10 Doctor Who Episodes More Important Than You Realised
1. The Chase
With The Beatles appearing in Doctor Who in Season 1, it's a good time to remind ourselves of their earliest connection with the show.
In an incredible bit of irony, a clip of The Beatles performing Ticket to Ride on Top of the Pops only exists because it's preserved in a bit of 1960s Doctor Who, one of the biggest victims of the BBC's notorious junking policy.
The opening scenes of 1965's The Chase see the First Doctor introduce his companions to the Time-Space Visualiser, which allows them to view moments from history like they were a TV program (basically Rick and Morty's Interdimensional Cable before it was a thing).
One of the sequences was some "classical music" – the Beatles performing live. The sequence was lifted from an episode of the BBC's Top of the Pops, which no longer exists in the archive, meaning that this little snippet is all that remains of the performance.
However, if writer Terry Nation had his way, the clip wouldn't have been included at all. The original script for The Chase would've shown The Beatles, in old-man makeup, performing at a 50th anniversary concert in the 21st century.
Keen for the Beatles' young fans not to be put off by middle-aged versions of their idols, manager Brian Epstein turned down the offer, and the Top of the Pops clip was used instead.