Doctor Who Episode Found In Dead Film Collectors House (BUT...)

[Si Hunt]

An interesting and quite hopeful story, even if it has not unfortunately resulted in the return of an episode this time.

Paul Vanezis:

Yesterday (Thursday) I travelled down to visit a family in Essex who contacted the BBC via the Treasure Hunt website. They bought a house in the country 8 months ago which featured in the grounds a makeshift cinema, complete with projectors and reels of film. One of the films was a Doctor Who and from their description of the first few feet of film, it featured the first title sequence.

Myself and Steve Roberts examined the film which turned out to be 'Conspiracy', the third episode of 'The Romans'. Nevertheless, it proves that despite what we think is a lot of publicity, people of a certain age just don't know what they have and in this case, the enthusiast film collector had been dead for ten years and his wife suffered from Alzheimers.

I'm sure that one or two more episodes will turn up in the hands of private collectors who simply don't know the value of what they have, or will be re-discovered by others who come into new ownership of such material.

I suspect due to the good condition of the print and the fact that the BBC leader was intact, that it had been with the same person since he acquired it, probably since the mid 1970's. But he died over 10 years ago and the family that bought the house have no knowledge of the people that lived there before, apart from the fact that they used to put on screenings for the rest of the village.

Old People: do they hold all the missing episodes?

Si.

[Dirk Gently]

That's my hope, Si. I hope that there are ex-BBC employees (or their families) holding film prints that were supposed to be destroyed but were "accidentally" taken home & kept.

[Anthony Williams]

Well, at least it shows that there are still prints out there, that the BBC didn't know existed.

Statistically, it's more likely that an episode that we already know to exist from the 60s will show up, than one that is missing - but this is very good news, and gives us all hope that the remaining episodes of The Space Pirates may one day show up

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

Well, at least it shows that there are still prints out there, that the BBC didn't know existed.

Statistically, it's more likely that an episode that we already know to exist from the 60s will show up, than one that is missing - but this is very good news, and gives us all hope that the remaining episodes of The Space Pirates may one day show up

I like the space pirates............yes, I know I'm in the minority.............what do you mean I'm the only person?

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

I've just realised that this is the same story that Ant Cox posted in the other thread about whether we should give up on finding missing episodes or not. I thought it was odd the chances of it happening twice in such a short timespan!

[Stuart Wallis]

Old People: do they hold all the missing episodes?

Eh? WHAT? I can't hear you young man! Let me turn this Web Of Fear thingy off!

[Andrew Curnow]

I bet they were really disappointed when they arrived to check the episode... only to immediately realise it wasn't a missing one. Still, it's an encouraging story!