This is utterly amazing. For fans of Classic Doctor Who, the 50th will be extra special - archivist Ian Levine has confirmed on his Twitter rumors that 90 missing Hartnell and Troughton episodes have been recovered. You heard right. He's seen the film cans himself - they're part of a cache of *three tons* of BBC recoveries. If I remember correctly from recent Internet rumblings, the 16 episodes still missing include "The Tenth Planet 4" and most of "The Daleks Master Plan", though I could be mistaken. That said, there still could be 15 left to find (The Daleks Master Plan 7 is gone forever). Okay, you're allowed to go and scream now.
Apparently they turned up a cache of 8,000 BBC films in Africa in 2011, 90 of which are Doctor Who episodes. Including "Tenth Planet 4", I was wrong! Still missing: * Mission To The Unknown * The Daleks Master Plan 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12 (episode 7 is lost forever, mind you - 0% chance of recovery) * The Ice Warriors 2, 3 * two episodes from The Wheel In Space * The Invasion 1, 4 Not too shabby, considering THREE COPIES of the absolutely 100% lost "Marco Polo" were recovered.
I think the Dr. Who shows are horrible, but I gotta say, I'm always glad when they've managed to save old shows from the dumpster. The show is historically important and I know there's fans out there, and it deserves to be saved. God knows, though, you'd have to hold a gun to my head to make me watch it. The very recent episodes aren't too bad, though.
Nope. As much as I'd love to see the Marco Polo serial for one, so far this is just baseless rumor of an event as likely as a pro color 35mm stereo filming of a 1958 Louis Prima concert turning up.
Well, I think it's from 1959, but how would a color videotape of Louis & Keeley strike you? **That** does exist!! - Kevin
BBC hasn't denied it either. Ian Levine is confident that the rumours are true - however, he is not the ultimate Dr Who authority - so we will have to wait and see. Interestingly he has just said (in the last few hours) that he was "lied to" about the 90 episodes by someone official. That is, he was told by someone official that the 90 episodes didn't exist but he (Levine) claims that he has seen proof that they do exist.
TV would be a whole different (inferior) beast than seeing their hit Vegas on stage show - but I'd still love to see it! Even were we to take his word, are we even sure the word is actually from Ian Levine? Wish it were true much as anyone, but it seems so much dubious talk on top of a story which, in the fictional words of Barbarossa, "It would strain credulity, at that." Must agree.
The last I remember hearing about a cache in Africa was that everything was destroyed in a fire during a revolution during the 90's.
http://lostdrwho.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=africa&action=display&thread=35 That's a nice summary of everything Philip Morris has been doing in Africa.
Yes - within THREE DAYS, Ian Levine has gone from "I am 99.9% sure this is a hoax" to "I have never been more f***ing wrong in my life" to "I'm not discussing this rumor further." Note the latter came after he said himself that he saw the film reels.
Did he actually say he saw the film reels? I have seen he say he has proof, not he has seen film reels.
Siffting through his twitter account he seems to be referring to that shipping manifest as his evidence. I can find nothing about actually seeing reels.
Ian can be very confusing sometimes when his stress levels rise. We will hopefully know more when he calms down.
I don't know, I always liked the Tom Baker one. Baker's performance made up for even the weak episodes and I also liked the performances by Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton (the few I've seen). Some hold up remarkably well, others not so much but I always found them fun. After Baker I kind of lost interest...
I'll be thrilled if they've found just one missing episode, let alone 90. And Vidiot, it's Doctor Who, not Dr. Who