Doctor Who's missing episodes are the many instalments of the long-running British science fiction television programme Doctor Who that are missing, with no known film or videotape copies existing. They were erased (or "junked") by the BBC during the 1960s and 1970s for a variety of economic and space-saving reasons. In all, 108 of 253 episodes produced during the first six years of the programme are not currently held in the BBC's archives, although many more were thought missing in the past before episodes were recovered from a variety of sources, most notably overseas broadcasters.

Doctor Who is not unique in this respect, as thousands of hours of programming from across all genres were destroyed up until 1978, when the BBC's archiving policies were changed. Other high-profile series affected included Dad's Army, Z-Cars, The Wednesday Play, Steptoe and Son and Not Only... But Also.^[1] In addition, the BBC was not the only British broadcaster to carry out this practice, with ITV companies also destroying programmes; The Avengers, another series initiated by Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman, is a high-profile ITV victim of junking.^[2] Unlike other series, Doctor Who is unique in having all of its missing episodes surviving in audio form, recorded off-air by fans at home. Additionally, every 1970s episode exists in some form, which is not the case for several other series.

Efforts to locate missing episodes continue, both by the BBC and by fans of the series. Extensive restoration has been carried out on many surviving and recovered 1960s and 1970s episodes for release on VHS and more recently on DVD. The surviving soundtracks of missing episodes have been released on cassette and more recently CD.

Background

Between approximately 1967 and 1978, large amounts of material stored in the BBC's videotape and film libraries were destroyed or wiped to make way for newer programmes.^[3] This happened for a number of reasons, the primary one being that agreements with the actors' union Equity and other trade bodies limited the number of times a single programme could be broadcast.^[4] These showings were also limited to within a set time period.^[5] This was due to the unions' fear that if the channels filled their schedules with repeats, it could lead to lower levels of production, putting actors and other staff out of work. This attitude by the unions had the unintentional side effect of causing many programmes to be junked after their repeat rights had expired, as they were considered to be of no further use to the broadcasters.^[6]

Most Doctor Who episodes were made on two-inch quad videotape for initial broadcast and then telerecorded onto 16 mm film by BBC Enterprises for further commercial exploitation.^[3] Enterprises used 16 mm for overseas sales as it was far cheaper to buy and easier to transport than videotape. It also circumvented the problem of different countries using different video standards, as film was a universal medium whereas videotape was not.^[7] The BBC had no central archive at the time — the Film Library kept programmes that had been made on film, while the Engineering Department was responsible for storing videotapes.^[3] BBC Enterprises kept only copies of programmes they deemed commercially exploitable. They also had little dedicated storage space and tended to keep piles of film canisters wherever they could find space for them at their Villiers House property.^[3]



The Engineering Department had no mandate to archive the programme videotapes they held, although they would not normally be wiped or junked until the relevant production department and / or BBC Enterprises had indicated that they had no further use for the tapes.^[8] The first Doctor Who master videotapes to be junked were those for the serial The Highlanders, which were erased on March 9 1967, only a very short time after their original transmission.^[7] Further erasing and junking of Doctor Who master videotapes by the Engineering Department continued into the 1970s. Eventually every single master videotape of the programme's 253 1960s episodes was destroyed or wiped, with the final 1960s mastertapes to be erased being those for the 1968 serial Fury from the Deep, which were authorised for wiping in late 1974.^[8]

Despite the destruction of these masters, up until approximately 1972 BBC Enterprises held an almost complete archive of the series in the form of their 16 mm film telerecording copies.^[9] From around 1972 until 1978, BBC Enterprises also disposed of much of their older material, including many episodes of Doctor Who, until their Doctor Who junkings ceased following the intervention of Ian Levine, a record producer and fan of the programme.^[9] Enterprises' episodes were usually junked because their rights agreements with the actors and writers to sell the programmes abroad had expired.^[9] With many broadcasters around the world now switching to colour transmission, it was not deemed worthwhile extending agreements to sell this older black and white material.^[10]

The BBC Film Library had no responsibility for storing programmes that had not been made on film, and there were conflicting views between the Film Library and BBC Enterprises over who had the responsibility of archiving programmes.^[3] These combined factors resulted in the erasure of enormous quantities of older black and white programming from the BBC's various libraries. While thousands of other programmes have been destroyed in this way, the missing Doctor Who episodes are probably the best-known example of how the lack of a consistent programme archiving policy can have long-term effects.^[5]

The degree of incompleteness varies, and is concentrated on the First and Second Doctor stories. Although some stories have only one episode missing, others are lost altogether, with Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor being particularly badly affected. From the first two seasons of the Troughton Doctor, only one story, The Tomb of the Cybermen, is complete, and this only exists due to a copy being returned from Hong Kong.^[3] All stories starring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor are complete in the sense that all the episodes are present, but some only survive as black and white telerecordings or US-standard NTSC copies.^[11] In order of original transmissions, the very last Doctor Who master videotapes to be wiped were the first episodes of the 1974 serials Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Death to the Daleks. The latter was recovered from overseas, initially from a tape in the NTSC format, and later in the original PAL format on a tape returned from Dubai.^[12]

