To some this is an obsession, many are completely unaware, but Doctor Who has many missing episodes from its early years that no longer sit in the BBC archives.

In mid 2013 I became aware of a rumour that many of these episodes had been found by a lone adventurer called Philip Morris. This idea rocked Doctor Who fandom and became known as the Omnirumour. To date 2 stories have been returned to the BBC in 2013, but the belief persists that more are to come.

After around 2 years of this speculation and to highlight some of the absurdities, I wrote the following piece on the Gallifrey Base forum. While it won't mean a lot to those who haven't followed the Omnirumour in all its labyrinthine detail, I've reproduced it here to provide it with a more permanent base.

Here is a run down of the top 10 hits associated with the Omnirumour. It’s been compiled in a spirit of fun, not intended to be offensive to anyone, but if I have overstepped the mark I apologise in advance.

1. 2nd Restoration Team
Reports reached us in 2013 that the original Restoration Team was “wearing a bit thin” and thus had to be replaced by a new one. This new team was younger, more anarchic, less obviously competent and had a propensity for wearing unusual hats. After a particularly wild phase, in which the new team managed to wipe all of its early work (see MEW), the second team has now settled into a more stable pattern, largely out of sight, where it has restored every single missing episode to the point where they are “iTunes ready” (see below). OK, so its best technology may appear on the surface to be a massive tangle of wires, but somehow it always saves the day even if it doesn’t explain what it’s doing to those around it. There are rumours that a third Restoration Team may be formed, but this one will have much closer ties with the establishment. If none of the teams seems aware of the existence of any others, it’s due to the laws of time which forbid any of them to meet.

2. Polly’s Folly
After Anneke Wills made public statements to the effect that her missing episodes had been found, but that irritating bureaucracy was stopping them from being released, the forums scrambled to find reasons why she was wrong. These included suggestions that she was (a) a woman, (b) over seventy, (c) blonde, (d) a former companion, (e) a crowd pleaser, allowing everyone to pick one or more to suit their own prejudices. Personally, I believe everything she says, but Anneke wouldn’t be the first person to misinterpret signals. I know from my own experience how easy it is to misunderstand a complex statement like “all of your episodes have been found and you’ll be able to see them again soon”.

3. Hidden Meanings
It turns out you can’t trust anyone in Missing Episode land to make a straightforward statement. “They are all wiped , still missing, the end” means you’ll have two almost complete stories available within a few months. “Season 5 has not been found in Africa” means much the same thing. And “we’ve not got any missing episodes here” means that all of the episodes have been returned, but are being held in a parallel universe so that we can plausibly deny their existence. But perhaps the most startling message seems to have drawn little comment. Has anyone else noticed that Paul Vanezis is an anagram of “I luv NZ AA eps” – talk about hiding in plain sight! Who would have thought that The Savages would turn up in New Zealand?

4. Good Times are a-Coming
Oh yes, those good times. They were a-coming. Then they came and we had 2 previously missing stories. Then they were a-coming again with Marco Polo for the 50th anniversary, but they didn’t turn up. They didn’t arrive at Easter 2014 either. Nor at any point that year. Then they weren’t coming at all. Now it seems like they might be a-coming after all. Or maybe not.

5. The Feast of Steven
Apparently “The Feast of Steven” is the least likely missing episode to turn up because it was never sold anywhere by the BBC. We don’t think it was even telerecorded and there are some who doubt that it ever even existed, putting accounts of its somewhat manic plotline down to too much post- Christmas-lunch sherry having been consumed by those who claim to have seen it. There remains the faint possibility that the master videotape spontaneously duplicated itself before being wiped in the late sixties.

6. Ninety
The earliest and most persistent versions of the omni-rumour seem to revolve around the number 90. Initially this meant that 90 of the then 106 missing episodes had been found. Then 9 turned up (the previously missing episodes of Web and Enemy),? Had someone mistaken 90 for 9? Or if you added the total episode count for the MEW (see below) stories that makes 19. Had someone misheard? But then not all of those 19 episodes were missing. Later rumours suggested it was still 90, but now 90 of the 97 still missing episodes. Lists appeared of which episodes had been found and what their status was, but those lists were then ripped up on stage at Gallifrey One. Still the number 90 exerts its powerful hold over anyone who has been unlucky enough to been sucked into the obsession that is the omnirumour.

7. On again, off again
The episodes have been restored and are iTunes ready (see below), held up only by commercial wranglings. Or they are stored in a lock-up somewhere in the North West. Or they are still in Africa. Or they were never found. Some of the same people have claimed all of these things at different times, but not in any chronological sequence. The BBC is desperate to get its hands on more missing material to make millions or it couldn’t give a monkey’s about archive material and can’t even be bothered to release a missing episode that it has. The BBC and Philip Morris are best buddies / hate the sight of each other / have never met. What’s a simple fan to make of it all?

8. The Quest
So when you and I first learnt about missing episodes, we also heard that they had been sold overseas, which is where many of the remaining copies had been recovered from. And we thought to ourselves “If only someone would go looking for them, I bet there are more out there.” Then we left it for someone to go looking for them while we got on with our own lives. If anyone dared to suggest that perhaps the searches to date hadn’t been all that rigorous and maybe there were still copies to be found, they would be laughed at by those “in the know.” It was best to leave this sort of thing to the professionals, whoever they were.
Finally someone decided to actually go and have a look unencumbered by any sense of futility or amateurishness. And it turned out that having a chat on the phone to the archive receptionist was no substitute for actually going into the archive and looking around. And that person found… well apart from Web and Enemy we still don’t know. But in another 50 years when the quest is over, then we’ll all be told. Probably.

9. MEW
Perhaps even earlier than 90 was the acronym MEW, standing (we think) for Marco, Enemy & Web, 3 stories that had definitely been found and would be released. MEW was an article of faith for several months, but then Marco was deleted or something (see 2nd Restoration Team above) and it became EW. Until it then turned out that Web 3 had disappeared in transit / been retained by TIEA to prevent a BBC4 repeat showing / never been found in the first place / found in a different place. But we got most of Web and Enemy, so you might have thought it was all over for MEW. However it’s now become a regular catfight over how accurate those early rumours were, one that can never be won – you’ll hear the MEWing for years yet.

10. iTunes Ready
This is the one. The best and worst of rumours. It’s the one that seems almost impossible to believe and yet the one that won’t die. Some people are convinced that Marco Pole was found, recovered, restored, ready to go on iTunes and then, unaccountably, not released. It’s too implausible to be true and yet too firmly believed to be entirely dismissed. What does iTunes ready mean? Generally encoded in an MP4 format that might be compatible with iTunes or actually uploaded on the servers? It’s been denied by all-comers, yet you know that stranger things have happened. Granted not often, but very, very occasionally. It’s the Loch Ness Monster of the Missing Episodes rumours.