One of the great tragedies of Doctor Who’s long history is that we can’t actually watch all of it anymore. While nearly 900 episodes of the sci-fi classic have aired since the show first premiered in 1963, the BBC hasn’t always been… let’s just say on top of its archival processes. In fact, it actually used to erase, tape over, or even throw out previous broadcasts in the name of saving money on space and storage costs. This (frankly unbelievable) process means that many classic era Who episodes from the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton eras have been lost. A total of 97 episodes from the series’s first six years are still missing, leaving 26 stories incomplete. cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Several of these episodes — “The Underwater Menace,” “The Savages,” “The Celestial Toymaker,” “The Web of Fear,” and more — have been recreated as animated specials. (Audio recordings have survived from every episode, so it’s a neat solution to this particular problem.) But fans shouldn’t give up on finding these lost classic episodes just yet. Many are believed to still exist in private collections, and it sounds as though a new discovery is closer than many expect. According to film collector John Franklin, of the preservation organization Film is Fabulous!, the group has solid leads about the location of some of these lost episodes. Appearing on the Doctor Who: The Missing Episodes podcast, Franklin did his best to clarify some claims made on the group’s Facebook page about the possibility of finding these lost treasures and dropped some hints at big things to come.“We are aware of several collectors – plural – with several episodes of Doctor Who that are missing from the archive – plural – that are in private collections and with former industry professionals,” Franklin said.He went on to share details about one particularly large collection that almost certainly contains a missing Who installment. “Since 2023, I and a couple of other key members of the Film is Fabulous! team have been aware of a large collection of films, thousands of films, that have become vulnerable. That collection contains some very important material, including a missing episode of Doctor Who,” he said, per the Radio Times. “It is a large collection, and there is a possibility that there are other episodes of Doctor Who in that collection, but at this moment in time, we know of one.”Franklin went on to explain that the original collector had recently passed away, and while they’d previously been permitted to catalogue the collection, the legal situation is now in flux in light of the owner’s death. Film is Fabulous! must reapply to the court in order to continue to do so. But it certainly sounds as though once the legal situation is sorted, Film is Fabulous! will have some very exciting news to share with fans. “Give us the space to conclude the things that we’re doing,” he added. “You will be very, very happy with the announcements when they come, but we just need the space to be able to do that now.”Start placing your bets now on what they’ve found, Whovians. Dare we hope it’s one of the few stories we currently have no surviving clips of? (Fingers crossed for “Marco Polo”, anyone?)The post A Missing Doctor Who Episode May Finally See the Light of Day appeared first on Den of Geek.