Color Restored to Pertwee-Era Story

The long delayed DVD release of the seven-part Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story “The Ambassadors of Death” has paid off. The BBC reports that the entire story has been restored to full-color.

The full story existed in a black and white prints in the BBC archives with a couple of isolated clips and episodes retained in the original color. The restoration team attempted to restore the color to the full story by marrying the black and white prints to an off-air color recording of the story from Canada for its VHS release. At the time, the expense of restoring the story led to only episodes four and five getting the full treatment with some isolated moments from various episodes also getting restored.

The VHS version was a hybrid of the color footage and black and white footage.

Now using the original techniques and a new method to extract color information from the black and white film print (as was done for “Planet of the Daleks”), all seven episodes have been restored to the original color version and will be released on DVD later this year or in early 2013.

With this move, that means only one Pertwee era story is in need of restoration–the six part classic, “The Mind of Evil.”