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:
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…”
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.
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.
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.
