"Missing Without Trace" - Revisited

After nearly ten years passed since I wrote my "Missing Without Trace" article I decided to write this companion piece as my original article seems to have provoked a fair amount of controversy. Because of the nastiness involved and also because of several personal problems encountered in the mid 1990's I found myself shunning the world of Doctor Who and its fandom, my interest in ths programme becoming one of only casual interest. In the run-up to the 40th anniversary my interest resurfaced slightly and I thought it was time to revisit my research and contacts but this time, in a more colloquial, memoir-style narrative rather than an article.

I really wrote this not only to be a reference, and to put my thoughts down, metaphorically, on paper, but also because I feel that it could be a catharsis. There is still a lot of hurt and resentment within me, and the best way I have found to purge it all, is to write about it. There might be discrepancies with other works, but these are my honest recollections - based on memory, letters and emails. Naturally, some accounts are crystal clear and, for reasons to become clear, others are very hazy. I have also taken the time to update "Missing Without Trace" with new information and annotation to show source attribution etc.

My interest in the missing episodes started in 1981 with the publication of the Doctor Who Monthly Winter Special describing the current status of the BBC archives. I was fascinated, but not too horrified; for one thing, I was far too young to have seen any of the missing Hartnell/Troughton episodes although knowing of them by repute I was intrigued by the glittering reputations they had garnered by those lucky enough to have seen them on their first broadcast. As episodes started materialising, my interest became one of almost archaeological leaning, with the gaps in the history of the show being slowly plugged.

I (along with thousands of other fans!) attended the 1983 Longleat Celebrations which was of course, great fun despite the queues. One of the fanzines I picked up was a recent edition of the fanzine "Skaro", edited by Simon Lydiard. He had written an editorial saying that he knew for sure that "Tenth Planet":4 and all of "The Macra Terror" existed. He was very opaque when it came to providing clues for this miscreant's identity, even go so far as to being vague about the persons gender, but saying that the person had obviously been in regular contact with the BBC. The matter has, as far as I am aware, been allowed to fade away (more on this later!) but I can't help but feel that Simon had heard of, or perhaps seen, the off-air cine footage from the stories that exist in private hands. Who knows?

(..and talking of promising leads that came to nothing; in the wake of the excellent DWB "Power of the Daleks" photonovel c.1988, a letter was published saying that the author "knew that Power existed somewhere on video". Was anything ever done to chase this up? If it was, its been keep very quiet!)

My first exposure to contacts who claimed knowledge of the missing episodes was in October 1985 during a visit to the Doctor Who Shop in Wapping. The owners claimed they had missing Yeti/Cybermen episodes from the Troughton era but didn't see the point in returning them to the archives as they would "just sit on a shelf gathering dust. I eventually wrote to Gary Levy (now Leigh) of the somewhat militant fan magazine DWB with this information in 1987, and he repled with a letter saying "I cannot and will not investigate these claims as 99% of them are due to hoaxers. Please don't be misled". Fair enough, although I was incensed back then that he sounded like a stern schoolmaster. I was also able to hear through a nth-generation source that Jeremy Bentham also had the same attitude towards the owners of the Who shop.

Today, my interest in the missing episodes saga is minimal. I still follow developments and get excited by discoveries, such as the censor clips, "The Lion", the recent "Fury from the Deep":6 scenes and the "Power of the Daleks" trailer (these two having been found in the BBC Archive!), and I think the Restoration Team do a fantastic, applaudable job in remastering the stories and episodes for VHS and DVD release. However, although I think the discovery of whole episodes is drying up, I can't help but feel that there might be more to be found, particularly in the BBC; the Fury footage and the final episode of the "missing" episode of the 1960s BBC show "Adam Adamant Lives!", entitled "D for Destruction", featuring Patrick Troughton (how the hell was thie missed during the BBC digital transfer archival project?!) are good examples of this...although a perfectly reasonably argument might be that Doctor Who is far more popular than this latter series ever was and so any overlooked material is not as likely to appear at this late stage. But you never know........! It is a bit sickening that the BBC are releasing audios of the lost stories, when they demonstrated thirty years ago that they didn't want the episodes in the first place.

Dr.Paul Lee,

September 6th, 2003

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My exposure to the world of Doctor Who fandom started as soon as I began University at Southampton in 1990, when I was fortunate enough to meet thespian Tom Salinsky, a maths student, who was organising a 27th anniversary video party session at a local hall of residence. We struck up a good friendship, and I told him of my interest in the missing episodes. He asked if I could write an article for his fanzine (which later collapsed, I believe, leaving my work unpublished), which I wrote over the Christmas holidays. The article would up being very long - about 20-30 pages - and collated all the information and rumours that I could gather from 10+ years of collecting Doctor Who Magazine, Doctor Who Bulletin, fanzines etc. We eventually formed a short-lived Southampton University Doctor Who Society; an excuse to wallow in nostalgia by watching old videos.

(PS: In December 2005, I was surprised to see Tom on Channel 4's "Space Cadet" series!)

The next contact I established was Jason Stevens at the 1991 DWAS "Day at the Dig" visit to Aldbourne, the location used for the Daemons story in 1970. Jason, who was the event organiser for the now disbanded Reading-based DWAS local group "The Thames Valley Timelords" was a great bloke with whom I got on very well. He also had a huge collection of rare episodes, something that I was able to enjoy first-hand when he kindly invited me (a virtual stranger!) to stay at his home for a few days whilst his parents were away.

Jason turned out to be a great source of information, and I gave him a copy of my missing episodes article, something I now hated as it was rather long and messy. Jason was very well connected in the fan world, but paradoxically, hated organised fandom. However, some of his ideas were quite good: in letters to the DWAS newsletter, he had suggested that the 1976 off-air recording of "The Deadly Assassin" part 3 be used to restore the truncated BBC copy. He also suggested that "The Sontaran Experiment" be issued with the VHS release of "Genesis of the Daleks". Both os these ideas were to come true!

Jason told me that one of his friends had fingered a member of the DWAS executive, who turned out to be "clean" of any accusations. Jason's contact also knew for a fact that one of the major fans (whose name was mentioned) had all of "The Macra Terror" and "Galaxy Four:2". Believe it or not, despite this seemingly cast-iron anecdote, this is as far as it went! Jason later told me that his friend shortly afterwards got married and live in Henley-on-Thames and "didn't care" about the story. Astonishing!

[I must acknowldge Mike Long for reminding me that, at exactly this time, an audio of "Galaxy Four:2" apeared in fandom. This was one of the dew stories that, until that time, didn't exist on audio.]

Also of interest from Jason was a report that "Power of the Daleks:3" was under negotiation - but this episode lacked the opening titles....

Jumping forward in time towards the end of the year, Jason wrote to me to tell me that the "Thames Valley Timelords" BBC contact had written a letter to DWM, which I should read "carefully". The letter was about a recent archive piece on "The Tenth Planet" and showed a picture of a collapsed Cybermen from the fabled part 4. The caption underneath said something like "it was a small piece of surviving footage before the regeneration scene". The writer of the letter said that he had a copy of the Blue Peter installment from which the regeneration scene hails and said that the collapsed Cyberman footage was not from this. I thought this was a brave thing to do; admitting in the letters page of a BBC sanctioned publication that "pirate" material was being held (viz. the "Blue Peter" edition). As it transpired, the picture of the Cyberman turned out to be a Cura snap of the episode, although DWM said that it was donated "anonymously".

The writer of the letter was Steve Roberts and he will figure prominently in my narrative very shortly.

Darren Gregory

During my summer break from University, I decided to do a little bit of research myself and put an advert in Exchange and Mart, mainly because, for one week, the ads were being published free. I simply asked for anyone with missing Hartnell/Troughton episodes to get in touch.I got a few letter from people offering to sell me copies of existing episodes, but one letter was intriguing. It was from Blackpool based Darren Gregory. Now, I had seen ads from him in previous editions of Exchange and Mart, where he had asked for missing episodes, as well as films called "Suspiria" and "Creepazoids".

To summarise the two letters that I eventually received from him: he claimed to have a poor quality copy of "Tomb of the Cybermen" on Betamax but didn't want to sell it, only to swap. He said that he had received clips from missing episodes from others to verify their existence, but that is all that he did receive ultimately!

He claimed to have clips from (and here I must apologise as my memory is fallible when it comes to recalling his list) "Tenth Planet:4", one of "The Macra Terror", "Power of the Daleks" and "The Highlanders" episodes, "The Singing Sands" ("Marco Polo:2"), one of the missing episodes of "Reign of Terror" and "The Faceless Ones" and - intriguingly, "Invasion of the Dinosaurs:1" (color) - note the Americanized spelling.

He was willing to swap all, or some of his clips and was also after a couple of other items, mentioned as "Changes" and "Cloudburst", as well as early (Doctor Who?) test films. He later admitted that he was the person responsible for creating the "Fury from the Deep":1 and 2 hoax at the time that the four "Ice Warriors" episodes were found in 1988. He said that his hoax went too far and ended up in the letters page of DWM, which I recalled seeing. He said that superfan Ian Levine spent two hours on the phone to him after copies of "Fury":1 and 2 and offered to drive up from London to Blackpool to meet Darren. Additionally, Levine offered Darren some items to swap: rare out-takes, presumably the 1978/9 Doug Who outtakes; Shada (Levine was quite surprised to learn that most fans had a copy of this) and "The Mind of Evil:1" - in colour (or "color" as Darren said). I was to get one more letter from Darren, although a few years later, friends of mine tried one last attempt to elicit the truth from him....

Darren's letters are now transcribed below. Click here.

Zach Waugh's Metamorph magazine were publishing an occasional series of articles on the missing episodes by Inverkeithing-based Ronald McDevitt, another well connected fan. He knew Bruce Campbell, the negotiator of the original print of "The Reign of Terror:6" in 1982 (and Ronald was horrified that in an interview with Ian Levine in DWB a few years later, Levine said that he "persuaded [Campbell] to return the episode" - an outrageous assertion: I know that if I was involved in negotations for missing material, I would be very reluctant to return it if I thought that others would claim the credit for it). I should also mention here that, according his friend Ronald, Campbell has noted that "Ian Levine doesn't give things to people like me."

Campbell was the one in negotation for an episode of "The Power of the Daleks" - but it was part 2, not 3 as reported by Jason Stevens. Campbell hadn't seen the episode but the collector wanted a copy of the laserdisk edition of the extended version of "Aliens", which was, at the time, only available from the USA. This was obtained, but Campbell never did get hold of the episode.

