BritBox, a streaming service for British TV that the BBC and ITV launched last month, announced today that it’s getting a much needed infusion of content with the addition of classic episodes of Doctor Who. That’s notable for fans, given that there’s been no legal way to stream any of the original 26 seasons of the series since they left Hulu in 2016. That move left frustrated fans with a choice between buying individual episodes on services like iTunes or Amazon Instant Video (which both have limited selections) or buying expensive DVD sets to be able to watch older episodes.
The availability on BritBox gives fans looking to catch up on the history of the series an option, even if it’s in the form of yet another paid monthly streaming service, this one aimed strictly at dedicated Anglophiles.
BritBox will also curate the classic Doctor Who episodes with specific collections, allowing viewers to easily find all the episodes with say, just Peter Davidson’s Fifth Doctor, or see every encounter between the Doctor and the Daleks. BritBox is also hoping to eventually release audio-only versions of some of the lost episodes of the series that have vanished due to poor archiving, which would be a nice bonus for fans.
Unfortunately, while BritBox may be the only place for US fans to stream classic episodes, it’ll only get you so far: Amazon still has an exclusivity deal for all current and future episodes of the modern continuation of the franchise, tracked from 2005 onward.