Missing, Believed Swiped!

Missing episodes rumours in 1990s fanzines - part 2

Welcome back to my survey of missing episodes rumours in Doctor Who fanzines of the 1990s. Please don’t start here as this is part two. If you missed it, please go back to part one here first. Or even read the proceeding two-parter about the 1980s rumours, which starts here. It’s a bumper instalment this time, thanks to some last-minute additions I hadn’t bargained on. My apologies for that.

Previously, thanks to all the hullabaloo around the Tenth Planet episode four hoax, we only got as far as mid-1993. So that’s where we pick up the tale, and we can now introduce into our chronicle a very aptly named new fanzine: Rumours. As the title suggests, it was a newsy zine which would publish almost anything it was sent, including plenty of nonsense about missing episodes. Nevertheless, some of its reports are quite interesting. Others less so, like this snipped (note the header) from Volume 1, issue 4 (July 1993):

The following issue later the same month offered this update:

Volume 1, issue 8 (August 1993) reported an opaque hint that there may be news of missing episodes involving Thailand. In the next issue a month later the editor suggested the episodes involved may be from The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks or The Web of Fear. We’ll return to Rumours shortly, but meanwhile DWB issue 117 (September 1993) contained this notice:

The chances of this panning out were very low since no Scandinavian broadcasters purchased any 1960s episodes of Doctor Who, although Denmark and Norway had received ‘audition’ prints of the first three stories, which they declined to purchase. The issue’s letters page included correspondence from Australia by a fan reporting:

Rumours volume 1, issue 10 (mid-September 1993) upped the ante considerably, suggesting in a lengthy report that 11 to 14 episodes had recently been recovered:

The latter suggestion sounds unlikely but was clearly inspired by something similar that did occur when The Tomb of the Cybermen was returned the previous year, with the news of the recovery restricted within the BBC itself for a short time to avoid the story being chosen for a repeat screening which would have diminished sales of its upcoming VHS release. In this case, however, the entire story was nonsense. The next issue (late-September 1993 – that’s three issues in one month, indicating how rapidly Rumours was getting its stories out to fandom) updated this rumour to involve 15 episodes (but note the editor’s comment at the bottom):

Rumours volume 1, issue 13 (October 1993) brought the news that the prints from Scandinavia were in fact nothing to do with Doctor Who:

There’s an open goal there for a ‘surprise, surprise’ joke if anyone wants to make it. DWB issue 118 (October 1993) reported much the same news:

Metamorph volume 2, issue 14 (Autumn 1993) provided further ‘information’ around the previous year’s Tenth Planet episode four hoax, covered here last time. The article claimed that ‘Roger Barrett’ had sold the episode on, along with seven (not necessarily missing) others:

This was all rubbish. ‘Barrett’ was a known liar and hoaxer, but the credibility given to these reports illustrates how willing large parts of fandom were to believe that the episode did exists despite the implausibility of all the reports about it. Continuing with rubbish: the article also reported that negotiations for the return of The Power of the Daleks episode two that they had referred to four issues earlier (as noted last time), had now broken down. A one-way “exchange of material” had occurred, with the ‘owner’ relinquishing nothing. It was clearly a hoax – or even a fraud given the hoaxer allegedly came away with a profit – although the writer’s source believed otherwise.

The writer continued to give credence to nonsense by reporting the claim he picked up from a ‘big name’ fan at London’s Fitzroy Tavern (the meeting place of Doctor Who fans) that various missing episodes existed in the UK and that these included The Tomb of the Cybermen prior to its recovery from Hong Kong the previous year. His other comments included: “The strongest rumours I have heard currently surround Fury from the Deep being touted at comic marts – believe it if you like!” On the same page another writer reported a conversation they’d had with a seller who had advertised videos in Loot, London’s buying-and-selling newspaper:

Metamorph metamorphosised itself into new fanzine Shadowsphere. Confusingly, it dated its first issue Autumn 1993, like the last of Metamorph. It printed a letter referring back to Metamorph volume 2, issue 13 (as covered last time) from a fan who supported the idea of TV shows having been screened in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe via “roundabout methods” (ie illegally). He went on:

In fact, South Africa didn’t have television until 1975, which was when BBC Enterprises was busy destroying its stock of Doctor Who episodes. When TV started, it was a colour service so even if South African television was inclined to show black market prints it’s unlikely it would have chosen ten-years-old monochrome ones. The same correspondent also asked what other prints were returned alongside The Tomb of the Cybermen, noting:

Wild indeed. Many episodes were dubbed into Spanish but Hong Kong would be a very unlikely place for them to have ended up. In fact, no other Doctor Who episodes were returned alongside The Tomb of the Cybermen, but various other programmes were.

