For fans ‘of a certain age’ even the notion of an announcement that missing Doctor Who episodes have been recovered would have been huge HUGE news. Even as far back as the 80’s, this was a singular focus for so many fans at the time. This was the age of the first great expansion of Doctor Who in the US, and while it seemed that the amount of Doctor Who to go through was endless, the knowledge that, at one point, there had been even more, was so tantalizing that the completist part of fan-gene always looked for more.
The Tomb of the Cybermen found in or behind a file cabinet in Hong Kong in 1993, even if apocryphal, was probably the last major drop of missing episodes being found and only added to the legend. A few more have turned up down through the years from various stories (The Crusades, The Underwater Menace) but nothing which significantly completed what was once incomplete. That is until tomorrow (October 10th, 2013) as of this writing.
Given the ephemeral nature of the web it’s likely the disclosure about the find will be made before this is read by you Tour Patron, but we’ll wade into the waters of having our ‘wish list’ for what is coming back into the fold, in quite particular order …
The Web of Fear. Having had this story written about, literally yesterday, for the 50 for 50 Countdown, we’ll only add for our own selfish reasons, that episode 1, which for years has been the only existing episode, is one of the most interesting singular episode of Doctor Who, and the tease that this was all there was (or seemingly ever would be) was very enticing.- The Savages. Perhaps an unusual choice. Late Hartnell, and completely missing from the archives. A listen to the audio of the story a few years ago was quite compelling. Intriguing.
- The Faceless Ones. Change of pace Troughton, not unlike The Enemy of the World. The second Doctor in a modern-day story always works.
- The Power of the Daleks. The only Doctor for which we don’t have their first story, audio alone is not enough.
- The Celestial Toymaker. We suspect that this story isn’t nearly as good as we would hope it to be, but I’ll gladly give those suspicions up given the chance.
- The Invasion. Only episodes 1 and 3 are missing, but there’s important world-building going on there (and incidentally no Cybermen). Tobias Vaughn. ‘Nuff said.
It should almost go without saying that we all want episode 4 of The Tenth Planet or any part of Marco Polo, but let’s not get too carried away. Then again what could be a better Anniversary Present?