Missing episode recoveries history

[diankra]

As it came up in another thread, I thought a run-down of which missing episodes were recovered when might be useful for reference (Mods, if not, please delete).

First, the 'easy' early recoveries from within the BBC...

1978: 270 of the first 384 episodes missing (117/134 1st Doctor, 88/119 2nd Doctor, 65/128 3rd Doctor)
When the BBC archives first consolidated the Doctor Who episodes held by the Film Library and on video tape by the Engineering Department, the transmitted episodes from the first three Doctors in existence were as follows:
(1-1) An Unearthly Child: complete
(1-5) The Keys of Marinus episode 5
(2-2) The Dalek Invasion of Earth 5 (35mm transmission copy)
(2-4) The Romans 1&3
(2-5) The Web Planet 2
(2-6) The Crusade 3
(2-7) The Space Museum 3
(2-9) The Time Meddler 2
(3-6) The Ark 3
(3-8) The Gunfighters 4
(4-2) The Tenth Planet 1-3
(4-5) The Underwater Menace 3
(4-6) The Moonbase 2&4
(4-8) The Faceless Ones 1
(5-4) The Enemy of the World 3
(6-7) The Wheel in Space 6 (35mm transmission copy)
(6-1) The Dominators 1,2,4,5. (It's believed that the 35mm transmission copy of episode 3 was actually in existence at the time, but wasn't listed by mistake).
(6-2) The Mind Robber 5 (35mm transmission copy)
(6-3) The Invasion 2,3,5,6,7,8
(6-4) The Krotons 1 (35mm transmission copy), 2&3
(6-5) The Seeds of Death 1,2,4&6, plus 5 (35mm transmission copy)
(6-6) The Space Pirates 2 (35mm transmission copy)
(6-7) The War Games 2,5,8,9
(7-1) Spearhead from Space complete (16mm colour transmission print)
(7-2) The Ambassadors of Death 1 (625 line transmission video tape, as are all later episodes)
(8-3) The Claws of Axos 1&4
(8-5) The Daemons 4
(9-1) Day of the Daleks complete
(9-3) The Sea Devils 4-6
(9-4) The Mutants 3-6
(10-1) The Three Doctors complete
(10-2) Carnival of Monsters complete
(10-3) Frontier in Space 4&5
(10-4) Planet of the Daleks 1,2,4,5,6
(10-5) The Green Death complete
(11-1) The Time Warrior complete
(11-2) Invasion of the Dinosaurs 2-6
(11-3) Death to the Daleks 2-4
(11-4) The Monster of Peladon complete
(11-5) Planet of Spiders complete.
All later stories are complete (though sometimes salvaged from damaged tapes).
In theory, four other episodes which were transmitted from 35mm film should have existed at the film library, but had been junked before 1970 (The Daleks 4, Planet of Giants 3 [tx version], Power of the Daleks 5 and The Wheel in Space 5), along with one 16mm print which had been lent out and never returned (The Dalek Masterplan 4)

Mid 1978: 139 missing episodes (61,76,2)
Later in the year, a large find of missing or incomplete stories was recovered complete from BBC Enterprises, as black and white film prints.
(Season 1-2,3,5,6,7) The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, The Keys of Marinus, The Aztecs, The Sensorites
(Season 2-1,2,3,4,5,7,8) Planet of Giants, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Rescue, The Romans, The Web Planet, The Space Museum, The Chase
(Season 3-6,8) The Ark, The Gunfighters
(Season 6-2,5) The Mind Robber, The Seeds of Death
(Season 7-2,3,4) The Silurians, The Ambassadors of Death, Inferno
(Season 8 - all ) Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos, Colony in Space, The Daemons
(Season 9 - 2,3,4,5) The Curse of Peladon, The Sea Devils, The Mutants, The Time Monster
(Season 10-4&5) Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks
Around the same time, the British Film Institute returned copies of three season six stories which had been donated to them by Enterprises:
(Season 6-1,4,7) The Dominators, The Krotons, The War Games

 

[diankra]

Part two: later recoveries, generally from outside the BBC.

