I was watching the Patrick Troughton 2 DVD set that covers lost footage such as the episodes that are not lost....ok, let us make sense of that statements. The 6 part series THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN has 5 episodes that are lost to history and one episode that is archived. The DVD contained the one surviving episode. So, really the "Lost in Time" DVD set is actually the surviving footage. If it were lost, they could not release it unless they sold it as a the Lost Episodes Commemorative Blank DVD. But I make light of an unfunny situation.

Anyway, I first heard about the lost episodes of Doctor Who in 1983 when a 20th Anniversary magazine was released. I was shocked to discover so many episodes were destroyed and, today, in 2007 I am very estatic that some of the episodes have been restored as well as the fact that fan audio recordings that were made in the 1960's SURVIVED and the audio of ALL episodes exist.

Also interesting to note is that a number of "brief snippets" of lost episode footag still exist in the from of censored clips. For those not familiar with thse censored clips, when 16mm copies were sent to Australia in the 1960's and 1970's for television airings, some of the more violent aspects of THE HIGHLANDERS and THE MACRA TERROR etc. These brief outtakes are all that are left of the episodes and it brings about an interesting question: why the heck did they save the clips and store them for 40 years but trashed the full episodes????

Also, it is fun to look at Super 8mm home movies of lost episodes that fans filmed off the television screen. (The BBC has synched the footage to the remaining sound recordings and it is pretty cool) Sadly, the old Super 8 reels only ran 3 minutes. If they were longer and cheaper we might have ALL the episodes on Super 8 out there.