Zach managed to trace Simon Lydiard (see my preamble for more details), who was agreeable to allow his original Skaro article to be reprinted in Metamorph. Simon did say that "he had nothing to add". Here, I must echo Ronald's sentiments: it simply is not good enough for sources of such concrete stories to refuse to provide any further details. Unless Simon knew he had made a mistake and was trying to save face? Who knows?

Postscript: In April 2004, I was surprised to receive an email from Simon Lydiard himself, who elaborated upon his claims as follows:

"OK, the truth is - I never had any hard evidence about people having copies of missing episodes. I was aware of a number of allegations, from people I trusted, about certain individuals. There were suggestions that some people were "hoarding" missing material. This was at a time when there was no legitimate means for even possessing video copies of stories which had not recently been aired. Fairly poor quality videos of old episodes, even from the Baker era, were changing hands at ridiculous sums of money. There was a kind of clandestine world in which videos were sold and exchanged. And one was frequently made aware of suggestions that there were copies of "rare" or "missing" material being circulated. I never actually saw any."

My article was intended to flush out those fans whom I thought were hoarding missing material. I can't remmber the words I used at the time (my copies of Skaro are back in the UK), but I suspect I probably phrased the article rather more strongly than I should have, leading people to believe that I had more definite information than, in fact, I did."

This resulted in a number of phone calls, often rather uncomfortable, including one from Ian Levine.

As Simon says: "Quite honestly, the reaction was unpleasant and that was why i went quiet about it."

Ronald, like myself, was intrigued by reports in DWB in 1987 about the purported, long held-fan belief of the theft of "The Tenth Planet:4" from the Blue Peter production office in 1973 while it was being used for the regeneration clip. The DWB report said that there was a rumour that a "sound engineer" who worked on "100,000 BC", "The War Machines" and "The Tenth Planet" and that edition of "Blue Peter" had stolen it. In the very next edition of DWB, this story was reported as being confirmed, but without any further details being given. Ronald said that consulting the necessary staff documentation from those three stories would give a common name, and whilst he had a tentative identification, I found that the person in charge of sound was different for those three stories.

All this ties in with the "Tenth Planet:4" fiasco in a few years time.....

One other project that Ronald asked me to get involved with: a friend, Mick Hall, of his was a huge collector of 1960s Dalek and Doctor Who merchandise, and it was his collection that appeared in the "Doctor Who - The Sixties" book, although, annoyingly, he was only given a tiny credit and a complimentary copy of the book for allowing generous access to his toys, books etc. The collector was running a campaign to get the two Dalek movies released in widescreen as they seemed like totally different movies from their full-screen counterparts. I agreed to help, but didn't get much help from others; to give one example, the Newcastle group "The Invasion of Tyne" didn't get many signatures for the petition on the grounds that the films were "crap" (!)

Roanld had a friend called Rob Lowry, who had written a thin pamphlet about the hunt for missing episodes, called "Chasing Rainbows", The booklet was full of rumours, and the one that caught my eye was about "Tenth PLanet:4". Jeremy Bentham had told Rob that this episode had been traced to the Leeds area before the trail went cold. This was a few years before the booklet was published (c.1993).

Both Ronald and myself subscribed to US and UK newsletters etc. where collectors would sell their hoards or try to swap them. Ronald's heart skipped a beat when he saw "The Underwater Menace" listed in one such listing. However, it turned out to be a documentary about the danger of undersea mines!

1992:

Steve Roberts

I was delighted to receive a letter from Steve Roberts in January 1992; Steve, who was an advisor to the BBC's "Resistance is Useless" clips montage the week previously, is a senior telecine (film->tape) operator at the BBC and was the main source of information for the "Thames Valley Timelords" group. He had recently unearthed the 35mm film footage from "The Daleks Masterplan:1" after he had requisitioned the footage from the "Masterplan:2" and found that the contents didn't match the label on the can, (it turned out that the footage was missing from the archives.)

He and superfan Ian Levine had a very close friendship; they not only lived very close to each other and worked together on "Resistance..." but the were not averse to swapping material. Levine, for instance, had danced around the room in excitement when he saw the uncut versions of "The Wheel in Space:6" and "The Faceless Ones:1", of which he only had excised copies. Levine swapped Steve for these episodes for the clips of the Daleks burning down the forest in "The Daleks Masterplan:2".

Steve had been disinterested in Doctor Who for many years, but Jeremy Bentham's book "The Early Years" had reignited his fondness for the show.

Steve had obtained a copy of my missing episodes article from the Reading DWAS group and had seen my address in a fanzine where I had appealed for copies of certain TV programmes, such as "Hot Metal" and the 1979 "Quatermass" serial. He said that he thought it was time someone sat down and wrote the definitive article and he said mine was "excellent". He told me of the recent clips find from "Masterplan:1" and that he was eager to merge the clips with an audio track as the clips were silent. In my article, I had mentioned that audios existed for the story and he asked who had them. I said that, as far as I knew, Richard Landen had off-air recordings of just about every episode, and had provided copies to the BBC for their releases of "The Macra Terror" and "Evil of the Daleks".

Steve also informed me that, as on early 1991, "it seems extremely likely" that as many as 6 episodes were about to be returned to the BBC. Adam Lee was expecting "four episodes of sixties Who" to be returned as part of a large package from Asia TV in Hong Kong. Adam claimed to Steve that he didn't know what the episodes were, but Adam knew what was in the rest of the package and "Doctor Who was important enough for him to have asked Asia TV which episodes they were". Steve guessed that they were missing episodes but that Adam wanted to have them in his hands before making any kind of announcement. Adam also told Steve that a colleague of his was hot on the trail of another episode, and that a Troughton episode was due to be returned from America "that week".

In his next letter, Steve broke the news that "Tomb" had been found. I pretended to act surprised but I had been told of the find by the Reading group a week previously! According to Steve, the film cans containing the episodes (see above) were taken directly to BBC Enterprises, much to Adam's disgust, where the discovery was made, and a large amount of disinformation was spread (the story being told was that it was another copy of "100,000 BC".

It also seemed that the "Power of the Daleks" episode rumour (see above) had run out of steam - Steve had heard that a film collector had had an episode that featured Daleks and Patrick Troughton in a silly hat. He confirmed the "Aliens" laserdisc story, but the last that was heard was that the collector's mother had died and the transaction was in limbo whilst the estate was being sorted out.

Some time later, Steve told me that Adam Lee (the BBC Archive Selector) had seen "Tomb" and thought it was "crap", because it had shaky doors when Tobermann opened them and poor acting etc. Steve dismissed these opinions as Adam wasn't a fan of the show. How right he would be proved to be....

(A correspondent later told me that, when he contacted Adam, the latter informed him that he documented proof that "The Feast of Steven" had been sold overseas; conventional fan wisdom states otherwise. Proof perhaps of Adam's lack of interest in the show?)

On the point of Darren Gregory, Steve was of the opinion that he thought that Darren's clips were genuine, but that he might have been misled by official clips (the regeneration scene) or the off-air cine footage ("The Macra Terror" et al), and by BBC promos ("Invasion (of the Dinosaurs:1"). On the issue of future recoveries, Steve confirmed something that Jeremy Bentham had said in DWB; that not only was a lost episode office to be set-up, hunting to material around the globe, but also the introduction of a finders fee, to reimburse collectors for whatever they paid to get material. When I told this to Steve Phillips many years later, he was always very hostile, squawking "There is no finders fee!", ignoring seemingly semi-official BBC information.

I was very concerned about the large scratch shown on the clips of "The Invasion:2" as used in "Resistance is Useless". Steve assured me that there were duplicate prints of the episode and, for whatever reason, a damaged copy had been used. He also allayed my concerns about the scratch on the 2 inch Quad master of "The Sea Devils:5"; apparently a scratch shows up as a series of dots spread over the screen. Talking of "The Sea Devils", which had recently been shown on BBC2, he said that he had sat in on the technical review of the NTSC->PAL converted episodes and was pleasantly surprised as to how far standards conversions had come since he copied the BBC Enterprises/Worldwide tapes, which had been returned from Australia after their repeat showings over there.

One other point that interested me was the use of a "private collectors" episodes to restore "The Time Meddler:1 and 3" to their full versions. Steve told me that the source of the material was Ian Levine and said that Ian got them back "AFTER" the Nigerian find...which doesn't tie in well with Levine's account. Also, I had seen a complete version of "Time Meddler:1" at Jason Steven's house the previous summer, when the official BBC prints had the first few minutes removed. It seemed to me that the complete episodes were circulated around fandom but only after the Nigerian episodes were found.

The one rumour that, as far as Steve was concerned, would not "lie down", as he put it, was "Evil of the Daleks:5" and he was wondering if I knew any details of it. I must admit I hadn't. The only prevailing rumours that I had heard were for "Tenth Planet:4" and "Marco Polo:2" ("The Singing Sands"). In later letters to me, Steve said that a contact of his (girlfriend's brother? I can't remember!) had a friend in Australia. Steve's friend laid the bait saying that "it would be nice to see a decent copy of Evil:5 as his was so poor." The Australian contact said that he would do a copy for him soon (!) Steve had promised a copy for "The Thames Valley Timelords", but obviously it never turned up!

A story that did sound too good to be true, and was never confirmed (but which we can safely say was bunkum) was the story that, a few weeks after "Tomb" was found, five film cans saying "The Web of Fear:2-6" had been found! The way he heard about it was as follows: a guy who works for HMV phoned BBC Enterprises pretending to be in charge of buying videos for the store, and said that HMV were very interested in "Tomb" and had anything else been found? The BBC said that they had also recovered "Web..." but they didn't know if its condition was good enough to allow it to be released, so they were going to clean it up first.

At one point in early 1992, Steve told me that Adam Lee of the Archives had had four people phone him up in the same week offering him "Fury from the Deep"; Darren was behind this and Adam didn't take any of his inventions seriously at all!

In the last written contact I had with Steve Roberts, he told me that he recently been to a meeting of DWAS members in the North-West and had met a nice bloke who was "very big in episode hunter circles". He had gone to the last known address of the holder of "The Tenth Planet:4", but the guy had moved house without leaving a forwarding address. Also, this episode hunter had been in contact with the man who had returned "Reign of Terror:6" in 1982. This man also had parts 4 and 5 and was trying to recoup the money it cost to buy them in the first place. Steve's new found friend had a large video collection and was copying the current series of "Star Trek:The Next Generation" (season 5) for Steve's girlfriend, Vicki. I was later to learn that this "big episode hunter" was a certain Peter Finklestone from Newcastle.

