Report on Tonight’s Missing Believed Wiped

Some very interesting details of “Project Africa” were revealed tonight at the BFI’s Missing Believed Wiped event, notably during session one which featured the Native Hue of Resolution documentary.

Phil Morris was given letters of authority to work on behalf of the BBC, ITV and the BFI in his endeavours after originally only going to look for missing episodes of Doctor Who, an effort to bring home as much missing material as possible. When news broke of Phil’s involvement in the recovery of Doctor Who episodes, it became more difficult for him as his personal affairs were placed under scrutiny.

There is no consensus online as to what was actually said regarding the number of cans Phil Morris recovered, where from, if they’ve been returned or indeed whether this was said at all, whether it was said as personal belief or whether it was simply said it was a rumour. As such, we merely reprint what was said by those in attendance:

“Tens of thousands of programmes recovered from Africa according to Dick Fiddy” - Ruther

“Dick Fiddy just confirmed thousands of cans without saying where they were from” - Minute Doctor Who Podcast

“The Missing Believed Wiped documentary confirms there’s a big haul of recovered material from Africa but still under wraps… He said he understood there was a substantial amount of material (00s of titles of more) all sent by Morris to the BBC, but some of it ITV material they’ll then pass on. Mostly now in the UK, being gone through” - John Kell

“No new announcements but mention of tens of thousands of film cans returned” - Matt Pearson

“Came across to me as good a confirmation that a large quantity of material recovered/being assessed” - Adrian Last

“He said he believed thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of episodes had been found, they were all now back in the UK and most had now been returned to the BBC and were being checked through” - Anna Lane

“This is not the case. The interview clip features Dick Fiddy, where he states currently they are aware of the rumours Phil Morris may have found a large haul of cans possibly numbering thousands. The only other thing the BFI film states is that if this material has been recovered, they think it may now all be back in the UK and being processed by various parties. Nothing more.” - Jack Bowman

Unfortunately due to restrictions imposed by Gallifrey Base, we are not at liberty to print anything said on that forum as doing so would result in a ban.

Following the confusion Dick Fiddy released a statement in his Facebook page:

“To qualify - that statement was from the MBW documentary and needed further elaboration. The full context is that the paper trail (ie the original sales documents) plus the number of separate broadcasters, warehouses, facility houses on the African continent that are being checked could potentially (and very probably) yield that sort of number. As to how many of those titles would be extant and of any use (ie not defunct) is debatable as would be how many are actually missing. In a nutshell what I was indicating was that there is s strong possibility that it’s a huge number of titles that are potentially out here and which Phil Morris is our best hope when it comes to retrieval.”

Dick Fiddy did however go on to say that the BFI had delayed this years event in the hope that TIEA would announce more finds at the start of session two.

Meanwhile our friends over at Kasterborus report that one of the film cans of Marco Polo was seen in the documentary broadcast at the event, however Kaleidoscope have seemingly stated that this was a “wind up” according to comments on Twitter, the article however adds further insight to what we have provided here such a comments in how long the entire process may take and so forth, it comes highly recommended and can be found at Kasterborus.com.