By May of 2010 things seemed to be moving in an interesting direction as questions regarding updates to the search were met with non-committal responses
“I’m afraid we can’t release any information at this stage. There are all sorts of reasons why which will become clear when we are in a position to do so.” - Paul Vanezis, May 2010
To what this refered is still unknown, but taking future developments and announcements into account it seems to have been a dead end. Given which countries had already been visited by Phil Morris and team by this point, it could be be speculated that leads were to be found in possibly Ethiopa or Nigeria, but that is nothing but speculation. During these years of 2008 - 2012 Uganda was “personally visited” to no avail, Kenya (2008 or 2009) was found to have nothing but some 1960′s Joe 90 prints and some 2mm British wrestling and Zambia (2008 or 2009) was found to have nothing in their archives of any interest (Ian Levine believing the same after speaking to Sue Malden in 2007). Zambia’s archive in particular was in bad condition and it was reported that “In one vault in Zambia the smell of vinegar was almost overpowering”. The non-committal nature of statements continued into 2011 and the team had invitations from two further African countries, ruling out the likelihood of finds in others
“Based on what we know and have discovered recently about how film was bicycled around, we think it’s unlikely that there is any material in Ghana, Uganda or Zimbabwe. However, nothing has been ruled out regarding them.” - Paul Vanezis, January 2011
It is by this point we first learn of contact with Nigeria and ongoing investigations in the country
“Nigeria did have several stations, but we have been able to ascertain that only a maximum of three broadcast DW. When it was on air, there were 10 in total although now there are over 30. There’s been a lot of misinformation about Nigeria. The whole broadcast system was nationalised in 1977 and all material was moved to a central store, which is where the 1984 material was located. We don’t think there is anything else there, but we are in contact with the archivist there, as in many other African archives. As for film falling into private hands; we think it’s unlikely in Africa. There was little interest in the culture. A film print would have required an expensive projector to run and they were expensive enough over here so unaffordable to the average resident of Lusaka or Kampala.” - Paul Vanezis, January 2011
Also by 2011 Swaziland had been checked and new information was also received on the holdings in Sierra Leone
“I am certain that some material was there until the late 1980′s because material was broadcast out of contract. The station itself was not destroyed in 1999, but the building that stored all their film was. Once we’re sure of our facts we’ll write something up, but what we do know is that despite the BBC sending telexes to these stations back in the mid 80′s, very few responses were forthcoming. When the BBC & Enterprises said there was nothing more to be found because they’d contacted everyone, they were mistaken as the return from Hong Kong proved. We think the episodes in Sierra Leone were Galaxy 4 through to The Smugglers.” - Paul Vanezis, April 2012 speaking on recently acquired information, presumably toward the end of 2011
However toward the end of the year, with the search seemingly nearly over, spirits seemed to have been dwindling
“There are still a few other places we’d like to visit, but in reality I don’t hold out much hope for finding anything else.” - Paul Vanezis, December 2011
“Thank you all. I can tell you, it’s far from being all over. Although I don’t think there’s anything else to be found in Africa, there are plenty of other avenues of research. The key person in this is Philip Morris, with essential work being done by Damian Shanahan and Jon Preddle. Thanks also to Richard Molesworth and Richard Bignell for insight and analysis.” - Paul Vanezis, December 2011
By January of 2012 the search seemed to be winding down and coming to an end and Paul Vanezis, Steve Roberts and others had been let go by the BBC, beginning to act in a freelance capacity while still continuing in their quest. The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine gives some particular dates from Paul Vanezis and Peter Crocker as to what happened next.
