Some of that might be true. A lot of that is wishful thinking. Those in the know are pretty sure Mission to the Unknown series is gone gone. I’m sure a few more are out there. (I would love more Troughton to show up!)
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Yeah. Despite what Ian Levine would like to believe, or that guy going around who insists the royal family have a secret archive of every BBC show ever made, no… just, no.
We have positive confirmation from Philip Morris and Paul Vanezis that there are a handful of individual episodes known to exist in the hands of private collectors, but that number is between 6 and 9 (that’s individual episodes, not full stories)
There might very well be more out there, but they are likely in the hands of film collectors like Terry Burnett, who had two surviving episodes of Galaxy 4 and The Underwater Menace in his collection and didn’t even realize it for nearly 40 years, because most film collectors are only hoarders in the sense that their house is a complete death trap of film canisters piled floor to ceiling, most of which are completely unorganized and uncatalogued, and often unwatched and unlabeled, since they’re random stuff they picked up in job lots from other collectors, car boot sales, or cleaning out the local church basement, that they always meant to get around to watching one of these days.
And like Terry, most are interested in 35mm film prints of movies, so if they happen to pick up some old TV recordings along the way, that’s just some random junk that’s not terribly important to them. It’s like a comic book collector who is super into mainstream Marvel or DC, and can tell you all about their silver age X-Men collection, but whenever they say they collect comics, there’s always some rando who wants to know if they have issue #3 of Fish Police in their collection. To which the answer is usually… “I have no friggin’ clue. I might have one buried in a box someplace but god only knows where, and I have no idea what issue it was. Is it important?”
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As for what those 6 to 9 missing episodes are… We have some pretty good guesses on at least a couple of them.
But first, the bad news… The number is almost certainly 6, and not 9.
And it’s implied that none of these form a complete story.
The reason being that Philip Morris has said he knows of 6 episodes in the hands of private collectors, and Paul Vanezis says he knows of 2 confirmed, possibly 3. But since they’re both actively involved in the recovery of lost film, it stands to reason that their knowledge probably overlaps and they’re both talking about the same individuals.
But 6 is still a better number than zero. And Paul has said at a fan event last year that “the number of missing episodes will be going down soon.” Which means that they either already have some recovered episodes that they are currently working on restoring, or that he’s pretty certain the person who owns them will be returning them soon… possibly posthumously.
Philip Morris has been saying nearly the same thing for several years, which I take to mean there’s some miserly old guy out there with a pack-a-day habit who’s inexplicably now in his 80’s or 90’s and in terrible health, but stubbornly refusing to pass on. But they’re playing the long game because they know this way they’ll get the print eventually, as long as they keep quiet and don’t talk about it. Because the last thing they’d want to do in this situation is annoy the family, or provide enough information that somebody decides to steal it, or allow some asshole collector who does have a ton of money to swoop in and buy it off then for half a million dollars, and then it really does disappear forever.
At any rate, trying to piece together what the episodes could be is a bit like one of those “Sally is shorter than Sue and older than Tom” grid problems from high school, where you’ve got multiple small pieces of information coming from multiple sources, and if any given part of it could be wrong and throw the whole thing off.
But the supposition is, if we’re getting anything back at all, and these are the episodes Paul Vanezis says he’s verified the existence of, then the most likely culprits are:
The Smugglers episode 2 & 3 (1 and 4 still missing) and “the earliest Troughton yet.”
Which leaning heavily into the “yet” part of that statement and the fact that no Underwater Menace episode 1 has appeared on the recent BluRay release, would suggest that it would have to be a single episode of The Highlanders or one of the later episodes of Power of the Daleks. But Highlanders makes a little more sense in terms of being something that somebody could conceivably hold in their private collection for over 50 years, and the BBC would be less inclined to really push for the return of, compared to any part of Power of the Daleks.
Regarding the identity of the Hartnell episodes. It gets confusing since we’re basing supposition off of separate statements by both Philip Morris and Paul Vanezis, and an article by the Radio Times that has never been officially validated by the BBC.
The Radio Times article, which came out back in January, specifically named The Smugglers as a forthcoming animated title alongside The Underwater Menace (now confirmed) and that several classic episodes of Doctor Who were going to be colorized for the 60th Anniversary (also confirmed). The Smugglers is an odd choice to animate because it’s a 100% missing story that doesn’t have a lot of source material, and it’s usually voted dead last on the list of favorite Hartnell stories. So the supposition is that Paul Vanezis (who heads the Doctor Who restoration team) must have chose that one for a reason rather than something popular and timely like The Celestial Toymaker.
