This is what happened when two stories thought lost forever were recovered. Scroll to the end for a Sherlock teaser too.
Two classic Doctor Who stories thought lost forever have been found and made available to fans.
In the 1960s, the BBC used to wipe over used tapes, not thinking they were worth anything. As a result, whole chunks of the archive were missing. Some of the material was transferred to film and sold to foreign broadcasters. So for the last 30 years, a dedicated team have been looking for what was lost. Now, two complete Second Doctor stories from 1968, The Web Of Fear and The Enemy Of The World have been found. So fandom is going crazy.
BBC
Tape canisters just like this one were located in a warehouse in Nigeria.
The episodes were discovered by Phillip Morris of the Television International Enterprises Archive, which tracks records of overseas tapes. He is often described as the Indiana Jones of television. He said: "The tapes had been left gathering dust in a store room at a television relay station in Nigeria. I remember wiping the dust off the masking tape on the canisters and my heart missed a beat as I saw the words "Doctor Who". When I read the story code I realised I'd found something pretty special."
BuzzFeed / Dan Martin
Here are the ins and outs of how they found them.
Excitingly, The Web Of Fear is the one with the yetis on the London Underground.
Despite being lost, the story has retained an iconic status. It featured robot yetis controlled by the amorphous Great Intelligence, who returned this year, with the body of Richard E Grant. Episode 1 was in existence, and now episodes 2, 4, 5, and 6 have been recovered. The third is still missing, but it has been restored using the original audio and 37 archive images.
BBC Worldwide
