Lost Media

Synonyms:
See also:	Doctor Who Restoration Team, Lost Works
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Not to be confused with lost episode, a genre of creepypasta.

This article or section needs expansion.

Lost media is a term used to refer to media that is unavailable or inaccessible to a wide audience, or no longer exists. This can encompass art, literary works, games, music, software, and more. Fanworks can also become lost media (see Lost Works). A piece of media becoming lost can occur for any number of reasons, including media degradation, accident, deliberate destruction, and more.

With the advent of the Internet, lost media has captured the attention of members of various fandoms. This is due to the rise of interest in preserving works, as well as the ability to conduct coordinated efforts online. Preservationists will conduct searches, document information about the work, and more. Some preservationists release the media online if found.

Examples of lost media and fandom

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

• Probably one of the most well known examples in fandom of lost media are the 97 missing episodes of the early eras of classic Doctor Who, after the BBC themselves wiped many of the films for reuse. However, Doctor Who was not the only BBC show to suffer with this issue, with episodes of Z-Cars, Dad's Army, The Quatermass Experiment and Top of the Pops, among many others, also having been lost.
• ITV also followed this practise in the 60s and 70s too. The Avengers and Tiswas were two such shows that were affected by this.
• BeyWheelz: Powered by Beyblade and BeyWarriors: BeyRaiderz were spin-offs of Beyblade following the end of Beyblade Shogun Steel. Beywheelz debuted in August 2012 and BeyRaiderz in January 2014 for North American audiences but then disappeared without premiering in Japanese. The series did receive an Italian dub, however, that had the credits for the Japanese cast. Through fan efforts, the Japanese dub was recovered in 2018 and uploaded to bilibili with Japanese audio and Chinese subtitles.
• BeyWarriors: Cyborg was another Beyblade spin-off, in the same series as BeyRaiderz and BeyWheelz. An English dub aired in English speaking countries in Asia in 2015, and received no official home release, causing the majority of episodes to be lost. Through fan efforts, 3 episodes of the dub have been found in full and 12 have been partially recovered.

Lost Fanworks

• The Only Thing that Shines, a Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan story by Rose. It was hosted in thesleepydragon.com archive, which can't be accessed anymore, not even using archive.org
• Moa810's fanworks of Mettablook were deleted without archival when they started working on the official Japanese translation of Undertale. Most of these were hosted on Moa's twitter, which has since been purged of all tweets pre-2017.
• My Man Friday, an early Snarry story by Enahma. The story got Taken offline by the author, who also deleted archive.org captures. There's a translation to Spanish and another one to Russian still available but the original fic written by the author is no longer online (althought still shared among fans privately).
• The Master's Musings MMOM Day 1 to 31, a Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan story by Mali Wane. Deleted off the internet and archive.org. Only a fragment of the first drabble survives.
• Lessons From a God, a frostiron fic by Malkavia30, got deleted without warning after chapter 109.
• The Simarillion by Mary Jean Holmes, Lord of the Rings-themed custom content for The Sims that's only partially archived.

Lost Archives

• The Official Malastare stories was a Star Wars fanfiction website.
• The Hidden Realm was a Star Wars fanfiction website.
• Strictly Duncan Methos Archive was a Highlander fanfiction archive.

Lost Fannish Resources

• The Crafting System, fandom themed podcast.