Good news, Doctor Who fans! A pair of lost episodes from the 1965 serial “The Daleks’ Master Plan” featuring William Hartnell as the First Doctor have been recovered from the collection of a film collector. The master videotapes were erased and the episodes never aired internationally, so they were considered well and truly lost.
From a BBC News article about the recovery:
Many previous lost episodes had been found in archives of TV stations overseas, including the last episodes found, which had been recovered from a Nigerian TV station.
But with The Daleks’ Master Plan, the story was not sold overseas.
Censors in Australia and New Zealand deemed it too violent, and without their buy-in, selling to other markets was not profitable.
Combined with the move towards colour, the black and white story was thought to have little future value and consigned to the bin.
But copies of some episodes were still made by technicians to check for problems which might need to be fixed ahead of pitching the episodes to other markets.
It was these versions that made their way to an amateur collection.
Professor of cinema and television history at Leicester’s De Montfort University, Justin Smith – chair of trustees at FIF – said “a debt of gratitude” was owed to the anonymous late collector, whose films – largely focused on his love of trains and canals, including hundreds of home videos – were donated to FIF after he died.
According to the BBC article, the episodes will be screened on April 4 in London and made available on BBC iPlayer the same day.
With the recovery of these two episodes, there are now 95 missing episodes of the original Doctor Who.
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I recall reading somewhere that either the Library of Congress or PBS has copies of lost episodes.
It’s likely that the BBC already contacted them, especially PBS. They may have been a source for some of the earlier found episodes.
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