Two Tom Baker adventures from his Doctor Who time have left the BBC iPlayer service with little fanfare, it’s been discovered.
It’s been around a year now since the BBC added pretty much everything it could find Doctor Who related, and added it to the iPlayer service. I know it’s not just me that’s spent a lot of time digging back through the Doctor Who archives, and it’s been a delight to do so.
A rights issue stopped the very first Doctor Who story – An Unearthly Child, starring William Hartnell – from appearing on the service. But every other story from the main run of the show was available.
Well, until the start of this month. As many have noticed, a pair of Tom Baker-headlined stories from the 13th series of the show are now showing as unavailable. Two cracking stories, too: Terror Of The Zygons and The Seeds Of Doom.
Both stories were penned by Robert Banks Stewart, and they were the only stories he’d ever write for the show across his extensive career. Following the clues to the most simple conclusion, it may well be that the BBC no longer has the rights for the stories on iPlayer, from Robert Banks Stewart’s estate. The mystery may be as straightforward as that, although inevitably there’s been no specific confirmation.
The stories are still widely available on physical media and via the premium bit of ITVX that’s superseded the BritBox streaming service.
As a spokesperson for BBC iPlayer, and a widely reported one, has said, “our programmes are only available for a set amount of time and after this expires, they are removed from iPlayer. How long we can make content available for comes down to the rights agreements, or there could be legal or technical issues that affects it. We aim to make programmes available for as long as we possibly can.”
The Whoniverse section of BBC iPlayer is still a treasure trove of Doctor Who of course. But it does beg the question as to how long what’s there will remain intact. It also all gives a hint as to the complexities involved in putting that Whoniverse collection together in the first place. It sounds like somebody, somewhere, had to do an awful of paperwork. I’m glad they did it…!
