The BBC today
confirmed recent reports from the Mirror and Radio Times that missing Doctor Who episodes have been found. While they haven't told us yet exactly how many, nor when/how they will become available to the public, they have said that "a number" of early episodes have been located. Now we've all been burned before. Just as recently as this summer, there were rumors of a large cache of episodes located in Western Africa. The rumor mill has, this week, been saying that episodes were located in Ethiopia. I generally took all these rumors cum grando salis, but then reports came that a press conference was scheduled; one that included odd-looking, TV-shaped invitations. I started to hope, and now it looks like the hope has turned into a reality. For the uninitiated, there are
missing episodes from the First and Second Doctor's eras because the BBC "junked" many of them back in the 1970s. This was done for several reasons, including union rules regarding repeats and the expense of video tape, as well as the expense of storing tapes. Copies of every older episode were sent out to various foreign markets, and that's why there may well be stories found in places like Ethiopia. Heck, an entire print of the Second Doctor story "Tomb of the Cybermen" was once located in Hong Kong. Other episodes have turned up in personal collections, boot sales, and, memorably, in the basement of a Mormon temple.
2|Entertain, the DVD arm of the BBC, has been releasing incomplete stories on DVD for a few years now, and in those they've replaced the missing episodes with animated versions. This means that regardless of what missing episodes the BBC have located, at least we can see see "complete" versions of "The Reign of Terror", "The Tenth Planet", "The Invasion", "The Ice Warriors" and, next year, "The Moonbase". While we don't yet know what has been located, I wouldn't be at all surprised if missing episodes from "The Moonbase" were among the recovered ones, as it was supposed to be out on DVD this month and was pushed back. We all have our dream stories we'd like to see recovered, of course. If I could make up a wishlist of Second Doctor stories (and, indeed, this cache is, according to the rumors, Second Doctor-related), I'd want "The Power of the Daleks", which was the first Troughton episode, followed by "The Highlanders", which introduced Jamie. There are also no existing episodes from "The Macra Terror" or "Fury from the Deep", so getting some of those would be nice, as would anything that can complete stories that we have in partial form. But really, any find is nice. If all the BBC have located are copies of the two missing episodes of "The Invasion", which we now have in animated form. That would be great! If they've found the complete run of Troughton stories, that would be even better! No matter what they have found, however, we can all be very happy they found anything. It helps make the 50th anniversary just that much sweeter.