For a few years episode one of Invasion of the Dinosaurs was the only Pertwee episode to be entirely missing from the archives, until a black and white 16 mm copy was returned to the BBC in the early 1980s.^[11] Archival holdings from Death to the Daleks episode two onwards are complete on the original broadcast videotapes, with the exception of the final shot of episode three of The Deadly Assassin (1976). This shot was removed from the master copy after its initial UK transmission following complaints from Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association.^[11] Subsequent repeats and commercial releases have restored the shot from off-air video copies.^[11]

The wiping policy officially came to an end in 1978, when the means to further exploit programmes by taking advantage of the new market in home video cassette recordings was beginning to become apparent. In addition, the attitude became that vintage programmes should, in any case, be preserved for posterity and historical and cultural reasons. The BBC Film Library was turned into a combined Film & Videotape Library for the preservation of both media.^[3] The Film Library at the time held only 47 episodes of 1960s Doctor Who; they had once held 53, but six episodes had either been junked or gone missing.^[12] Following the transfer of episodes still held by Enterprises, there were 152 episodes of Doctor Who no longer held by the BBC, although subsequent efforts have reduced that number to 108, as of 2007.

The most sought-after lost episode is episode four of the last William Hartnell serial The Tenth Planet, which ends with the First Doctor transforming into the Second. The only portion of the regeneration sequence still in existence, bar a few poor-quality silent 8 mm clips, is the few seconds of the scene which had been rebroadcast as part of a 1973 episode of Blue Peter.^[3]

Compared with many BBC series broadcast in the 1960s, Doctor Who is comparatively well-off in terms of missing episodes.^[13] 145 of the 253 episodes broadcast during the 1960s are still in existence. This is mainly due to wide overseas sales which have aided in recovery of episodes (see below). This is reflected in the nature of the surviving episodes—Seasons 1 and 2, the most widely sold abroad of the 1960s episodes, are missing only nine and two episodes, respectively. Most of the episodes probably survive due to a late sale in 1973 to Algeria; Algeria are believed to have returned their copies to BBC Enterprises after their rights to broadcast them had expired, shortly before the end of the junkings.^[12] By contrast Seasons 4 and 5, which sold to fewer countries, have only one complete serial in existence between them.

Of all the series shown by the Corporation throughout the 1960s which had runs of significant length, only Steptoe and Son can be said to have a better survival record, with all episodes existing, albeit some only in the form of early domestic videotape copies created by the writers of the programme.^[14] Other programmes have few or no episodes in existence; United!, a football-based soap opera which broadcast 147 episodes between 1965 and 1967, has no episodes surviving at all.^[15] Doctor Who's popularity and high profile has also helped to ensure the return of episodes which, for other less well-remembered programmes, might never have occurred.^[5]

Doctor Who is also comparatively rare amongst contemporaries in that all of the 1970s episodes exist in one format or another, whilst other series such as Z-Cars and Dixon of Dock Green have episodes from as late as 1975 missing.^[16][17]

Recovery

Since the archive was first audited in 1978, a number of episodes thought missing have been returned from various sources. An appeal to broadcasters in other countries who had shown the programme (notably Australia and African nations such as Nigeria) produced "missing" episodes from the archives of those television companies.^[3] The Tomb of the Cybermen, for example, was recovered in this manner from a television company in Hong Kong in 1992.^[18]

Some portions of these overseas copies were physically excised prior to transmission in the 1960s by the Australian and New Zealand censors for being too violent or frightening for the programme's early time slot and younger audience. This posed a problem because episodes recovered from these sources were missing these segments. However, in October 1996 Australian Doctor Who fans Damian Shanahan and Ellen Parry discovered a collection of the censored clips — several from missing episodes which do not exist in their entirety — in the archives of the Australian government censor.^[12] The clips had been sent by the ABC to the archives as evidence of the required edits having been made. Similarly, in 2002 New Zealand fan Graham Howard uncovered censored clips from The Wheel in Space and The Web of Fear.^[12]

Episodes have also been returned by private film collectors who had acquired 16 mm copies from various sources. For example, 16 mm film telerecording prints of episode two of The Evil of the Daleks and episode three of The Faceless Ones were returned to the BBC by film collector Gordon Hendry. These episodes (the only one from Evil and one of only two from The Faceless Ones to exist) had been purchased by Hendry for £8 each at a car boot sale in December 1983. At the time of purchase he had been completely unaware of their rarity, and bought them out of mild curiosity and childhood memories of the programme.^[19]

The unlikeliest story from which episodes have been recovered is The Daleks' Master Plan, a serial which was never sold abroad.^[3] Only Australia ever requested viewing copies (except for episode seven: "The Feast of Steven"), eventually electing not to purchase the serial.^[3] What happened to these viewing copies is a mystery, as no records of their eventual disposition — whether they were retained in the ABC archives or returned to the BBC — have been found.

