50 Years Of Doctor Who

Fanboy Slap-fight Across Time and Space

Since the writing of this opinion piece yesterday, Rogue Cyberman’s twitter account, @roguecyberman has been locked, and his blog,  www.roguecyberman.com is no longer active.  It was my intention to include links in the body of the article so that you could read the correspondence between the various parties, but now that looks to be impossible until such a time that the blogsite is up and running again, which admittedly may be never.

Any Doctor Who fan worth his jelly babies knows that the back catalogue of what I refer to as “Classic Doctor Who” is far from complete due to  the short sighted, wanton destruction of many stories by brainless public sector drones in the 1970s.

Over the years a number of episodes thought lost forever have been recovered from various sources, both local (to the UK) and foreign, in large part due to the efforts of Ian Levine and others.  The flow of recovered episodes in the last ten years or so have slowed to a trickle, and Who fans, myself included, for the most part have, if not given up entirely, certainly hold little hope of any more big discoveries of lost episodes.

The Macra Terror, one of the Lost Stories thought found.

Recently I discovered on twitter, a gentleman in the UK who goes by the net handle Rogue Cyberman.  At some point last year, he offered a 25,000 pound reward for information leading to the recovery of lost, presumed wiped and burned episodes of Doctor Who.  From what I read on his blog, he seems to have had some success, and since January 2013 has been in contact with a private collector in Kent who has in his possession a number of various “lost” stories from Patrick Troughton’s era.

In his attempt to get these stories released to fans, Rogue Cyberman has been lambasted and flamed beyond belief on social media, by Ian Levine and various who fan sites calling him a fraud, a liar, and a hoaxer based on very little evidence in my opinion.

I have no desire to step into the middle of a protracted fanboy slap-fight, as its absolutely no fun getting between two slightly overweight, greasy haired virgins who don’t quite grasp the martial tactics involved in fist fighting.  To get between them one runs the very real risk of personal bodily harm when all three of you crash to the ground in an uncoordinated heap, that in the end resolves nothing.

Is it the perceived “commodification” of these lost episodes based on Rogue Cyberman’s offer of reward that has all these fanboy’s knickers in a twist?  Or is it just jealousy because he’s had some (alleged) success where so many others have failed?

I certainly don’t know, but if the end results are that we as fans of the programme finally get the chance to see some long lost Who stories, does it really matter how, or from whom they became available?

Yeah, I didn’t think so either.