We were promised lots for the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who. But half a season made last year, a one off special and the Christmas special have left some fans annoyed, disappointed and wanting more.

Well, there's a big rumour that they are getting it.

And no, not just the Adventure In Time And Space making-of-the-first-episode drama. Nor the 50th Anniversary Convention. Nor the 50th Anniversary party hats.

At least I think there will be hats. There should be hats.

I've been hearing chatter about this particular rumour for some time. But it's started to coalesce a little recently so I now feel more comfortable at least reporting on the rumour. I'm still missing anything remotely resembling proper details, such as a conformation from an official source, but still.

And the rumour is that we may be getting a whole host of Doctor Who episodes.

Not new ones, but episodes not seen anywhere since they were first broadcast.

We all know that through a series of cock ups, incompetence and lack of forethought, swathes of episodes of Doctor Who from the sixties were wiped by the BBC. Some episodes were found again, some were sold to other countries, some kept in people's loft space, but over a hundred episodes of the show were missing, along with episodes, entire series even, of many other BBC shows.

What I've been hearing, and some of it is attributed to an eccentric engineer who worked for broadcasters across Africa with a taste for science fiction and a habit of taking things for "safe keeping", is that the BBC have secured a large number of presumed-wiped episodes of early Doctor Who.

And there are lots. Lots and lots. Completed serials that we've only had incomplete before, full series that nothing existed of. Not everything. But heaps and heaps. Possibly even The Full Hartnell.

And come November, or before, we'll get to see them.

Now promises of this kind have been made many times before. Sometimes they've come true, sometimes they have now. But I'm told to expect, among others, a full Evil Of The Daleks from 1967. Up till now, the BBC only had the second of seven episodes, after that film was found in a car boot sale.

There's even the rumour that the much touted DVD set Regenerations out this month, with its previewed animation clip of the regeneration between the first and second Doctors is a bluff, and they now have the full The Tenth Planet in which the Doctor regenerated for the first time which will be released in this set. But that strikes me as wish-fulfillment too far. Would be very clever though.

I'm going to cross my fingers for the next five months. You just never know.

UPDATE: Shortly after posting, I received further confirmation of the details listed above from another, better connected source. I don't think I need to cross my fingers quite so hard any more.