The cruellest rumour of them all...

[thisbluespirit]

So I don't know why I'm even posting this, except I want to make everybody else suffer along with me, but the worst DW rumour is going around - that they have found or are hot on the trail of lots - yes, lots - of the missing episodes.

It's here: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/06/13/wqill-doctor-who-have-a-very-special-surprise-for-us-in-november/ (caught via the excellent who_at_50)

I should be laughing cynically, of course, and I don't really believe it. The cruelty of it this time is that when they found two episodes in 2011, the articles surrounding it sounded quite definitely hopeful about finding more (and this has not been the case since Tomb's appearance in 1996 - ever after, when something's turned up it's been followed by gloomy warnings that there is NO MORE, no, we have checked the back of the cupboard and on top of the wardrobe and under the bed, and no. No.). Which made me wonder if they were on the trail of something specific and I've been vaguely hoping for something ever since - and since the anniversary is close to the BFI's Missing Believed Wiped event that if they did find something it'd be announced then. So... I am looking at this so wistfully! But... lots! That's just too much to swallow. It couldn't be true, and if it was, it'd have to be a general haul, so that would mean other lost TV as well and... well, yes. It would be very very amazing. But obviously either not true or massively exaggerated from "we've found another episode down the back of the sofa!" (Obviously, I want badly to be proved wrong on that. That's why it's so cruel.)

Also I hate burninated TV generally, have I mentioned that? Oh, yes, I have. Quite a bit. It's understandable from various reasons, but actually it's not okay to throw your only copies of nationally broadcast, professionally produced drama into tips and/or generally wipe/burn/lose them. In the 1970s when everyone was making such a concerted effort to preserve almost everything else, too, and VHS was just around the corner. And, in fact, ITV companies were still doing it in the 1980s and even 90s, when there were mergers and things. /o\

Anyway, let's make there be a point to this post. Let's have the evergreen chestnut - if there has been a serial recovered, what would you most want it to be? What other old and lost TV (if you have any interest in such things) would you want to have been uncovered sitting beside it?

Comments

[john_amend_all]

In DW, I'd be happy with anything from The Faceless Ones onward.

Among other shows, I'd like to see the lost episodes of His Lordship Entertains recovered.

ETA: Oh, and the biggie: the original high-resolution footage of the Moon landings! Seriously, they recorded over that?!

And am generally annoyed with organisations not properly archiving things. Or keeping a single copy, which promptly gets wiped out by fire or flood.

[seriesfive]

Oh, and the biggie: the original high-resolution footage of the Moon landings! Seriously, they recorded over that?!

That's strangely unsettling. Although, come to think of it, wasn't the whole moon landing thing a hoax? ;)

[thisbluespirit]

It's easy to see things in retrospect, isn't it? Still, I do think drama by national TV networks is not too difficult to grasp as a thing that should be preserved, so it does annoy me.

In DW, I'd be happy with anything from The Faceless Ones onward.

I might have to not speak to you any more now - what I want most is Power of the Daleks, then pretty much any non-surviving/incomplete historical, and next anything when Ben and Polly. And only then would I go for EVil, or probably actually Web of Fear because of the Brigadier (being a Colonel, but still, more Nicholas Courtney).

;-p

[john_amend_all]

I certainly wouldn't turn my nose up at Power, and how did I manage to forget about The Smugglers?

[thisbluespirit]

Somehow I am now imagining headlines:

POWER OF THE DALEKS FOUND! JohnAmendAll turns up nose: "It's all right I suppose, but I'd rather have had Evil."

ETA: And really, I expect we're all the same - they can find the rest of Galaxy 4 and The underwater menace, or anything as long as we get to cut down on the number of episodes missing. But the dream of the restored "classic" is so hard to resist...

[john_amend_all]

I'll have to remember that comment for when the recovery of Power is triumphantly announced in November :-)