Two More Episodes Recovered!!!
Two more episodes of Doctor Who have been recovered - “Air Lock” - Episode 3 of the William Hartnell Season 3 story Galaxy Four and Episode 2 of The Underwater Menace, from Season 4. The latter is now the earliest surviving complete episode of the Patrick Troughton era (previously it has been Episode 3 of The Underwater Menace, the only other surviving episode from this story - there are also clips from Episodes 1 and 4 that exist giving us footage from every episode of the story and more than half the story complete). As for “Air Lock”, it is the first episode from Galaxy Four to be recovered, although a little over 5 minutes of the first episode also exists. It becomes the earliest surviving episode from Season 3 of Doctor Who.
The episodes were found in the hands of a former tv studio engineer (though not one who worked for the BBC). The full story can be found at the Radio Times website.
There are now only 106 missing episodes remaining. Given how many people insisted that there were no more missing episodes that would ever be found, the recovery of two missing episodes is the best Christmas present a Who fan could dare hope for!
Here’s a clip from Galaxy Four:
And a clip from The Underwater Menace:
Posted by Luca on Sunday, December 11 at 1:54 pm
3 Comments...
This was definitely a fantastic surprise. It seems every time someone swears up and down that there are no more episodes to be found, suddenly a discovery is made. What’s amazing is these have been in a collection since the 1980s, and were actually shown a few times, yet no one realized their significance (same thing I believe happened with the Evil of the Daleks and Daleks Masterplan episodes that were recovered earlier). I think if more awareness was raised in the UK of the importance of finding lost episodes of shows like Doctor Who (and not just DW - almost the entire first year of The Avengers is lost too, as well as many episodes of iconic shows like Z Cars) there might be more chance of someone finding these episodes in their garages or basements. Sadly we won’t likely see anything like this in Canada, given I don’t think prints of CBC broadcasts tend to end up at flea markets. That said, who knows if some guy in Manitoba didn’t film Marco Polo off the screen back in 1965 and his grandkids have the 8mm film in some trunk that hasn’t been opened in 40 years?
Posted by Alex on 12/11 at 04:11 PM
always a celebration when old classic missing episodes are found, an entire episode - YEAH!! no wait, another one !!! how amazing!! I agree with Alex .. the guy who had them had no idea of their value .. he knew they were Doctor Who episodes, but he wasnt a big DW fan and so he had no idea of their value .. I agree that if the BBC ran a commercial or 2, a little campaign telling the story of the episodes that were found, and if any collectors out there have anything, let the BBC know, I really believe there are so many more episodes in cans right there in the UK, maybe whole stories - this find and the 2nd ep of Dalek Masterplan prove that they are out there, just that their true value is unknown to many. A great day for the classic series fans!!!
Posted by Ian on 12/12 at 12:54 AM
Am very happy about this! - great news and I hope we discover more out there. Can’t wait to see the full versions!
Posted by GR on 12/12 at 07:10 PM
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