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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Now that the Blake's 7 series 3 Blu-ray Collection has been announced, here's what will be included in the PDF Archive on this release. Enjoy!

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Very sad to hear about the death of BBC film cameraman, John Walker. I'd known John for many years and he was always so willing to help out on the Doctor Who DVD/BR range with information, identifying people in photos or helping to track down others in the film unit. Top bloke.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

TARDIS Vol 1/11 from Oct/Nov 1976 (when The Face of Evil was in studio), published this, hinting that the new companion was going to be played by Emily Richard - a name that never appears in the lists of people they saw for the role of Leela. I wonder where they got that idea from?

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Around that. Started about 7.30 in the evening and went on until around midnight.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

As Sir David Attenborough turns 100 today, here's his memo from December 1966 as Controller of BBC2 to Dennis Scuse at Television Enterprises, turning down the idea that Terry Nation's planned colour Dalek series could find a home on his channel.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Aww, I've only just heard that the lovely House of Cards trilogy director, Paul Seed, died a few weeks ago. It was his appearance as the Graff Vynda-K in The Ribos Operation that led Graham Williams to assist him in getting onto the BBC directors' course.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

I was camping in the grounds of Longleat, my first experience of doing so. I don't think I've ever been so cold.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Oh, I don't think there's any truth in that at all, Jonny.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Just a few more hours until two "new" episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan are available to view. That said, I'm still bitter about the fact that we never got to see the pilot's "space playing cards" that were supposed to appear in Day of Armageddon!

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Ah, so that's the image that's being referred to here. Nice to finally see it after all these years!

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Well, that's this visit to the BBC Written Archive over and done with. 5882 scans and images obtained. Brain fried. 😀

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Five full days. Start at 10am when I’m allowed in then work flat out, no breaks, until I get kicked out at 5pm. 🙂

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Back here again for my 20th visit whilst working on the Doctor Who Blu-ray Collections! Here all week, gathering material for the next unannounced 2026 release as well as making a start on the scanning for the two releases after that (probably).

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Reposted by Richard Bignell

Kenny Smith @finishedzine.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

🚨NEW EPISODE!🚨 The 500th episode of the Power of 3 has just dropped. We look at a #DoctorWho lost story, The Zeldon, by William Emms, originally discussed for the Fifth Doctor. We bring it to life with 4 fab readers and discuss the plot. on.soundcloud.com/h3U94IcTdcDI...

soundcloud.com

500: The Zeldon

The Power of 3 reaches its 500th episode - woohoo! For a podcast that started in 2019, we've done not too badly, with our mix of regular co-conspirators, including Tom Harris, David Steel, Kenny Smit

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

Two years before my effort, Jan Pinkava won the Young Film Makers' Competition. He subsequently went on to win two Oscars for his work at Pixar.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

I recently found the judge's letter I received with regards to my entry to Screen Test's annual Young Film Makers' Competition back in 1982. I love how they bothered to give proper consideration to the entries and the kind and encouraging nature of their comments.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

It's in DWB #59 from October 1988. They printed this part of the interview over brown-toned photographs, which doesn't help when it comes in trying to read the thing!

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

Back in 1988, Gerry Davis said in an interview that when he was story editor on Doctor Who, one of the first people he commissioned to try and write for the programme was Roy, but there's no evidence of this in the BBC Written Archives. Did Roy ever have any memories of this happening?

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

And thanks to the British Newspaper Archive uploading the Evening News to their repository last year, we now have William Hall's account of being involved with The Feast of Steven.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

The PDF Archive for the Doctor Who Season 21 Blu-ray Collection has finally been locked, so here's what's going to be included this time round - a total of 7706 pages of material, the second largest so far. It brings the running total across the 19 releases to 78,493 pages!

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Reposted by Richard Bignell

Richard Latto @richardlatto.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Delighted to announce after many years of trying to get this to happen, the lovely people at North One & UKTV saw the opportunity and we're making this incredibly special series. A joy to work with these teams and of course with Sir David and the rest of the fantastic OFAH cast.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

I'm part of a film collecting group on Facebook. Back in 2022, I asked the members whether they had made any firm plans as to what should happen to their collections when they die. These were the results. This is one of the reasons why the work of @filmisfabulous.bsky.social is so important.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

The daily PasB logs are included on a number of the Collections, but after a time, the log stopped in that format and they reverted to just using the PasC sheets, which form part of the PDF production paperwork anyway.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

The hired-in metal condenser panels seen hanging in the top left of the photo and in the middle of the studio layout have been used many times over the years and were the same ones reused for some of the new filming for the 2017 version (image (c) John Kelly) www.endofthelane.co.uk/Shada-Blog-4...

