2018 - January to June

2018

January 2018

For some reason, missing episode & rumour discussion gets off to a flying start on the forums in January 2018, with the amount of discussion not being this intense since perhaps points during 2014.

1 – The new year kicks off with PM answering a question on Twitter about Web 3, saying it’s “in the hands of a fan”. Speculation begins as to which fan loves ringing TV stations and paying money for episodes of Doctor Who…Ian Levine for example, or perhaps Morris himself.

Meanwhile, boysandgirls wishes the forum a happy new year and says “let’s hope 2018 is the year we have to make more room on our DVD shelves”.

2 - On Twitter, Kaleidoscope announce the discovery of "the Randolph Tapes" - higher quality reels of off-air audio recordings from missing episodes of Doctor Who, ranging from The Daleks' Master Plan to The Moonbase.

3 – On MEF, Paul Vanezis states explicitly for the first time that missing programmes are in the hands of private collectors. Discussion down thread turns to the case of Bob Monkhouse, a British film collector who was taken to court over his possession of films and who lost almost his entire collection as a result.

6 – On PMF, ericthehalfabee posts that a Roobarbs member has said there is a Special Edition of The Web of Fear in the works which will contain special features.

10 – On GB, douglaswulf gives his tally of what he believes comprised the original 44 rumour:

Marco (7)
Reign (2) = 9
Crusade (2) = 11
Galaxy 4 (3) = 14
Myth Makers (3 or 4 of 4) = 18 (or 17)
Massacre (4) = 22
Celestial Toymaker (3) = 25
Tenth Planet (1) = 26
Power of the Daleks (6) = 32
Wheel in Space (2 of 6) = 34
Enemy of the World (5) = 39
Web of Fear (5) = 44 (or 43 if not all of Myth Makers was found)

11 – On GB, douglaswulf quotes a post from Paul Vanezis: “Philip has always said that the full story will be told when the job is done.” He then posts quotes from a podcast with JR Southall and PV:

JR Southall: “ ... You know, two years it's been now. And you know, personally - I've said this before - I wasn't expecting to hear anything for a good couple of years, or however many years it takes, because I don't think the world turns that quickly. But some people are, let's say, a bit less patience. Do you think Phil has - Because both you and Phil have said that at some point in this project, you now, all will be revealed, as it were - but we've not heard anything yet. Do you think Phil has legitimate reasons for not having, you know, made that revelation yet, as it were?

Paul Vanezis: “Well, absolutely. I mean, he's still looking, for a start. I mean, you could argue he'll never stop looking and therefore he'll never be able to tell the whole story. But I think there will come a point where he can tell the story. But, he hasn't told the story yet, and I'm absolutely convinced there's a good a reason for him to feel that it's not the right time. And so, you know, that's his business - it's not mine, really.”

12 – On GB, Richard Smith posts that according to Ian Levine, it was then-brand manager Edward Russell who started the original MEW rumour. 

Robocelot weighs in saying he believes Levine is correct, and that Morris likely threw in Marco Polo as a way to sweeten the deal for BBC Worldwide.

12 – On GB, douglaswulf posts a lengthy explanation of why he believes Dick Fiddy’s comment that “everything has been returned to the UK now” is still legitimate, despite Fiddy’s later backpedalling.

14 – On GB, douglaswulf posts a (hitherto unknown to me) Kasterborous interview with Roy Robinson, father-in-law of Philip Morris:

Interview from late 2013 ...

Roy Robinson – RR
Kasteborous Interviewer – KI

RR – My name's Roy Robinson. I'm the Archives Co-ordinator at TIEA. I organise anything that needs to be distributed out to Phil if he needs anything where he is and then I also arrange for anything to come back here that he's found while he's away. Once back here we archive it and get it ready for distribution to whoever wants to buy.

KI – How many items do you deal with generally? Are we talking hundreds? Thousands?

RR – At the moment we have got hundreds. Basically because at the moment we've been refurbing our premises and haven't had a chance to distribute at the moment. But we're reorganising and getting ready for redistribution.

KI – OK. So these are all the items that you've discovered all round the world.

RR – These are items that have been discovered outside this country is the best thing I can say and I can't tell you exactly where for obvious reasons. So yes is basically the answer.

KK -How did you get involved?

RR – Me personally?

KK – Yes. 

RR - I got involved because I've known Phil for quite a while and then I retired from my own job and being of a business nature and he knowing that he was getting a business than he could initially handle asked me to go ahead and join him and see if I could help him back here while he was abroad. Because obviously he couldn't be in two places at once.

