Film is Fabulous, an organisation run by film collectors and vintage television enthusiasts, has confirmed the existence of several missing episodes of Doctor Who, and further revealed that a detailed announcement about these stories being returned to the BBC!
On Facebook, Film is Fabulous wrote:
“As mentioned by Sue Malden at our RECOVERED event in May, we are aware of several missing episodes of Doctor Who (Sue stated one [or] two, but there are more than this) in private film collections in the UK. We are liaising with the individuals about cataloguing and preserving their entire collection, including the missing Doctor Who episodes, and ensuring that copies are returned to the BBC. We expect to make a detailed announcement shortly.”
Indeed, at the Recovered festival in Leicester, Sue, who is an archive specialist, had 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.
“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.”
Back in the summer, The Daily Star reported that these might include The Daleks’ Master Plan: The Traitors, Part Four of The Tenth Planet (featuring the first ever regeneration, from William Hartnell’s Doctor into Patrick Troughton’s), Episode Three of The Web of Fear, (the first appearance of Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart), and The Macra Terror. Private collectors are said to have the complete Marco Polo, the fourth Doctor Who story, too.
Where the tabloid got such information from is unknown.
So when is such an announcement likely? We’re keeping our fingers crossed for next month, November 2025, to help celebrate Doctor Who‘s anniversary. But we’ve no insider information here, so it could be at any point!
Either way, this is extremely exciting.
(Thanks to Joe Siegler.)