Mix in some podcasty detective work based on another statement by either Paul or Philip regarding one of the purported private collector’s episode(s) being either on (or not on) the Australian return list, and then correcting himself later after he’d gone back and checked the list (so it would have to be something that you’d think would be on the return list but wasn’t, or vice versa,) and a separate comment mentioning that one known private collector was a resident of the UK and another was outside the U.K. (likely Australia,) and another comment that one set of missing episodes in private hands is the middle chunk of an entirely missing 4 part Hartnell, then through our grid process… assuming most of this info is overlapping, at least part of one of these guys’ private collections would have to contain episode 2 and 3 of The Myth Makers, The Massacre, The Savages, or The Smugglers, with The Smugglers being the one to most likely to fit most of the variables.
As for the other three that Philip Morris supposedly knows about… I’ve heard some supposition that it’s the back half of The Space Pirates… but I haven’t heard any concrete information that backs this up, so it’s hard to tell what’s based on real information and what’s just supposition based on what we hope it might be.
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Definitely. His body motion acting is reminiscent of the silent film comedy greats which cannot be truly recreated in the animated reconstructions.
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I’m surprised that they didn’t animate this episode and release it before the 60th as a tie-in.
For the folks who weren’t aware, Charles Band released his own take on the show during the hiatus.
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A lot of the rumors surrounding the return of this one stem from the upcoming 60th-anniversary episode with Neil Patrick Harris. Though the idea that The Celestial Toymaker and Marco Polo are both complete and in the hands of private collectors has swirled for years.
I would love to have The Highlanders (first Jamie story) and the Wheel in Space (first Zoe story) back. Telesnaps just don’t do either of these stories justice, and I haven’t heard any plans to animate the missing episodes for these either.
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We know there are two animated recons currently in production. While nothing other than the quantity was announced it is rumored that these are The Celestial Toymaker and Wheel In Space, though it’s possible the announcement (which was made during the screening of the recently animated The Underwater Menace) refers to that afore mentioned animation of The Smugglers plus one more.
Really, with the return of the Celestial Toymaker in the 60th specials (which has been confirmed) they’d be fools not to animate The Celestial Toymaker next.
By the way, the Guardian just posted an article that says a missing Dalek episode has been recovered, but this is a massive heap of lies and twisted truths.
The reporter completely misrepresented John Franklin, who said absolutely nothing of the sort. The article was supposed to be about his Film is Fabulous initiative, which actually could result in the return of missing Doctor Who episodes, by encouraging collectors to catalog their collections, and trying to undo some of that longstanding fear and distrust of how the BBC used to operate, where they treated everybody with recordings as criminals who stole the property that they threw away.
The collector in question holding two Hartnell episodes does exist, but this is the person I talked about earlier with two parts of a Hartnell 4-parter (believed to be The Smugglers 2 & 3) that Paul Vanezis has been attempting to have returned for the last several years.
Unfortunately this terrible article twists just about everything that John actually said, which is that the BBC is much better now about working with people to return wiped material, though they have yet to officially announced a blanket “general amnesty” which would go a long way towards reassuring a group of people who traditionally do not trust the BBC, and who in the past, have been treated like enemies.
And the entire point of Film is Fabulous, that if we want stuff like Doctor Who or Basil Brush to be returned so that everybody can enjoy it, we need to work with, encourage, and appreciate our film collectors, and offer them a network where they can come together to catalog their massive collections and identify and archive prints of particular historical value.
This is especially important now, as we are facing a great second wave of film destruction, as these folks who started collecting in the 60’s and 70’s, are now mostly in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s themselves, and many priceless collections have been lost forever because their children or grandchildren don’t have an interest in old films and simply want to get granddad’s “house full of junk” cleared out as quickly as possible so they can sell it off and get on with their lives.
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Dad’s Army is another one with tons of missing episodes. I have no idea where that one sits in terms of known potential episodes out there still to the Mission to the Unknown situation where if any of those episodes showed up would truly be miraculous.
Actually, while that was initially the case, by the 90’s they’d recovered all but three of the missing episodes, plus two Christmas shorts.
Much like Doctor Who, the BBC wiped their own copies, but because it was sold abroad, most of the missing episodes were eventually returned or found in private collections. Two of the missing episodes are 100% missing where not even the audio tracks survived (Doctor Who was very lucky that it had several fans who liked to make off-air audio recordings, and never missed an episode) but the audio to “A Stripe for Frazer” was rediscovered in a private collection in 2008, which is the one they recently gave the Doctor Who animation treatment to.
