Archive specialist, Sue Malden says that she knows “fairly certainly” that missing episodes of 1960s Doctor Who do exist in the hands of private collectors.

Talking at the Recovered festival in Leicester, hosted by the Film is Fabulous! group of cinema enthusiasts, Malden said:

“As far as Doctor Who goes, we do not have a statement or anything to make at the moment. We do know fairly certainly that there are episodes missing in private collections.

“Some members of the Film is Fabulous! team are in a considerably significant position to help on that.”

She added:

“So, when the time is right, we really do hope that it will be Film is Fabulous! that manages to return at least one or two, I don’t know, of the missing episodes of Doctor Who to the BBC.”

The Daily Star reports that these might include The Daleks’ Master Plan: The Traitors, Part Four of The Tenth Planet (i.e. the first ever regeneration), Episode Three of The Web of Fear, in which the Brigadier (then Colonel) Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart first appeared, and The Macra Terror. In addition to these, private collectors are said to have the complete Marco Polo, the fourth Doctor Who story and the first entirely missing serial.

The one we’re most certain still exists is Episode Three of The Web of Fear, given that the whole story was found over a decade ago in Nigeria, but this important episode went missing again while being transported to the UK. Did someone steal it? What actually happened? No one knows right now…

Either way, the tally of 97 missing episodes is very likely to go down in the future — we just have to wait.