It’s not long ago we learned the ABC plans to air the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who live. That was good news. Now there’s even more news of the good variety — the BBC has tracked down a bunch of long-lost Doctor Who tapes, remastered them and thrown them up on iTunes.
As this story over at Coming Soon reports, 11 episodes from the 1960s were unearthed in Nigeria — “gathering dust” in a TV relay station — by Philip Morris of the Television International Enterprises Archive. Apparently nine of these haven’t seen the light of a cathode ray (or an LCD backlight, if you want to be all modern) for almost 50 years, making them rare finds indeed.
Fortunately, there’s no need for them to be stored in an airtight container or squirreled away in a vault — the episodes have been remastered into a pair of iTunes downloads: “The Enemy of the World” and “The Web of Fear”. Both feature the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton and are mostly intact; sadly, The Web of Fear is missing an episode, though the team behind the restoration did what it could with the 37 images it did have.
The clip up top is a trailer for The Enemy of the World. Take all two minutes and 24 seconds in, or you can hit up iTunes (and part with $14.99 for a complete story) for the full deal.