First up, it's a little bit of lost Who bought back to life. This recreation of missing episode Mission to the Unknown by the University of Central Lancashire is something truly special. If you showed me part of it and told me the actual episode from 1965 had been found, I would have entirely believed you. This particular episode has fascinated me for a while, giving it's odd status as the only entirely Doctorless, and Companionless, episode in the entire run, and the look of the alien delegate characters that turn up in it. So having a very authentic feeling version is a real treat; obviously, there's no way, bar a miraculous find, that we can be sure of how it compares in terms of direction to the original, but given the dedication to using old school methods of TV, I'd say this is probably very close. It's also pretty good that this has gone down well with modern fans, looking at it with interest. I wonder if there's a chance we'll see anything from this story come up in new Doctor Who after this? The Varga plants would be cool to do on a modern budget, and I'd love for a least a cameo from Sentreal, that one that, as DWM put it back in the day, looks like Satan's Christmas tree.
Next up is something announced this weekend at MCM Comic Con. The Beeb has been doing for the last few years animations to cover some of the missing episodes, with the next one for The Faceless Ones due out next year. At the convention, there was a full panel by the team behind these where it was announced that the next one to get this treatment would be the season 5 serial Fury from the Deep. Now I was a bit surprised by this choice; personally, I thought they would go with The Evil of the Daleks next, as that follows directly from The Macra Terror (the last one to be released) and The Faceless Ones, and given that they did The Power of the Daleks, we know they can do Daleks. However, I'm all in favour of this one getting the treatment; I know this story well, I first experienced it through the novelisation I found in my local library, and later the cassette of the episode itself; both scared the hell out of me growing up! I actually found the radio drama this was semi-based on, The Slide, a while ago, that's a damn good listen too, and I'm not just saying that because it has Roger Delgado in. It's a pretty intense one, as the few surviving clips can show, and I love that a new generation of fans are going to discover it.
Finally, a plug for a very cool charity campaign a bunch of different podcasters have put together; #WhoForSchools. This is a follow up to the earlier very successful #WhoAgainstGuns campaign which I also contributed to, and got a nice set of commentaries for The War Games as a result. To help raise money for educational charities including The Malala Fund, over fifty people have come together to make a set of special podcast commentaries for all 14 episodes of Season 26, just in time for it getting a new Blu Ray release later this year. The guests include writers like Paul Cornell, Peter Harness, Vinay Patel, Andrew Cartmell, and many more, and even Ace herself Sophie Aldred. It's running until Halloween night, so there are still a few days to go to donate and secure the commentaries for yourself, please donate to a good cause, and get some extra perspectives on some classic episodes. Seriously, Season 26 is one of my favourites in the show's entire run, this will be another great reason to revisit these.
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