British broadcasting executives actively deleted or taped over dozens of early 'Doctor Who' episodes in the sixties and seventies just to save a few measly pennies on storage space and magnetic tape.

A closer look

British broadcasting executives actively deleted or taped over dozens of early 'Doctor Who' episodes in the sixties and seventies just to save a few measly pennies on storage space and magnetic tape. The BBC had a strict corporate policy of wiping old broadcasts because literally nobody in management could comprehend the future concept of home video or lucrative reruns, assuming once a show aired, it was utterly worthless forever. Because of this bureaucratic penny-pinching, devoted sci-fi fans have spent the last half-century desperately hunting down blurry film copies from random television stations in Nigeria and Hong Kong just to piece together the first Doctor's adventures. It perfectly encapsulates the profound shortsightedness of media conglomerates who will gladly burn their own historical archives to the ground if an accountant tells them it will shave a fraction of a percent off the quarterly budget