Talk:Doctor Who missing episodes

Requested move 19 May 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (non-admin closure) Natg 19 (talk) 23:26, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

– The main article about the subject of "missing episodes" is Lost television broadcast (and a UK list is at List of lost television broadcasts in the United Kingdom) which also has the redirect Lost episode, while there is no article on Missing episodes. Seeing as how the terminology we use everywhere else is "lost" and as these are in fact more lost than missing, these two pages should be renamed to be WP:CONSISTENT with the rest. Gonnym (talk) 11:50, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Doctor Who missing episodes → Doctor Who lost episodes
 * Dad's Army missing episodes → Dad's Army lost episodes

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose: the episodes were not lost. Most were actively chucked or wiped. Missing is the better term. If other articles prefer lost, then perhaps they should be changed, or perhaps they have their reasons reflecting the circumstances of the topics they cover. I don’t see any pressing need for consistency on this matter. Bondegezou (talk) 12:08, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose move. The respective fandoms overwhelmingly refer to the episodes as missing, not lost.  O.N.R.  (talk) 15:27, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose As mentioned the episodes were not lost. Also WP:OTHERSTUFF. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 16:24, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose It just doesn't make sense. Great Mercian (talk) 09:46, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose There is a documentary titled "The Missing Years", included on disc 3 of Lost in Time. Also, uses the term "missing" several times. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 09:48, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

POV on colour recovery section?
“In the early 1990s, an early form of the Doctor Who Restoration Team attempted to pair the low-resolution colour signal from these sources with the high-resolution black-and-white signal from the black-and-white film recordings. In this way, several Jon Pertwee stories were returned to a rough form of colour” This seems terribly POV: firstly, the restoration team was created specifically to carry out the project that the paragraph is describing (as per the Wikipedia article on the same). It may be the earliest assembly of the team, but it is the team, not just a form of it. Secondly “attempted” is an ineffective way of conveying that they developed and deployed successfully a new technical process, involving not just mixing the chrominance with the luminance, but also warping the one to match the other, given that the two sources were not the same shape. The results may not exactly correspond to the look of peroid video masters, but the end product is far from being “a rough form of colour”. So successful was it that the restored episodes were deemed suitable for broadcast and retail, and led to the financing of other epsiode restorations by the team. Jock123A (talk) 15:15, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Completion columns in missing episode list
I added a column for official recons and it was removed as it didn't "count" as completion and there was a section on recons anyway. There's a section on animation too, and I think recons using original materials"count" more than a recreation, and that has a column.

Although the "there's a section already" argument made me think - why does this column need to be in that list? a note with a link to the section below that various methods have been used to complete it would be sufficient Thoughts?

Etron81 (talk) 22:52, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Two Hartnell episodes have been found
Two Hartnell episodes have been found 197.89.10.49 (talk) 09:15, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * A statement like that is so vague as to be worthless. Which episodes? When were they found? If it was in, say, 1984, then it is old news. But most importantly: how do you know this? Without a reliable source, you're simply not going to be believed. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 11:20, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * A quick news search reveals they were probably referring to this story. Bondegezou (talk) 21:54, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I think the story is false as the people mentioned in the news article say they never said anything about it. IrishDeafBoy (talk) 10:59, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

This is now in the article, but unfortunately isn't accurate. The Observer article only cites John Franklin as their source, and he says that they misquoted him. An article covering this can be found here (seems to be a RS with editorial oversight). Would anyone object if I replaced the current paragraph with a final sentence added to the paragraph before, something along the lines of:
 * In November 2023, film collector John Franklin repeated these claims to The Observer, which reported that two more episodes had been found, but the owners were reluctant to return them to the BBC.

I also couldn't find Philip Morris saying "he was negotiating their return to the BBC" in the interview linked to, but he does say that the last episode of The Web of Fear is also out there. -- Yodin T 01:21, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I've made the above changes. It seems like the Morris negotiation claims were from this blog, which Morris called "completely false and fake". Might be worth moving this entire paragraph from the "List of missing episodes" section to the "Continuing search" section above, and including the counterclaims by Morris and Franklin. -- Yodin T 10:36, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Celestial Toymaker DVD release date
, you keep reverting people saying that there's no release date for the Celestial Toymaker DVD. As per a previous edit summary, this gives a 2023 release date. This is also the date given at The_Celestial_Toymaker. Bondegezou (talk) 14:24, 8 December 2023 (UTC)


 * That seems to be the release date for the 60th anniversay specials, Celestial Toymaker isn't mentioned at that link. -- wooden superman  14:36, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * My apologies. I don't know who put the date at The_Celestial_Toymaker, but I'll remove it from there too. Bondegezou (talk) 14:42, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, god, my apologies again. The text there gives a date of the announcement, not the release! Doh. Bondegezou (talk) 14:43, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Bad citations
"Doctor Who is unusual in that each of its 97 missing episodes survives in audio form, recorded off-air by fans at home.[4] " Is there any actual source for this? From what I can tell the citation here is being used for a footnote about an unrelated TV show, and the statement is not supported. 2600:1700:96D3:D900:B041:90FF:FEA3:27B9 (talk) 04:11, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Z-Cars claim
The statement "while other series such as Z-Cars and Dixon of Dock Green are missing episodes from as late as 1975" would not seem to be correct for the former. According to List of Z-Cars episodes every episode still exists from the series that started in September 1974 and from all later series. Indeed this article would indicate that the last missing episode of Z-Cars was Dinner Break broadcast on 11 March 1974. Dunarc (talk) 21:49, 25 February 2024 (UTC)