Doctor Who Series 8 has reached its conclusion! Christian Cawley and James McLean bring you their thoughts and opinion on Death in Heaven, the – uhm – unusual conclusion to the Twelth Doctor’s first run of episodes.
We’re not going to pretent it was brilliant, but I think you’ll find something to take away from this discussion. we also take a look at a new topic: Doctor Who missing episodes, and bring you some interesting recommendations.
Shownotes
- Bleeding Cool on missing episodes
- Recommendations: The Invasion
, Frank Black in The X-Files comic, Harvest of Time
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Intro by John Guilor.
The Bleeding Cool page makes a lot of sense, and since it fits in with pretty much all the facts we had it’s probably true. The lack of hype pretty much guaranteed that something had gone somewhere, and all the spin from certain people was very strange. How very, very sad. It was always going to be money!
(Hopefully it won’t blow up with media exposure, though, as that would raise the price of whatever’s in Africa even more.)
Here’s the situation as I see it. I’m leaning toward this latest rumor being fake, but here are my thoughts on both sides of the coin. If this latest piece of anonymous news is true, then it certainly fits with the most recurring elements of previous rumors over the last couple of years. It also feels entirely plausible, due to the convoluted business of licensing and royalties. Maybe there is some truth in the mess made of the negotiations and Phil not having them all in hand when he was first talking to the BBC, but the rest of this story just feels like it has been sprinkled with too many erroneous assumptions and rumors.
First, the shiny side of this coin… Episodes discarded by their creators during the wiping in the 70s, now in the hands of someone other than Phil Morris, who is suddenly realizing their financial worth, that all makes for a big, but plausible mess. Especially if Phil Morris’ efforts were jeopardized by newspapers breaking the story early and threatening his episode recovery deal. That’s all entirely believable, sadly. As you guys said, it feels like the brutal truth at last starting come out about what really happened with the attempted recovery of these stories.
And the supposed complication from the estate of one of the actors involved in Marco Polo (or crew members, perhaps the source was a little off there), also sounds entirely possible. None of us should be surprised to hear that a big corporation would try to keep as much profit for itself and attempt to use thrift when it comes to the rights of people involved in the original production’s making. Since it is an “estate of an actor that’s not playing ball”, I can only imagine it would be one of the leads from that story, and estate means deceased, so we are most likely talking about either the Hartnell of Hill estate seeking greater royalties. The other possibility is that this is John Lucarotti’s Estate, the writer of the story, since, with the exception of script editors, writers worked freelance for the BBC and have some control over the copyright of their work and entitlements to royalties. The rumor, however, specified the “estate of an actor”. Again, this sounds plausible. Of the many episodes people have pulled out of their asses to feed the fires of the rumor mill, Polo is the easiest to believe (especially considering the number of copies that were made for distribution in the 60s).
Marco Polo, was part of the original mix of Enemy of the World, and Web of Fear when the news was originally breaking in the early days. A year ago, the papers stirred things again by announcing Marco Polo was imminent. However, they claimed that the delay for Polo was to do with audio problems, if I recall correctly. As we all know, missing audio is not an issue with missing episodes as we have all the audio thanks to enterprising 1960s fans who recorded it off air onto tape. All we care about when it comes to recovering missing episodes, really, is the picture on the film. So, when this anonymous guy wrote his piece for Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool,,he falls into that trap of suggesting missing audio is part of the problem in delays for the Massacre and Daleks Master Plan, which I think is a bit of a giveaway that the news source here is misinformed or fake.
The other thing that leads me to think the rumor is fake, much more so than the audio question, is simply that the episodes which are being mentioned here are all stories which seem too good to be true.
I’m not personally a fan of The Massacre, it’s dry grisly tone, it’s lack of the Doctor in the story, and piecemeal ending, make it an exercise in John Wiles and Donald Tosh’s attempts to overhaul the show into something they felt their peers would better respect, since they openly felt family / children’s drama was beneath them. Regardless of my opinion (having watched all the B&W era as recons many times), fans generally tow a particular line, or sing a common tune, when it comes to “classic” missing stories. What I’m trying to get at is that Marco Polo, The Massacre, Daleks Master Plan, Power of the Daleks… these are all considered gems of the Black and White era by most fans. All that’s missing from this list is Evil of the Daleks or Fury from the Deep. In short, the list is just too perfect to be genuine. Where we would expect a much more random mix of stories and episodes to be in this discussion, like for example, an episode of the Savages, a few episodes of Daleks Master Plan, an episode from the Crusade, or the Faceless Ones, instead they are suggesting entire stories are out there under negotiation, and they happen to be the best of the bunch. While Underwater Menace would fulfill that role, I can’t help but feel it’s only being mentioned because the DVD’s animated portions were pulled and the DVD was delayed.
This is the weakest part of this anonymous tip that Rich is republishing. The info from Mr or Mrs Anonymous is simply recycling the rumored stories that have been most commonly mentioned in previous rumors over the last couple of years. Sprinkling those into an otherwise plausible legal / negotiation nightmare story may make it seem convincing to some, but I think it red flags this news as just another rumor in an ongoing effort to keep the omni rumor alive. Why do people do this? To give themselves a sense of importance and pride, even if only the originator of the rumor knows it is mostly a work of fiction on their own part. They get satisfaction that they are the one who came up with it and get special attention and treatment from that small inner circle of various news and fan sites who uphold their anonymity and seek a scoop.
That said, I wish this rumor was true, even if it means that the episodes are in a quagmire, at least it would mean they ARE indeed out there and I could hope to see them in my life time. I had essentially given up on more missing episodes and stopped regularly following the rumors which became an obsession after the recovery of Web and Enemy. This reminds me why its healthy to keep a bit of distance and revisit my collection of the recons to at least experience the next best thing. And the recons really are very good.
The omni-rumour seems dead as a donut now anyway, except for those on the other side of the podcasting curtain. I don’t like the recons much, but the audios with linking narration are very good.
However, if people were somewhere preserving these things wouldn’t some self-selection occur in what was left? People would throw away Macra Terror before Power of the Daleks, if there was human agency involved at all.