1978 (137 missing episodes): The War Machines 2 returned by Australian collector; The Web of Fear 1 returned from Hong Kong TV station (though it's possible that a copy of this may have already existed at the Film Library, but had been missed during cataloguing, as it was apparently in existence in 1976).
1981 (136 missing episodes): Death to the Daleks 1 returned from BBC Canada (along with colour copies of many other Pertwee episodes). At this point Doctor Who Monthly publishes a list of the missing episodes, attracting more attention to the subject.
1982 (134 missing episodes): The Abominable Snowmen 2 and The Reign of Terror 6 recovered by fans.
1983 (131 missing episodes): Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 recovered by fans (completing the Pertwee era); The Dalek Masterplan 5&10 located in the basement of 'a Mormon Church in Clapham' (well, that's what was reported at the time).
1984 (120 missing episodes): The Celestial Toymaker 4 returned by ABC Australia (though it apparently originated with RTS Singapore); The Wheel in Space 3 recovered by fans; The Time Meddler and The War Machines found complete at a Nigerian TV station (but not returned till 1985 due to a diplomatic incident); The Reign of Terror 1-3 found at a Cyprus TV station.
1987 (118 missing episodes): The Faceless Ones 2 and Evil of the Daleks 2 returned by private collector.
1988 (114 missing episodes): The Ice Warriors 1,4,5&6 found during a final clear out as BBC Enterprises leaves their old offices at Villiers House (initially it had been thought that 2,4,5&6, plus Fury from the Deep 6 had been found, until the actual films were checked, rather than the labels on the cans).
1992 (110 missing episodes): The Tomb of the Cybermen returned by Asia TV Hong Kong.
1999 (109 missing episodes): The Crusade 1 returned by New Zealand film collector.
2003 (108 missing episodes): The Dalek Masterplan 2 returned by retired film technician.
2011 (106 missing episodes): Galaxy 4 pt 3 and The Underwater Menace 2 returned by retired film technician.

 

[Stevil2001]

Anyone who is interested in this should read Richard Molesworth's Wiped!-- second edition covering "Airlock" and The Underwater Menace coming soon.

http://www.telos.me.uk/category.php?id=6#141

 

[bigdaddy]

So like 30% of the original episodes are still missing? I didn't think it was that much.

 

[Phillip Culley]

Nowhere where that much - if you disregard the post 2005 series there are about 700 episodes of Doctor Who; a little over 100 of which are missing which leads to only about 15% of the original episodes being missing.

 

[FalTorPan]

So like 30% of the original episodes are still missing? I didn't think it was that much.

About 39% of the episodes initially thought to be missing are still thought to be missing.

 

[Candlelight]

http://missingepisodes.blogspot.co.nz/p/timeline.html

A few corrections and debunking fan-myths:

Spearhead from Space: Both the negatives and positives were retained.

The Abominable Snowmen 2 and Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1: Both were recovered by Roger Stevens (along with five other episodes) and were handed over to Ian Levine, but Ian chose to retain Dinosaurs 1 as bargaining material for possible later finds. As none came, he returned it the following year.

The Ice Warriors 1: The 'incorrect label' thing is actually only a single hand written note in one corner saying it was part two; the rest of the details on the label refer to part one. This was likely added in error when the films were found in 1988.

The Celestial Toymaker 4: It was leftover from ABC's broadcasts, NOT from RTS in Singapore. Jon Preddle (who runs the BroaDWcast website) informed me this will be corrected in the new version of Wiped! next month.

The Wheel in Space 3 was found by David Stead, who would also recover the unedited and PAL 2" copy of Death to the Daleks 1 in 1991 (which had been abandoned on a loading dock!). Up until then only a 2" NTSC and 1" edited PAL version existed.

 

[Candlelight]

(6-1) The Dominators 1,2,4,5. (It's believed that the 35mm transmission copy of episode 3 was actually in existence at the time, but wasn't listed by mistake).

Didn't the 35mm episode come from the BFI?

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Going by the timeline we're not due to find another until 2015-2019. It's surreal now to imagine them erasing even master copies of that stuff but it was a different mindset.

 

[diankra]

I thought the initial post was a massive enough infodump as it was without getting into the specific details of negatives or positives, Who Found What, How Long They Had It Before Returning It, and later recoveries of improved (colour/stored field/unedited/625-line copies), so did my best to avoid those areas.

The Celestial Toymaker 4: It was leftover from ABC's broadcasts, NOT from RTS in Singapore. Jon Preddle (who runs the BroaDWcast website) informed me this will be corrected in the new version of Wiped! next month.

Ok, I took my version from the original edition of Wiped (where ABC was quoted as saying it definitely wasn't their copy, and must have been sent to them fairly recently), so sounds like you're more up to date. That would be interesting, as it would be the only recovery which was sourced direct from ABC, right?

