The Doctor Who Missing Episodes Menace - Parts 1 and 4 Only

The Release of The Underwater Menace

Is this the wind blowing in the right direction?

By Ken Parker

It has been a long time since we have looked at the Doctor Who missing episode situation and for good reason.  Nothing has changed. Since the big reveal in 2013 there has been nothing officially reported. The final DVDs were released and "The Underwater Menace" cancelled, but that has changed.

A quick recap (okay not that quick)–

Doctor Who - The Macra Terror Reviewed By @Paul_Bowler

Doctor Who:

The Macra Terror

Reviewed by Paul Bowler

Having seen the image of a giant claw on the TARDIS time scanner, the Doctor, Polly, Ben, and Jamie arrive on an unknown planet in the future where they visit a human colony. They encounter Medok a crazed colonist, who is quickly arrested by Ola, the Chief of Police. The colony seems to be a happy place and is run just like a giant holiday camp. However, the Doctor is uneasy, despite the assurances of the Colony Pilot and the message of greeting from the mysterious Colony Controller who appears on a screen to welcome them.

The colony has in fact been secretly taken over by grotesque crab-like creatures known as the Macra, who have brainwashed the citizens and forced them to mine a gas for them, one toxic to humans, but essential for the Macra’s survival. Ben also succumbs to Macra’s influence and turns against the Doctor and his friends. Fortunately he manages to recover in time and helps the Doctor destroy the gas pumping equipment to kill the Macra. The colonists want the Doctor to be their new Pilot. Appalled by such a prospect, the Doctor quickly guides his companions away, dancing past the celebrating colonists as they depart.

Top 10 things to do while waiting for the missing Doctor Who episodes to be returned

By Ken Parker

A hopeful article for sure. In this week of accusations and growing frustrations along with silence from the Restoration Team (could be a good thing), here are a few things to do to pass the time for the announcement of found episodes.

What Other Missing Shows Could Be Found? Part Two

By Ken Parker

Welcome to part 2 of this article series. When I took this article on I figured I could easily come up with a fairly detailed list of sci-fi fantasy tv shows from Britain that are incomplete or missing that we might see recovered.  If these rumors of a huge find of film cans is even partially true, we could be looking at a massive about of recovered TV.

While I found many very informative websites, it was very difficult to compile this list as there are so many shows out there missing. I was hoping to find a definitive site and one that could perhaps come up with an estimate of what percentage is missing.  Of course what is missing and what can be recovered are two different animals.  So much live TV is gone forever.  These early teleplays and the like were only meant to be shown once and the value of these productions was not seen back before the late 50's.  beyond historical value, nothing was ever shown again and so what was the point.  The invention of the video tape changed all that and recordings were made for documentation.  

Unfortunately the value was still not realized and orders to junk many of the video tapes were made. Thankfully telecine was done, copying videos onto film for sales abroad.  This process would end up saving the vast majority of British TV that had been previously junked.  Most if not all of Doctor Who's original video tapes from the 60's are gone and everything that exists is from film.

It might seem odd to read an article about these lost treasures from someone who never seen them, coming from America.  I became fascinated with British sci-fi in my younger years and actively sought to see as much of it as I could.  There is so much still out there to see and if these rumors are true, much much more to come.

So here are some more series, most of which I have never personally seen, that sound interesting.

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/

Doctor Who Magazine Special - The Missing Episodes The 1st Doctor

Doctor Who Magazine is releasing a special that has telesnaps from the missing stories.  The first one has the 1st Doctor stories Marco Polo, The Crusade, The Savages, The Smugglers and The Tenth Planet. 

Classic Dr Who Awesome News: Underwater Menace Episode 2 and Galaxy 4 Episode 3 Found At last

Great news for Doctor Who fans.  It is being reported by the Doctor Who News Page and the BBC itself that the classic William Hartnell story Galaxy 4 Episode 3 "Airlock" and the Patrick Troughton story The Underwater Menace episode 2 have been found and aired at the British Film Insitute's Missing Believed Wiped event today.  This is pretty awesome news as it was believed that most missing stories from this era would probably be no longer found.  With this discovery lets hope that more missing Doctor Who stories will be found.