Steve and I arranged to meet at the DWAS "Tombwatch" event (see the "Tomb of the Cybermen" DVD for clips of this event) for which he had provided S-VHS copies of "The Web of Fear:1", "The Daleks Masterplan:5 and 10", "The Evil of the Daleks:2" and "The Ice Warriors:1" before the showing of "Tomb". He said "look out for a short git" iin his letter. He was there with Vicki, and afterwards we retired to the Fitzroy Tavern pub (he did invite others but no-one else could make it that day). He was impressed with the quality of the BBC Enterprises/Worldwide tape copies of "Tomb" as the film copies for Ian Levine had turned out to be very grey. I recall Steve trying to describe how the copy protection system "Macrovision" worked, but I was a bit drunk on cider and I couldn't take in the details, although I do recall him saying that recent film releases, such as the Aliens:Special Edition were standards conversions from NTSC masters. He also hoped that "Tomb" would herald a new era of episode hunting, and expressed hope that "Moonbase 3" from 1973 would be found. I kept quiet as I thought this was unlikely. How wrong I was proved ro be!

As you can imagine I had a mountain of questions. I asked Steve about Quad tapes snapping during playback, and he was sceptical. He said that what normally happened was, if the tape had a slight nick or fold at the top, when the tape head passed by (near vertically with respect to the movement of the tape), it would slice it in two.

Evidently staff in the Engineering department have too much time on their hands: as he told me, Steve said that only that week he had worked out that "Chesney Hawkes" is an almost perfect anagram of "Cheesey Wanks" (!)

[If I may sidetrack slightly here: I had the idea that unused clips may have found their way into the hands of fans during the making of the "Whose Doctor Who" show in 1977. It was known that a longer clip of "Four Hundred Dawns"/"Galaxy Four:1" existed in the hands of Jan Vincent-Rudzki and I was wondering if there was any material that had been collated that hadn't been used at all. I knew that Melvyn Bragg and the "Whose Doctor Who" producer Tony Cash still worked together, so I wrote to Tony c/o "The South Bank Show" production office but never got a reply. I did also toy with the idea of contacting Hartnell's granddaughter, Jessica Carney, to ask her about the rumour that William Hartnell used to show "The Feast of Steven" ("Daleks Masterplan:7") episode after Christmas lunch, but I never did test this theory.]

I also wrote to BBC Wales after reading that they broadcast episodes of Season 11 a day after the rest of the country. I enquired whether they still had any tapes left over, particularly "Invasion (of the Dinosaurs)":1, but they informed me that the episodes were either wiped or sent back to London shortly after transmission.

In June that year (after my 2nd year exams), Steve invited me to the BBC itself to show me the test footage that had been done for the restored "Daemons". I had just completed the 2nd draft of my missing episodes article and I took it along with me. As he scanned through it, he picked up on a mistake instantly; in my account of "The Ice Warriors" discovery, I had said that BBC Villiers House was in the process of being demolished when the film cans were unearthed in 1988; it transpired that Steve had been there only the week before! Oh dear! I should have said "refursbished" rather than demolished!

We had a good time though. Steve showed me around White City television centre; they were shooting an episode of "Bottom" that day and we had a view of it through the public observation gallery. Back in his engineering office, things were more interesting.

Steve boasted of his and workmates' ability to change the heads on a VTR very quickly - and they were right! At one point, Steve stood on a table, and rooted in a cardboard box on the top shelf. Clutching a couple of video tape cassettes, Steve took me to a nearby editing suite.

The first tape had the colourised test footage of "The Daemons". The titles were still in black and white, but the results of the rest of the restored segments were nothing short of impressive. He told me that any colour banding seen on the episodes were not in the finished versions, which were away, ready to be given the nod for broadcast. The only niggle was that I didn't see how the interior, studio scenes looked after restoration; I only saw up to and including Bessie being manipulated by remote control.

On the next tape were episodes 3 and 6 of "The Wheel in Space". Apparently the director of the show in 1968 had expressed an interest in seeing the episodes again.

On the final tape was a dub of the recently located PAL "Death to the Daleks:1". Steve sped forward through it at 44x normal speed, and then backwards at 100x normal speed. On both occasions, the image on screen was still recognisable.

After all this, we went to the customary Fitzroy Tavern meet to share gossip and meet friends (and in my case, rendezvous with mates from Southampton who had just finished their exams that afternoon). Steve had told me an interesting story about the forthcoming BBC repeats of the whole original "Star Trek" series (remember that, for many years, a few episodes were banned in the UK). He said that the film prints acquired by the BBC in the late 1960s/early 1970s were in a very poor state, with cuts all over the place. The BBC had obtained copies of uncut episodes from Paramount, but the engineering department though that the videotaped conversions were awful and had tried to throw them out, reinstating the original films. They were always thwarted, and for the first time ever a few months later, we were treated to a complete uncut run of Star Trek episodes. Not bad for a series that was c.26 years old at this point! Steve was also mildly annoyed at Ian Levine who had claimed in a DWB feature that he had been working with James Russell to restore the Pertwee episodes to colour; Steve had sat in on all the restoration sessions and Levine was nowhere to be seen (in fact, this is a common theme by Levine, taking the credit for other people's hard work.) Steve told me that they didn't actually need Levine anymore after the Daemons as they had good quality colour recordings of the Pertwees from which they extracted the chroma information.

As we walked to the Tavern, Steve informed me that the b&w telerecording of the Pertwee episodes did have colour information embedded in them, manifested as a series of dots spread across the screen. He said that extracting these dots to recreate the colour information would be impossible. It would be some 15 years before James Insell proved Steve wrong with his incredible colour recovery process.

Steve had been impressed by the BBC drama "The Nightmare Man" and had given me a copy from one of his tapes (which included "The Stone Tape", "The Omega Factor", "Quatermass 2" etc.). He told me that his BBC friends jokingly ask him "Have you been copying again, Steve?" Eventually, Steve would put his own countdown clocks on his pilfered tapes to stop people thinking that they came from him. He had copies of (at least) "The Claws of Axos", with the clock at the start saying "The Vampire from Space", and with an interesting out-take: an extra playing a UNIT soldier from part 2, who was wincing from heart burn. Steve also had copies of "The Sea Devils", which he copied from tapes recently returned by ABC tv (Australia) following a recent repeat series.

In October that year, at the start of my final year, I phoned Steve up out of the blue to check on any news. He said that "The Tenth Planet:4" was back, but he didn't divulge any details other than Adam Lee had to threaten the holder's job to get it back, which made it sound as if the possessor of the episode works, or worked within the BBC. The episode has been returned on an obsolete video tape format, the original 16mm b&w film having been sold on to another collector years before.

I asked about the restoration work being undertaken. "Doctor Who and the Silurians" was proving to be "a dog" because it was incomplete and sequences were having to be coloured by hand by a third party. And work on "The Ambassadors of Death" had stalled because of the poor colour quality, though apparently the first episode was not too bad to do. I took this to mean the abysmal episodes 2 and 3 which shows colour streaking. It really meant part 5 and parts of others.

I remember inviting Steve Roberts to my 21st birthday party in Southampton on November 14th, 1992, but I never got a letter or a phone call back. Sadly, things would not be as cordial afterwards, which I think is a pity as we got on very well.

About this time, thanks to the availability of email at Southampton and access to the newgroups, I was able to establish contact with a good group of researchers: Richard Develyn (whose wife had just given birth), Steve Philips (compiler of clips from missing stories), Richard Shipton (a student at Reading University) and Brian Haas (missing episode rumour collector). In fact, thanks to the generosity of Richard Develyn, I was given good quality audios of "The Web of Fear" and "The Abominable Snowmen", the former of which I listened to almost continuously.

Remember that in those golden days, when I wrote my original missing episodes article, the internet was relatively tiny. Researching anything was difficult and still required writing via snail mail to people and places, often without result.

Richard Landen

Sometime about the transmission of the 2nd or, more probably, the 3rd episode of the restored "Daemons", I was able to attend the Fitzroy Tavern meeting. I had the good fortune to meet one of the original fans, Richard Landen, whose off-air audio tapes had been instrumental in providing the missing episodes with some form of legacy.

The ubiquitous Steve Roberts introduced me to Richard, and I had the chance to listen into their conversation, ask questions etc. Of course, by then, we had received word that the "Tenth Planet:4" tape, which had been given to the BBC on an obsolete video format, was blank, and there was speculation that the BBC had used the wrong tape player when trying to retrieve the episode. Richard had a large collection of tape machines from the early 1970s and had offered them for use if needed.

Richard had been at the BBC the day that film prints from Nigeria had turned up. I can't recall whether he was at the BBC Film and Videotape Library ("the archive") or BBC Enterprises (now BBC Worldwide), but, whilst he was at the conveyor belt watching the cans trundling along, he noticed something labelled "Doctor Who". He picked it up and it was the final episode of "The Web Planet". He put it back on the belt, but it frightened me just how easily anyone with contacts could slip something under their coat and walk off with it.

Of course, the conversation did drift into the saga of the missing episodes. Richard knew for sure that "Tomb" had been in the hands of a fan before a copy was found in Hong Kong. This aroused Steve Robert's interest and the following exchange took place:

Steve: "Hang on. Are you saying that Tomb existed before we got it back?"

Richard: "Yes."

Steve: "Was it Ian [Levine]?"

Richard: (firmly) "I'm not saying. But we all know his name."

And then, for some reason, the conversation faded away into other matters, such as a brief segment of Bok running through the churchyard in "The Daemons" part 5 couldn't be restored as there was no corresponding colour signal etc. A shame that we didn't pry into Richard's story a bit more, who knows what we would have found out. But I get the impression that Richard was talking about someone other than Darren Gregory!

Also of interest was the Roger Barrett story: according to Richard, "Roger" stole it, then sold it to an oil rig worker by the name of Simon Marshall for 5000.

Postscript: I have since learned that Paul Vanezis claims that Richard was deliberately "winding [me] up", and presumably Steve too. It Steve knew that I was being "wound up" and played along, this says a lot about our frienship. I don't believe this. I remember the conversation very well, and there is no hint that Steve was simply playing along. And Richard's conversation was primarily with Steve. Why would anyone make stuff up just to tease a by-stander?