KK – So Phil's been busy.

RR - Phil's been busy and is still busy. He's away looking and it's a case of what comes back.

KK – Fingers crossed.

RR – Fingers crossed. We just don't know from one day to the next.

KK – Were you a Doctor Who fan yourself back in the day?

RR – I was in the day. The early days. I'm sort of lost for the moment but no doubt as a result of this, I get my interest[?] back again.

KK – Well thank you very much and I'm sure we're all very appreciative of your efforts.

RR – Thank you very much. It's been nice to talk to you.

Doug later says this interview was held to mark the release of Enemy and Web. Doug also says that this is the only public statement that Mr Robinson has ever made.

17 – On GB, Mark Humphries summarises the events he believes led up to the infamous “DJ Wiltshire” email:

     

1. Morris's mission is well known among the higher ups and ubers, information is shared but there is a pecking order.

2. Morris comes into contact with a few ubers at the MBW event in 2011. One or two of them try and press their luck to get direct info out of him.

3. Around 2012 the circle of information is closed off to only a few. A few of the ubers are angry at being left out but most understand and are happy to sit back and wait.

4. Late 2012 a few ubers are convinced episodes are back in the UK and are getting restless. A few are told to please just not rock the boat. The first seeds of plans to out Morris publicly and to try and force an announcement start.

5. Early 2013 word goes out to the ubers that some episodes will be returned this year. "MEW" is born, a few over excited higher ups and ubers start blabbering to the wrong people.

6. May 2013 and the return announcement is expected but then all off a sudden total information black out. NDA's signed, strict need to know only and a few egos bruised at their position in the pecking order.

7. June 2013 and the uber plan to out Morris and force the announcement comes into effect. The DJ emails are created, sent out to lower level fans in an attempt to get others to leak the news.

Meanwhile, Richard Molesworth states that prints of Marco Polo and other Hartnell epsiodes which were held by RKTV in Nigeria, were destroyed in 1994 (see January 20.

18 – On GB, Richard Bignell reveals that the reason no VAM were featured on the DVD releases of Enemy and Web was to prevent the possibility of actors leaking information.

19 – On GB, after a discussion of PM following “trails”, aka bicycling routes, ericthehalfabee mentions that the role of Zambia may well simply have been “inspiration”. That is, PM may have found all the paperwork there that later led him to pursue the episodes to Nigeria.

Richard Molesworth weighs in on a previous post of eric’s, stating that while he agrees that the Enemy and Web prints travelled from Hong Kong to Singapore to Nigeria, he has found no evidence that they went to Gibraltar or Zambia. Richard says this shows that up to four copies of Enemy and Web were in circulation globally.

20 – Harking back to a previous post, and answering a question from Richard Smith, Richard Molesworth heavily implies that there is documentary evidence of the destruction of Hartnell film prints – including Marco Polo - in Nigeria in 1997.

21 - On GB ericthehalfabee reminds everyone of a previous convention appearance where PM says about Kaduna, aka RKTV, that despite the alleged destruction of film prints he always follows every lead to “the absolute end”, even to the point of finding out where film prints might have been buried in the desert.

Also, when eric questions RM about the “other” Hartnell prints, Mark Abernathy replies that it was all episodes from season 1 and 2. (In terms of missing episodes, that would mean only Marco, The Reign of Terror and The Crusade were lost in that junking.)

Later, steve davis quotes Charles Norton – a BBC film restorer, who was featured in the three part article on their website – as saying that “…we spent about six months developing the [Enemy/Web reveal] project with Caroline [i.e., Skinner] until the end of June 2013…then we hit a problem.” This of course being the onset of the omnirumour.

22 – On GB, Servorobot mentions that according to his research, all stories with missing episodes up to The Macra Terror had their last Australian screening in Hobart.

25 – On GB, douglaswulf quotes another interview with PM, in which he implies that Zambia and Ethiopia held “no BBC programmes at all” and were “to no avail”. But PM does say that visiting these places was a “fascinating start” and what with staff at these TV studios asking for technical support it led to the creation of T.I.E.A.

26 – On Twitter, Frazer Hines tweets that he is headed to London for some recording. When a fan queries if it is more Big Finish, Hines replies “No…BBCWW”, meaning BBC Worldwide. This raises some eyebrows on PMF.

27 – On the 42 to Doomsday podcast, author Dave Hoskin talks about the delays in publishing his book “Chasing Shadows”, and that despite the threat of legal action he believes he has “sorted out” the truth behind the omni-rumours. Dave further says he believes there is “no question” that Morris has found more missing Doctor Who.

