Has Marco Polo Been Found?

Okay, first things first, this is in no way anything official, it's nothing but an analysis of various rumours going around. Take this with a healthy dose of skepticism.

But it really is starting to look like Marco Polo might be back home at the BBC.

Here's what we know:-

• When the missing episode rumours first started to really build steam earlier this year, the most widely-reported news was that we'd get Marco Polo, Enemy Of The World and The Web Of Fear in their entirety. Obviously Enemy and (most of) Web are back, so that immediately lends credence to the current Marco Polo rumour.
• Of all the lost serials, Marco Polo should technically be the most likely to be found, having originally been sold to more countries than any other lost story.
• Ever since the Enemy and Web reveal last month, rumours have been rife that there are more serials that have been returned - either to be revealed this weekend, or at the "Missing: Presumed Lost" event in December, which is confirmed to have Doctor Who content [though that content is still most likely to be one of the nine recently returned episodes]. While these rumours have varied in episodes count (from a couple of serials to an insane and no-doubt false 90 episodes), every single one of these various sources has included Marco Polo in their list of found stories, with the rumour that has the most longevity being the "Four M" rumour - Marco Polo, The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew's Eve, The Myth Makers and The Macra Terror.
• The BBC were seemingly very careful in their wording at the 9 Episode press conference, making sure not to say that they were the only episodes found ("The episodes we can reveal to you today..."), but then this may just be us looking at it and seeing what we want to see.
• DWM mentioned that there were "some extra special treats from the DVD range [during the anniversary year] - with the biggest treat yet to come." Again, this could well refer to Enemy Of The World, although it is questionable why they wouldn't just say that.
• Heavy focus was placed on the serial last night in An Adventure In Space And Time, in that Mark Eden, who plays Polo in the serial, had a cameo as a BBC exec and some serious input in the talking heads feature that accompanied the film.

And this is where things get really interesting...

• Rumours started to spread very heavily earlier on this week (before Eden got a lot of focus last night) that the serial was set to be unveiled on The Afterparty over on BBC3 tomorrow night.
• The "missing episode rumour" threads on Outpost Skaro and Gallifrey Base - the two biggest Who forums on the web - have been temporarily closed for undisclosed reasons. This also happened in the days leading up to the Enemy/Web announcement.
• The Daily Mirror today printed a stupid article that claims that a fan used 16mm film to record the serial off of his telly when it first aired, and that the Beeb have reconstructed it using voice actors from that footage. While this is clearly dumb (since there's already existing sound for the serial, and the odds of somebody returning footage that has been hanging around their house at about the same time that the other 9 missing episodes were returned are astronomical), The Mirror had a similarly silly story about missing episodes just before the Beeb's last announcement, so it seems that there could be somebody there who has half-an-ear to the ground, and just fills in the blanks with the wrong felt tips.
• And finally, when the Beeb were asked about all this earlier today, they said that they "can't confirm anything", rather than the more obvious "it's bollocks" response that would come along were there nothing to the story.

Once again, this is just me putting together a dozen or more rumours and trying to fit them into a narrative - of course when everything is placed together like this it's going to make for a convincing argument, and I must reiterate that these are separate rumours, that often come coupled with other, conflicting, information.

And after such a huge haul last month, we're all on a high and more willing to believe in the chance of lost episodes turning up than we have been for decades.

But this is a far more plausible rumour than, say, The Crusade's first episode being found at a rubbish tip in New Zealand, or Episode 2 of The Evil Of The Daleks being found at a car boot sale, and they both actually happened, so...

Marco Polo was the fourth serial of the first season, and its first installment is the earliest missing episode. All seven parts of this epic and incredibly highly regarded story are currently missing, and it is one of the few serials to not even have a single clip in the archive. If it has been found, then it'll mean that the entire first season would be available to the public for the first time since it initially aired (if you allow for the two animated parts of Reign Of Terror).

Whether this serial is unveiled on Saturday, or at the event in December, remains to be seen, but one thing's for sure.

The missing episode rumours don't seem to be going away.