Paul worked on Enemy and Web on “April 28″ and “May 31″ respectively while Peter states restoration work on Enemy ran from ” 2 June and delivered on 7 August” while “Web was started on 16 August and delivered on 4 October”. So Enemy of the World was being worked in from April 28 to August 7 and The Web of Fear from May 31 through to October 4. However, no year is given for these dates. One might assume that it was 2013, yet consider this:
The same issue of Doctor Who magazine has an extensive and excellent interview with Phillip Morris. The interview gives little new details except one interesting fact that Phil mentions toward the end. He states that “While we were in Jos, a church was blown up! People were massacred there”
This statement allows us to narrow the time of Phil’s presence in Jos quite considerably and interestingly there have been no church bombings of relevance in Jos in 2013. The dates that could be referred to are:
December 24, 2010: Two churches attacked by Boko Haram fighters
December 25, 2011: Bombs explode at churches across Nigeria including in Jos
February 26, 2012: Suicide car bombing kills 3 in Jos
March 11, 2012: Suicide car bombing kills 10 at Catholic church in Jos
June 10, 2012: Bomb explodes at Church of God in Jos
June 17, 2012: At least 50 killed in three church bombings including in Jos
June 25, 2013: Scores killed in suicide bomb attack on church in Jos
It is fairly safe to discount both Christmas attacks as unlikely times for the Jos visit which leaves us with only four possible dates for Phil Morris to be referring to, all within the first half of 2012 between February and June. The June 25, 2013 date is not possible if Paul Vanezis carried out his work on April 28.
It is of course possible Phil is referring to a trip to Jos prior to the find, but it doesn’t sound that way and in any case, the find likely came soon after. This can be taken with the fact that the search was “winding down” in January of 2012 and the unlikelihood it would continue another year. Therefore we can conclude that Enemy of the World and the Web of Fear were both found in the first half of 2012.
So..
- If the two stories were found in February or March of 2012, then the DWM dates could refer to 2012, work being finished a whole year ago. So were the stories ready a whole year before the announcement?
Or
- The episodes were not returned to the BBC by Phil Morris for possibly around nine months which could entail the period of negotiations. This is what we favour and if you read some of Paul Vanezis’ later quotes you will see mention of episodes not in the hands of the BBC which many have taken as a denial of their existence.
Unless
- Phil Morris returned to Jos in June, 2013 for unknown reasons, although it does not sound this way in the quote
In September of 2012 however it seems the origin of the existing print of Web of Fear 1 had undergone re-evaluation
“Just to add; there has been a lot of speculation about the source of some episodes in the archive, for example The Web of Fear - 1. Sue Malden recalls this as having been returned from overseas, and I’m sure that’s true. But rather than it being a Hong Kong return, I think it much more likely that it was part of the batch of episodes sent back from Australia. One of the prints of ‘The Keys of Marinus’ that was sent back had chinagraph markings and Australian Broadcasting Commission leaders on them, as did the two episodes returned last year. The films from Hong Kong (Tomb) had BBC leaders on them, so could never have been in Australia or New Zealand as those countries replaced BBC leaders with internationally recognised SMPTE leaders. I think Hong Kong was sent in the main their own prints of the later stories which were then mostly sent on to other countries such as Gibralter etc… The surviving Web of Fear print has a BBC leader on it, but it’s not the one it originally had. There would only be three reasons to replace the leader. Firstly, it may have been returned without a leader at all (unlikely), secondly the leader was damaged (possible), thirdly the leader wasn’t a BBC leader (most likely). I think the Web of Fear print is one of the batch of films from Australia. The Web of Fear was not censored in Australia and the BBC’s copy is uncut. We know that many films were sent back in 1975 from Sydney and some of these still survive in the BBC archive. The BBC’s print of episode five of The Dominators is in fact the ABC censored print (although the retained negative is intact) and we also have two other ex-ABC prints as well now.”
And in the same month Paul Vanezis also stated
“Obviously we’ve looked into the situation in Nigeria.”
And in a separate posting
“But I’m as confident as I can be that specific areas have been exhausted when it comes to the search overseas for DW.”
From our perspective it looks highly likely that Enemy and Web had been recovered by at the latest June 2012. Now taking that on board we can look at developments between that date and this months official announcement in a new light.
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