As for Dominators 3: Assuming that the BFI copies did come from Enterprises, then they'd only have a 16mm copy, which would have been returned along with War Games in July 1978. So the origins of the 35mm copy would still be a mystery, but one best explained by a cataloguing error missing something that was there all along. As Andrew Martin says (Wiped, p.155) "I'm very sceptical about the idea that the 35mm material for episode three of The Dominators was ever anywhere but at the BBC Film Library..."

 

[Candlelight]

ABC also returned The Dominators 5 in 1995, although obviously it was an existing episode.

 

[Klaus]

...as a side note, the Monty Python documentary documentary of a couple of years back mentioned that the only reason the Flying Circus didn't get wiped was that someone at the Beeb called Terry Jones and offered him the chance to buy the tapes. Otherwise it would ALL have been gone... made my blood run cold to think we'd have no TV Python at all.

 

[Zeppster]

Going by the timeline we're not due to find another until 2015-2019. It's surreal now to imagine them erasing even master copies of that stuff but it was a different mindset.

It is all about technology. At the time there wasn't the space to save everything on TV. VHS wasn't around till 1975 and took years before it could be used for recording things. DVD wasn't around till the early 90s. And putting things on a hard drive is really new. That's really the biggest advance we have in saving TV. You can basically download anything that is on TV now. Back then you had to have everything recorded on actual film reels. Fact is there wasn't enough space for this type of thing. So some shows were put on the cutting block. SFDebris has a commentary that is well worth watching on this. We can think of Doctor Who in a different way because we are fans.

http://sfdebris.com/videos/doctorwho/wiped.asp

Star Trek wasn't completely saved from this. The Cage was thought to be completely lost till the late 80s. The first 10 years of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show are gone. Many early sports events in America aren't around anymore.

Finding episodes at this point is extremely hard unless we find out there were a lot more film technicians that were Doctor Who fans. Which we've found 2 in the last decade so you never know.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

^ If they were on tapes that were wiped then I think they had the space to keep at least a master copy.

EDIT: Never mind, badly thought out, I would've thought they'd make room somewhere. Obviously at the time they were not thought to be important but that's still amazing to think now, things being what they are.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

...as a side note, the Monty Python documentary documentary of a couple of years back mentioned that the only reason the Flying Circus didn't get wiped was that someone at the Beeb called Terry Jones and offered him the chance to buy the tapes. Otherwise it would ALL have been gone... made my blood run cold to think we'd have no TV Python at all.

It means I would never have discovered its joys when I was in college.

That makes me wonder what gems have in fact been erased from history.

 

[Klaus]

^^Many of the older shows the Pythons cited as influences, like Spike Milligan, are mostly gone... we're just lucky in this case.

 

[throwback]

To put this in perspective, Sophocles wrote over 100 plays. Someone thought that seven of his plays had value, and were subsequently preserved. This one example has been repeated throughout history. I am happy that we have as many Doctor Who episodes from that era. I would be enthusiastic if additional episodes were found.

 

[Christopher]

To put this in perspective, Sophocles wrote over 100 plays. Someone thought that seven of his plays had value, and were subsequently preserved. This one example has been repeated throughout history.

Well, others were preserved at various times, and subsequently lost at various times. For instance, the Library at Alexandria preserved official copies -- or even originals -- of the plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, and considered them to be of such value that they were reluctant even to loan copies out to anyone. But not everyone values the same things, and those plays and a wealth of other knowledge were lost when the Christians took over Alexandria and burned the library's contents in their purges of pagan culture. There may have been other copies and collections that have been preserved and lost at various times; but those seven happened to be part of a compilation that existed recently enough to have survived to the present.

And so it is with the missing Doctor Who episodes. Which ones survived the purges and which ones didn't was more a matter of chance than deliberate selection.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

As time rolls on a lot of these old shows are more historical curiosities and artifacts than truly cherished anyway. I don't know if twenty, thirty years from how many people are going to be thinking wistfully about lost Troughton episodes.

 

[diankra]

Well, that's impossible to say. If anything, I'd say the Troughton era seems to be more popular now than it was say 25 years ago, and in some ways it seems less dated than the 1980s episodes. Now whether that's just a natural function of distance (20 years old seems dated, 50 seems quaint, 75 seems... who knows yet? Prehistoric? Even better?) only time will tell...