Missing Doctor Who Episodes Found!!
Cool news for the serious Who fans (me included). The BBC today revealed that an episode of the 1965 First Doctor story, Galaxy 4, has been recovered along with an episode of the 1967 Second Doctor story, The Underwater Menace. Neither of these stories exist in their entirety in the BBC archives. Each find is significant: this is now the only episode of Galaxy 4 in existence, and while a different episode of The Underwater Menace was discovered some years ago, the “new” one is an earlier episode, and is now the earliest Second Doctor episode in the archives.
If you want to read the whole story, including a brief explanation of why there are missing episodes in the Doctor Who archive at the BBC, here’s the article on the Radio Times website.
Ack! This is part of what’s stopping me from going back and trying to get to know the older Who! I’m something of a compulsive completionist (when I went away to college, my mother taped all my regular shows for me so I could keep up with them on breaks–no DVR then, and no TV in my dorms!) so the idea of only seeing part of a story or even part of a Doctor’s run makes me a little batty. But it’s an exciting find!
I understand totally, and this is why it is so cool that the audio to EVERY episode still exists, thanks to loyal fans in the 60s who would set up tape recorders in front of their TV sets and record the show. Some people have used these audios along with photos taken either in studio or from the TV screen to reconstruct missing stories. And the BBC has even licensed the release of these audios (all nicely restored with narration to describe on-screen action) on CD. So you can still experience, to some extent, the missing stories. And don’t forget the old Target novelizations! I, too, am a bit of a completionist, and have procured audios and reconstructions to fill in the gaps in 60s Who. It’s by no means ideal, but it helps.
I would hate to think of you missing out seven years of great Who stories because of 106 missing episodes. If you’re really interested in hearing missing stories, check out http://www.recons.com/ and also look on Amazon for the BBC audio stories. Also, the DVD set “Lost in Time” contains recovered and restored episodes, as well as recovered clips from otherwise missing stories.
BBC Breakfast are very excited about the news this morning, and encouraging everyone to look in their attics for the other 106 missing episodes.
Until recently, there were some fans that had given up hope of there being any more discoveries. They believed that after 20 years of exhaustive searching, anything that was out there would have turned up by now. This goes to show you *never know* so I’m glad the BBC are throwing their weight behind this news and encouraging people not to give up hope and keep up the search.