Classic Who Episodes Found!

Hi there, resident classic-Who quasi-expert Seth here! Yes, yes, I know, I've been a long time gone. I've been busy. Doing what, you ask? Well, I'll get to that in a later article. In the meantime, Who novelist Lance Parkin has been nice enough to break the BBC embargo on the missing episode news that was announced today via his Facebook page. What did we find? What does it mean?

Well, first of all, the nine episodes found today were from the Patrick Troughton era, dropping his count of missing episodes from 62 to 53 and the overall count of missing episodes from 106 to 97, officially dispelling long-held conventional wisdom that we'd never have fewer than 100 missing episode. Good news all around, really, but especially for Troughton fans, who have long suffered not just from missing episodes but from most of those episodes being scattered about different serials, leaving us with very few complete stories.

Hot Pat-on-Pat action!

Thankfully, we now have one more--all five missing episodes of six-parter The Enemy of the World were found, a hallmark for a number of reasons. It was the last story to have series co-creator Sydney Newman directly involved, for one. It was the first serial directed by Barry Letts, who would go on to run the show for all of Jon Pertwee's five years and cast Tom Baker as his successor. And it's the penultimate serial written by the show's original script editor and resident genius-alchemist-madman, David Whitaker. Of course, for all of you who don't care about the behind the scenes nitty-gritty--well, you also get Patrick Troughton's Doctor match wits with ruthless megalomaniac conqueror Salamander, who is also played by Patrick Troughton, and they fight in the last episode via splitscreen. I don't doubt that'll be a lot of fun to watch.

Finally, you can get the Yeti off your loo
and back on your telly!
(Sometimes I'm only amusing myself.)

Not complete, but now only missing a single episode instead of five, is another six-parter called The Web of Fear. It's the first appearance of Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart of UNIT, who would go on to be a lead during Pertwee's era and the show's longest-lasting recurring character (besides the Doctor himself, of course.) It's also the second appearance of the Great Intelligence, and the last one of the classic series. The site's spoiler policy means I can't be too explicit, but those of you who were following the show this past year should be pretty familiar with that guy, and now you'll be able to know first-hand
what that whole "London Underground" speech in the Christmas special was about.

These apparently weren't the only episodes found, with more news due out soon. I'll post more as events warrant.

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