Rumours of the recovery of missing episodes of Doctor Who still continue but to date there has been no evidence produced of any finds.
The Yeti’s second adventure in The Web of Fear is rumoured to have been found
An also rumoured recovery is a television interview with the First Doctor, William Hartnell. To date no interviews with Hartnell, out of character, are known to exist. The opportunity to hear Hartnell speak in his normal accent is widely sought after.
The Enemy of the World is one of the rumoured Missing Episodes finds. In this serial Patrick Troughton plays the dictator Salamander who is the spitting image of the Doctor
Outpost Skaro has reported on its Twitter feed that a “mate of mine is saying that people are beginning to see Enemy of the World … hope it’s true!” The most commonly bandied around number for returned episodes is 17, although claims that as many of 94 of the missing 106 have been returned, have been made. The oft quoted 17 returned would probably entail all seven episodes of Marco Polo, and five each of The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear. Episode three of Enemy and episode one of Web are held in the BBC Archives and have been released on the triple DVD set, Lost in Time.
Episode 3 of The Enemy of the World and Episode 1 of The Web of Fear are held in the BBC Archives and have been released on the triple DVD set, Lost in Time
Given the decimated nature of the archival material of Patrick Troughton’s tenure as Doctor, it would be an incredible coup to have returned two complete and consecutive Season Five serials. Season Five hitherto has one complete serial, The Tomb of the Cybermen, and four out of the six episodes of The Ice Warriors. The two missing episodes of The Ice Warriors have been animated and the complete serial is being released on DVD later this month.
The Ice Warriors is to be released in late August 2013. Included on the DVD release will be the four episodes held in the BBC Archives, together with two animated missing episodes
Anyone interested in an in depth analysis of 1960s Doctor Who and the missing episodes is advised to track down the updated edition of Richard Molesworth’s seminal work Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes. The revised edition was released by Telos Publishing Ltd earlier this year . Wiped! is presently available for purchase online through The Book Depository UK.
The updated edition of Richard Molesworth’s book Wiped! was released by Telos Publications Ltd earlier this year
You can find my first article on the Missing Episodes Hysteria here.
Vivien Fleming
©Vivien Fleming, 2013.
The Doctor Who Mind Robber 
The Hartnell interview is no rumour. It has been confirmed. It’s from 1967, three minutes long, and will be packaged on the Tenth Planet DVD.
As for the rest… I await Missing Episode Weekend with anticipation.
FM
Thanks for the update Frivolous Monsters. I’m pleased to see that the Hartnell interview is definitely confirmed!
The whole story appeared today. You can read about it here: http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2013/08/hartnell-tv-interview-discovered-160813184817.html
Cheers! That’s a great find. I’m very much looking forward to the release of The Tenth Planet.
What is even better than the Hartnell news is the discovery, via the Bleeding Cool website, that bolsters the claim that all the remaining Dad’s Army episodes have been found. Mainly because the BBC has already amended their second series episode guide website with: “There will be 6 episodes. More information coming soon.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t2ksr/episodes/guide
That sounds very promising. We can only hope that some Doctor Who episodes were found in the same place as the Dad’s Army ones.
Well, I certainly hope that it’s true, but I’m not going to hold my breath. Don’t count your missing episodes until they’re recovered, or something. Yeah, it would be great if this was true. Even a mere handful of episodes, say four or five, would be a HUGE discover. Hell, at this point, I won’t be greedy; I’ll settle for just one! Anyway, yeah, I am very cautiously optimistic. But, to quote an exchange from The Armageddon Factor…
The Doctor: Where’s your joy in life? Where’s your optimism?
Romana: It opted out.
K9: Optimism: belief that everything will work out well. Irrational, bordering on insane.
Cheers Ben!
I have remained skeptical of all the rumors about the recovered episodes, but I would love it if it was true. I’d love to see more of Troughton’s time as the Doctor, so I’d be happy if they had even found one more episode. I guess we’ll find out soon!
I think I’d be happy with a couple more censor clips. Anything that adds a sense to what the broadcast looked like would be good.
Just learning about this rumour and I agree that fans should be cautious. Even if ‘lots of cans’ were found in Africa (admittedly a good location for old BBC shows), we must remember their age – 16mm black-and-white film prints cannot last forever and sometimes only a few extracts can be reclaimed. That said, if it’s only 1 or 2 episodes – or 5-minutes worth of clips – it would be a welcome addition to the Dr. Who archive.
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