Letters from Michael Long were certainly very interesting: he had heard of rumours connecting the existence of "Evil:5" with "The Moonbase:3". He also heard of the existence of more colour Pertwee episodes; a friend of his had been shown a 10 minute long extract from Part 3 [alas, I can't remember which story!]. The friend and the source of the material was trying to do a deal for missing episodes with the son of a famous film firector (I can guess which one, by the way). Michael also told me the story, which I didn't quite believe that an episode hunter (a name was provided, but I won't give it here) was alleged to have missing "Doomwatch", "Ace of Wands" and "Adam Adamant" and "Doctor Who" episodes. Michael obtained this information from a friend who had talked to the episode hunter in question and had boasted of his possession, although Mike would only give credence to the "Doomwatch" claims.

Mike did wonder, semi-jokingly, whether the estates of Terry Nation, Gerry Davis/Kit Pedler et al. could sue the BBC for loss of revenue as a result of the junking policy!

1993:

I am a bit fuzzy about the dates here, but sometime about the end of 1992/start of 1993, DWM published a series of fuzzy off-air stills from "Evil of the Daleks:5" as part of its archives series. Steve Roberts was suspicious of this, given his knowledge of the perpetual rumours of the elusive nature of this episode. He mentioned that he would like to see if the original stills exhibited something called a "shadow mask" (??) because this would indicate whether it was taken from an original videotape broadcast or from a telecined episode.

David Morgenstern

I received a letter from BBC producer David Morgenstern (who lived in Barnes, London). He had read my article on missing episodes in "405 Alive" with great interest. He said that it had sufficiently aroused his interest into possibly making a documentary of the saga, a topical subject given that it was now the 30th anniversary year. He asked for details on any stories that I knew so that he could publish them in a proposal to his bosses. Over the course of the next year, we were to be in occasional contact, and I kept him informed of my research into "The Tenth Planet:4" episode. David would often write back, sometimes from home, and sometimes from the "Did you see?" production office and tell me about how his "Missing Episodes" documentary proposal was proceeding, and about how it had been put to Alan Yentob, the Controller of BBC1 at the time.

Jumping forward in time a bit: whilst I was enjoying a holiday in Orlando to celebrate the end of my exams, Richard Shipton and Steve Phillips had been on a mission of their own. They had been in contact with Darren Gregory, whose claims had now expanded to the size of one of Richard Branson's balloons. He said that "his collection of [missing] episodes" was nearly complete, and he had a good collection of props from TV series too. One of his props was half the model of Moonbase Alpha from "Space: 1999". Now, bear in mind, the size of the model and you'll agree that you need a very big house in which to store it!

In one of his unbelievable letters to Richard, Darren repeated that various fantasies, and elaborated on various other stories. For instance, when Rich tried to tempt Darren with a photo + audio reconstruction of "The Savages", Mr.Gregory replies that he didn't collect episodes in this form. He also said that his collection of episodes still lacked "Galaxy Four" parts 1-4, "The Crusades" part 1 and "The Feast of Steven", and that he would swap episodes for Doctor Who props, but not costumes or props. The props didn't even have to be authentic, just very good replicas, and he would settle for material from "Space:1999", "The Tomorrow People" and films like "Hellraiser", "Aliens", "Star Wars" etc.

As an effort to ingratiate themselves with Darren, Rich and Steve had offered to make a copy of their compilation tape of nude celebrities, and Mr.Gregory seemed interested although, as Rich pointed out "I don't think he's gonna swap Evil of the Daleks for a pair of t*ts, no matter who's they are!"

Darren had specifically asked for an episode of "The Tomorrow People" ("Shuttlecock") and Rich and Steve agreed to drive to Blackpool to verify Darren's claims, and had a list of clips that they wanted to see, such as the first meeting with the Emperor Dalek in "Evil:6" and the destruction of time sequence from "Masterplan:12". Darren wanted this "Tomorrow People" episode in return surrending a 15 minute tape of clips. So, my chums drove up to the North-West and waited for Darren, who promised to be there. Rich even took his VCR to ensure the best possible quality copies. Darren seemingly had vanished by the time my friends reached the outskirts of Blackpool. Initially, he was reported to be "at work", then "had just nipped out", then he would be about an hour, so my friends whiled away the time in MFI. And they waited...and waited....and waited.... A man was nearby and was repairing a car. I seem to recall that he was a relative of Darren's (brother maybe?) and when asked, he said that Darren had done this before and he was "sick of it". So my friends left, having never met the elusive Mr.Gregory.

Steve Phillips concluded in a letter to me, "Although Rich is somewhat more optimistic, my own feelings are that descriptions of what Darren owns are vastly overblown. A possible hypothesis is Darren invented a tale about having Tomb (or else the copy he did have was unwatchably poor). He then set about making spoof swaps. The first stage of such a swap was to obtain a clip from people who approached him. He couldn't reciprocate so the contacts disappeared leaving Darren with clips form missing episodes. So, I do think the clips he claimed to have were genuine but this is just about the only thing about Darren that I do believe."

Prior to all this, Steve had managed to visit Jan Vincent Rudzki, who had agreed to allow a copy of his long Galaxy Four:1 excerpt to be made to act as bargaining material for Darren. For some reason that I can't recall, the copy never was made. Of some note is the fact that, in the summer of 1993, Rich had been in contact with Adam Lee, who had said that he wasn't interested in off-air recordings of lost TV, presumably as they held no commercial merit. He was to change his tune drastically at "Missing Believed Wiped" that summer.

Another great contact I was to make was Dennis Greenaway, who worked for a newspaper. His forte was designing mock video covers of the missing stories and he was hoping that he could swap some of his excellent samples for some clips from Darren. Of course, nothing came of this. One of the more bizarre rumours from Dennis was that one of the famour film directors had bought all 12 of the Yeti episodes for his son. I won't mention the name of the director, but he has a vehement hatred of the "Carry On" films. You might be able to guess who it is....!

Dennis had been in touch with one of the Yeti authors, Mervyn Haisman, but had been informed that his co-writer, Henry Lincoln, had gone "weird". This is presumably the Henry Lincoln who helped to write "Holy Blood and the Holy Grail ", which may, or may not, have inspired Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code"

I was becoming a bit obsessed with Hartnell's final episode and the DWB story of the sound engineer. I wrote to Lewis Bronze, the editor of Blue Peter and asked him if he could provide staff details of the relevant edition of the show in 1973. He said that he did have the details but was intrigued as to why I wanted them. When I told him, he said "we can't help you". I then circumnavigated him completely and wrote to the BBC Written Archives Centre and, despite a costly photocopying bill, I had the staffing details. This disproved the DWB story completely. Four different people had worked on "100,000 BC", "The War Machines", "The Tenth Planet" and the Blue Peter edition. Back to square one!

Mark Gattiss

I recalled reading a leading article in DWM saying that fan Mark Gatiss (now best remember for "The League of Gentlemen") had first alerted the BBC to the existence of "The Tenth Planet:4". Mark had written a New Adventure and I wrote to him care of the editor of the series, Peter Darvill-Evans. Mark contacted me and said that, in 1986, he was invited to join a missing episodes group called "LOCATE" by its founder, a man named Chris Perry. Mark's first idea was to publicise the missing episodes on the ITV Teletext service ORACLE, who then contacted him and interviewed at length. An article was duly run on ORACLE in July 1986, and a few days later, Mark received letters from "Roger K.Barrett", a BBC sound engineer, with a care of address in Watford Way, Hendon, in West London. Barrett had eight episodes ("100,000 BC" parts 1-4, "The War Machines" parts 1,3 and 4 and "Tenth Planet:4") and asked if Mark was interested. Naturally, Mark was interested, but by the time a reply had come back, "Roger" had had an offer for Hartnell's finale of 500. He was prepared to give Mark first refusal, and the money was indeed raised. About this time, the fanzine DWB was giving out hints about this episode, and, as Mark said "a strange interlude" occurred in which Roger thought his name has been leaked.

After this, "Barrett" decided not to accept any money, but instead wanted a print of "Quatermass and the Pit", which was not yet out on video. Negotiations dragged on well into 1988, and Barrett became progressively more and more greedy, and Mark handed negotations over to his friends who had more experience in the matter. The last information that Mark heard was that someone had leaked Roger's name to DWB and that he had called the whole thing off.

The matter was forgotten until Gattiss saw a small news item in DWM in 1991 saying that there was a rumour that a consortium of fans were working to keep episodes out of the archives - and Hartnell's finale was mentioned as a candidate. Mark contacted DWM editor Gary Rusell with his 1980s Barrett correspondence. BBC Archive Selector Adam Lee was reportedly very excited and ascertained, according to Mark, that "Roger Barrett" was a pseudonym of a high ranking BBC Executive and that, at the very least, he did have the print of "The Tenth Planet:4" at one point. After much "blackmailing", the (blank) tape was returned to Adam Lee. Mark told me that Adam was convinced that the episode had been sold on to another collector and that he was determined to get it back.

(As a little aside, Mark related to me how he thought he was close to getting "The Macra Terror" back only to find that the whole story was a hoax!).

Mike Long gives a slightly different (albeit not first hand) account of the story. In his version, David Stead, ex-BBC Archives and at the time, at BBC Enterprises had informed Adam Lee of a film collector who had sold his original print of this episode but kept an old video copy on an obsolete video format. The BBC then paid the National Film Theatre a sum of money for the conversion. When the tape turned out to be blank, the BBC were apparently considering legal action to recover the money paid for the transfer. Interestingly, a contact of Mike had bid for "Tenth Planet:4" at an auction but was unsuccesful in purchasing it as he "only" went up to 900.

It seems that "Roger" was contacting many fans in the UK in the mid 1980s and it appeared that he also contacted DWB editor Gary Levy/Leigh saying that he wanted 500 and would meet Gary at Elstree studios reception to hand over, as he put it, "DD:4" (DD being the story code of "The Tenth Planet"). Barrett never turned up. However, the tiny reproductions of letters in DWB did give a full address and even mentioned a name; Barrett's friend, who had reminded him to write to Gary; a man by the name of Anthony Goodman.

To return to Mark briefly; he seemed interested in Darren Gregory and trying to prise his clips out of him, and said that he could definitely get hold of "The Changes" and "Cloudburst" for him, but eventually communication with Mark faded away with nothing being done. A pity.