DWB issue 124 (March 1994) brought a riposte to the letter reproduced above from issue 117 alleging episodes resided with TVNZ. One of the broadcaster’s employees wrote to make the following points:

The next issue (April 1994) included three letters on the subject. The first, reasonably, pointed out that it was unhelpful to the hunt for missing episodes to suggest, as could be inferred from the above letter, that stations retaining missing material were ‘inefficient’ operations. A second letter from an ill-informed fan from Jersey claimed The Tomb of the Cybermen was not destroyed (all copies bar the the one held in Hong Kong were destroyed) and that the The Feast of Steven was “never junked” (the videotape was wiped but there was no ‘junking’ of a film print as far as we know because to the best of our knowledge one was never made in the first place). More sensible remarks were made by a fan from Winchester who deplored the ludicrous rumour-mongering associated with the subject.

Issue 126 (May 1994) included a reader letter again encouraging a survey of the TVNZ archive on the basis of an old newspaper cutting from 1985, which was reprinted, in which a traffic manager at the archive reported sitting on large numbers of prints from overseas that the distributors didn’t want back. He noted that sometimes they were obliged by the distributors to destroy them, “But there are times when we don’t have the heart to do it”. As an example, he noted they had “a complete set of Hancocks sitting here that we never destroyed.” There was nothing in the article about Doctor Who but it makes interesting reading.

DWB issue 128 (July 1994) brought a letter from a fan who reported having recently spoken with the chief archivist at TVNZ who discounted the possibility of any missing Doctor Who being held. However, he claimed that in Canada a:

Shadowsphere’s third issue (Summer 1994) contained an article which began with a vague allusion to a recent rumour concerning The Highlanders and The Macra Terror. It went on to bust an old myth:

However, whilst the rumour is undoubtedly baseless, this explanation doesn’t entirely hold water since few fans were aware of episodes being missing in the mid to late 1970s. The article then sketched in more background of the ‘Roger Barrett’ Tenth Planet episode four hoax. It’s not worth giving all the details here, except to say that this report shows that finally even the most optimistic fans were starting to realise that the whole thing was a hoax – the writer conceding he was 98% convinced of this. He suggested the serial would still be 25% missing in 30 years – and exactly 30 years on we can say he was quite correct.

Matrix issue 50 (summer 1994) included a large article about the whole missing episodes phenomenon by a fan who has written widely and not always accurately on the subject. This reiterated many of the rumours I’ve covered here and presented a lot of poorly informed and illogical supposition, such as the suggestion that William Hartnell may have been given a print of The Feast of Steven (he definitely wasn’t). Amongst rumours we’ve not yet encountered was a reference to The Evil of the Daleks episode five allegedly existing, but with no further details. The writer also presented this nonsense about fan ‘hoarders’:

The article continued in this vein with hints that some of the off-air soundtracks that had turned up in recent years actually came from existing film prints; that a BBC Enterprises employee undertaking the junkings sold episodes on to private collectors; and that one fan may have travelled to Kuwait in 1976 or ’77 to buy several missing episodes. It’s hard to fathom how missing episodes could have been in Kuwait since it never showed Doctor Who and the wider UAE only bought 1970s and ‘80s episodes.

As an aside, it’s impossible to prove a negative, so many rumours of a missing episode’s existence are impossible to disprove. However, objective facts can be proved. When considering what rigour any writer about missing episodes applies to the rumours they quote, it can be illuminating to consider the reliability of their verifiable ‘facts’. For example, the article referenced above reports The Tomb of the Cybermen sold over 100,000 copies on VHS. This is clearly impossible and the true number is about a third of that.

Dated October 1994, Image to Image appears to have been a one-off (though it’s labelled as issue 1) “complete give to Doctor Who in the BBC archives”. One article reported that an attendee at the previous year’s Panopticon convention claimed to have viewed The Power of the Daleks episode four on VHS at a comic mart. It also reported:

To be fair to the author, this was a level-headed article which applied an appropriate degree of scepticism to rumours. The author also made the prophetic statement: “I would never bet against something existing abroad (Africa most likely)”.

However, this article was accompanied by a misinformed and credulous piece which included the suggestion that Marco Polo, The Power of the Daleks and the missing instalments of The Invasion “almost definitely exist in private collections”, with VHS copies reportedly being sold at the rate of £300-400 per episode. These stories were supposedly in the UK, while the second episode of The Crusade was rumoured to be with a private collector in the USA and had even been shown at conventions. The author suggested it must have been bought from a small US television station when they were ready to junk it. However, no 1960s episodes were ever sold to US broadcasters.