Dave clarifies the rumours about The Wheel in Space, which originated in Sydney and alleged that a private collector held the serial in full. The true story is that a collector who had died left his film collection to his daughter. She approached the owners of the Sydney Doctor Who retail store about the matter, and although the store owners were excited, Dave has established that she was holding only the extant episodes of Wheel.

29 - On GB, Patrick Mulkern refers back to an earlier post by douglaswulf, which quotes PV as saying that he told Mulkern (who then told Ian Levine) that a collector in Melbourne may have up to 20 missing episodes of Doctor Who. Mulkern contradicts this, saying that there is no way he passed this information to Levine.

February 2018

3 – After a fascinating exchange on GB about old posts by PMF members astrocat and stampy about a private collector in Melbourne who may have had film prints of Marco Polo, Power of the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks (PV’s “timewaster”), douglaswulf posts a quote from Damian Shanahan about a wealthy film collector he knows just outside Adelaide who has a “huge complex” in his backyard in which is stored 100,000 prints.

The quote comes from Shanahan’s interview in the RFS podcast in 2014 (see 16 February 2014).

Further posts downthread speculate that stampy/astrocat may be the same person and also be “Mr Brisbane”, who sold a copy of an episode of The Time Meddler to DS.

7 – On GB, carrollanthony posts a link to Amazon where a listing for the special edition release of The Enemy of the World has appeared. The new edition is scheduled for release on 19 March 2018.

Meanwhile, DWO posts details of the release’s special features. Among them is “Recovering the Past – The Search for The Enemy of the World”, produced by Paul Vanezis and featuring Philip Morris telling the story of how he came to track the serial down.

10 – DWO tweet out a rumour that a special DVD edition of The Web of Fear may be slated for August 2018.

23 – In a discussion thread on MEF about the possible bicycling routes of Evil of the Daleks and Tomb of the Cybermen, Jon Preddle appears to knock on the head the idea of an African TIE “hub”.

25 – The 42 to Doomsday podcast tweets an intriguing photo of a film reel bearing the logo “Australian Film Reel Co.” with the message:

“Coming soon we exclusively reveal the history of this film can and does it confirm a long held theory? #DoctorWho #missingepisodes #staytuned”

26 – On GB, Rob Mammone clarifies his podcast’s position on this; he believes that the film can discovered by a collector may confirm the theory that there were multiple film prints of Doctor Who circulating in Australia during the 60’s and 70’s.

27 – The 42 to Doomsday podcast discusses the film can pictured in the previous tweet. The can once held an episode of The Macra Terror, and currently belongs to a film collector known only as “Lord Melbourne”.

The label on the can says “Pt 3 Melbourne dupe”, which Lord Melbourne believes proves the theory of multiple prints in Australia. However the collector who originally held the can allegedly threw out the episode inside. The collector bought 200 film cans from the ABC when they were clearing out their stock, for the purpose of storing vinyl records, but this can was the only one thought to contain an episode of Doctor Who.

Lord Melbourne also hopes that 2018 might see another reveal of missing episodes.

28 – Fantom Publishing releases a Who Talk commentary bundle entitled “The Monster Era”. On the Web of Fear commentary (recorded in 2016), Philip Morris is featured and a number of interesting points come to light:

·      Morris believes in bringing home “the whole haystack”, rather than spending too much time looking for the needle

·      He knows where Web:3 was shipped from, and who it was shipped to

·      The station manager at RKTV in Jos not only took Web:3 away, but another print as well (Enemy? Abominable Snowmen? Wheel in Space?)

·      He got the station manager fired for the loss of Web:3

·      The bicycling route for Enemy and Web was Hong Kong > Singapore > Gibraltar > Zambia > Nigeria.

·      Morris confirms he met with Caroline Skinner in the early days of his liaising with the BBC

·      BBC Worldwide initially wanted something with Daleks or Cybermen in – implying that Morris was in a position to deliver such stories!

·      Morris was able to somehow dictate terms to BBC WW and gave them Enemy and Web instead.

March 2018

2 – Paul Vanezis tweets a photo of a silver film can which he is holding in from of Tottenham Court Road underground station with the caption: “Something borrowed, something blue.” Fans on forums immediately speculate that this could be referring to the ‘borrowed’ Web 3 can – however this is later revealed as an empty can due to house film trims from Blake’s 7.

