A classic Doctor Who serial from 1967, The Underwater Menace, is set to be restored with colour animation and original audio recordings, courtesy of a story from The Radio Times. Into the 1970s, the BBC had no official policy for archiving programme content, and as such, many stories within Doctor Who’s classic era (including two of the four episodes from The Underwater Menace) were either incomplete or lost forever.
Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace can be pre-ordered on DVD, Blu-Ray, and Blu-Ray Steelbook, available on Amazon, and scheduled for a November 2023 release date, which coincides with the upcoming 60th-anniversary specials.
You can watch an exclusive teaser for The Underwater Menace below.
The release is a two-disc set. The first disc contains the animated episodes, and the second features the original broadcasts and reconstructions of episodes one and four. A wealth of special features include behind-the-scenes clips, galleries, and BBC news reports.
Other incomplete Doctor Who serials, including The Abominable Snowmen and The Evil of the Daleks (classic Troughton serials from 1967) and Galaxy 4, a Hartnell four-parter from 1965, have been previously renewed with animation.
“We know where there is missing Doctor Who out there but the owners won’t return it at the moment,” Chris Perry, the CEO of TV archive group Kaleidoscope, said last week, as reported by FlickLuster.
Doctor Who can be streamed via the BBC iPlayer, with classic episodes on Britbox. What are you most excited to see from the future of the series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
