There have been rumors swirling for over a year now about a number of long lost Doctor Who episodes being recovered from an archive in Nigeria – until now. The BBC has confirmed nine lost episodes have been recovered by Phillip Morris, director of TIEA.
In all 11 episodes were recovered from the Nigerian city of Jos, but only 9 of them were thought to have been gone forever.The nine episodes are from the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who, have been fully restored, which means fans can now see the complete story arc from The Enemy of the World (1967) and all but one installment of The Web of Fear (1968). What makes The Web of Fear so interesting to fans? It marked the first appearance of The Great Intelligence – which made caused quite a bit of trouble for The Doctor last season.
Episode one of The Enemy of the World is a James Bond-style thriller complete with an exploding helicopter, a hovercraft, gun-toting henchmen and a foreign-accented villain, Salamander (also played by Troughton).
The Web of Fear is a claustrophobic tale that sees the Doctor battle his old foe, the Great Intelligence, and the yeti in the tunnels of the London tube system.
The Enemy of the World will be released on November 22, 2013, while The Web of Fear will arrive in early 2014 – or if you are one of those Gotta Have It Now kind of people, you can buy it directly from iTunes right now.
8 Comments
These are awesome news!! (Even though I don’t watch Doctor Who [someday I will])
Awesome news! As a Who fan this makes me extremely pleased!
Actually The Web of Fear was the second appearance of the Great Intelligence. The Abominable Snowman (which The Web of Fear is the sequel) was the first.(and sadly is still missing).
What about the one that had the first Regeneration that you guys were talking about in one of your podcasts?
Not in this collection.
Still among the 97 missing…
As noted above, The Web of Fear is the second appearance of The Great Intelligence. It is, however, the first appearance of the Brigadier, though at the time he was Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart.
Excited about this, particularly since the 2nd Doctor is my favorite.
I may actually purchase these from itunes.
Enemy of the World sounds pretty cool. Also yay! Less than 100 to go. (half-sarcastic)