6 – On PMF, ericthehalfabee says he’s heard tell that Philip Morris directly told people that The Myth Makers was found, but also told others it was NOT found.

8 – On PMF, ericthehalfabee posts that in 2013/14 he was told by one of “TPTB” that if The Power of the Daleks has been found then it’s the Singapore copy. He also received an email that mentioned both Power and The Tenth Planet being found in an African country to which those serials were never shown, together with most of season 3. This, according to eric, comprises the 40 (odd) list.

However, eric is undecided whether this and other “lists” of the found were just wishful thinking or perhaps just educated speculation on the part of said powers.

9 – Stephen Cranford, a presenter of radio and TV, tweets that fan Graham Strong has permanently handed over his high quality line records of audio of Doctor Who episodes to 1969 to sound wizard Mark Ayers. Philip Morris later tweets that this is “fantastic news” and that “the[y] are in the right hands and will prove essential for the future…”

DWN runs the story.

Meanwhile two of the PMF moderators, ericthehalfabee and servorobot, release the first PMF Grumpcast. Among other things they discuss the omnirumour and assert their belief that a lot more is still to be revealed about what may have been found in Ethiopia, and that they do not believe that Web 3 was “stolen to order”.

10 – On PMF, Richard Molesworth says that Graham Strong initially handed over the audios some 20 years ago (which is why we have commercial releases of the missing episodes on audio only), but Richard doesn’t believe that better quality audio can be coaxed out of Strong’s recordings now.

13 – Fantom Films tweets that Philip Morris will be at an exclusive signing event at Chiswick on Saturday, 24 March 2018. The event will also mark the launch of the special edition DVD of The Enemy of the World.

17 – Later, Fantom update their website without fanfare to show that Philip Morris is no longer attending the signing event.

19 – Over two interesting posts on GB (here and here), Richard Molesworth explains more of how the BBC Film and Videotape Library came into being – and the gradual way in which the junkings and wipings were eventually stopped.  

21 – The official Doctor Who YouTube channel publishes an excerpt of the interview with Philip Morris, featured on the upcoming special edition DVD of The Enemy of the World. In the excerpt, Morris reveals that:

·   He found the two episodes of The Sky at Night by pulling up an old carpet in a film store at a television station in Kaduna, Nigeria. The films cans were underneath

·   The station at Jos had “not been touched for 40 years”

·   The two Doctor Who serials he found at Jos were lucky to be in the condition he found them in. But as other films in the same store had turned to “mush”, Morris believes the films were retrieved just in time.

In addition, pictures of the station at Jos shown in the interview clearly show film cans sitting on a rack labelled Softly, Softly – another series with missing episodes.

24 – A conversation sparked by douglaswulf on GB results in a clearer picture of what might have happened the RKTV’s copy of The Wheel in Space – Doug, felice and others “join the dots” to arrive at the conclusion that it was probably junked, but its copy of The Abominable Snowmen is so far unaccounted for.

30 – Fantom Events tweets that Philip Morris will appear at a signing event on 21 April 2018.

April 2018

1 – The full interview with Philip Morris as shown on the special edition DVD of The Enemy of the World brings more points of interest to light:

·    * Morris insists that sales records and official “traffic records” alone are not enough to shed light on what television programmes ended up where; programmes were often bicycled in “batches”, so that the next country in the chain would receive more than what they officially paid for.

·    * Presumably, this is because the sending country had no further need for the programmes and would rather send them on than destroy them.

·    As a result, programmes can be found where they were never sold. As both Enemy and Web were known sales to Nigeria, what can Morris be referring to?

·    * Morris undertook “very difficult”, “protracted negotiations” with the Nigerian Television Association to secure the Doctor Who episodes.

·    * Morris believes he has tracked down the “final resting place” of Web:3.

7 – In episode 2 of the PMF Grumpcast, Servo Robot points out amidst discussion of Copy A, Copy B and Copy C of film prints distributed to Commonwealth countries, that BBC Sydney was in fact responsible for striking these copies and not BBC Enterprises as previously assumed.

May 2018

10 – Having tweeted he was in Singapore, Paul Vanezis tweets out front of the ABC offices in Perth saying he is on a “flying visit” doing “stuff”.

18 – On PMF, The Ginger Cat reports that Graham Strong, the man responsible for supplying the lion’s share of crystal clear audio recordings for missing Doctor Who episodes, has passed away. Only last year he had given all his original recordings of television audios to sound wizard, Mark Ayres.

19 – On MEF, Paul Vanezis adds his thoughts on Strong’s passing, and says that he is sad that Graham won’t be able to see and hear the full extent of what will be done with his audio recordings. Intriguing!