I now had an adress with which to write, but no idea who lived there. I contacted the Hendon local library, who couldn't help other than to suggest the electoral register, and the Hendon police, who gave the name of the person living there: Goodman. Barnett London Borough gave the occupants in 1986/7 as Gloria C, Anthony L and Shelley J. Goodman. Name sound familiar? I found out that he worked for BBC News, and although I was keen to mention him in David Morgenstern's mooted missing episodes documentary, he advised against it because "it will lead to dozens of episode hunters and other nutcases phoning him up and spoiling [my] own investigations."

I wrote to the old Goodman address and, a few weeks later I got a reply, from Radlett, in Hertforshire.

The letter was from Callan fan Anthony Goodman, who also read "405 Alive" and had seen my article. In my article, I had said that I had written to "Roger" c/o of his address, and no doubt Goodman saw that and perhaps wanted to divert attention away from himself...? Anthony Goodman was a sound supervisor for the BBC and told me that the originator of the "Roger Barrett" story was a man he named only as "M", but, Goodman said, he wanted to give me enough clues to identify him as both he and Goodman were friends who shared a passion for vintage television. The clues were scant. "M" was a one-time member of DWAS, but was kicked out for unknown scandalous behaviour: as revenge on the fans he had set up the Tenth Planet:4 hoax. He had left the UK and now lived in Israel. Goodman had agreed that "M" could use his address for correspondence. That is all I call recall of the letters that Goodman sent me. I do remember looking through all editions of the DWAS newsletter from the time I joined (1983) until 1987 but could find no mention of anyone been expelled from the club.

[Postscript: I was able to find copies of Anthony Goodman's letters. Click here to read them.]

Thanks to Richard Develyn, I was able to identify the mysterious "M". I had asked Jon Way in the DWAS if he knew of anyone who had been dismissed from the society for any scandalous behaviour, but he knew of no-one. Now, thanks to Richard, a name had been suggested: Matthew Morgenstern. Needless to say, I was taken aback by the coincidental surname! But is Matthew involved, or was this Goodman's attempt to divert attention away from himself? I am not too sure. Certainly, he told Ronald McDevitt the same story regarding "M". [Matthew Morgenstern shall reappear later on in this story. Click here.]

And as a postscript to the above, Richard Shipton had talked to one of Darren's associates about missing episodes and Rich had dropped the named David Morgenstern into the conversation. Rich's contact reacted when he heard the name and asked "The TV producer?". Rich replied yes, and the contact said "Yes, he's got some missing material". Now, normally, I wouldn't bother wasting my time recounting any of Darren's, or his friend's fantasies, but the fact that this guy reacted unprompted to David's name was interesting.

Postscript

In late 2003, I was in brief contact with Dr. Matthew Morgenstern of Huji University in Israel. While not denying anything, and refusing to say anything against Anthony, who he described as a good friend, he did suggest that the "blank tape" saga might have been settled by the late John Nathan Turner, who was reported to have seen the episode on a tape and described the picture quality etc. Matthew denied being a relative of David.

Also, according to a contact, Tony Goodman was a member of the "Saviours of Television and Radio Shows" (STARS) organisation, and an attempt was made to have him ejected because of his connections with the hoax. As my contact says:

"The society chairman informed me that he was unable to expel Goodman due to his constantly supplying members of the executive with tapes sourced directly from the archives. Throughout his tenure in the society Goodman claimed that he did know who possessed the master of Tenth Planet part 4 but that he would never volunteer the information due to a long standing vendetta with certain sections of fandom."

The 2004 DWM Special on the William Hartnell era is in no doubt that Goodman was behind the hoax.

Bob Furnell

I had heard of Bob Furnell of Vancouver from his regular articles to Metamorph, and a letter to DWB c.1989 about possible missing episodes in Canada. He recalled that when he lived in Edmonton, Alberta, he saw episodes of the series which were never officially shown in the country; stories such as "The Moonbase". Now, thanks to DWAS, I was aware that Canada only showed up to and including "The Keys of Marinus" in the 1960s before picking up with Pertwee stories in the early 1970s. I was willing to concede that Bob's memories might be due to false memories, but he seemed sincere, so it was worth a chance investigating. In our letters, he was very eager to help and said that an informant had told him that individual TV stations had decided to carry on with Doctor Who when the network dropped the show. Again, possibly unlikely (at least from a BBC documentation point of view), but I couldn't help but recall physicist Professor Feynman's quote: "If observation doesn't match the theory, then the theory is wrong" - bearing that in mind, my maxim is that an eyewitness sighting counts more than words on paper.

Bob's informant at the local TV station related that, because of the huge size of Canada, to ensure a broadcast at the same local time across the continent, regional TV stations would make their own telecined copies for distribution across the country. Interestingly, I heard exactly the same story about Australia c.2003.

Bob's letters also said that he knew that the early Pertwee stories of Seasons 7, 8 and 9 had been shown - somewhat in variance with the DWAS information I had. Bob mentioned that he had colour copies of "Ambassadors of Death", "Doctor Who and the Silurians", "Terror of the Autons" and "The Daemons". Of course, the first of these is of interest as the BBC were having huge problems restoring their black and white copies to colour. Jumping forward in time, I was to meet BBC graphics designer Ralph Montagu at the British Film Institute (BFI) later on that year and he agreed to be a liason with Bob. It transpired, from the station idents at the start of "Ambassadors" that it came from the same source as the BBC.

[Although chronologically speaking, my next anecdote didn't occur till the following year, I may as well recount it now: Bob did inform me of a sealed warehouse that he heard about in Canada that, it was felt, might contain lost TV treasures. I know nothing more about this though, except that this story was enough to make then BBC Archive Selector Adam Lee very excited. I informed Ralph Montagu of this warehouse and he said that "the storehouse of uncatalogued material is apprently in Toronto. [He gathers] that the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) is so short of funds that it has just left the contents of this store until such time as they have the money to employ more staff. For the same reason, they are not prepared to respond to enquiries about its contents." Certainly, Bob Furnell informed me that Ralph was hoping to arrange a time share/ exchange of staff to look through the vaults. The last I heard of this, on July 11th, 1995, Ralph had indeed contacted a lady in the CBC Programming Department. She said that they don't recall who the distributor of the programme was, but it came to them on the "bicycle system" (or continued redistribution). The only information they have is that, between 1978 and 1985, they were supplied with 508 tapes (of 25 minute episodes?). Unfortunately, the CKVU (Vancounver TV) lady explained that they don't have records from that long ago. Strangely, when Ralph offered her a list of missing programme titles, the lady changed her mind and said "it wouldn't help". She also volunteered that, after they had finished with the tape, it may have gone back to the original distributor. As of the time of writing (October 2003), I don't know if anything has been done to break this deadlock between the CBC and the BBC.]

By about this time, I was in the midst of my finals at Southampton University, but I still found time to write "Missing without trace" at the request of Bob Furnell for his Canadian magazine (though it was published in a few other fanzines too); I was to tinker with the document for a further year though as new information came to light, such as the Carol Keogh fiasco, to be related soon.

After completing my finals (where I got a first in Physics), I was offered - and accepted - a place at York University to study for a doctorate in Nuclear Structure Physics. Leaving the south of England to go back "up North" meant that regular trips to the Fitzroy Tavern for the regular monthly meetings were now not feasible. In one my last visits to the Fitzroy Tavern, I got into a very drunken discussion with Anthony Brown, the then-editor of DWB. Well, I was drunk. He bemoaned that, as a comedy fan, the finding of Doctor Who eclipsed everything else. He had recalled many times when reports said that "episode X has been found, as well as a few other TV programmes", which providing their identity. I agreed with this comment; well, what else could I do? He was right after all.

I am reminded of a poem, which I shall misquote deliberately:

Earlier on that same evening, Gary Leigh/Levy was, as usual, very hostile to the impending releases of the incomplete "Tenth Planet", "Invasion" and "Reign of Terror" episodes with linking narration as he speculated that the missing episodes would be returned to the BBC the day after the release of these "patchwork" titles.

Incidentally, one of the best contacts I was to make in York was English student Lance Parkin, who with his future wife Cassandra, ran the Multimedia Society (basically a group of television enthusiasts). Lance went on to write some of the "New Adventures" books and later script edit the UK soap opera "Emmerdale"

In late Summer 1993, DWB ran an article stating that there were reports that a whole batch of missing Hartnell/Troughton episodes from season 4 were to be returned to England from Scandinvian countries. I found the report doubtful as I was not aware the countries mentioned (I forget which ones) had even bought the stories mentioned, which included "The Tenth Planet", "Power of the Daleks" and "The Highlanders". However, I gave the story the benefit of the doubt and did a bit of digging. It also coincided with strong rumours that there would be a massive surprise for fans to celebrate the 30th anniversary and the indications were another rush-release of a lost story.

Alerted by the report in DWB, a surprising, but ultimately fruitless source offered itself as a means of possible corroboration in late Summer 1993. I was astonished one day to get a phone call from Adam Gillam (I think - oh, how the memory fades!) from the Sun newspaper. He had heard reports that Jon Pertwee, Peter Davision, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy had pulled out of the mooted 30th anniversary drama "The Dark Dimension" on account of the large proportion of the script given to Tom Baker. Adam asked if I knew anything about it and I said no. I hinted that things might be occurring archive wise at the BBC and could he find out anything....? He was strangely slow to catch on to what I was saying and gave a noncommital grunt. He never got back in touch.

All I could find out was the following: the story, quel surprise, turned out to be a baseless rumour that started out within the BBC itself. I phoned up David Morgenstern whilst I was at the DWAS "Panopticon" Doctor Who 30th Anniversary celebrations in London and chatted to him about this. He had spoken to Adam Lee, of the BBC Archives, who knew nothing of the story. End of rumour. David also related that, as far as Adam was concerned, Anthony Goodman was the originator of the "Roger Barrett" hoax. Also, whilst at the convention, I had the pleasure of meeting Ronald McDevitt, and we managed to corner the late Michael Craze in the bar (seems that he drunk away his appearance fee!), where we asked him if he knew of any episode recoveries. After all, to clear any episodes, they would have to approach him, as he starred in all the stories mentioned above. He hadn't heard anything of any episode recoveries.