Also like Doctor Who, they switched to recording in color in the 1970’s, but a number of the color episodes were also lost with only 16mm black and white overseas copies remaining. They’ve subsequently managed to track down color editions of all but one of those, which of course is the one they used the Chromadot process on as a test before trying the same technique on Doctor Who.
Recovery of the two Christmas sketches is about as hopeless as finding a copy of The Feast of Steven, as they were part of a larger Christmas variety show and never packaged with the other episodes for overseas sales. But the three remaining episodes from season 2 that are missing could theoretically still show up somewhere along the “bicycle route” in a foreign country, or in the hands of private collectors who rescued them from the rubbish tip. And in 1969, it’s just barely possible that someone could have owned a $1000 VTR recorder and recorded one of the episodes off air. Same goes for any of the Troughton episodes, but since the tapes were super-expensive and only recorded 30 minutes, it’d cost them well over $100 in 1960’s money to record a complete copy of any of the missing stories. Recording a one-off Dad’s Army sounds slightly more plausible though, especially as it was aimed at an older generation.
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I’d heard that DW streaming was moving to Disney, and I wasn’t happy, but I figured I’d still get to see them on BBCAmerica, and would keep my favorites on the TiVo.
Well, it seems they will only be on Disney, and not on BBCA at all. 
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This is correct.
I have D+ so that part doesn’t bother me.
What bothers me is Doctor Who episodes here in the States are going to be scattered across even more streamers. Disney only has right to air starting with Ncuti’s Christmas special. I think they might have the three Tennant specials, but I’m not sure.
All of the pre-2005 stuff? That’s in at least two different places.
Not sure where the post-2005 stuff is now.
I want a dedicated Doctor Who site. One that has all of the pre-2005 remastered and/or animated episodes. One that has all of the post-2005 episodes in high def. One that has all of the various specials (half of those never made it to this country either).
If the Beeb would just let us dirty Americans (not to mention the rest of the world), sign up for an annual subscription, we could likely fund a whole new season of Who. 
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Word is the first of the specials will be 26 November (or maybe 25) and only on Disney
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Technically, if you live in Japan and have a Disney+ subscription, you’ll be able to see it a few hours ahead of everybody else because of how international time-zones work.
But I’m sure what this really means is that for the first time ever, people in the UK are going to be faced with the moral dilemma of watching it on the BBC or torrenting a copy from another country and watching it early. Those of us in America have already been making this choice for years, especially here on the west coast, where no matter how slow your DSL connection is, you can be watching Doctor Who and posting spoilers on Facebook hours before anybody with BBC America catches up.
There was quite a while when I was watching Doctor Who maybe a year before it aired in the US thanks to torrents. Just double checked on Wikipedia and Rose aired in March 2005 in the UK and March 2006 in the US, and I know that carried on for a couple seasons.
The stated premiere is still the same: BBC One, UK & Ireland, 6:30pm GMT on Saturday, 25 November 2023. And also: “on 25th November to BBC iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ in the rest of the world”.
Generally, shows appear on iPlayer shortly after they conclude their broadcasts. With the BBC in charge, Disney+ may be held to a similar delay (of about 1 hour for this first special). (Disney+ hasn’t even put up a Doctor Who page or section, let alone announce time(s), despite the premiere being only 11 days away.)
Specific to the “confusion” presented in the video, it seems reasonable to understand the date given as the official date of release from the perspective (time zone) of its country of release (the UK). And that the off-the-cuff response to name a part of the world (Japan) in the context of “the rest of the world” (other than UK & Ireland) may have not considered the often confusing intricacies of world times and dates (including the fact(?) that it’s never the same date across the entire surface of the Earth).
That’s the thing that floors me. Disney paid presumably tons of money to get this property, and they aren’t doing anything to promote the fact that they are the new home for Doctor Who. We were hearing about “30 years years of Simpsons episodes” for months before the FOX deal was concluded. Why the radio silence?? And for the 60th anniversary,no less.
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Indeed. I’ve known the 60th was on the way for a while, but just learned it would be exclusive to Disney last night. I’d think that Disney would be spreading the word far and wide.
Or maybe they think people like me would riot because it is exclusive. I hold no ill will toward Disney, but I’m just not part of their target demographic While they have a few movies I’ve seen, there just isn’t a lot there I’m interested in. Not near enough to justify buying more entertainment options.
And, yes, I’ve looked. My sister’s kid shared her account, and set me up with my very own profile.
No mention on the Disney Home Screen that the Doctor is coming that I saw.
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In case you’re wondering what kind of plots Charles Band’s take on Doctor Who covered…
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