29 – Doctor Who begins being shown in a marathon run on live streaming platform Twitch.tv.

June 2018

3 – PV and JR Southall appear in separate interviews on the Radio Free Skaro Podcast, and the interview with PV turns to the subject of missing episodes. PV says he “went somewhere” recently to examine a “lot of negatives”, not missing Doctor Who, but something very exciting that will enable him to restore a classic TV series that he couldn’t before. 

He goes on to say “there is no question” that private film collectors hold “one or two” missing episodes and “at some point” they may be interested in handing them over.

PV says that PM is still “on the hunt”, and confirms PM’s bicycling route for Web and Enemy, but pooh-poohs the notion of a TIE hub in Africa. However he says Asia might be a location that holds a substantial amount.

PV also talks about his 1984 episode recovery efforts in Cyprus and which episodes of Doctor Who were lost in the Turkish invasion.

4 – On PMF, member nordicnoir points to a tweet from James Patterson of Australian Television Archive about finding a BBC TV film can. When queried about it on the ATA Facebook page, Patterson says that it IS indeed a piece of missing material but he cannot say what it is at this stage.

9 – On GB, Loxley states that the BBC are currently working on animating The Evil of the Daleks, as he was talking to a chap who knows someone working on a model for the Emperor Dalek.

10 – Not sure what they’re playing at, but the Mirror publishes an article with unattributed quotes from PV stating that 97 episodes may be with private collectors. The article appears to be drawing on the RFS podcast (see 3 June 2018).

11 – In another bizarre media related turn, member sawdust on PMF reports that he heard Radio 2 announcer Steve Wright say that two lost episodes of Doctor Who have been found in Cyprus.

And finally, to round off the trifecta, PV tweets at the Mirror stating that their article isn’t true and also that it’s not even journalism on their part. Meow.

13 - On MEF, Lou Singh claims to have personally seen the opening minutes of episode 1 of The Power of the Daleks as well as a longer version of Katarina’s death scene from The Daleks’ Master Plan. Singh says that the episodes in question are in private hands, which is why he has always believed the rumours that PV alludes to.

Lou was told that if he believes that every film the BBC ordered destroyed was in fact junked, then he is as crazy as the people who ordered the destruction.

Finally, Lou says that he believes embassies and other British diplomatic offices would be good places to check for films of missing episodes.

In a further post on MEF, Lou states that “in a very public forum, a “group of people” who “rebuked” the head of Australian DWAS [sic – Lou appears to be misremembering the name of the DWCA) when he resigned in the 1980s are the ones who claim “incontrovertibly” to have seen The Power of the Daleks. Lou says this group of people are all “Americans”, and that these are the “private hands” he alluded to earlier.

Richard Bignell appears to dispute Lou’s claims, but Lou stands by what he has said quoting as his evidence a post on a public forum by a Doctor Who fan he calls “Mister X” said he has seen every first story of each Doctor and The Twin Dilemma is the strongest of them all.

(For other posts by Lou Singh, see 5 August 2014 and 10 November 2016.)

15 – Rounding out a strange week even by missing episode standards, long time MEF member Marty Schultz says that while he knows nothing of the US Power rumours, the serial has long been rumoured to be in the hands of a “non-Who” collector in Australia, whom Marty believes also holds other missing material.

25 – The PMF lads release Part IV of the Grumpcast, specifically focussing on the omnirumour and whether Philip Morris does indeed hold more missing material (Part V will focus on whether he has more currently missing Who).

First up, the Grumpcasters pay tribute to the late Graham Strong (see 18 May 2018).

Next, they summarise the views and opinions of the PMF denizens which range from no Who coming back to the whole lot. To set the scene for this and the next episode of Grumpcast, they also recap the way in which most fans of a certain age first became aware of missing episodes followed by a potted history of returns since the early 1980s to date.

The lads all agree that the collated evidence shows that Morris has indeed found more material, both Who and non-Who. To support this opinion, the Grumpcasters draw on a number of resources including the two extant omni-timelines available on PMF, as well as forum discussion and the things said by family and friends of Morris, Morris himself and by Paul Vanezis over the years and in the recent Radio Free Skaro podcast (see 3 June 2018).

Eric mentions a rumour doing the rounds in 2013 that the US (and perhaps the UK) flooded Africa with as much western television as possible to counteract communist insurgency on the continent, and that this possibly explains how the oft theorised “hub” came to be.

