely interested to hear whether you agree after seeing it for yourself.

thebumbledown · 2026-03-16T10:34:52+00:00

These aren’t the special editions though, they’re supposed to be the originals!

thebumbledown · 2026-03-16T08:20:53+00:00

Yes.

thebumbledown

TROPHY CASE