The Faceless Ones. I watched the black and white version with the two existing episodes. (It seems a downright odd thing to do to animate the non-missing episodes as well as the missing ones but there you go).
As often seems to be the case with the classic series the first episode was a cracker. Thereafter, it felt very padded and the plot made no sense to me at all. The "Chameleons" want to use human bodies because their own faces have gone a bit icky? Was that it? Not for the first time, nor the last time, the departure of companions, in this case Ben and Polly, is handled horribly. On the plus side, the performances were all very good and I appreciated the opportunity to see this serial for the first time, albeit part-animated.
Fury from the Deep. I must admit to being hugely disappointed in the animated version. The animation itself seems much cruder and cheaper than previous efforts and I was a little annoyed at the anachronistic (in terms of the show) wanted poster for Delgado's Master. What remains of the actual footage from the episodes looks terrific - really atmospheric and creepy - so that just makes it all the sadder that almost all of the serial seems to be gone for good.
Seeds is definitely near the top of my favourite stories list, and has been since it was first shown (if the "Golden Age of Doctor Who" is when you're eight, the timing was spot-on for me!) The Doctor and Sarah Jane are both written a bit differently to the way they are in other stories of the time; Sarah's a lot more capable than usual, and whilst she does get a lot of screaming / damsel in distress stuff here, she's great in her approach to Boycie, er, I mean Scorby ("What was that you were just saying about WOMEN?!?") and almost on equal parner status with the Doctor. The Doctor himself seems to be in a bit of a mood throughout, with his strange detachment in the Antarctica-set episodes, to his bullying and exasperation with various establishment types, and his tendency towards action-hero violence (jumping through skylights to save Sarah, beating up a chauffeur badly enough to put him in hospital, wreaking havoc on Boycie's neck etc.)
It's also the last time for many years that we'd see the Doctor working directly with / for UNIT, though none of the regular characters are present. Originally, as with The Android Invasion, the Brigadier was written into the last two episodes, but again, and possibly mindful of the spiky relationship he'd had with Tom Baker on Terror of the Zygons the previous year, Nicholas Courtney was unavailable, and replaced by a ringer, in this case Major Bad Teeth Beresford. It's possibly for the best, as the character doesn't have much to do, apart from have "waffle!" barked at him by the Doctor, and proving entirely ineffectual when bringing his laser-gun team into action against the Krynoid. It's a shame that the classic UNIT era had to go out with a bit of a whimper, especially in a story which is otherwise excellent.
Douglas Camfield directs with his usual skill, and ensures that everyone concerned takes it seriously. It's interesting that the location footage is on OB video as opposed to the 16mm film with was the norm for Doctor Who up to the mid 1980s. Presumably this was so that the CSO effects used for the Krynoid in its mature form would match the location shots better. Certainly, due to Camfield, the lack of the distinctive filmed location "look" (at the time, eight year old me saw the film / VT mix terms of how things looked "inside" and "outside",) isn't as obvious as it is in other stories which use video on location.
Great stuff - I think I need to go and watch it again myself now!
A strange mix of The Quatermass Xperiment and Dr Terror's 'a plant like that could take over the world'. Tom Baker seemed somewhat subdued, perhaps I just recall his more flamboyant turns such as Talons of Weng Chiang etc
Just noticed in the credits that our old pal Harry Fielder played 'guard'.
I've decided to watch The Seeds Of Doom after reading Fritz Maitland's rave review somewhere.
I've been listening to a podcast about the missing episodes, which took me right back to those dim and distant days in the last century, which was when many of us first became aware just how many 60s episodes (and colour Pertwee episodes) of Doctor Who were AWOL back then. In the 1981 DWM Winter Special, there was an interview with Sue Maldon of the BBC Archives, and at the end of the interview, this listing of what was then known to exist (with a couple of errors - Episode 6 of The Wheel In Space existed but was omitted, and Episode 4 of The Invasion was listed but was actually missing (and is still missing!)
At the time, it made bloody depressing reading. Being at the time innocent of the vagaries of TV archiving, I'd previously assumed that they were all safe and sound at the BBC. In fact, I was aghast - how could they have got rid of the likes of Tomb Of The Cybermen and The Ice Warriors - after all, the Target books were great, they had iconic monsters in them, and even though this was very early in the home video era, the thought that I would never be able to see them was deeply upsetting.
I was also very (possibly more!) upset that so many of the Pertwee stories only existed in B&W, and one episode (Invasion Of The Dinosaurs 1) was missing. I mean, I could remember watching that one at the age of 6 in glorious full colour, and it was completely gone forever! How could that have happened?
Since then, 42 episodes have been returned to the BBC (plus, through various returns and technological jiggery-pokery, all the B&W Pertwee episodes now exist in at least some form of colour!) We've also got odd clips here and there, a full set of relatively prisine off-air soundtracks for all missing episodes, off-screen telesnaps for many of them, and the ongoing animations (one of my favourites, Fury From The Deep, is coming next.) I can go on Britbox and access every single complete story (and a sizable chunk of animations and recons) at the click of a remote. I've been making my way through the classic era during my enforced break from work, and by heck, if I haven't fallen in love with this silly old show all over again! I'm currently up to The Pirate Planet, with all the "joys" of Season 17 and the 80s to come!
There's a new interview with Philip Morris here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG1uryUKNhY
It it, he says he's sure that there are at least 6 missing episodes of DW in the hands of private collectors (which, I'm extrapolating, doesn't mean there aren't more in official archives, or already in Phil's possession). He makes quite a big thing of mentioning that this is Troughton's centenary year, as if he is trying to send a signal to collectors that this would be an ideal time to return episodes. If I was really making a big effort to read between the lines and indulge in some massive wishful thinking, I would interpret the amount of time he spends talking about Evil of the Daleks and the context in which he is discussing it as a hint that we might get to see some more of that serial.