Missing, Believed Swiped!
Missing episodes rumours in 1980s fanzines - part 2
Please don’t start here. If you missed the first part of this article, go back and read it here before proceeding. Last time around we got up to 1984, after a flurry of missing episodes activity in fanzines and genuine recoveries. We’ll pick up where we left off and this time we’ll get right to the end of the decade.
However, before going any further, I should reiterate that except where explicitly stated otherwise, none of the rumours referenced below were genuine leads as to the whereabouts of missing episodes and there’s no reason to think they were ever credible.
Following the discovery of missing episodes of The Time Meddler and The War Machines in Nigeria, mentioned last time, the BBC made efforts to contact a number of other African broadcasters who may have held episodes. DWB’s missing episodes specialist, and fan elder stateman, J Jeremy Bentham reported in issue 16 (November 1984): “Nigeria has now checked all its stations and nothing more exists in that country.” This is ironic in retrospect as the biggest recovery of episodes from Nigeria was still thirty-odd years in the future.
The DWB double issue 17/18 (December 1984/January 1985) reported on the return of three episodes of The Reign of Terror from Cyprus. This report also updated readers on the BBC’s hunt for further episodes via telex messages, stating that there had not yet been any reply from Kenya, which was: “thought to be where any Troughton material is likely to be found, if it still exists.” This was an unlikely suggestion as Kenya had never bought any Troughton stories. The only stories with missing episodes shown in Kenya were Marco Polo and The Reign of Terror. Incidentally, an article in this issue suggested computerised reconstructions of missing episodes were just around the corner, a development which in 2024 is only now starting to become a possibility (with a lot of human intervention) thanks to various advanced software tools.
Jumping forward to September 1985, DWB issue 26 contained an interesting report which did later result in a recovery. An organiser of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society (DWAS)’s Panopticon VI convention reported intriguing happenings at the event, which had occurred in July that year:
According to the report, the man returned that evening and was informed that fans would not want to attend a screening of missing episodes without an assurance that the episodes would be returned to the BBC. He went away to consult his ‘boss’. The next morning:
We’ll pick this story up in a moment. Meanwhile, interviewed in DWB issue 29/30 (Winter 1985), JNT reported that there were “a few leads that are being pursued” regards missing episodes, which must have stoked fan anticipation. Then things went quiet for a while.
In DWB 38 (September 1986) a letter writer from Derby made the ludicrous claim that a well-known fan writer must own, or have had access to, copies of The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Moonbase episode three based on his detailed writing about these episodes. Less ludicrously, he also referenced “everyone” he spoke to knowing that The Evil of the Daleks episode two and The Faceless Ones episode three existed in private hands, which obviously stemmed from the Panopticon VI incident related above. Efforts had been quietly going on behind the scenes to ascertain whether these episodes really did exist and if so to get them back to the BBC. This was a protracted process (see Wiped! for the full story) but they did exist and were eventually returned to the BBC in April and May 1987.
We’ll give DWB a break for just a moment and look at a fanzine from overseas. Issue 43 (May-June 1987) of Australia’s Sonic Screwdriver reported the return of The Faceless Ones episode three and confirmed that a second episode had also been found, with the possibility of third. They went to press before The Evil of the Daleks episode two’s recovery had been confirmed, reporting that the second recovered episode:
About a month later DWB issue 44 (June 1987) reported a rumour that The Tenth Planet episode four was in the hands of an ex-BBC sound technician who had worked on the episode of Blue Peter which showed a clip from the episode’s regeneration scene. This was the start of the long-running ‘Roger Barrett’ hoax, more on which shortly.
The same article went on to report an anonymous letter from a reader claiming to own The Highlanders episodes two and four. It also claimed the owner of the print of The Evil of the Daleks episode two would only return it in exchange for another missing episode, which was untrue as the episode had by this point already been returned according to Wiped!’s timeline.
DWB repeated this claim in their next issue (July 1987) in which J Jeremy Bentham reported that a video copy had been shown at a fan gathering in Blackpool. More notably, he reported that whilst nothing was definite, “things were looking favourable” regards further recoveries. A last-minute addition then announced:
This was a further reflection of the ongoing ‘Roger Barrett’ hoax, with DWB’s editor Gary Levy (later Leigh) arranging to buy the print from him. ‘Barrett’ didn’t turn up for the agreed rendezvous, but in 1992 he succeeded in convincing the BBC that he was in the process of returning a video copy of the episode to them. The tape was blank. This hoax, and a great many rumours revolving around this episode, were predicated on the belief that the BBC’s film print was never junked, having been lost by the Blue Peter team after they used it to source a clip. The evidence given in Wiped! suggests that in all likelihood the episode was returned by Blue Peter and subsequently junked.
The July 1987 issue of Celestial Toyroom (CT), the newsletter of the DWAS, which was usually rather more circumspect with its news coverage thanks to the club’s official status, reported:
DWB issue 47 (September 1987) printed a letter from a fan in the US claiming Nicholas Courtney had a mute copy of The Invasion episode one on video and may also have episode four. This was a misunderstanding of a reference Courtney had made to the first two episodes being mute on his VHS copy. He was referring to the first two episodes on the tape, which did not include the missing episode one.