Nevertheless, 16 mm copies of three episodes from The Daleks' Master Plan have been recovered. Two came from an ex-BBC property which had been purchased by a Mormon church group in the early 1980s who had come across the films when tidying the basement and subsequently offered them back to the Corporation.^[3] The third was returned in 2004 by former BBC engineer Francis Watson. Watson had taken the film home in the early 1970s after being instructed to dispose of junk material from a projector testing room at the BBC's Ealing Studios. Instead of throwing the film away, Watson kept it, eventually returning it when he realised the value of the material.^[20]

Shortly after the junking process came to an end and the BBC was first taking stock of how much material was missing from its archives, enquiries were made to the National Film and Television Archive, held by the British Film Institute, as to whether they held any copies of BBC programmes which the BBC did not. These enquiries resulted in the return of three complete Second Doctor serials: The Dominators, The Krotons and The War Games.^[9] These were all standard 16 mm film telerecordings except for Episode 3 of The Dominators, which was a 35 mm print. Episodes four and five of that serial originated from a foreign broadcaster and had been slightly edited. However the missing material has subsequently been restored, either from a copy held by a private collector or through the discovery of the censor clips.^[3]

Some of the surviving episodes were always held at the BBC, although the Corporation was not necessarily aware of this. In August 1988, episodes one, four, five and six of the six-part story The Ice Warriors were discovered in a cupboard at Villiers House when the organisation was in the process of moving out of the building.^[3] Also, when the archive was first checked in 1978, forty-seven episodes were held by the BBC Film Library, in addition to those still held by BBC Enterprises. These Film Library copies were a combination of random viewing prints created for various episodes down the years which had subsequently found their way into the library's holdings, and some of the few episodes that had originally been telerecorded onto film for transmission rather than recorded onto videotape. These film-recorded masters had been stored in the Film Library rather than in the Engineering Department with the videotapes.^[3]

However, despite the Film Library's remit, not all of these originally film-recorded episodes exist. On the other hand, there were also some unexplained items in the library, such as 16 mm copies of the first three episodes of The Tenth Planet, presumably viewing prints which were mistakenly returned to them at some point instead of BBC Enterprises.^[9] Most surprisingly of all, they also still held a 16 mm telerecording copy of the original untransmitted pilot episode of the programme, presumably a viewing print made in 1963 and subsequently lodged at the library.^[8] The Film Library also held high-quality original film sequences made for insertion into videotaped episodes. Some of these, such as those from the opening two episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan, survive to this day, but there is evidence to suggest that some film inserts were considered to be of lesser value than complete programmes and were junked as late as the early 1980s.^[3]

Small excerpts have also been recovered on 8 mm cine film taken by a fan in Australia, who filmed certain scenes directly from the television screen during repeat showings of various episodes.^[21] Clips from some missing episodes also survive where they were used in other programmes, with these other shows surviving. For example, scenes from the missing episode four of The Daleks' Master Plan exist in a 1973 edition of Blue Peter, and an Australian programme called Perspectives: C for Computer yielded otherwise-missing extracts from the first Second Doctor story The Power of the Daleks.^[3]

A lengthy excerpt from the 1965 serial Galaxy 4 was returned by Doctor Who fan Jan Vincent-Rudzki in the 1990s. The sequence had originally been taken from a viewing print of the first episode of that serial by the production team working on a 1977 Doctor Who documentary, Whose Doctor Who. After they had selected the short clip they wished to use from the extract they discarded the rest, and Vincent-Rudzki, who was working as an adviser to the production team, was allowed to keep the film.^[22]

In 2005 two further short clips from The Power of the Daleks — along with a higher-quality version of one of the extant scenes — were discovered in an episode of the BBC science series Tomorrow's World from 1966. The clips, lasting less than 10 seconds each and on film (as opposed to film recordings), only came to light when the Tomorrow's World segment was broadcast as part of the 11 September 2005 edition of the clip-based nostalgia show Sunday Past Times on BBC Two. Several sharp-eyed fans noticed that these clips were not among those already known to be extant in the archives and informed the BBC.^[23]

Though numerous episodes are still missing, full-length audio soundtracks for all missing episodes are held by the BBC.^[13] These come from off-air recordings made by fans, often made by use of a microphone placed close to the television set.^[24] While the quality of these off-air recordings varies greatly, multiple fan recordings exist for every episode; this has allowed groups such as the Doctor Who Restoration Team to compile "remastered" soundtracks for CD releases of the missing episodes.

