There are certainly some Patrick Troughton serials I’d love to be able to watch in their original form. Also “Marco Polo”, but mostly Troughton. I hope they’ll materialise before my eyes give out.
Well, yeah…
The BBC didn’t give a shit about archiving, especially pulp sci-fi like Dr Who.
So private collectors goobled up all the tapes as they were found in the closets of random BBC regional offices.
By now the BBC has almost certainly located multiple copies of “missing” episodes and know exactly who has what.
It’s how they have a slow trickle of “found” episodes whenever they want.
If that’s the case, why hasn’t there been a missing episode released in over ten years? Not much of a trickle if you ask me.
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a64001894/doctor-who-update-missing-episodes/
Because they were filling in gaps of episodes with animation and that’s done cheaper in bulk than one episode at a time.