"...he's as mad as a hatter..."

So. Today was Missing Believed Wiped at the BFI. Only the second time I've been. The lure of a previously missing Dennis Potter play, and the... speculation... as to what the sci fi treat was tempted me down again. And, boy was I glad.

The event kicked off with a screening of the aforementioned Potter play, from the Thirty Minute Theatre strand, called Emergency Ward 9. Present at the screening was Kenith Trodd, who worked with Potter on so many productions (including this one), who spoke briefly about the play. It was every bit as good as I had expected it to be, and was well performed by the cast (I have a memory it was done live, but would have to check to be sure). The racism of one of the characters, Flanders played by Terence De Marney, was quite shocking, really, and there were many nervous laughs throughout the audience. The thing was, though, that you never got the impression he was being malicious, rather he was a very misguided character; so much so, that when there was a sudden act of violence towards him, you couldn't help but feel sad for him. I very much hope it gets a DVD release at some point in the future.

Next up was the Mumford Puppets, and this really was my least favourite part of the event. I'm not a fan of puppet stuff at all; I don't even care for Gerry Anderson's stuff. I can't help but wish that this section had been canned, and the time given over to showing one of the other shows in full, rather than an extract...

An episode of Overseas Press Club called The Man Who Changed Faces followed. This was... interesting. It was one of those shows that initially started off bad, and got worse, and then sunk to such depths that it became so bad it was good... a resistance fighter has plastic surgery to resemble a high ranking Nazi soldier, who then passed on information back to the resistance... The quality of the acting was such that the wooden chairs had more charisma. The script, for what it was worth (about 7p) was full of lines that made everyone chuckle. Yet, somehow, it worked. And made me want to see more...

Next was a clip of Pete 'n' Dud from a show called Showtime; it was just brilliant. But then any Pete 'n' Dud clips usually are brilliant; the way the par sparked off each other... wonderful.

Then came the sci fi treat... and what a treat. 35 minutes of previously missing Dr Who...

We started with about 10 minutes of Airlock, the third episode of the Hartnell story Galaxy Four. We got to see a Rill on screen for the first time in many years indeed, which for most of us would be the first time we've seen them. Poor ol' Billy had a bit of a fluff with one of the props in the Rill ship as a piece clearly fell off the controls as Vicki got trapped. There was, also, a great scene with Maaga berating her clones. The performance was great, a real sense of exasperation as she complains about how crap they are. But, just as it was getting started, really, the screen cut to black...

...and we got a complete episode, The Underwater Menace 2, which is now the earliest surviving Patrick Troughton episode, and boy it's a good one. Now, I love The Underwater Menace; I think its previously sole surviving episode, #3, is probably the single episode of Who I've watched more than any other. #2 is just as good. A good chunk of the first half of the episode consists of Troughton and Josef Furst's wonderful Professor Zaroff sparking off each other in the Prof's laboratory. And it works really well. The expressions on Troughton's face as Zaroff does the usual bad guy thing of explaining his plan are just brilliant, and make you so glad the episode was found. We don't get to see Zaroff's pet octopus, though...

Later, when the Doctor is trying to convince Thous that Zaroff is mad (as a hatter, in fact...!) we also get some great expressions from Troughton. In fact, the more Troughton you see, the more you wish that we could get lots more of his stuff back. Let's not forget, shall we, that this episode is the first Troughton to be recovered in the twenty (yes *twenty*) years since The Tomb of the Cybermen was found.

The episode is physically not in too great shape, but this was an unrestored copy, so I'm sure that by the time the restoration team get working their magic on it, it will look brilliant. It was also very interesting that the copy of the print was one that must have been down under in Australia at some point, as it was missing the censor clips recovered from there a few years back; these will be reinstated when restored.

I was just so blissfully happy watching the episode. I really never thought I'd get to see any more of the Underwater Menace, and had pretty much started to get to the thinking that there were no more to find. But, from out of nowhere these two episodes came. And, like The Lion and Day of Armegeddon, they were in the collection of a person who had no idea they had the only copies of these episodes.

Makes you wonder if there are any more out there...