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.(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're definately not doing "The Crusade" either. I just figured there were waiting on a decision, probably waiting to see how the sales go for other animated stories like "The Ice Warriors," "The Tenth Planet," "The Underwater Menace," & "The Moonbase."
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."
IMO, if there were any more episodes about "The Web of Fear" that they knew about, I suspect they would have told us. It doesn't make any sense that they would give us the rest of the story but hold back on a single episode.
Unfortunately, no fan is ever going to take anything said by Morris or Vanezis at face value ever again. They both denied everything so vehemently. Morris even went so far as to say that there was absolutely no possibility that there were any further episodes to be found anywhere. (Which is clearly rediculous because the fates of so many episodes are still unknown. If we knew where everything was, we wouldn't be looking. Even before all this started, the 2011 finds proved that there were still bits & pieces floating around out there.)