106 TO GO

I know that in the great scheme of things, certain events really aren’t all that important, and I also know that in terms of impossible quests, some are probably more pointless and impossible than others, but, over the course of the afternoon of Sunday the 11th of December 2011, I heard some news the like of which I had begun to suspect I would never hear again and it managed to put a tiny spark of hope back into even this mean old heart of mine.

The world didn’t change for the better, wars didn’t end and no lives were saved, but a small corner of my geekiest self was made slightly happier by the news, which I’m sure to the vast majority of the very few who might be bothering to read this, it will be the most pointless and trivial piece of nonsense and they really will wonder quite what all the fuss is about, so I’d better explain.

For as long as I can remember I’ve been a fan of old telly, and, as regular readers might already know, one telly programme has rather followed me through life from at least the time when I bought the TV Comic Summer Special way back in 1973 and I’ve paid rather a lot of attention to it, learned far more than is reasonably healthy about it, and spent far too much money on buying stuff related to it.

This means that I happen to know that until yesterday, 108 episodes of “Doctor Who” from the black and white era of the show starring William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton were “missing” from the archives. “Missing” is of course the word we use because we know that they were wiped, junked, incinerated or simply thrown away by a policy that thought that they would never, ever be needed or wanted again.

Whilst the “classic” shows continue to get their shiny new DVD releases every month or so, it becomes increasingly clear that the gaps are likely to remain, despite the sterling efforts of those who restore them to their pristine clarity. Sometimes the towel is thrown in by those of us that still believe, and we accept that we just aren’t going to ever join in on that journey with Marco Polo to Cathay, climb aboard the Trojan Horse, flee from the Massacre of the Huguenots, or see the first Doctor’s last half hour. Sometimes a compromise is reached and a story lacking just a few of its parts is reconstructed by whatever means possible so that the Cybermen can still be seen planning their “Invasion” of 1960s London.

Moments that you might think of as fragments of a cheap and very old bit of hokum are like gemstones to me, rare nuggets of TV gold that are to be nurtured and treasured. Three epic Dalek stories remain lost except for tiny fragments. Patrick Troughton seems to have fared the worst with only his final year well represented, and his early years gone up in smoke apart from the occasional miracle like the “Tomb of the Cybermen” turning up in Hong Kong a couple of decades ago. The Yeti invading the London Underground or the Det-Sen Monastery might never be seen again, nor the wicked machinations of the Doctor’s evil double Salamander, and so many more.

Meanwhile the seemingly hopeless search for these missing moments, alongside so many more from so many other shows, goes on and the optimist in me always hopes that something will turn up. The last time was nearly 10 years ago when one episode of the 12 part “Dalek Master Plan” was returned to the archives meaning that there are now “only” nine missing. People talk of film canisters perhaps turning up at car boot sales, or “Blue Peter” engineers spiriting those precious cans of tape away and putting them in sheds or attics or cellars. More fanciful notions are of the archives of once friendlier nations that used to have names like Rhodesia and that were once pink on the map of the globe but which are now closed to us being stuffed full of old overseas programme sales just waiting to be resurrected, but these are just the hopes and dreams of old men and women whose memory cheats and fades and who probably really know that those precious flickering images they remember witnessing when they were children have slipped into the abyss and will never be seen again.

So when I hear, on a Sunday afternoon that not one, but TWO have turned up, my weary old heart skips a beat and still dares to wonder whether one day the Yeti will once again stalk along the darkest passageways of my television set, or that Fury will once more rage in the Deep…

Until then, I have two more precious nuggets to look forward to seeing. I’m sure in some ways they are bound to slightly disappoint as all things that are far too much anticipated will, but two more precious parts of the jigsaw have been found behind the sofa cushions of the world which means that there’s always hope that something else might yet show up.

Maybe they’re still out there… In the darkness… Waiting…