This article divided all the then-missing episodes into categories A to C according to the likelihood of their recovery (‘A’ being most likely), based on an analysis of rumours, like this:

This makes interesting reading when viewed in light of the 13 episodes recovered subsequently. Look away now if you don’t want to know the scores… This system of categorisation proves to be startlingly accurate – but in reverse! Eleven episodes from group C have been recovered, two from group B and none from group A. This is as good an illustration as any of the folly of putting your faith in rumours.

Moving on, and Shadowsphere issue 4 (Autumn 1994) included this rather half-hearted rumour:

Shadowsphere then metamorphosised again, becoming Metamorph II in reference to its previous name. Its second issue (Spring 1995) reported on the claims of a TV collector, ‘Mr X’, who was clearly a hoaxer but was given credence by the writer. Mr X claimed to have bought four missing episodes of the BBC sci-fi anthology series Out of the Unknown on a VHS tape at a car boot sale in 1987 but that he wiped the tape because of its poor quality. Additionally:

Rumours volume 4, issue 10 (late-June 1995) reported the potential existence of a clip from The Power of the Daleks:

Volume 4, issue 12 (August 1995) gave the following update:

This was getting closer to the truth, regards the Power clip at least, which did exist. In volume 5, issue 1 (dated early/mid-September 1995) a letter from Steve Roberts of the BBC’s Doctor Who Restoration Team corrected these reports:

Roberts was unable to comment on the suggestion that three whole episodes had been recovered, but we know now that they hadn’t. To give DWB its due, they had first reported the potential existence of the ‘C for Computer’ clip in issue 12/13 way back in 1984, albeit referring to Evil rather than The Power of the Daleks, as noted in the first instalment of this series of articles.

Rumours was soon at it again with volume 5, issue 3 (mid-October 1995) reporting that missing episodes from The Invasion and The Macra Terror had been recovered and were being “cleaned up” at the British Film Institute. Why the BBC wouldn’t be doing this themselves with their dedicated Restoration Team wasn’t stated. Volume 5, issue 7 (January 1996) came up with this unlikely report:

This was, of course, unfounded, although episode two of The Underwater Menace would be recovered from a film collector in the UK in 2011. The report concluded:

This was a more interesting claim. Late in 1996 a selection of extracts from now-missing episodes was recovered from the Australia Film Censorship Board, including clips from The Macra Terror. However, these were not discovered until well after the Rumours report appeared, and New Zealand was not involved. Some years later, a few further censor clips were recovered from New Zaland, but these certainly weren’t known about when Rumours published.

It is likely that the rumour was a corruption of reports about the compilation of missing episode clips which (as noted in the first part of this series) had been circulating in fandom since the 1980s. These were home-recorded 8mm cine film clips that originated in Australia and had been compiled onto videotape. Extracts did indeed include moments from both The Power of the Daleks and The Macra Terror, and rumours had previously (inaccurately) linked its origin to New Zealand. The original film eventually resurfaced and was loaned to the BBC to copy in 1998.

Metamorph II issue 8.5 (Spring 1997) included a piece hinting at conspiracy theories around these cine clips. The writer came up with a number of objections to reports that it originated in New Zealand (it didn’t) or Australia (it did). The misunderstandings that led to these objections were corrected in issue 9 (Autumn 1997).

It was around this time that the fanzine scene began to wane as the internet started to become the dominant home for fan communication. So this is good place to leave our chronicle but please get in touch if you have any interesting fanzine cuttings on this subject you would like to share.

Many of the conclusions I drew at the end of my survey of 1980s rumours apply equally to the 1990s and I won’t repeat them here. But the nature of rumours did change a little in the 1990s. Although most were again the result of misunderstandings or excesses of optimism, to a greater degree than previously we see malice taking a role. There were several deliberate hoxes, one at least apparently conducted for profit.

We also see more suggestions than previously that missing episodes held a large monetary value if not returned to the BBC, which was probably inaccurate and potentially unhelpful to report. In that respect, we see a parallel with modern internet-based fandom (and even tabloid reporting around the subject), which gives prominence to the more sensational rumours regardless of the irresponsibility of such reporting.

Whereas we saw several rumours in the 1980s proceed recoveries of episodes, in the 1990s this applied only to clips. Of the decade’s full-episode recoveries – The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Lion – not a peep was rumoured in the fan press in advance of the official confirmations of the returns. That probably tells you all you need to know about the rumour-mill of the 1990s.

Finally, I have been scathing of the illogicality of many of the rumours quoted in this series of articles but I must acknowledge that I have had the benefit of access to several decades of research into the subject which those witing in the 1980s and ‘90s did not. I tip my hat and offer thanks and admiration to that handful of fan scholars whose diligent research I have drawn upon.

Images © the original writers or editors of the fanzines and are reproduced under the fair dealing provisions of copyright law.

Thanks to Chris Arnsby, Tim Burrows, Ash Stewart and 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, 2^nd 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.