"and at least existing as a foetus during his regeneration scene"

TV Perhaps thanks to the BBC's genome project which is utilising scans of back issues of the Radio Times to create a complete database of all their transmissions, the Doctor Who website has been updated with a nearly all of television Doctor Who giving each episode its own page.  In an announcement. the BBC explain's that in the coming months they'll be updating them with "galleries, clips, fact files and collections about your favourite monsters, companions and Doctors" or what sounds like copying over the content from the old format episode guide into the new, perhaps including the telesnaps.

Philosophically this is quite a big decision.  As soon as the show returned, the old website, which had been thriving during the wilderness years, was rather shunted off and generally forgotten about, findable through a single link hidden on an inner page of via Google.  Bits of it still are. You can't find this page if you're just wandering about.  With each successive new series there's been redesign on redesign, layers upon layers, but now they're embracing the new BBC website format and filling in the gaps.

There's something bracing about clicking on the episode tag now and having Season 17 sitting there.  You can also look at the episodes by date.  I've now realised that the first episode broadcast after my birth was Robot which means I wasn't alive before Tom Baker played the character  (and at least existing as a foetus during his regeneration scene) and that my first Who memory of a scene in The Invisible Enemy was as early as 1977.  I don't remember much else about back then.

It's not a complete broadcast history.  Neither Galaxy or UK Gold presentations are included for obvious reasons.  But it is still possible to see such things as the multiple broadcasts of the Genesis of the Daleks (including a BBC Choice outing in 1999) and the several thousand BBC Three repeats of Blink and every other nu-Who episode.  Interestingly, the Eccleston series hasn't been on since the turn of the decade at least not on a channel that isn't Watch.  There's a story there I'm sure.

There are a few things missing.  Omnibus editions, like the Christmas 1974 repeat of Planet of the Spiders and June 2007 broadcast of The Infinite Quest aren't there.  The special 1991 broadcast of the pilot episode during The Lime Grove Story, a day long festival of programmes marking the closure of the studio, hasn't been thrown in.  Dimensions in Time too, though that can be explained by it having been broadcast as part of Children in Need and Noel's House Party. And that it's Dimensions in Time.

There's some real attention to detail otherwise.  Each of the classic episodes has its correct logo on apart from the final series of the Pertwee years which doesn't have what's more commonly thought of as the Baker diamond as it should do.  Which is ironic because the TV Movie doesn't have the Pertwee logo on it when it really should.  So some attention to detail then.  But this is early days and isn't it great to be reminded that even in 1994, BBC Two decided to broadcast Pyramids of Mars in a lunchtime slot.  I'd forgotten all about that.