Ambassadors Delayed

2|Entertain have announced that the DVD release of the Third Doctor story The Ambassadors of Death has been delayed due to ongoing restoration issues.

It was hoped that the story would be out later this year and it was due to be released along with the 1977 story The Sun Makers. However the company confirmed via their twitter account that the story will not now be released this year.

The story only existed in the BBC Archives in a mixture of formats. Although the original Transmission Master of Episode One exists, the rest of the story was only kept as 16mm black and white film. A second generation colour copy exists as an off air recording from WNED Channel 17 in Buffalo, and this was used to restore episodes five and six to colour for the 2002 Video release. However the quality of the colour recording was not good enough to allow for the restoration of the rest of the story.

Earlier this year it was reported that the remaining episodes were being restored to colour using the same technique applied to Episode Three of the 1973 story Planet of the Daleks. However it appears this process has run into problems and the release date has been delayed to give the restoration team more time to work on the project.