Over 100 Missing Episodes of Doctor Who Located

MajikJon writes "The BBC junking policies of the '60s and '70s resulted in the loss of hundreds of episodes of the classic series in its earliest years. Through the work of ardent fans over the succeeding decades, dozens of these lost episodes have been painstaking recovered and added back into the BBC archives. Now, it seems, the searchers have struck the mother lode. According to the Wikipedia, there are currently 106 missing episodes of the serial. If reports are correct, we may finally get to see all the episodes."

Interesting.

[Delusion_]

I'm not a fan of the series in any incarnation, but assuming the report is accurate, I'm thrilled that those that are fans may finally be able to dig a little deeper into the archives.

And thanks to the internet being the world's most effective copying machine, if these episodes do release, we'll never have to worry about this particular series going dark again.

I'm always a little intrigued by some of the other long-running shows where archival is not (at the time) a financially sound move. I have to wonder exactly how many episodes of, say, daytime soap operas are lost. Many? Most? The airing schedule on some of the longest-running is so frequent that catching up from a series from beginning to end (if it were possible) would take 6 or so years if you tried to plow through at 40 hours a week.

Re:This is still not actually confirmed

[findoutmoretoday]

No problem, being a fan is talking about the series, not watching them. I even secretly hope it's not true, otherwise I have to wade through hundred passed episodes.

What the effing fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is a really big deal for the BBC and is set to make them millions from the sale of the DVDs."

Hopefully the BBC doesn't make a penny selling anything related to these episodes. The BBC didn't want them. They shouldn't have them.

Re:Interesting.

[realityimpaired]

It's a tabloid newspaper, on a Sunday, when all the journalists are at home, and they just make shit up instead. I'm going for 100% untrue, until proved otherwise. Fan sites seem completely dismssive also.

The proof is in the pudding, but I will point out that the tabloid newspapers tend to have better fact checking than the mainstream news because of the risk of getting sued for libel. It's unlikely that somebody'll sue them for reporting incorrectly that episodes of Dr. Who have been recovered, but they employ people to verify facts because it's *very* likely that somebody'll sue them if they report that Celebrity X got arrested after a 3-hour high speed police chase, and that they were high on cocaine, completely naked, and had a dead hooker in the boot at the time.

Re:We don't remember what we saw, only what we fel

[Tapewolf]

The point is, even if we unearth all those missing 106 episodes, the actual episodes might not stand up to all the hype and expectation heaped up on them.

'Tomb of the Cybermen' actually did, for me, at least. I thought it was a rather slick production given the budget. Other stuff from that era is distinctly variable in quality (e.g. the little city model in 'The Krotons' which I honestly thought was supposed to be a heap of stones).

Nostalgia doesn't really enter into it for me because I never got to see the original broadcasts. In actual fact I only got into Dr. Who really when they repeated the Tom Baker episodes in the 90s and I found them to my liking.

Re:Interesting.

[BigBadBus]

Its because the different departments of the BBC didn't speak to each other. Occasional filmed episodes of many TV shows wound up at the BBC Film Archives, but BBC Enterprises held just about all the original kinescopes/films for overseas sales. When BBC Ents decided it didn't want their episodes, they didn't bother to check with the archives whether they would want them instead of ditching them. BBC Ents held videotape copies of the original shows, but the master tapes were held by the Engineering Department who would wipe and reused the tapes after a number of years.