Introduction

I've always wanted to watch the original run of Doctor Who in order.

My first encounter with the show was when I was seven years old; my mother (who had watched the show during the William Hartnell era) encouraged me to watch the 1993 repeat run of Planet of the Daleks, and after that I watched the other surviving episodes whenever I was able to catch the compilations on Saturday and Sunday mornings on UK Gold. My partner Hannah has been a fan of the show since the revival in 2005; she's always been interested in the original series, but has never seen a full episode. (What she does have over me is that she used to live within a Jelly Baby's throw of Tom Baker, and occasionally ran into him at the local garden centre and the rubbish tip when she lived in Hawkhurst.)

Now that we've finally moved home and settled in, it's time to begin watching the first 40 years of Doctor Who together, including the ones that don't exist anymore (something even a large number of "proper" fans haven't done). I've also decided to chronicle her reactions in a blog, on the off-chance that someone else might be interested.

Rumours about further missing episode recoveries have been doing the rounds since the most recent occurence in 2013, but we've been waiting long enough already and Hannah has decided she wants to get started. Of course, this means that some more episodes will inevitably be recovered as soon as we pass the 1960s and render the blog instantly outdated and incomplete, but as problems go, it's not a bad one to have. If this turns out to be the thing that finally leads to a complete recovery of The Myth Makers, it'll be worth it.