Newspaper and Magazine Cuttings: 1990-1994

The first five years of the 1990's was a period when the future of Doctor Who very much up in the air. The ongoing TV series had been cancelled in 1989, although a BBC spokesperson promised to take the series through the 1990's these were very much hollow words designed to avoid any public outcry at the series' cancellation.

Of course no news is good news and the British press continued to speculate on the future of the programme but, sadly, most of this speculation was founded on rumour and misinformation.

As mentioned above the BBC had promised at the start of the decade to "take the programme through the 90's". This was presumed by fans to mean that there would be some form of new series or film, albeit made in co-production.

However, followers of Doctor Who had a long and dispiriting wait for any concrete news. In fact, apart from a Children in Need pantomime style sketch in 1993, and two radio plays starring Jon Pertwee, no new Doctor Who was forthcoming until the late 1990's, the McGann TV Movie in 1996 to be precise.

So from 1990 to 1996 there was one piece of 'new' television Who, but it was a confused pastiche of the programme rather than anything that satisfied most fans of the series. Made by controversial former Producer John Nathan Turner who had piloted the series from the early 1980's until it's end in 1989 this skit seemed to say more about his love of pantomime, glitzy sets, publicity and the latest media fad (in this case a new 3D video technique) than the TV series that had been Doctor Who.

It was aired at the same time as the Doctor Who 30th Anniversary Celebrations which also spawned some more valuable documentaries and repeats.

In addition to these programme's the BBC repeated various stories on BBC 2 before and after the anniversary in 1993. One of the highlights of these repeat seasons came with the first airing of the classic Jon Pertwee story The Daemons since it's original broadcast in 1971.

Of particular interest to press and fans alike was the fact that it was long believed the story had been completely lost in it's original colour format. However a group of Doctor Who fans , mostly working in the TV industry themselves, had managed to track down poor quality off air colour video tapes of the episodes which originated in North America. They then developed a technique which married up the poor quality colour footage with far higher quality black and white film. This resulted in a colour copy that was of broadcast quality.

Other Pertwee colour stories have since been restored in a similar way and the group who were responsible for this work have now coalesced into the 'unofficial' Doctor Who Restoration Team. The Restoration Team have been responsible in recent years for the critically acclaimed BBC Doctor Who DVD releases which have set a new standard in the restoration and presentation of classic TV on the DVD Video format.

More cuttings relating to the Restoration Team and their work and the missing episodes of Doctor Who can be found on our Missing Who pages.

These events, and the continued speculation over the series' future, helped to keep the programme in the public mind and in the pages of the press into the mid 1990's.