Wiped Episode Discoveries

[The Four Doctor]

still no word on whether the prints are complete or censored?

 

[Brendan Moody]

still no word on whether the prints are complete or censored?

Philip Morris' statement reveals they came to Nigeria from Hong Kong, and the BroaDWcast site suggest Hong Kong's prints of those stories would have been fresh from the BBC. So it depends whether Hong Kong or Nigeria would have been censoring stories.

 

[Brendan Moody]

Enemy will be out on DVD next month, confirming another hard-to-believe claim from longtime rumor sources. Web will follow next year; Amazon's listing says February, though that's not confirmed. These are UK dates, presumably, though I doubt the US will be far behind. The artwork for both seems to say 2-disc set, so special features have apparently been prepared, as was also rumored.

There are clips from and trailers for the episodes on YouTube now as well.

 

[Brendan Moody]

still no word on whether the prints are complete or censored?

Philip Morris' statement reveals they came to Nigeria from Hong Kong, and the BroaDWcast site suggest Hong Kong's prints of those stories would have been fresh from the BBC. So it depends whether Hong Kong or Nigeria would have been censoring stories.

And Paul Vanezis has now confirmed that there were no censor cuts, only some missing frames at commercial break points, which have been restored. The episodes are uncut, and were in fact restored by the Restoration Team, which is why they look so good.

Also, they were apparently in "at least one other country" between Hong Kong and Nigeria. And Morris will be telling the story himself "at some point." After Marco Polo is announced, perhaps?

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I wonder if they will employ animation for the Web of Fear missing episode? It'd be nice if they did, and would fit the Restoration Team's budget to do so (they'd stated they can only be afforded animation for two episodes per release).

 

[Brendan Moody]

I think if they were going to be animating the missing episode of Web they would have said so. Given the lead times animation requires, it would certainly be underway by now. But you never know.

 

[The Four Doctor]

Has there been an explanation or theory as to why all of Enemy was found but not all of Web?

 

[Brendan Moody]

Morris' statement just says that Web 3 wasn't with the rest of the film cans that contained the eleven episodes. Vanezis has reiterated that, and denied that the episode "has been found but is damaged, or is being held back, or whatever." I'll leave it to others to parse that, as someone probably should.

Meanwhile, this article comes closest to addressing the remaining rumors:

The elephant in the room was never quite addressed – is this haul the tip of the iceberg and to what extent has there been an element of hostage negotiation in the episodes’ recovery? But there were seemingly loaded statements nonetheless.

A video interview with Philip Morris, the executive director of Television International Enterprise Archive and the man who discovered the episodes revealed yesterday, saw him assert, ‘I have the Doctor Who fans’ best interests at heart, believe me.’

Meanwhile Dan Phelan, Head of Communications at BBC Worldwide, directly addressed the rumours: ‘There has been lots of speculation – some of it better informed than others’. When Phelan presented the episodes to the press, he spoke of them as ‘the missing episodes we’re announcing today’ – a phrase which, it seems to us, can be taken one of two ways.

 

[StalwartUK]

The missing episode of The Web of Fear will be represented by audio shown with some of the telesnaps, at least with the iTunes release.

I hope the missing episode will be animated for the DVD release. Might explain why it's not coming out till the end of next February.

The BBC Shop site is currently down... amazing.

Guessing now that The Tenth Planet DVD's rumoured next time trailer will be for the Enemy of the World after all.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I think if they were going to be animating the missing episode of Web they would have said so. Given the lead times animation requires, it would certainly be underway by now. But you never know.

Well, given that the Restoration Team has denied rumors of actually being involved with the restoration of the missing episodes, and the confirmation of the exact opposite just now... yeah, we never know.

 

[The Wormhole]

Enemy will be out on DVD next month, confirming another hard-to-believe claim from longtime rumor sources. Web will follow next year; Amazon's listing says February, though that's not confirmed. These are UK dates, presumably, though I doubt the US will be far behind. The artwork for both seems to say 2-disc set, so special features have apparently been prepared, as was also rumored.

There are clips from and trailers for the episodes on YouTube now as well.

US release dates are usually within a month of the UK dates. Mind you, I don't see Enemy getting released in the US in November. The Tenth Planet is getting its release late November (the 19th). And since there's never any classic era DVDs released in December, Enemy of the World probably won't see a US release until 2014.

But aren't these release dates a bit too soon? Enemy of the World out next month means there won't be very many, if any, bonus features. And I doubt a February release will be enough time for Web of Fear Part 3 to get an animated reconstruction.

