As any Doctor Who fan knows, rumors of missing episodes have been swirling for some time. Fans hopes have soared as estimates ranging from sixty to one hundred and six episodes found stashed in Ethiopia-or-maybe-it's-Zambia have been shared and as people have listed favorite missing episodes and hopes.
BBC has finally stepped up and confirmed the less-glamorous truth: Nine episodes from two stories have been found. The Web of Fear is now almost complete--it's still missing episode #3, and the company now has all the episodes from The Enemy of the World.
Two new full (or nearly full) episodes from the Second Doctor's era is quite a find; Troughton's era is sadly underrepresented in current collections.
However, I do have to admit that I wish BBC had gone ahead and announced it yesterday rather than announcing that they were going to announce and giving everyone an extra day plus of highly-caffeinated guesses and hopes.
No one has mentioned yet where the episodes were kept in hiding.
Here's to the half-filled glass, and to a few hours of happy black-and-white viewing in the future.
Episode names and numbers come from the BBC Doctor Who Blog
PS: Do go see the clips they've put up!
Edit: Just after I posted this, someone pointed me to This article from DoctorWho TV. The episodes were found in Nigeria.
In Nigeria? Someone had tapes of them or something? Anyway, I am excited. I kept my expectations low deliberately -- all I wanted was some more of Patrick Troughton, and hooray! That's what I've received! I always thought it was a crying shame that so many of Troughton's episodes got lost. He's my favorite of the first four Doctors.
ReplyDeleteThey were part of an official shipment sent to Nigeria for broadcast & then left stored somewhere in the dust. Funny to think there are or may still be some official tapes stashed here & there around the world.
DeleteI *should* have kept my expectations low. I was *almost* succeeding, and then BBC announced that they were going to make an announcement, and that sounded potentially big, as in really big, so I indulged in some 60 episode daydreams.
I am glad they're Troughton eps, though.