However, Ronald McDevitt could offer a few more clues: one of his contacts had found out that the November 1993 BBC Video releases of "The Two Doctors" and "Resurrection of the Daleks" had been pulled from the schedules in favour of "newly recovered" "The Highlanders" and "The Macra Terror". Although Ronald's contact had produced dubious information in the past, he had double checked this rumour by phoning BBC Enterprises who confirmed that the schedules of their video releases had indeed been cancelled, but were not prepared to say what the replacement stories would be.

After a while, Michael Long, of "405 Alive" fame, provided an intriguing story. He knew of a great contact for me, a lady called Carol Keogh who was organising a charity convention called "Who's 7" (as the name implies, a Doctor Who/Blakes 7 crossover) for 1994. Michael had some information that Carol was to show some missing episodes at the event and he gave me her telephone number.

This is the story: Carol had a friend in Chicago, called "Lei" (a friend of Stephen Spielberg apparently), who had his/her (?) own TV company. Lei, and his/her father was a big Doctor Who fan and had managed to get hold of episodes for broadcast at his/her station, after he/she was bequeathed them from his/her father. Rather than destroy or return them, he kept them because he liked the series so much. Lei, who had a history of heart problems, had showed Carol all of "The Daleks Masterplan" and "The Web of Fear" at his private viewing room and she ( Carol) had asked for copies so that they could be shown at Who's 7. Now, the story sounded preposterous but I kept an open mind: remember Feynman's quote earlier on?

(For slightly more info, see my original article here.

Carole had talked to Ian Levine about all this, but he was very dismissive about the story saying "Well, I've spent all this money getting these episodes back, and if I couldn't then I don't see what you can do, but good luck anyway".

I had spent many hours talking to Carol (a friend of "little" Kevin Davies, the Blaeks 7/Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galazy/Dr.Who documentary director) and thought she sounded convincing, but I was still a bit sceptical, especially with regard to her levity. She had a light-hearted idea to toss the tapes of "Masterplan" and "Web" into the audience when they had finished showing them! But ultimately, she wanted to give any tapes that she got back to the BBC. I implored her to get as much as she could and I gave her a long list of missing or incomplete episodes.

One thing that did impress me was that Carol would often phone me asking for advice. For instance, one evening, after getting in from the pub, she phoned me and asked about video tape formats and any problems with customs upon the tapes' arrival in this country. I gave what assistance I could in this matter! Why would Carol phone me up? To keep the story on simmer, for good publicity for her conference? I really don't know.

Missing Believed Wiped

I had to get up very early for this exciting BFI initiative: the launch of a campaign to recover lost TV classics. One of the list of "must haves" was, of course Doctor Who, especially "The Tenth Planet" part 4. But now, it seemed, all the various television archives were now interested in any lost material, including off-air tape sound/cine material or clips: "six seconds is better than nothing at all." For instance, the BBC's footage of the Apollo 11 moonlanding is missing, but there were hopes that a long touted off-air film and a seperately made sound tape could be married to make a surrogate audio-visual recording.

The day started off with a retrospective session by the BBC's Adam Lee, and the BFI's Steve Bryant. They took it in turns to describe the contemporary attitudes towards archival holdings, something that helped me to understand why destruction of material happened, even if it didn't forgive it; it was stated that TV output was considered ephemeral.

Adam Lee's presence was a hypocrisy; for, while he was appealing for the return of lost material, he had authorised the wiping of old children's programmes (Play School, Rentaghost, Vision On, etc.), so that the tape could be sold overseas (according to 405 Alive anyway). By chance, some of these had survived thanks to showings on UK Gold.

Other interesting tidbits described the primitive method of editing videotape - by splicing - and an example was shown that demonstrated this. A piece of tape was shown that displayed juddering and jumps as the manhandled tape passed over the VTR's heads.

When it came to Doctor Who, Steve Bryant gave his account of the day he was phoned up by the Mormons, expecting a religious spiel, only to be informed that a pile of film cans had been found in the basement of one of their churches. Cue clip from "The Dalek Masterplan:10". Adam Lee was more dismissive towards fans. He said that a few months back a rumour surfaced that material was coming back from overseas ("The Scandinavian tapes"?) and, within weeks, the story had snowballed into a notion that "every missing episode was coming back". He was very hostile towards us I thought.

The general attitude was that, TV companies can't pay for the return of material, in contrast to the "Finders Fee" mentioned by Steve Roberts earlier, which was now sounding very hollow indeed.

BBC graphics designer Ralph Montagu gave a talk on the colour restoration process, showing clips from a "Tomorrows World" feature and how part of episode 1 of "Terror of the Autons" was restored, showing the method used to iron out the minute distortions on screen to merge the colour and black and white signals together perfectly. (I was later to form a friendship with Ralph, and he is a thoroughly nice bloke). It turned out that the only non-Who to be restored was an episode of an early 1970s BBCs show featuring Cilla Black. The BBC still had the b&w film, and the Cilla Black fan club in Australia had made a colour recording of its transmission over there, and the quality of the two merged sources was extremely good.

Another staff member, this time from the BFI (Dick Fiddy?) described the method of recovering and restoring the missing "Steptoe and Son" episodes using vintage 1970s reel-to-reel video tape recording machines, about the size of a tabletop!

The lunchtime session showed clips of recovered fragments, such as the restored "Ambassadors of Death:5" (excellent quality), a few minutes from a reel of "A for Andromeda", a low quality, multi-generation VHS copy of pieces of a missing "Till Death Us Do Part": this latter clip was of an incomplete (18 minutes compared to 30 minute-long) edition. A very poor (content wise) clip of an edition of "The Black and White Minstrel Show" was included in this compilation, to show that 2 inch quad tapes could be found too, this having been unearthed in someone's attic when they moved in.

My friend Ronald McDevitt was at the event too, and had smuggled in a hefty video camera into the auditorium, to film colour footage of "Ambassadors" as it was unlikely that a partially restored story would be released on tape. Despite camera jiggle and background giggles, the quality of the footage was extremely good. Ronald also met up with a chap who knows Ian Sheward, who had sold Ian Levine a bunch of film cans in the mid-1970s (most of these were later found to be of missing episodes). This contact of Ian said that other episodes were in the hands of fans "high up" in fan circles though he would not provide names. I also met up with Michael Long, and Andy "405 Alive" Emmerson, along with someone by the name of Pat Hildred.

I met Steve Roberts after the screenings and he showed me a carrier bag of film cans containing the film inserts from "Dalek Masterplan:2". A collector had bought the cans in good faith and, having found out that they were missing from the archives, was now returning them.

One bit of good news: a collector from the audience came forward to say that he had the complete "Till Death..." edition, and was willing to return it.

The question and answer session was illuminating too. Richard Shipton, a Steptoe fan, asked about the restoration of an episode called "My Old Man's A Tory". A "405 Alive" article said that its recovery was troublesome. The BFI representative said that the episode "was recovered" without proving much more illumination. It turned out that, because of tape faults, the only way to restore it was to point a camera at a screen showing the episode and tape the output!

I asked about the colour faults on the off-air "Ambassadors of Death", but no-one seems to know how they cropped up, except as possibly interference from...something?

Right at the very end, but before tea-time, a recap of the days events were relayed to the audience. In addition to the good news about "Till Death.." and "Daleks Masterplan:2", someone else had come forward to say that they had a colour copy of the now black-and-white only Nigel Kneale play "The Year of the Sex Olympics". Steve Bryant rounded up by saying that one day the BFI did hope to show the complete, hallowed 1962 BBC drama "A for Andromeda", but the alleged holder in Bristol was asking a lot of money for it. At the tea social, I approached Adam Lee about negotiations for missing material: he informed me that, if a purported holder says that he doesn't have anything, then thats as far as he can go. Steve Bryant said that, when he worked at the BBC (in the post that Adam does now, c.1984) he did get a Doctor Who episode back from Australia; it had fallen down the back of a filing cabinet. Allegedly.

Steve did say that it is possible that film companies have had the "brush-off" in the past when people have tried to return the episodes. I asked because Lei (Carole Keogh's friend) had apparently tried to return "his" episodes in the past (in the late 1970s I believe) only to be informed that he/she wasn't supposed to have them and the BBC would sue. So, Carole's contact became slightly hostile to the BBC, thinking "I tried to return them once and was threatened, so I won't bother in future". Steve Bryant, to whom I did not specifically mention the above story, was sure that film and TV companies around the world had been scoured for Doctor Who many times, and was not optimistic about any more foreign returns.

One nice little point: Steve mentioned that, in the past, the BBC had actually send staff overseas to watch the output of TV companies to see if they have actually destroyed material and to see if they are still broadcasting any "lost" programmes.

At the end of the day, episodes of the recovered "Moonbase 3" were shown (viz. episodes 1 and 6); sadly I had to leave before the end of the last episode but I enjoyed what I did see. Reviews afterwards described the show as dated and embarrasing rubbish. Makes you wonder why people bother to try and retrieve missing television.

{An excellent BFI book is available: "Missing Believed Wiped" by Dick Fiddy; ISBN 0-85170-866-8)

I get ensnared to be on TV

Once it was all completed, I met Adam Lee and was delighted that he recognised me from "Missing Believed Wiped" from the previous month. He said that his big problem when he is filmed is that he can't help but look into the camera! We retired to a nearby pub for a chat.

We had a chat about "Missing Believed Wiped" and he said that "not a lot" came back as a result of it. He was still waiting for the "Till Death..." edition, but he was pleased that a missing "Z-Cars" edition had been returned. Also, the colour "Year of the Sex Olympics" turned out to be black and white. He also had a collector contact him about his collection of "The Likely Lads", but these turned out to be from the colour, and much better preserved "Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?". One bit of good news was that the "only" missing episode of "The Goodies" was about to be returned. (However, looking at the BBC listing, there is still one episode outstanding as of 2003).

On the subject of "Moonbase 3", Adam related that Ian Levine wasn't the person to break the news to him about its discovery: by the time Ian had contacted Adam a short time later, Levine had already contacted the TV station in the USA that had repeated the episodes. Out of interest, I asked Adam what material existed on 525-line sourced tape apart from "Doctor Who", and, of the top of his head, he recalled "Moonbase 3", "Doomwatch" and "Up Pompeii!".

Adam Lee also revealed the interesting news that he didn't just receive the "Roger Barrett" letters from Mark Gattiss; there were apparently letters sent to many fans. And, Adam recognised that they were a hoax straight away, as the letters were not only from a Roger Barrett, but also a "Syd" Barrett, of Pink Floyd fame. And, grasping at straws, I asked Adam about the tape that was handed over. It was totally blank, he said....

