10 Changes Doctor Who Hoped You Wouldn't Notice

6. Last Of The Time Lords' Original Cut

Doctor Who Third Doctor Eleventh Doctor sonic screwdriver brightened
BBC

Hey Doctor Who fans: did you know that, for years, you might have been watching the wrong version of Series 3 finale Last Of The Time Lords?

The full, untouched, original broadcast version is over 50 minutes long, but when the time came to flog the international rights to the episode, the BBC brought out the scissors and chopped it down to around 46 minutes, omitting scenes like the Sol 3 opening, and Francine Jones confronting the Master at gunpoint.

Sure, different networks have different rules about episode length, but over time, the BBC has allowed this shortened edit to become the "standard" version of the episode on countless streaming platforms, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube - a baffling move considering that episode length doesn't matter when you're putting something on a streaming service.

This change from the broadcast edit to the trimmed edit means that many fans might be ignorant to the fact that they're watching an inferior cut. Even worse, instead of rectifying this issue, the BBC has chosen to remain quiet. Tut tut.

And considering that the shorter version is the one that recently launched on HBO Max, it seems like they're hoping that people will just fail to notice the change.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.