The rumour about the Tenth Planet episode rumbled on in certain quarters (as it would in different guises for years to come). The October 1987 issue of Data Extract, “The Australasian Doctor Who Newsletter”, reported hopes that negotiations for the episode’s return would be finalised by the end of October. They also reported the return of a duplicate of an existing episode of The Reign of Terror with hopes that the same source had the story’s missing pair.
In the ‘Rumour Zone’ of its June 1988 issue, CT reported a vague suggestion that the third episode of Marco Polo may be recovered, albeit with suitably sceptical phrasing. They also referred to the episode as The Singing Sands, which is actually the second episode, not the third. The Singing Sands had long been the subject of rumour and this was probably another reference to the same.
The next month, the same column reported a number of rumours around missing episodes in the US. All six episodes of The Faceless Ones had been reported to be in circulation on video, while the two missing episodes of The Reign of Terror apparently resided with a film collector now living there. It also raised the possibility of colour copies of Planet of the Daleks episode three and the first part of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, both of which were only held in monochrome by the BBC, existing in the States. This was a common misconception due to US broadcasters having simply omitted those episodes from their omnibus edits to show the ‘whole’ of each story in colour.
The discovery of four episodes of The Ice Warriors at the BBC itself in August 1988 spurred further speculation about the whereabouts of other episodes. A letter from a West Midlands fan was published in DWB issue 58 (September 1988) reporting the rumour that entertainer Bob Monkhouse “owns a complete set of Doctor Who episodes.” The correspondent went on to advise:
The tape format referred to should be U-matic, not ‘pneumatic’. Monkhouse also could not have started returning episodes to the BBC in the mid-1970s as the archive would not have been interested then and BBC Enterprises was busy destroying its copies.
It sounds like a small kernel of non-Doctor Who related truth had been wildly distorted by the fan rumour-mill. Monkhouse was indeed a film collector and avid off-air recorder of television. In the 1970s his property was raided by the police who confiscated his film prints and brought dubious charges against him. Ultimately, the prosecution was thrown out but nevertheless some of Monkhouse’s films ended up being destroyed. There has never been any credible suggestion that he held missing episodes of Doctor Who. Some items of missing television were found in Monkhouse’s collection following his death in 2003 but these were programmes with which he had a personal connection.
While reporting the discovery of the Ice Warriors episodes in the September/October 1988 issue of CT, Bentham also reported, with reference to the DWAS’s recent Panopticon IX convention:
Another baseless rumour surfaced in DWB issue 67 (July 1989):
A not-very-informative update was provided in issue 69 (September 1989) linking the episode to a potential screening at the BFI’s National Film Theatre (NFT):
It was another hoax. The same month the debut issue of Celestial Farmyard (a parody on the DWAS’s Celestial Toyroom) reported a rumour that a BBC designer who worked on The Daleks’ Master Plan had missing episodes of that story in his possession:
Design duties on the story had been shared by Raymond Cusick and Barry Newbery but neither held any missing episodes. Perhaps the reference was to a more junior (ie uncredited) member of the design team, but regardless the rumour was without merit. As it transpired, one missing episode (the second) of the story was held by an ex-BBC staff member, but an engineer not a designer, and it was returned to the BBC in 2004 as soon as the owner learned of its scarcity. There is no connection between this recovery and the earlier rumour.
Meanwhile, issue 34 (circa September/October 1989) of Enlightenment, the “Official Newszine of the Doctor Who Information Network” in Canada, reported:
The first part of this presumably relates to the same rumour that DWB published, as above. Regards the second, there was no link between this investigation and the recovery of The Tomb of the Cybermen from Hong Kong in 1992.
We’ll close there with the end of the 1980s, by which time Doctor Who itself had come to end but 24 missing episodes had been recovered to help fill-in its past.
What can we learn from this survey of missing episodes rumours that saw print in fanzines across that decade? We can see that the behaviours of fans in the fanzine and internet ages of fandom are not much different – the unlikeness of a rumour does little to impede its progress and unchecked optimism leads some fans to accept rumours on face value alone. ‘Reliable’ anonymous sources are typically anything but and a rumour claimed as ‘fact’ usually has no more strength than the fan reporting it having heard it from someone they liked and trusted. Worse, occasionally fans will invent missing episodes hoxes for their own perverse pleasure.
Yet, whilst the vast majority of rumours turn out to be nonsense, just a few do (sometimes many years later) prove to have a kernel of truth behind them. And that’s why we fans find it so fascinating to examine them.
The fanzine scene continued through the 1990s, with the furore around missing episodes reaching new heights in the absence of Doctor Who on television. Let me know if it’s worth extending this survey into the 1990s, and please subscribe to receive future articles direct to your email. Thanks for reading.
Images © the original writers or editors of the fanzines and are reproduced under the fair dealing provisions of copyright law.
Thanks to all the kind souls who shared their fanzines and scans with me.
Sources
The fanzines cited, of course. But the main sources regards missing episodes are:
Richard Molesworth, Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes, 2nd edition (2013), available here.
BroaDWcast website, edited by Jon Preddle and John Lavalie.
The Missing Episodes Podcast by Tim Burrows, available from podcast platforms such as podbean