It’s how they have a slow trickle of “found” episodes whenever they want.
Except… they don’t. There is no “slow trickle” of episodes found in private collections, most recoveries we’ve seen were forgotten in archives around the world.
Quite the contrary, “Web of fear” was reported found in its entirety, but the episode featuring Lethbridge-Stewart’s first appearance disappeared (again) before the serial could be returned. This episode has been rumoured to have been scooped up by a collector.
Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory, but there is absolutely no evidence or even motivation for the BBC to secretly sit on missing episodes. That would just be a whoppingly bad look after the archive purges in the '60s and early '70s.
Well, yeah…
The BBC didn’t give a shit about archiving, especially pulp sci-fi like Dr Who.
So private collectors goobled up all the tapes as they were found in the closets of random BBC regional offices.
By now the BBC has almost certainly located multiple copies of “missing” episodes and know exactly who has what.
It’s how they have a slow trickle of “found” episodes whenever they want.
Except… they don’t. There is no “slow trickle” of episodes found in private collections, most recoveries we’ve seen were forgotten in archives around the world.
Quite the contrary, “Web of fear” was reported found in its entirety, but the episode featuring Lethbridge-Stewart’s first appearance disappeared (again) before the serial could be returned. This episode has been rumoured to have been scooped up by a collector.
Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory, but there is absolutely no evidence or even motivation for the BBC to secretly sit on missing episodes. That would just be a whoppingly bad look after the archive purges in the '60s and early '70s.
If that were remotely true, the BBC wouldn’t be so stuck releasing the early years on Blu-Ray.