In a special edition of Doctor Who: The Missing Episodes Podcast, recorded on 10th October 2025, more details have emerged from Film is Fabulous!, an organisation set up to support film collectors and preserve their films.

Last week, Film is Fabulous! had made positive noises regarding missing episodes of Doctor Who.

On 3rd October, in a reply to a fan’s Facebook comment, they said:

“[We] are aware of several missing episodes of Doctor Who… in private film collections in the U.K. 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.”

Much excitement and comment followed.

Now, in a new podcast, John Franklin, a film collector for almost forty years and the leading light of the organisation, has related a sensitive story regarding one particular collector. Their collection contains thousands of films and “some very important material, including a missing episode of Doctor Who.” (The name of this episode is not given.)

Sadly, the collector who owns it had been in very poor health since Covid times. They had been in and out of hospital. The Film is Fabulous team was aware that this situation had left their collection vulnerable.

It had fallen to the local healthcare trust to look after this man’s affairs. Film is Fabulous (FiF) hoped to gain permission from them to take his film collection to their secure facility. Their intention was to catalogue the films and then make an offer for the entire collection. (Note that FiF underline that they always want to deal with each collection as a whole unit. They are not going to cherry pick or ‘treasure hunt’, by which they mean they are not going to pick out the rare items, buy only those, and leave someone else to deal with the rest. The more commonplace material is usually sold at auction, allowing those films to live on in the collections of others. This approach meets with the approval of the film-collecting community and ensures FiF retains their co-operation.)

The healthcare trust was willing to give permission on condition that FiF was first gained charitable trust status. FiF became a registered charity on 3rd October. This was the day the optimistic Facebook reply was posted. FiF were all set to take the films away on 10th October. Very sadly, the collector, who had latterly been receiving end-of-life care in hospital, died earlier that week.

As the healthcare trust no longer holds any authority in the collector’s affairs, the original plan has fallen through.  Nevertheless, there are high hopes that an application to the court will lead to them being granted permission to preserve the collection.

Returning to the Facebook reply, the impression I get is that FiF’s “detailed announcement” would have been built around news of them securing this collection. As that has yet to happen, it’s best that we stop anticipating an announcement for the time being. (The podcast appears to have taken its place.)

Despite this setback, there is plenty of reason to hope that Doctor Who missing episodes will be handed over to the BBC Archive as a result of the efforts of Film is Fabulous. They understand film collectors better than anyone else – after all, they are film collectors themselves – so they stand the best chance of bringing this about.

John Franklin underlines that they have been in discussion with other collectors who have missing Doctor Who within their collections. FiF is hoping to gain agreement to take those collections in and catalogue each as a whole.

They even mention that, by necessity, they’re directing their limited resources towards preserving the most vulnerable collections, i.e. those where an imminent house clearance would likely see the films thrown in a skip. They have been contacted regarding collections which are safe and secure and which contain rare and missing material (though it’s not stated whether any of this is Doctor Who), but have had to put thoughts of cataloguing those to the side for the moment.

If you would like to support Film is Fabulous with a donation, there is a page for this on their website. The lowest donation amount is £5.

Alas, we move on to less heartening news now…

That Facebook reply generated a lot of interest, and some of it resulted in negative consequences for FiF. (To help make immediate sense of what follows please be aware that they have a strong partnership with De Montfort University, Leicester.)

Here’s another quote from John Franklin:

“We do not want people turning up at De Montfort University uninvited, trying to get access to special collections so that they can look at the films. We’ve had it once. We don’t want it again. And we will not tolerate, under any circumstances, abuse or threats of physical violence against our person and the team because we will not share details of the collector and the films with certain individuals. That has resulted, and will result, in police involvement.”

This is appalling.

Nevertheless, I think we would all recognise that the subject of missing episodes is pretty emotive for fans. When you consider that Doctor Who is a show whose central character is focused on doing good deeds, and often in as peaceful a way as possible, it is sometimes depressing that we as fans lose sight of that example.

John continues:

“There are a small number of people that do not understand where the line is. And I’m afraid I think some of the frenzy that’s built up with this comment encourages that. So can I just ask people to give us the space to conclude the things that we’re doing? You will be very, very happy with the announcements when they come, but we just need the space to be able to do that now.”

This raises a number of issues.

Film is Fabulous members have made themselves very approachable on social media. And they have positioned themselves to be open and honest about their work. This is their way of attracting interest and support, and I can see that they would want to stick with it. That last quote seems to want us to be a bit more muted in our responses, reasoning that, if fandom as a whole shows restraint, this might reduce the excesses of those within it who don’t understand what is unacceptable. But I find myself wondering if that is likely to work.

More than that, I wonder whether FiF will end up drip-feeding us news on their progress with the aforementioned collection across a long period of time. FiF are big on consent. They will need time to catalogue the collection and make a fair offer for it. Surely that offer (which could be much costlier than you’d expect) would have to be accepted and met before they would hand a copy of the missing episode to the BBC Archive? Even if all goes according to plan, we might have to wait a long time to see it.

Ultimately, I think it is in our best interests to be as patient as we can possibly manage, and give Film is Fabulous the space they have asked for.

Film is Fabulous is run by volunteers, many of whom have given up staggering amounts of their time for the organisation. While their aims run to preserving “missing, rare, and culturally-important films” (i.e. the part of their work that we are most interested in), those aims are secondary to their commitment to support private film collectors and preserve all the films in their collections. There is a good chance that we will gain greatly from their work. If some of their ways of working are not optimised for us, then tolerating that is probably a small price for us to pay.

So how do you feel about these developments? And should we scale back our online reactions to news like this? If news ends up being drip fed to us, would you like the Doctor Who Companion to cover every twist and turn, or just have an update every so often?

Also, here’s one last gentle reminder that you can donate to Film is Fabulous if you wish.