So there’s excitement again about missing episodes of a certain BBC SF TV show possibly turning up… a couple of years ago there was also excitement on this subject, though the latter was somewhat quickly squashed, and similarly there was a bit of excitement when Sue Malden said something else about missing episodes at a big TV-related event. In both cases it appears that the episodes in question weren’t new discoveries, but ones that had been “known” for some years to exist in private collections. But there’s a new addition to these reports that looks… promising?
The development comes from Film is Fabulous, which is an organisation (now a registered charity too) that’s operated by John Franklin (from the original Guardian article above), and it’s basically about helping private film collectors with cataloguing and preserving their stuff and hopefully rediscovering lost film and TV in doing so. They have indeed succeeded in recovering an assortment of long-lost TV, even from the ’50s, and that talk with Sue Malden took place at one of FiF’s events. Which is why it’s interesting that they recently posted this comment on Facebook (grabbed it from Reddit):
As mentioned by Sue Malden at our RECOVERED event in May, we are aware of several missing episodes of Doctor Who (Sue stated one or two, but there are more than this) in private film collections in the U.K. We are liaising with the individuals about cataloguing and preserving their entire collection, including the missing Doctor Who episodes, and ensuring that copies are returned to the BBC. We expect to make a detailed announcement shortly.
Obviously the Who fandom on YT are bouncing up and down and expecting great things… I’m, well, remaining a bit sceptical still. Cos on the face of it, this just looks like another iteration of the episodes we already “know about” that no one has ever proven to actually exist… on the other hand, of course, this comes from an actual organisation, a charity no less, rather than some random goon on the Internet; FiF actually has something to lose if they turn out to be wrong after saying this.
Accordingly, I’m actually inclined to take this with more seriousness than usual; a statement from an actual organisation like FiF has potentially far greater credibility than the aforementioned random goon. And yet… I still can’t get too worked up about the news. Cos it’s only “news” in inverted commas, really. FiF might have something. No one is saying what (and it probably won’t be much if it’s anything). And I see a few cynics claiming the “news” is connected with FiF’s recently gained charitable status and their requests for donations since then which, I don’t know, may not be entirely wrong… I think I’ll hold off getting excited until someone offers tangible proof of any of this being correct.
