As I speak there are still episodes from 1960's Doctor Who that are still missing. But there may still be hope for us loyal and dedicated fans who desperately want to see these episodes. It has been said that 97 of the missing episodes could be returned to the BBC, an expert has claimed. But it might be best that we bide our time until the secretive private collectors are ready to hand them over.
But more on that in a minute, right now I'd like to go into the background of how this whole ordeal began. In the late 1960's/ early 1970's, the BBC was running out of storage space and that meant them having to scrap, wipe, burn and destroy some of the old tapes they had. And some of those tapes included Doctor Who episodes. Lots of adventures such as: "Marco Polo", "The Daleks Masterplan", "Power of the Daleks", "The Macra Terror", "The Evil of the Daleks", "The Abominable Snowman", "Fury from the Deep", "The Wheel in Space" amongst loads of others now cease to exist.
But, thankfully, Doctor Who was a show that was sold abroad and could be tracked down. And in 2013, that's just what did happened. The announcement was made in October 2013, just weeks before the 50th anniversary special that nine episodes had been discovered. Those being "The Enemy of the World" and "The Web of Fear" from the Patrick Troughton era. "Web of Fear" of course being a story that most fans were excited to see.
After that, there hasn't been any more new announcements of any other findings. But the fans can hope wishing upon a star for more episodes to turn up so that we can see them for the first time.
I remember watching "Enemy of the World" for the first time when it was found as a complete story and feeling so happy and proud to be a fan of the show and watching something so brilliant.
BBC Doctor Who archivist Paul Vanezis, who recovered four missing episodes in the 1980s, has revealed he knows where more of the remaining episodes are located.
Sadly for Whovians like me, some of the William Hartnell and most of the Patrick Troughton era were largely destroyed when the BBC did its spring clean of its archives in the 1970's. It was a time before home video had been invented, so it was decided that the tapes would be either wiped or destroyed. 1970's was moving into an age of colour television and it was decided that no one wanted black and white TV shows again. But a few old episodes were saved and picked up and put into private collections.
Personally, though, I wouldn't say that we should put our hopes up in thinking they'll be an announcement tomorrow of a big find, or any find for that matter. These things will come as shock and at the moment when we are least expecting it. Like in 2011 when "Galaxy 4 Episode 3" and "The Underwater Menace Episode 2" were found. It was a nice surprise but I thought that that would be the last finding of any episodes, and then we got nine in one go in 2013.
Of course, I would love all the missing episodes to be found and returned safe and sound to the BBC. I was watching a reconstruction of "The Wheel in Space Episode 1" that to me is an excellent episode of Doctor Who, one of which I would really like to see in action. It's on my list of episodes to be found.
I'd also liked to see "The Daleks Masterplan", "The Highlanders", "The Faceless Ones", "The Evil of the Daleks", "The Abominable Snowmen", "Fury from the Deep" and episodes 1 and 4 of "The Invasion turn up. I can only keep my fingers crossed and hope that one day, all of them will be found. But anything would be brilliant.