Adam (a tall bloke) drove me in his tiny little car to Northfields tube station for my long trip back to Kings Cross and then home. As I waited for the late train back to York, I thought that Joanna might be interested in suggestions for clips for the vignette, but I could never again get in touch with her or her answer machine. When the vignette was aired, one of my suggestions (from "Enemy of the World:3") had been included anyway.

When I saw the finished vignette, my parents and friends thought it was good fun, and quite light-hearted. I had a good day out anyway.

At Jonathan V.Way's insistence, I made it to the Fitzroy Tavern for the 23rd November, 1993 Doctor Who meeting. This meant travelling to London from Manchester after my graduate lectures. Of course, I met up with Steve Roberts who told me of the fantastic find of Cura snaps from the Hartnell/Troughton era and that publication would start almost immediately with "The Tenth Planet:4". He was a bit annoyed with me for saying in the Doctor Who vignette that missing episodes change hands for large sums of money as he felt this would deter collectors from coming forward. Sadly, I had no choice over this, as the inserts were pre-filmed and I was more-or-less told what to say.

I did finally get to meet Richard Develyn, and much fun (and alcohol) was had by all. There were a few furtive glimpses in my direction from people who had recognised me in the vignette,

The only downside was the massive powercut that affected most of the London Underground on the 24th. Jon dropped me off a tube near Heathrow, but it still took about 10 hours to get home, via Manchester to York, complete with intervening snow showers.

1994 - onwards:

Although the year started off very well, it would prove to be very turbulent for me.

In January, I was delighted to received a letter from Richard Develyn and a strange audio tape. It seemed that, over the Christmas holidays, he had met a bloke by the name of Graham Strong, who had recorded every episode of "Doctor Who" from "The Daleks Masterplan:8" (I think!) to "The Wheel In Space:6", bar "The Celestial Toymaker", which he had taped over as he thought it was rubbish. Rather than Richard Landen et. al's method of placing a tape recorder as close as possible to the television, Graham had wired his recorder into the TV itself.

When I played the tape I was astonished at the clarity. It made every episode I had heard before then sound like an echoing cough in a large quarry. The tape only contained a minute or so from the first missing episode of each story from Graham's collection. Richard told me that his friend was interested in the black and white era and was hoping to get some good quality copies in exchange for pristine audio recordings.

Dr. Peter Finklestone

Copies of the pristine audios sample tape were sent to Lee Bagnall, of the Newcastle group "The Invasion of Tyne", and he played them to his friends. Most of them weren't bothered but a member by the name of Dr.Peter Finklestone immediately recognised the superior sound quality. He was inistent that I got in touch, as he wanted to do a dubbing experiment with the very poor quality audio (sound + picture) of "The Tenth Planet:2". His theory was that improved sound would fool the mind into thinking that the picture was good too...and it would be nice to hear a decent quality episode too of this crackly, hissy episode. He said that any experiments in dubbing would result in me and any contributors getting copies of any such improved episodes.

I travelled up to Newcastle from York and met Lee and Peter, who drove us to his very luxurious home. Peter knew of me from Steve, and also knew of people like Paul Vanezis, whom I had admired for finding "Reign of Terror:1-3" in Cyprus before the BBC did in 1984.

Peter was a great source of information; for instance, the story that the recently found PAL tape of "Death to the Daleks:1" had come from Saudi Arabia, soaking wet, and was in pieces (this despite the story in the DWAS newsletter that it had been returned by a collector). Peter also seemed pre-occipied by a personal matter; he had a copy of "Pyramids of Mars", which had been an S-VHS copy from the Archives master, but it had a scratch on a section of part 1. He thought he could create a perfect domestic master by editing this and the a copy of the recent repeat of this story together - but this too had a fault at the same part (just as Scarman enters Sutekh's tomb).

Peter's attitude was that probably only about 10 more episodes were in existence, which I thought was incredibly defeatist, but I now recognise as probably being true. He had, however, recently been to some sort of mart and had missed buying a "Doctor Who" episode on film by minutes, although the dealer didn't know what the title was. Peter was also aware of the cultural problems of contacting previous customers of the show, as you had to phrase letters correctly. Bear in mind the Iranian response of "Who in the name of Allah are you talking about?"

Peter had a huge collection of U-Matic and S-VHS tapes upstairs; so much so that their weight was causing the shelves to bow. They were all pristine copies of archival stuff such as "The Stone Tape" and bootlegged, but still excellent copies of material such as the extended "Vengeance on Varos" (which Lee Bagnall had earlier obtained copies of and have given to me).

Finklestone did say that, due to the suspiciously close timing of the discovery of the pristine audios and the hoard of Cura snaps, some people had jokingly pondered whether they might be from the same source and that some collector was gradually releasing material to the fan world.....!

Also imparted were a few other useful bits of information, one which I found fasincating, and the other a bit dubious: firstly, that some of the film sequences from "Terror of the Zygons" had been found in a private collection, but not the famous unused invisible TARDIS sequence from Part 1. Peter joked that it would have been easy to digitally do a lighting correction on such footage (the reason why the sequence was not used in the first place) and then perhaps, sneakily insert this material into the tapes for any future transmission and wait for the fan reaction! Quite a funny plan I thought! The second piece of info was that the restoration team were planning to restore the black and white film prints with the NTSC/US/Canada Pertwee tapes. I thought this was stupid but didn't say anything.

On the whole, the meeting went very well between Peter, Richard and myself. I told them both that I was due to fly out to Australia two days later to gather data for my PhD, and then I was onto New Zealand were I would investigate stories of missing episodes. Peter said that I could be an "ambassador" for a missing episodes group. He gave me some hints as to how to identify an episode; form the lader section of film, before the countdown.

However, nothing came of this and Peter never got in touch (not even about good quality b&w episodes that were unofficially promised) and I felt afterwards that all he wanted was Graham Strong's phone number. Later on, I was to voice a similar thing about Steve Roberts; now that he had moved into the "upper echelons" of the fan base, small fry such as myself were not worth bothering with. For what it is worth, his old contacts in "The Thames Valley Timelords" said exactly the same thing and that, after many years of fruitful friendship on both sides, their contact had whittled to zero too.

I personally found this to be a crying shame as I seemed to get on well with Steve and he appeared to be a really nice bloke. The last time I met Steve to talk to was just before I flew out to Australia again in July 1994 when I stopped overnight at DWAS executive member Jon V.Way, and we went to Steve's house to watch an episode of the X-Files that he had just received from the USA (I think it was "The Ehrenmeyer Flask"?). He was polite and cordial enough at the time.

Still, at least Graham got some good quality episodes, from what I have heard, and Richard Develyn too, so all ended well. Recently, Finklestone was struck off the medical register in the UK for secretly video-taping a lady with whom he had become infatuated, whilst she was using his toilet. He also inadvertently caught images of children relieving themselves too, and he kept the tape for "his own amusement". Seems that Peter has become the Gary Glitter of the Doctor Who world. Despite this, he is still held in esteem by some fans, which, to my mind, says a lot. His sins were largely forgotten and forgiven with Peter himself saying that they had been exaggerated. Certainly, within a short space of time, he was back working on the DVD range under the name "Peter Crocker," the head a shadowy company known as "SVS."

Whilst in Canberra, I took time out to visit the Australian equivalent of MOMI, or the National Museum of Film and Television (in Bradford). Fortunately, this was just right round the corner from my Liversidge Lodge appartment on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin. I didn't expect to find anything, but I did have a wonderful conversation with the curator there and look at some of the great exhibits on display, including film and video tape formats.

Thanks to a stopover flight courtesy of the York Nuclear Structure Group, I was able to visit New Zealand and James Clark, whose emails in the last few months had proved intriguing. He at first claimed on the newsgroup that he had a colour copy of "The Ambassadors of Death". This turned out to be mistaken identity - it was "Inferno". Then he said that he might have a colour off-air recording of a PAL "Colony in Space", compared to the BBC's NTSC holding.

Anyway, when I got to Auckland, I met James and we went to his flat where he was living with his mate Jasen Mitchell; both were students at nearby Waikato University. Eventually I was able to peruse Jim's video collection at his parent's place. The quality of the tape was appalling, since the reception in his area was very poor, but I was able to confirm that the source of "Colony..." was..the BBC NTSC tape. The conversion artefacts were too obvious even through the murky haze.

On a quiet day, I phoned up Fred Gapes, of NZTV's archive and asked him about Doctor Who. He said that an episode of that and some other BBC programme had been found years ago (I can't recall which) and returned, but other than that, nothing.

James Clark's dad proudly showed me a copy of the Daleks' 30th Anniversary video tin, showing the metal creatures trundling over Westminster bridge. He pointed out one of the Daleks and said "Thats me!"...apparently one of the actors was unavailable the day that publicity photo was taken and Clark's dad had taken his place. He was full of great stories; when he worked at the BBC, one of his co-workers had invented a method of broadcasting colour television using one electron gun rather than three (for red.green and blue); competitors bought him out to keep him quiet. James' dad had retired to New Zealands many years before and, in 1994, he was working as an operator at a local hydro-electrical power station (which James showed me round).

It was, on the whole, a nice trip to New Zealand; wonderful scenery and great hospitality from James, Jasen and James' parents. I left with one tangiable reminder; a scar on my chin, which I split open when I slipped on wet porcelain whilst getting out of the shower. A quick visit to A&E and some stitches saved the day then! (and that was on my first day!)

Steve Phillips copied some of his rare Dr.Who episodes as a treat for James Clark but on condition that I let him have some of my stuff and perhaps if I could twist Adam Lee's arm to allow us into the BBC Archives to see what stuff remained. This latter request seemed like a non-starter given Adam's indifference to the fans, and besides, my friendship with Adam had been exaggerated. The first request was fine (for instance, an extended episode of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" with oddly off-colour titles) but it took a while for me to do this because of work pressures. I kept getting constant pressure from Steve though, and he really wanted access to the archives.

Other than this, my grandfather had recently died, and this was the first case of me losing anyone close. I was also getting grief from my work mates, my friends, everything. By late Summer, I was spiralling out of control and was diagnosed with severe clinical depression. My mood swings took me from vacuous moments of apathy to self loathing, bordering on suicide, but doses of anti-dpressants and a brief stay in hospital managed to stablise me. I emailed all my friends and asked them not to contact me, to allow me to sort myself out. It was clear that this was going to be a long-term ailment (and in fact, I have never quite got over it) and my contacts and interest in Doctor Who gradually faded away.

