Good news from a jumble sale. The BBC reports that two presumed lost episodes from Doctor Who have turned up in the care of a retired television engineer who bought them in the 1980s.
As noted in our examination of the only partially extant “Marco Polo,” the BBC routinely wiped the expensive video tapes for re-use, resulting in the presumed loss of quite a few episodes from Doctor Who‘s early years. As Shaun Ley of the BBC observes:
The find makes only a modest dent in the number of missing episodes, with 106 instalments broadcast between 1964 and 1969 still being sought.
The two episodes, “Air Lock” from William Hartnell’s Season Three opener “Galaxy Four” and the untitled part 2 of Patrick Troughton’s “The Underwater Menace,” will apparently be made available via DVD at some point in the future.
I’d certainly prefer sooner rather than later, as I’m slowly closing in on Season Three in the Doctor Who Project. I have the novelization ready to go, but being able to see at least one of the four episodes of “Galaxy Four” would be of some help, as I don’t think the novelizations capture all of the Hartnellizations in the televised script. Until then, I’ll have to make do with the short clips the BBC has made available.
(Image via the BBC)