Two long-missing episodes of the BBC’s science-fiction series Doctor Who have been recovered over six decades after their original broadcast in a “ramshackle collection” donated by a collector.
This marks the first confirmed discovery of lost episodes of the programme since 2013.
Episodes one and three from the third season of Doctor Who’, which are part of a 12-episode “dark and gritty” story arc called The Daleks’ Master Plan, have been found, reported the BBC.
The first episode, called The Nightmare Begins, premiered in November 1965, while episode three, titled Devil’s Planet, aired two weeks later.
Episode two, Day of Armageddon, was rediscovered in 2004 during a review of the BBC’s commercial film archive.
These episodes feature the first Doctor, played by William Hartnell from 1963 until 1966.
Also in the episodes are Peter Purves as the Doctor’s companion Steven Taylor, Nicholas Courtney as Bret Vyon, Adrienne Hill as Katarina, and Kevin Stoney as the villainous Mavic Chen.
The serial was written primarily by Daleks creator Terry Nation and follows the First Doctor and his companions as they uncover a conspiracy between the Daleks and the treacherous politician Mavic Chen, the self-styled Guardian of the Solar System, who joins forces with aliens in a plan to conquer the solar system using a weapon known as the Time Destructor.
At the time of writing, 95 more episodes of the popular series are unavailable to watch anywhere. All these went “missing” when the BBC stopped archiving programmes between 1967 and 1978, during which time Doctor Who was in its original run.
BBC archives director Noreen Adams said: “We're thrilled to have worked with the team at Film is Fabulous! to bring these lost Doctor Who episodes to viewers on BBC iPlayer this Easter. BBC Archives has been working to restore the original recordings and update these to broadcast quality, ensuring fans can enjoy a little extra treat with their Easter Eggs this April.”
The new find ends the longest gap in the series’ history with no recovered episodes. The previous major find occurred in 2013, when nine missing instalments from two Patrick Troughton stories – The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear – were discovered by the executive director of Television International Enterprise Archives, Philip Morris, at a television relay station in Nigeria.
Film is Fabulous!, a charitable trust dedicated to preserving historic film collections in the UK, found the missing episodes after it started cataloguing a deceased collector’s donated archive.
What is significant about this particular find is that this storyline was only broadcast in the UK, after censors in Australia and New Zealand called it too violent.
“These are gems in what was an eclectic and ramshackle collection, a lot of which hadn't been looked after as well as the Doctor Who had. The collector did recognise what he had, but how he acquired them has been lost to time,” Justin Smith, cinema and television history professor at Leicester’s De Montfort University and chair of trustees at FIF, told the BBC.
The rediscovery prompted an emotional reaction from Purves, now 87, who had been invited to the Phoenix Cinema in Leicester under the pretext of participating in interviews about television in the 1960s. Instead, organisers revealed the recovered episodes and screened them for him.
After watching the episodes, he joked: “My flabber has never been so gasted. I've never forgiven the BBC for losing those episodes – it would be really nice to get a few royalties.”
“It was the fourth appearance of the Daleks and it'll be exciting to fans for a lot of reasons,” he said. “The fans of Doctor Who are legion, and they seriously love the classic times.”
A special screening of the restored episodes organised by Film is Fabulous! is scheduled to take place in London on 4 April, with Purves attending as guest of honour.
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