DR Who on I Plaer Nov 1

[Dazzle1]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/800-d ... cf3a&ei=72

I hope they are judicous on which Classic they show unless it is the entire full episode list

If you have an I Player, here are my recomendations for Classic, I am not including the incomplete stories

HartnellAn Unearthly Child
The Daleks
The Aztects
The Keys of Marinus
The Meddeling Monk

Troughton
The Mind Robber
The Tomb of the Cyberman
War Games

Pewtree
Everything except Carnival of Monster

Tom Baker Everything except Underworld, Android Invasion

Davison
Castrovalva
Earthshock
Arc of Infinity
Mardawyn Undead
Planet of Fire
Cave of andorzani (but just skip to the regeneration scene)

Colin Baker
Time of the Rani
Vengenceof Varios

Sylvester McKoy
Battlefield
Survival

[Lurkndog]

Pewtree

That's Pertwee!

That man was a treasure, please get his name right.

[Danorian]

There's a batch on PlutoTV too.

[Heroine Addict]

You can cross An Unearthly Child off the list. The rights to those four episodes are being held to ransom by the writer's son.

[Mr. X]

You can cross An Unearthly Child off the list. The rights to those four episodes are being held to ransom by the writer's son.

Lost me at "angry at black people".

[five_red]

You can cross An Unearthly Child off the list. The rights to those four episodes are being held to ransom by the writer's son.

Lost me at "angry at black people".

Well basically the episodes we're talking about are from 1963. The man who wrote them, Anthony Coburn, I think died in the 1970s. Despite the episodes being sold around the world, broadcast several times on television, made available in book form, VHS video, DVD, and streaming, etc. etc. the writer's son, Stef Coburn, is now claiming that core parts of the show were owned by his father not the BBC. Nearly 60 years after the original broadcast, he has suddenly decided to push the issue legally. As if that wasn't enough to upset the modern day younger Who fans (the so-called Nu-Who generation who came to the show after its 2005 reinvention), Stef has apparently made a number of jabs on social media concerning the 'woke' nature of the modern show. In interviews he comes across as a bit of curmudgeonly contrarian with a chip on his shoulder about anything and everything. He's apparently made social media posts about vaccine conspiracies, and claims that he's bequeathed his father's IP to the Russian Government so that if anything happens to him Vladimir Putin et al can sue the BBC on his behalf.

He's tried to push this issue legally before, during the 50th anniversary ten years ago. He failed then. Now he's back again for the 60th anniversary with the same claims. The problem is that numerous accounts of the origins of Doctor Who, dating back for as long as there's been fans enquiring about the origins of the show, all agree that ideas such as the name 'TARDIS', the Police Box, it being bigger on the inside, etc. did not come from Anthony Coburn. Surviving documentation suggest various ideas were pitched into the pilot episode by the Producer (Verity Lambert) and its first Director (Waris Hussein), as well as some of the senior people at the BBC. It has also been suggested that Coburn's original script underwent a lot of rewriting after it was delivered.

The last I heard the BBC was negotiating with Stef Coburn, and fans are optimistic they'll sort something out. If they allowed the matter to go to court they'd almost certainly win (and no doubt Stef Coburn would claim their victory was a deep state conspiracy), but it could drag on for years and I think the BBC realise it might be far cheaper to give him some money to make him go away once and for all.


R5

[Dazzle1]

You can cross An Unearthly Child off the list. The rights to those four episodes are being held to ransom by the writer's son.

Lost me at "angry at black people".

I am wondering how he can do this. I have seen the episode on PBS when they were the one showing it.

The only thing worth seeing is the first episode.

[five_red]

I am wondering how he can do this. I have seen the episode on PBS when they were the one showing it.

The only thing worth seeing is the first episode.

Regardless of whether his claim is valid (and pretty much everyone who knows about the history of the show say it really isn't valid), he's able to do this because even an invalid claim would cause maximum disruption to the BBC's plans for the series. For the 60th anniversary the BBC wants to bring all the British rights to the show back under one roof -- iPlayer. They want to make all episodes across the entire 60 year run freely available to (license fee paying) British audiences, and further to this they want to start opening up their archives by scanning and uploading in high resolution hundreds of behind-the-scenes photos, production documents, scripts, musical scores, etc. etc. So the plan is that eventually the British public will have access to a complete archive of the history of the show, on screen and behind the scenes.

And Stef Coburn I suspect has realised that he can deflate their plans by resurrecting his claim right at this moment, and holding hostage the four episodes that started it all off. It is difficult to know whether he actually genuinely believes his claim is legitimate. He has a kind of contrarian personality that seems to think there's value in causing chaos for the sake of it, particularly when his supposed opponents are a large organisation or a government body. In recent years he's been apparently spouting more and more conspiracy related stuff, and seems to think the Russian government will help him in his fight against the BBC. It is possible, therefore, that he's not entirely in touch with reality.


R5

[Dazzle1]

As I have seen every complete Classic, I won't be affected by it.

When I was younger we would do things like 48 hours marathons. Seeing all of Roger Delgado episodes in a row or watch all the Key to time at once