The only person who did pester me was Steve Phillips. Steve Roberts had been in touch and Phillips was wary about getting in touch based on my opinion of him (the fact that he didn't get in touch). I told Steve Phillips my thoughts on him and Roberts, but in confidence. Steve Phillips soon got back in touch and it was clear that he had broken my confidence. He said that "Steve [Roberts] denied that he ignored you." Thanks, Steve.

Missing Believed Wiped 2

For the personal reasons outlined above, I did not really want to attend this event. My interest in Who was at a low ebb, but I elected to go anyway when Steve Phillips bought tickets for "Missing Believed Swiped 2". At our rendezvous at "The Coal Hole" pub near the Embankment tube station in London, it gave me a chance to catch up with Steve Phillips, Richard Shipton and to meet Dennis Greenaway for the first time; Richard Develyn couldn't make it sadly.

None of the programmes from the "must have" list issued the year before were, as far as I can recall, recovered. But at last, the film of the "Till Death Us Do Part" promised the previous year was handed at the "Missing....2" event. Why it took so long to be handed over is a mystery.

I was underwhelmed by the poor quality of the content of the recovered material. One variety programme showed an eager magician, mouthing to the audience to applaud, and later on, Woody Allen himself in a boxing ring with a kangaroo. Steve Bryant enthused that, until now, they had not been able to do "A Night With ATV (television company)" showing at the BFI, but now they could. I pity the audience!

Clips from nearly all the recovered material, found as a result of the previous year's initiative, were shown at the lunchtime session were replayed for the audience. Sadly, this included ALL the clips of "Daleks Masterplan:2"....inclusive of a long and tedious section showing a smoke overlay which went on for ages and elicited groans and giggles from the audience. In his speech to the audience, BFI patron, comedian Bob Monkhouse took a bit of a light-hearted swipe at Doctor Who.

Also shown at the event was the only (at the time) complete episode of "At Last the 1948 Show", the first half of an excellent drama from 1967 (part 2 being AWOL)

At the end, Steve Bryant (Adam Lee was absent as far as I can recall) informed us that the Cunard Line had found copies of missing 1950s and 60s children's shows ("Andy Pandy", "Bill and Ben"? etc.) in its archives. Apparently they used to show the for the children on ocean cruises.

Aftermath

From 1995 onwards, I did get many emails from people, many of them disparaging, and most of them wound up in my email wastebasket. I rememberer Paul Vanezis remonstrating about the story that "Tenth Planet:4" had been sold for £5000 and that not even Ian Levine would pay that much for an episode; surprising given Levine's telephone bill for his transglobal telephone bills in 1984. And Vanezis also said that the PAL "Death to the Daleks:1" was indeed from a collector, as he had secured it, thus contradicting Peter Finklestone's story.

Some abusive emails were from bigwig Doctor Who fans, who hadn't appreciated that most of the "inaccurate" information provided by me, came from people within their own ranks!. Talk about hypocrisy. For instance, Jeremy Bentham's columns in Dr.Who magazine were the source for much information within fandom (my article included) but it is now acknowledged that these are laced with errors and inaccuracies (a real police box being used in the pilot episode...The Gunfighters getting the lowest ratings..."The Wheel in Space part 6" being an incomplete, or 'scratch' print...the purging of the Troughton episode "The Invasion" part 1 causing the Pertwee yarn of the same title to also be junked...a clip from "The Macra Terror" being used in "The Three Doctors"...etc) and yet he is held in God-like reverence with no one bleating as to how badly he "got it wrong." And to pre-empt any readers' questions on this point: in those days, getting access to any internal BBC documentation was near impossible; in fact I was told by the Written Archives Centre in an unrelated matter that members of the public couldn't access papers less than 30 years old. This was to prove embarrassing for the triumvirate of Howe, Stammers and Walker in their much lauded book, "Doctor Who: The Sixties." Within a short space of time, Andrew Pixley (I think!) had managed to access BBC papers relating to the origins of the series, and much of the information in that book was either incomplete or inaccurate. But then these people are Gods and I'm just a pleb. Cowards like vanezis were happy to criticise me in public and leave Bentham, Howe etc. untouched. Of course these people were his friends.

And despite Paul Vanezis' spiteful remark that "[my article] is long and badly structured", I still think that it was one of the best pieces of writing that I have ever done.

There was a postscript to the Carol Keogh affair. A friend of hers (and "Lei") was sure that the story was hogwash. A name was provided - Leanne Mallory. Except that Carol described "Lei" (her spelling by the way) as being male. Oh well. Anyway, Carol was described as a very unreliable source and Lei was not the owner of a TV station, but had a much more lowly status in someone else's organisation. Curse you, Carole Keogh, for building up our hopes.

Steve Roberts sent me an email saying "Lighten up! Its only a TV show", saying that Vanezis considered me an "upstart" and Steve Phillips, who had a cosy relationship with the restoration team by now also told me "So what?", before grumbling about his stomach ulcers when I told him that I had been diagnosed with severe clinical depression. I don't want to remind myself of the harsh emails and public postings, but the overwhelming reaction I recall from the mid 1990s was that of a vendetta against myself which has been kept going till the present day, on and off, by Vanezis et al. At least one friend at York University who had been friendly to my face allied himself the BBC posse and voiced his angst about me in public. As the old saying goes, with friends like these....?

Doctor Who fan Dave Hoskin asked me in 2014 for my memories of this period and I related the following story to him for his forthcoming book. Needless to say the memories the process dredged up were very painful.

The last time I heard from Steve Phillips was in early 1995. As a Titanic buff, I was alarmed at the poor quality of the footage of the Titanic being completing in Belfast in 1912 and I wondered if the BFI could restore or enhance the quality. I put an appeal on one of the film newsgroups for information (without revealing why), and Steve got in touch asking what the nature of the footage was. When I told him it was about the Titanic, he didn't bother to reply.

One email I did get was from TV-Zone editor, Jan Vincent Rudzki, confirming that the 4 minute long clip of "Galaxy Four:1" ("Four Hundred Dawns") did originate from him, but he was, as Steve Roberts once told me, unwilling to let the clip into the BBC for duplication. He didn't explain exactly why.

A few emails were of interest but again, I deleted them. The first was a rebuttal of the Carol Keogh story (as given above); the second was from a man who had helped a famous fan (named) move house, and helped him move a lot of boxes/film cans of labelled missing stories. One day, this fan, showed him "Power of the Daleks:2" - but fast forwarded visually through it from beginning to end. The third email was from a much more concrete source (and from someone who, initially did reply to my messages), "confimring" that "Reign of Terror:4 and 5" were in the hands of the same American who returned part 6 in 1982. This contact also reprimanded me for an unfair account of the recovery of "The Wheel In Space:3" in 1984, which I now plead guilty to; however, it is very hard extracting information about such accounts unless you happen to either know, or be a "famous fan", or work for the BBC. In the end I had no help from either, so I had to resort to contemporary news reports from DWAS' Celestial Toyroom newsletter, DWB, DWM etc.

Why do I present the rumours above? Simply for completeness. I don't claim any knowledge as to their truth.

By far, the best piece of information was in reply to my "Missing Without Trace" in Bob Furnell's magazine. It was from a Jewish-sounding bloke who used to work for the BBC. He had lots of data on shady film collectors who might help; one was a collector who loaned a BBC production office the only existing copy of a TV show to help them in their own research and the office either lost or junked the recording at the end of their research. The collector was unwilling to help the industry and particularly the BBC in future. In another story, my contact told me that, in late 1993, a knowlegeable friend in the F.U.P.A (Film Unit programme Acquisition) informed him that a vault containing old television shows ("Melbourne?" my friend wrote) has been found after having been bricked up until recently. Adam Lee had been very excited by what could be found, but when my correspondent contacted the BBC Archive around spring of 1994, Adam Lee had left to work in another BBC library and Jan Hawkins had become the acting Archive Selector. She knew nothing of this warehouse.

I sent a copy of the letter to Ralph Montagu and he was intrigued too, but whether anything came of it I don't know. My contact mentioned that he knew of a dealer who had "The Dominators" part 5 with the death scene at the beginning uncut. When I got the letter (1994), the BBC's copy was edited - maybe my contact helped to get a complete copy returned to the BBC as this was reported a few years later? Whatever happened, my interest in the missing episodes was by then zero. So of of this was a wasted opportunity. I never contacted the gentleman in question, but he is still apparently alive and at the same address.

I did plan to attend the 2001 BFI "Missing Believed Wiped" initiative, but unfortunately (or fortunately in my point of view) my father and I had won tickets, courtesy of the Mail on Sunday, to the Concert for New York City benefit gig in aid of the victims of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. When you see the carnage inflicted upon New York, it makes Doctor Who seem petty and insignificant.

On my return, I bought Dick Fiddy's book on the search for lost TV treasures and this prompted me to write to him - under a pseudonym - to suggest a scheme whereby film collectors could bequeath their collections to the BFI upon their death. As a Titanic enthusiast, I recall reading of one New York survivor's collection of Titanic-related memorabilia being dumped in a city trash can after his death and I was concerned that the same thing could happen to pricless treasures held by TV collectors in this country.

Dick wrote back with a very polite letter and said that a donor card scheme had been considered but had been rejected as being in poor taste, and had heard of stories where the wives of deceased collectors had sent their husbands (hardly ever the other way round he said) collection to the local rubbish dump.

I do have a few ideas about missing episodes of Doctor Who and other TV programmes, such as trying to contact film collectors abroad in often overlooked countries (Hong Kong, Singapore etc.), whether they be ex-pats or whatever. Certainly, when I do go overseas, I keep an eye on car boot sales (!!), antiques fairs etc. But always I feel the restoration of the filmed history is always ever so slightly elusive; consider the report that Sierra Leone had a large collection of Hartnell episodes up until c.1999 but were apparently destroyed in the civil war that ravaged the country; it is unknown if this country was contacted during the large overseas episodes hunt in 1984, but if they had (and the archivists could be bothered to check), up to 22 episodes may have been retrieved; what is even more disturbing is that some Dr.Who fans were more incensed at the supposed loss of the episodes than the daily routine of rape, torture and murder meted out to the citizens of this beleaguered country.

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Aftermath

Darren Gregory's letters:

Anthony L.Goodman's letters:

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