The Reconstructor Has A Master Plan

It is a big topic, the idea of "reconstruction" of lost works.  In the discussion topic for Jukebox Sample Explorer someone unimpressed with our machine overlords linked to this popular old video I'd never seen piss-taking the Beatles mythology:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z2vU8M6CYI&feature=youtu.be&t=124

This does also take the piss out of the "reconstructor" as well.  The "reconstruction" here is spearheaded by an arrogant prick who has made a slab of incomprehensible noise and declared it to be genius.  This is a fairly cynical take for sure and not one I'd fully agree with, but I think there's an underlying point - a reconstruction is only as good as the reconstructor.  I recall reading about someone who decided to re-film "The Magnificent Ambersons" based on Welles' notes, re-creating the lost footage, and the opinions I read were unilaterally was that this person was, you know, no Orson Welles.

The saving grace of Doctor Who reconstructions is that the missing episodes are, by and large, not very good.  There are bits of them that are brilliant, and a lot of these bits we have.  Tristam Cary's soundtrack, for instance.  The whole thing taken in context can be underwhelming, though.  What would we think of "Tomb of the Cybermen" if all that existed of it was the footage of the Cybermen emerging from their tombs?  The same as we thought of it when it was entirely missing, only moreso - it would be seen as _the_ lost masterpiece of Who.

Reconstructions are a form of alternate history, I think.  "What might have been" isn't, for me, always sad, though of course there is a deep sadness in it.  "What might have been" is a key to understanding what might still be.  Rewriting the past, or to be more accurate _re-interpreting_ the past, helps me survive what is honestly a mostly horrible present.

The Daleks' Masterplan as a whole is less compelling to me than certain bits of it.  It's maddeningly inconsistent, and it's not even Nation vs. Spooner inconsistency - Episode 2 and episode 5 are totally tonally different.  And I have the whole thing mixed up in my head with the work of Douglas Adams.  In my memory episode 5 involves hyperintelligent mice, for instance, and the whole bit where the TARDIS materializes on the cricket pitch in episode 8, in my imagination they leave with the Ashes.  It's the culmination of a failed attempt at making the show more "adult" after Lambert's departure put together by a couple of staggeringly misguided men whose understanding of "adulthood" wasn't any more sophisticated or nuanced than Frank Miller's.  There's bits of it that, cheap as they are, stick in my head.  The Daleks with flamethrowers, burning the jungle - in my mind this is silent because I first saw it as silent film trims.  The conference of the bizarre and evil aliens.  Katarina being sucked out of an airlock.  And on top of that, my memories are of things I didn't see - Katarina's lifeless body spinning in silent space, Sara Kingdom aging decades in seconds and crumbling to dust (probably a lot of Indiana Jones shit going on in my mind there), the Meddling Monk being marooned on an isolated volcanic planet to never be seen again.

To me, there's not a lot of difference between that and, I don't know, remaking, or re-editing, the Doctor Who story Inferno in the same way.  Maybe doing it as a mash-up with Clouzot.  That's the potential I see in these things, and nobody's in a position to realize that potential right now.