Sfdebris.net

http://sfdebris.com/videos/doctorwho/dwkamelion.php

I was unaware of the "Kamelion Kurse." I guess it's a good thing Five dealt with that the way he did, both in universe and out.

I was unaware that JNT basically wanted a Showbiz Pizza animatronic as a character and thought that would work inside of the show's budget and be better than K9.
I always figured there was more supposed to be happening with Kamelion from watching the shows; at first I thought I had missed episodes or they were being shown out of order. No, there just was literally nothing done with him in between appearances.

I had much the same experience as you. I used to watch the show on PBS back then. Just figured there was more that I wasn't seeing.

...In the immortal words of Loud Kiddington:

Wow, that's sad!

I could never get into the show on PBS. I think it was too British for me and my high school mind. I tried watching the old Dr Who on Netflix, but it was so segmented that it was hard to follow.

I never really got into Doctor Who. I had heard about it from my friends for forever, and I did watch all of the modern series a couple of years ago up to the last episodes available on Netflix at the time. I enjoyed it but it didn't capture my imagination the way it has a lot of other people's.

But I absolutely love hearing the production history on classic Who. Some of it is stranger than fiction, all of it it is fascinating. All of the things about lost episodes and the weirdest ways previously lost footage has turned up, and things like this where the showrunners somehow thought that buying a Chuckee Cheese animatronic to try to make it an actual character was a good idea. (Even once they realized it wouldn't work, couldn't they have put a man in a silver suit and had him act like a robot?) Like ... that is not something I would believe had actually happened on the set of a professional television show in a million years.