 

[Brendan Moody]

The UK date for Enemy is confirmed in the wave of midnight press coverage. As I noted, the artwork says 2-disc set on both, so there's presumably enough bonus material to warrant that, which for a six-episode story would be anything over 30 minutes. I would imagine that, as the rumors claimed, they've been working on bonus material for both stories over the past few months. Unless they've been working on animation in secret as well (and are still keeping it secret now for some reason), there isn't likely to be one for the missing episode of Web.

 

[The Wormhole]

Unless they've been working on animation in secret as well (and are still keeping it secret now for some reason), there isn't likely to be one for the missing episode of Web.

Dropping the ball there, aren't they? Or is this going to be a "vanilla" release with a special edition released later on with animated reconstruction?

 

[Brendan Moody]

If these releases are two discs with special features they're not really "vanilla." I couldn't say why they're evidently not doing an animation for the still-missing episode of Web. (They're not animating the missing episodes of "The Crusade" either, even though that story is within their two-episode limit.) Perhaps they felt it couldn't be achieved with the same secrecy as the rest of the project. Perhaps they didn't want to add that lead time to what was apparently a protracted process already. Perhaps after the cost of recovering the episodes themselves there was no money for an animation. Perhaps some of the "blackmail" rumors are true and the episode may be returned in the near future, so they're holding off on an animation. Or maybe there's one after all and they're just not discussing it now.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I usually don't go for double dips if I can avoid it, but I'm willing to make an exception in this regard. I'm already downloading the digital copies The Web of Fear and The Enemy of the World and plan to get the DVD copies as well. Hopefully, there will be an animated episode for The Web of Fear (if, in fact, the episode wasn't recovered at all) and it's something they're keeping under wraps simply because they haven't finished the process and don't want to jump the gun for whatever reason. That wouldn't be too surprising considering how cautious they've been with releasing information about the finds themselves until everything was set in stone.

Which leads me to another point: Why wait until the episodes had been remastered and ready for immediate download before officially confirming the finds? What harm would there have been to simply announce that they had been found? I can understand if this was a case of negotiations, but it seems to me that those negotiations happened some time ago if the episodes are already restored and ready to go.

I don't remember how the events leading up to Tomb of the Cybermen evolved. Did they announce the news of its find and then months later release the DVD? Or was it out all in one go? Granted, the internet has changed a lot since back then, both in the dissemination of information and the availability of digital downloads and both facts could easily alter how BBC would handle things, but I curious to know the differences in timelines between Tomb and this time around.

(For what it's worth, I view the situation for the single episodes of The Underwater Menace and Galaxy 4 differently because they were single episode finds that didn't come close to completing their respective serials, so their release methods would be different anyways)

(They're not animating the missing episodes of "The Crusade" either, even though that story is within their two-episode limit.)

I hadn't heard that they were "definitively" not doing animation for this serial. Is there any official reason for this or has it been left vague, and as a result, is it part of the rumors that the missing episodes have been found, too? Disappointing news to read considering how much I love that serial.

 

[diankra]

It was about four months between announcement and release for Tomb.

 

[Chris3123]

Phil Morris on finding the missing episodes:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6XPhLZTLSo[/yt]

BBC has also put trailers and clips from the two serials on their Youtube page.

The Enemy of the World:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9Ckdpvg22w[/yt]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZuc0AOc9Zs[/yt]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg079oDPKso[/yt]

The Web of Fear:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPm6zcy_6j0[/yt]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAlDZQ3t2JQ[/yt]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ABFqI6T6x4[/yt]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nStE5MYMUgs[/yt]

 

[Candlelight]

The UK date for Enemy is confirmed in the wave of midnight press coverage. As I noted, the artwork says 2-disc set on both, so there's presumably enough bonus material to warrant that, which for a six-episode story would be anything over 30 minutes. I would imagine that, as the rumors claimed, they've been working on bonus material for both stories over the past few months. Unless they've been working on animation in secret as well (and are still keeping it secret now for some reason), there isn't likely to be one for the missing episode of Web.

When did Fraser and Deborah find out I wonder...

I imagine there would be heaps of extras with them involved.

 

[VDCNI]

US release dates might be later than normal apparently as the US wasn't told about these finds. The suggestion is spring 2014.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I saw both of these stories as a young girl many, many years ago. I remember The Web of Fear reasonably well. As a child I thought that the Yeti were not very realistic.

I don't remember Enemy of the World to the same degree except for it opening in Australia.

What pleases the most is Jamie McCrimmon appears in both. Jamie was my first ever crush and I believe my lifelong kilt fetish started with him.

I plan to download the episodes and watch them over the weekend. I hope my childhood memories aren't destroyed.

I wish that The Highlanders and Fury from the Deep could be found. I have strong memories of both of those stories.