In late 2007 or early 2008, Morris is known to have been to Zambia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda, where he assisted local television archives and built up goodwill. In October 2008, Richard Bignell discovered the link between T.I.E. and program distribution in Africa.

In 2009 Morris was quite pessimistic about finding anything and ruled out Zambia as holding any material. However in late 2009 he appeared on the Radio 4 documentary (see 26 December 2009) and dropped the fans the hint, “watch this space”!

In January 2010, the TIEA web domain is registered. The TIEA company, registered in 2011, appears to have facilitated Morris’ entry into foreign archives to conduct his boots on the ground search. Web and Enemy are known to have been found in 2011, coinciding with the formation of TIEA.

Servo observes that Ethiopia is mentioned early on in the MEF Africa threads, but is never mentioned again, begging the question. Of course, the Mirror once reported that 106 episodes of Doctor Who had been found in Ethiopia (see 6 October 2013). Eric mentions that Paul Vanezis once alluded to a significant film archive in Ethiopia, but the details of this have never been forthcoming.

Richard mentions Dick Fiddy’s appearance at Starburst where he alludes to more finds.

Richard also refers to the Richard Baker post (on Roobarbs, see 25 February 2011), that the box of tapes and films came from Zambia via Nigeria and we still don’t know everything that was in that. Servo says that we all thought it was Web and Enemy, but Tim’s December 2016 discussions on GB with PV indicate that these serials came back at separate times.

Tim states that Morris has been photographed in Indiana Jones gear Zambia post-omnirumour, showing that work was still going on then.

Tim opines that the length of time to sort, assess catalogue thousands of films will be significant – years - let alone getting around to restoring them, and finally negotiating with relevant parties and selling them.

Further evidence is that the interview featuring Morris on The Enemy of the World region 2 DVD (see 21 March 2018) includes a photograph of the storage room in Jos, clearly showing other BBC programmes that have not been announced as found.

Tim mentions a thread on MEF from late 2011 early 2012, where a member said he had written to TIEA and received a reply that they have “tens of thousands” of items and what was it he was specifically interested in. This led to a discussion about a TIE hub, but the posts were later deleted by moderators.

All in all, Tim believes that this points to a lot of material having been found.

Tim offers more evidence in support of this. Firstly, a relative of Philip Morris once posted on Facebook, having seen a Morris-Indiana Jones meme and linked to it on his profile. A friend asked the relative, what does Philip Morris do? The relative replied saying he has his own company, TIEA, and that he recovers missing television from all over the world – including Doctor Who, The Sky at Night, “and many others that I can’t name yet”. The post was quickly taken down but Tim managed to capture a screenshot.

Secondly, Richard reminds the team of the time that Morris once bragged to Gareth Roberts on social media that he has found much archive television, “more than you know”.

And thirdly, Tim mentions the Kasterborous interview from November 2013 with Morris’ father-in-law, Roy Robinson, in which he says that TIEA has “hundreds of films that are waiting to be sold” to interested parties. Tim asserts this is distinct from TIEA’s other business arm of restoring and returning foreign archives’ films.

Fourthly, Richard brings up Dick Fiddy’s infamous comment on The Native Hue of Resolution documentary in which he states thousands of films have been found (see 21 December 2013). However, Tim says that the FOI requests lodged by a fan revealed an email from Fiddy to the BFI enquiring about the rumours and whether there was any truth to them? (Incidentally, the BFI provided a number of films found in their reply.)

Tim believes, having spoken to most of the key players in the missing episode search, that outside of TIEA nobody knows what’s really going on. Some of these individuals believe there has been a huge find of Who, others think it’s of non-Who.

Servo mentions another TIEA shipment that was in part coded “antiquities”, which could well have been other archive films that so far are unannounced. In addition, at Morris’ appearance at Starburst he listed a number of series that had their last resting place in Nigeria, and that it’s public knowledge that he has found an episode of The Troubleshooters. Tim mentions other tidbits Morris has dropped in to social media conversations anecdotally, such as Basil Brush and Secret Service and Callan, supposedly found in Nigeria.

Servo points to PV’s previous comments that Cyprus was used as a BBC hub for the region, and that the records there even including flight numbers for the incoming television material. Servo mentions that Paul does not believe in an African hub but believes there may be an Asian one. Also, PV mentioned two stories that were returned from Australia in the 1970's including The Macra Terror and Fury from the Deep, which were not known to have come back from Australia.

The Grumpcasters conclude that there is definitely more missing archive television to be announced, but for some reason this has been delayed for around five or six years now.