We've all heard the ones about the hording fans who have spirited away every missing episode. This last week saw a sophisticated hoax involving a two inch quad video tape and a period BBC label with "Mind of Evil 3" written on it.



With this much potential for misbehavior, the amount of stupidity (always larger than malfeasance) is awesome--if only it could be tapped for some good purpose! Which brings us to the sad story of The Invasion. This eight part season six story was found to be missing parts one and four when the BBC finally started preserving this material in 1978. There the story lies until 1993, when the adventure was to be released on video. An image of the release appeared in Doctor Who Magazine # 202, upon which the text could be read  "Complete at last with an introduction by Nicholas Courtney".



Fans were stoked--two episodes had been recovered in secret, and were going to be released for the domestic market.Then they were surprised, and annoyed, to find the released video to have the text changed to "Specially recorded links with an introduction by Nicholas Courtney" and there to be conspicuous gaps preceding episode two and five where Nick narrated the plot developments. Where were their other two episodes?



A rumour spread. The episodes had been recovered--but stolen! And the text was changed to reflect the links material that had been recorded in their stead...



It was all nonsense. There never had been such a recovery, and the intention all along had been to release the existing six episodes with the Courtney links. Why had a version of the box been made public if it wasn't correct? Plain old stupidity.



Why do I say that, you ask? Simple: the Australian release came complete with the "Complete at last" text. Far from being some conspiracy uncovered by boy detectives working from an obscure clue, it was a plain old commercial mistake. Bad luck to any Australians who bought it in good faith! But as the current quad hoax shows, there'll be another disappointment along in a minute.

Wow, very interesting.  Damn shame the BBC threw out most of their old stuff, very stupid.



Sort of a bit like the ABC here junking most of the early episodes of Countdown - although I dont think anyone misses seeing the 70s pop stars warbling their hits in flared trousers!!!

My Favourite Consipriacy is that they started filming Season 23 with Colin and there are a few episodes of Mission to Mangus out there

DWM did a couple in the '80s--that The Hidden Planet had been found (it hadn't made it past synopsis stage), and that episode 4 of the Tenth Planet had been restored found and the whole story was to be colourised!