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

The overhead image helps to make geographic sense of the photo of the partly erected (but not dressed) studio set looking towards the TARDIS console room, lab set and the back of the TARDIS storage room.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

It's been kicking around in fandom for about 40 years, so it's pretty well known about. It's not a great story, though. Looking forward to listening to the podcast!

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

"No, Malcolm. You've misheard. Jenna Stannis is a Space *Pirate*..." 🤣

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

And a couple of rather nice Blake's 7 Blu-ray Collection subtitling goofs for Series 2 that we caught along the way...

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Apologies for the lateness, but here is the breakdown of the PDF Archive on the new Blake's 7 Blu-ray Collection for Series 2, this time with a total of 3556 pages of stuff!

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Here are the contacts. I had a nasty feeling that Reach would begin dumping vast swathes of negative libraries when they started to take over multiple local newspapers.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

I bought several of their Shada photos years ago. I’ve still got the contact sheet of all of them somewhere.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

What "previous upscaling method" has The Android Invasion been through that you can point to as being any different?

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

You see, I find all this very disingenuous. The sign would take up 2.1 x 1.7mm on the original 16mm frame and then be transferred on a not-great telecine machine. On the original Quad tape, the sign is barely any different to this because the detail simply isn't there. I find this perfectly legible.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

That's as transmitted and it's called undergrowth! 🤣

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Also from the 6th August 1966 edition of Jackie magazine, we learn that Roger Daltrey was a big fan of Doctor Who and had two Louis Marx Daleks in his flat! Mr Who loves Dr Who!

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

The British Newspaper Archive has recently put up the entire run of the girls' magazine, Jackie (1964-93), including their 1969 serialised ‘Private Life of Frazer Hines’ strip. This is the somewhat wonky section covering Frazer's Doctor Who career (and, of course, bits of his love life!)

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

It's actually quite a Sutekh thing to say!

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

I don't think they'd have any interest in taking them, to be honest and sometimes scripts are no help at all. It wouldn't surprise me if a percentage of it is done by running the dialogue through a program rather than by a real person anyway.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

No, we've always done it and we flag up hundreds of corrections along the way. It may be that we flagged it and they accidentally missed it during whilst correcting all the others or it could have been that we just couldn't work out what was really said as there's only a rehearsal script for Part 2.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

2/2 - This one is from the BBC trail for the week of Doctor Who repeats (Planet of Evil and The Sontaran Experiment) in July 1976. Sarah sees Styre for the first time and is supposed to think its Commander Linx, the Sontaran she encountered in The Time Warrior. Instead, she just goes…

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

1/2 - With the Doctor Who Season 13 Blu-ray Collection arriving, here are a couple of fun corrections we had to make to the subtitler’s work on this set. This one from Pyramids of Mars (obv), where the subtitler seemed to forget that Sutekh’s puppet was actually named “Scarman”...

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

2/2 - All bangers, the flame is revived with a Little Demon from Standard, whilst Bradwell's Mighty Atom and Thunderclap were given to the Sisterhood by the Doctor as they leave. Glad to be of service!

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

1/2 - With the Season 13 Collection beginning to arrive, for those of you even vaguely interested in such things, the fireworks used by the Doctor in The Brain of Morbius to help the Sisterhood with the dying flame were all quite genuine.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

That's one of the shots from the day at Denham Aerodrome.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

Pip and Jane were interviewed in DWM 552 and mentioned the story, with Pip confirming that they had never actually done any work on it. Ian Levine insists that they were commissioned purely as a cover so that Eric Saward could write the story... 🙄

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

Oh, there are certainly commissioning documents relating to Gallifrey. They were commissioned on 1 March 1985 to write four episodes. They were paid for Episode 1, but when the idea was quashed, that payment went towards their writing of The Ultimate Foe (aka Vervoids) a year later.

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Richard Bignell @nothinglane.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

There's virtually nothing about unmade stories (maybe the odd reference here or there) other than the contractual information for the writers involved. Just to clarify, what story are you referring to? 🙂

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