Doctor Who s08

[Aractus]

I am guessing that Marco Polo: The Roof of the World is a lost episode, because all I have is the audio accompanied by still pictures.

Kind of annoying and difficult to follow.

Yes, the actor's guild compelled them to erase all tapes - or have them certified as destructed, the only reason why any of the early episodes exist is because they were transferred to film (which of course meant 50i > 25p), this allowed it to be sold internationally because 1. film was much cheaper than videotapes which were extremely expensive, and 2. the film would be put through a telecine to produce 50i or 60i as needed by international standards. There are NO videotapes from the Hartnell era because all were blanked and used again for other episodes or other shows (video tape was expensive, and under their contract with the actor's guild they had to destroy episodes after transmission). After the film was shipped internationally it too had to be certified as destroyed - thank goodness they did a bad job of this which is why so many episodes have survived (way more than other series at the time).

Marco Polo was never sold outside of the UK, no one wanted to pay for a 7 part episode, as such as far as it is known it was never transferred from video to film, and so it's impossible to recover it.

Remarkably, audio exists for all episodes (including missing episodes).