Marco Polo the Myth and Mystery Behind the Doctor Who Story By @Blackadder345

Marco Polo the Myth and Mystery

Behind the Doctor Who Story 

By Will Barber – Taylor

50 Years ago this year, one of the most well-known missing Doctor Who stories, Marco Polo was broadcast. It is the only missing story from the first season of the show and ever since it was wiped it has held an awe of mystery. More copies of it were produced than any other story so if any serial still exists then it is likely to be Marco Polo. What led to the creation of this epic story and what is the story behind it?

Doctor Who – The Missing Companion – Ping-Cho

Every missing episode of Doctor Who is part of the show's mythology. Most are these holy grails that many fans have never seen. They are often thought of as the best of the best and are heavily regarded. What fans know of them are based on memories, novelizations, scripts, Cura tele-snaps, audio recordings and fan reconstructions. Only when these stories are found would the truth be known and still, only from a perspective of watching them in this day and age. We do not have the luxury of enjoying these over the years. As fans we have been able to see stories over and over again thanks to home video. We have picked apart “The Ark” and “Wargames” over and over again. Do these live up to our memories seeing them when they first aired? What about when we saw them at the convention, or bootleg or when they finally came out on DVD?

Doctor Who Missing Episodes - Latest Comments

Nothing official to report on the potential Missing Episode front but there have been some developments that could be seen as some evidence or at least some hope.  Things have been quiet when it comes to rumors but the prevalent theory that is going around is that there might be an announcement on Easter weekend.  What this announcement will contain, who knows.  There are so many things being discussed on the forums, it is hard to even guess.  Some rumors state that the episode "Marco Polo" has been restored and is ready for release any time.  Others state nothing has been restored and no evidence of anything being found.

Steve Roberts, of the Restoration Team went on stage this past weekend at Gallifrey One to basically rip up the detailed information of the "omni-rumor" stating that it was untrue.  He also went on to state that he truly believes that episode hunter Philip Morris has found more missing Doctor Who and that "Marco Polo" was one of those stories.  Roberts has no evidence to support this, he has not seen it or heard of anyone seeing it or worked on it.  This flies in the face of restored reports but, and more importantly, seems to give pretty good support to the possibility that we will see some more found Doctor Who episodes.

Again, this is all guess work and hearsay and we are still not going to dwell on the rumor itself and our individual author opinions about the topic.  We just have to patiently wait.

Here is a link to a Steve Roberts interview where he talks about the Omni-rumor and the potential find of "Marco Polo."


http://www.radiofreeskaro.com/2014/02/16/radio-free-skaro-408-the-case-of-the-missing-episodes/

Technology Report - A Sci-Fi Fan's Dream - The Internet

Observations by Ken Parker

Remember just a few years ago getting Time Screen Magazine and seeing all those cool shows that aired in the UK?  No?  Since I was already a fan of Doctor Who and some other British shows, it seemed to me that the rest of the stuff would be all good but was going to be impossible to see.  At the time shows were slowly coming out on VHS tape but unless I found bootlegs of Time Slip or Doomwatch, I was out of luck. As an American I so badly wanted to see many of those.

Years later we have You Tube and now virtually anything is available to watch.  I have known this for years of course but unless I stumbled across something by accident, I rarely ever thought about hunting down these gems.