Will somebody please tell me where on earth you get hold of a copy of The Millennium Trap?

(This is a fan produced video, reviewed in Doctor Who Magazine which I am sure myself and many others are finding very difficult to find). Also I would be interested in obtaining any other fan produced videos like this, but as Doctor Who Magazine points out it cannot give out details due to copyright laws.

If you are able to help, please e-mail [email protected] I will be very grateful!

Doctor Who And The Curse Of The Fatal Death - shown on March 20th 199 BBC1

4 Brand new comedy Doctor Who episodes, - Doctor Who And The Curse Of The Fatal Death were filmed for BBC 1's Comic Relief (Red Nose Day), lasting approximately twenty minutes in length. Written by Steven Moffatt and produced by Sue Vertue, Rowan Atkinson played the Doctor, Julia Sawalha the new companion Emma, and Jonathan Pryce as the Master including a few familiar sink plungers. Later incarnations of the Doctor were brought to us by Richard E Grant (who on paper seemed like an excellent choice but in reality was rather wooden), Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant (Oh god!)and the lovely Joanna Lumley who along with Rowan were absolutely superb!

The BBC's website Comic Relief website offers the first episode online. But I recommend downloading the whole lot on the Nitro9 ftp site

I would also like to point out that should you choose to view these episodes in this way then please make a donation to Comic Relief and not only will your money go to good causes but it may also provoke the BBC to repeat this venture! 9.8 million viewers tuned in and loved it so why don't you?
Comic Relief Red Nose Day from beeb @ the BBC

Big Finish takes on canon series of audio plays

Big Finish Productions, already have a staake in the Doctor Who market with their own New Adventures audio tapes starring Lisa Bowerman as Virgin's Bernice Summerfield, have been licensed by BBC Worldwide to take on producing canon Doctor Who audio drama. The release schedule looks like 1 every 2 months.

The first is in June titled - The Sirens Of Time written by Nicholas Briggs (responsible for the excellent Auton spin off videos), featuring Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy in "a multi-Doctor story with a twist". The Doctors will appear in their own episodes concluding with the 3 joining together in the last. The Sirens of Time will be followed by Phantasmagoria by Mark Gatiss - another excellent author (featuring Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor) in August, and The Sound Of Fear by Justin Richards (starring Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor) in October.

The audios will be recorde in the familier 25-minute episodes format and I for one hope they go down well as I feel the BBC should have done something like this a long time ago and stop messing about with their own stories which have been read to the listner and actually biting the bullet and make them comee alive with proper characters, music and effects. Three cheers for Big Finish!!!

Little did the public expect as they sat down in front of their B/W sets that all the behind the sofa stuff was actually in colour.

In an alleged cover-up operation the BBC claimed that all the episodes were made in B/W and anyone who was to have said to the contrary, would be locked in the same cupboard they were going to throw episode 4 of the Tenth Planet in.

The BBC were alleged to have wiped the colour tapes to make room for Star Trek episodes which reportedly were about to be wiped worldwide at the time. So to make way for these episodes the Doctor Who episodes that were in colour were burnt hastily while engineers copied what episodes they could be bothered with to B/W films.

Fortunately for us though one engineer managed to swipe a few colour tapes so that he could use them to prop up his chairs at home, as the BBC wages at the time were so low most employees had to live on the street. This is where they have been for the last 25+ years.

It is with regret though that these episodes will never be seen in colour as the engineer in question has decided that the BBC does not deserve to have them back simply because they refused to give Doctor Who the decent budget and time it deserved. Instead what we have is permission to show a collection of colour stills taken from these lost classics. It's true...allegedly

I will go absolutely mad if I here one more time about the BBC's excuse for not making Doctor Who is they do not have the money. For a start they can stop buying every Sci-Fi show under the sun and not showing any of their own. I seem to remember reading an article where the BBC stated that Doctor Who always brought more money back than it cost to make. So what's changed? Well let me guess, the excuse is that audience expectation of special effects has changed. Erm, well when Star Wars came out in the late 70's they didn't take Doctor Who off the air then did they?

I think with the latest technology at hand Sci-Fi can be made on a budget and still look good. Red Dwarf is a perfect example of this. So if it did boil down to just money then why don't the BBC explore other means of funding. How about looking closer to home for funding through coproducing with our own terrestrial channels. They did it with Dennis Potter, so why not Doctor Who.

Also, they could gain extra cash by selling the series on video before broadcast on the BBC to offer fans the chance to see the series first. An attempt at which failed dismally before due to classification problems bringing the release within weeks of the transmission! They could get it right if only they were more organised. But no, they would rather flog the old stories to death on video and spend the money on costume drama. At the end of the day video sales will (eventually) drop off as the BBC will have released every story available. It is quite clear that the BBC have realised this and are reissuing many videos (uncut) just to prolong the end. Then what will they do? DVD?