Aw, come on Paul, don't end yer story there!!
I want to hear about the web of intrigue!!
coz I'm nosy.
The story is complex and long, but should give you all some insight into the machinations of the BBC and the motives that drove others.
After we had watched the episode, myself and Dave had to do all the mundane stuff in preparation for the convention. Peter Finklestone was about to arrive from Leeds to assist us in collecting audio visual equipment from the NEC, so we took the bus into Birmingham and met him at New Street station. This had to be very carefully timed because mobile phones did not exist in our world. It was 1987.
When we got back home we sat him down and told him to watch the screen, and we played the episode. Unbelievably, he explained that he was certain there would be a better time to watch this, but that we should go and collect the gear, which we did. We managed about 2 minutes of the episode before it was switched off. We had already met Ian Mclachlan in Birmingham and given him the good news and everyone who was let into the secret knew the implications of us having a copy of Faceless Ones 3. After we had done what we needed to do regarding the equipment, we travelled to Cannock to meet Steve Broster and Michael Smallman, both co organisers of the event and the episode was screened to them, Peter and Ian for the first time.
We kept the recovery of the episode secret from the stewards at the convention until a 7.30pm "stewards meeting" on the Friday night, when we screened the episode in the video room just for them. Our thinking was that if they found out that the episode was being shown in the main hall the following day, they would abandon their posts and that would be a problem for security at the event. They were sworn to secrecy and not one of them let the information slip out.
On the day itself, the morning was the usual thrash to get everything done. Various guests were arriving including actors Kenneth Cope and Ed Bishop and from Adam Adamant, Juliet Harmer with writer Tony Williamson. Actors from series one of 'The Tomorrow People' were also due and messages were coming in left right and centre. Jeremy Bentham and Richard Landen were very keen to screen their new telesnap reconstruction of episode two of 'The Power of the Daleks' and I'd let them believe that their tape was our "Patrick Troughton Tribute". You see, we had been advertising that we were going to show a "Previously Missing Black & White 'Who' episode" on advertising flyers. In reality, we had arranged with the BBC to screen 'Invasion of the Dinosaurs' #1, a recently returned episode which hadn't done the rounds on the fan circuit and the BBC had loaned us a 16mm print of it. But many people had turned up in the mistaken belief we were going to screen a missing episode.
Just before lunch, I explained to Richard that we did in fact have something else to show, but I couldn't tell him what it was.
I think we showed the episode at 2pm. Myself and Michael Smallman introduced it. Michael said that we were unable to show 'The Singing Sands' for copyright reasons. That took me completely by surprise; it was true though. The day before the BBC had given us permission to screen 'The Faceless Ones' #3 but we didn't have permission to show 'The Singing Sands'. The fact we didn't have a copy was (I guess) neither here nor there in the mind of Michael. He did it for a bit of fun but ever since there have been rumours that the episode was doing the rounds. I then requested that people didn't take pictures of the screen and as we walked off stage the lights went down and Peter pressed play.
I think there were about 250 very privileged people in that room who were watching a genuinely missing episode for the first time whilst it was still missing. I walked down to the back of the hall and stood with Jeremy Bentham, Richard Landen and Graham Wood. The episode has a very obscure beginning. The title caption doesn't come up for some time and people really didn't know what they were watching. I recall the look on Jeremy's face was of puzzlement, surprise and then sheer joy and he collared me afterwards to thank me. Richard was more concerned with the breaks in the film. Graham was just shocked. He had stewarding duties but hadn't arrived in time to see the episode on the Friday night. The only other steward who couldn't make the meeting was Richard Molesworth who had to do his paper round, so we made sure he was in the main hall when the episode was screened. He, like almost everyone else had no advance knowledge of the screening.
What happened immediately afterwards and in the weeks that followed was plain bizarre. Firstly at the convention venue, the queues for the telephones were substantial. Nobody could tweet and I guarantee nobody there had a mobile phone. But the message was getting out within minutes regardless.
Saied Marham arrived in the afternoon after the screening and we talked about how the episodes were going to be returned to the BBC. He wanted to trade the episodes, but I told him the best he could hope for was a copy of the actual films back in return. If he wanted to get other material, he would need to deal with someone like Ian Levine, who had a large and well known about video collection. I acted as intermediary for Saied and negotiated an exchange of copies of episodes of Doomwatch, Out of the Unknown and Doctor Who for the loan of the original 16mm prints of Evil 2 and Faceless Ones 3.
During the intervening few weeks, Saied sent me a VHS copy of 'The Evil of the Daleks' #2. For me, it was a relief to see it and know that it existed. Once I'd watched it I called Richard Molesworth and he skateboarded round straight away and we watched it again.
A few weeks later myself, Saied, Gordon Hendry and one of his friends met up at Ian Levines house where the material was exchanged. There were various very surreal moments. Firstly, Richard Landen was there. It was lovely to see him again and we had a good chat. At the time, I didn't know who Gordon was, or that he was the actual owner of the films. It seems that Saied was a sort of a go between and in fact he was only loaning the films to Ian as a favour to Saied.
Ian was like a kid in a sweet shop. All he wanted to do was ensure that the Dalek film was real. He unspooled the first ten feet onto the floor to check and both myself and Gordon were rightly concerned. Satisfied it was the real thing, Ian went off with the films proclaiming as he left that "...we must keep a monopoly on this." His thinking was that it was bargaining power with another collector should something else turn up.
Two weeks later we were back in London. I met Saied, Gordon and his friend outside the BBC Film Archive at Windmill Road. They had just collected the two films back from Ian who had made his own transfers. The Evil film went into the boot of their car, but 'The Faceless Ones #3 was taken in and handed over to Steve Bryant. In return for the loan of the film, John Nathan -Turner had agreed that Saied and Gordon could have a tour of Television Centre, but I stayed behind to watch the film examiner evaluate the film. It was remarkable to see the film on the Steenbeck for the first time. The underlying quality was excellent. The various breaks annoying. The film was sent to the lab for a negative to be made. Two weeks later, Gordon and Saied returned to pick up the film and loan to the BBC 'The Evil of the Daleks' #2.
I though didn't have to worry about getting hold of a decent copy; Ian Levine had offered to give me a U-Matic recording of both episodes, so I picked it up from his place later that day. Ian didn't know that Gordon was going to return 'Evil' to the BBC straight away, but even Gordon realised that having two 16mm copies in existence would effectively double the chances of the episode surviving in the long term.
I took great satisfaction that the episodes were back safely at the BBC, but out of the blue I had a phone call from Gordon Roxburgh who was organising PanoptiCon VIII. Despite this being the official DWAS event, Ian had refused to allow them to screen either 'Evil' or 'Faceless Ones' and could I help. So on the morning of the first day of the convention, I loaned Gordon my U-matic copy of the two episodes. They looked great on the big screen.
I think what people should realise was that quite a few episodes turned up between 1978 and 1984. 1985 to 1987 was a very fallow period in comparison and if you were to pick an episode to find then, anything from 'The Faceless Ones' would have been quite low on the list and anything from 'The Evil of the Daleks' quite high. At the time, none of us who were fans or involved in the search for missing episodes ever believed we would see these two, or any of the others that have subsequently turned up, particularly 'The Tomb of the Cybermen'. That really was the holy grail. So to see them, and to have a hand in the return was a very emotional experience.
Paul