On 20 April 2006 it was announced on Blue Peter that a life-sized Dalek would be given away to anyone that could find and return one of the missing episodes.^[25][26]

Recovered episodes

When the BBC Film & Videotape Library and BBC Enterprises were first audited in 1978, the following thirty-nine episodes were absent from their collective archives but have subsequently been returned to the BBC via the various methods described above.^[3][9]

• The Reign of Terror — Episodes 1–3 & 6
• The Crusade — Episode 1
• The Time Meddler — Episodes 1, 3 & 4
• The Daleks' Master Plan — Episodes 2, 5 & 10
• The Celestial Toymaker — Episode 4
• The War Machines — Episodes 1–4
• The Faceless Ones — Episode 3
• The Evil of the Daleks — Episode 2
• The Tomb of the Cybermen — Episodes 1–4
• The Abominable Snowmen — Episode 2
• The Ice Warriors — Episodes 1 & 4–6
• The Web of Fear — Episode 1^[27]
• The Wheel in Space — Episode 3
• The Dominators — Episode 3
• The Krotons — Episode 4
• The War Games — Episodes 1, 3 & 4, 6 & 7, 10
• Invasion of the Dinosaurs — Episode 1
• Death to the Daleks — Episode 1

For a list of Doctor Who material still missing from the BBC archives, see List of incomplete Doctor Who serials.

Restoration

While the original 625-line PAL videotapes of some serials starring Jon Pertwee were wiped for reuse and a few episodes are only held as 16 mm black and white telerecordings, some colour versions survived in the form of 525-line NTSC colour videotapes that were sent for broadcasting overseas. In the early 1980s, some of these tapes were returned to the UK from the BBC's office in Toronto, Canada, including all seven episodes of Inferno (1970) just after it was aired in colour by CKVU in Vancouver; other colour material had been aired in the late 1970s by Toronto-based TV Ontario.^[11] As well as this, some off-air colour videotape copies recorded by an American fan in the late 1970s were recovered in the early 1990s, and their colour signals were used (along with traditional colourisation techniques where necessary) to colourise the higher-quality 16 mm monochrome film copies.^[28]

The serials that were restored in this way, and thus no longer incomplete, were Doctor Who and the Silurians, Terror of the Autons and The Dæmons.^[28] Off-air NTSC colour tapes are held for all the episodes of The Ambassadors of Death, but are too badly damaged to permit anything more than a partial restoration, with the cost of repair being prohibitive.^[29]

A new "Reverse Standards Conversion" process was used for the first time on the 2005 DVD release of The Claws of Axos.^[30] This process can be used on NTSC version master tapes to restore them to something closer to their original PAL colour state.^[30] Another digital image processing technique used for the DVD releases is VidFIRE, which restores the fluid video look to telerecorded episodes only held on film.^[31]

Reconstruction

In addition to recovered short video clips and audio soundtracks, there also exist still photographs taken off-screen by photographer John Cura. Cura was hired by the BBC, and independently by many actors and production staff, to document the transmission of many of their most popular programmes from the 1940s to the 1960s, including Doctor Who.^[13] These "tele-snaps" were generally used to promote BBC programmes and for actors, directors and other production crew members to keep a visual record of their own work in the days before home video recorders. In many cases, they form the only visual record remaining of several Doctor Who serials and other missing episodes of many programmes.^[32]

Since the late 1990s, reconstructions of the missing serials have also been made by fan groups such as Loose Cannon Productions, who distribute them for free.^[33] These "recons" are based on the directors' original camera scripts, and use a combination of the surviving soundtracks, surviving footage, photographs, still images (especially Cura's tele-snaps) and specially recreated material.^[33] Although technically infringing copyright, these recons have been tolerated by the BBC, provided they are not sold for profit and are only distributed in degradeable, non-digital formats such as VHS.^[33]

"Official" high-quality reconstructions using the same methods were made for the BBC Video releases of The Ice Warriors (a 12-minute "highlights" reconstruction bridging the missing episodes two and three) and The Tenth Planet (a full reconstruction of the missing fourth episode).^[34][35] The DVD box set Doctor Who: The Beginning consisted of the first three serials and included a 30-minute reconstruction of Marco Polo, of which absolutely no footage exists. The Doctor Who Restoration Team has hinted that similar reconstructions might be done in future.^[36]

In June 2005, BBC Audio began to release reconstructions as part of their "MP3 CD" line. Under the Doctor Who: Reconstructed banner, the CDs include the same audio portions as the previous audio CD releases, but are on a single disc with Macromedia Flash-animated and synchronised slideshow of tele-snaps and other material. The tele-snaps play in sequence when viewed on a computer, or a listener has the option to play the audio-only portion on an MP3-compatible CD or DVD player. The Power of the Daleks was the first such reconstruction to be released.^[37]

On 6 November 2006, The Invasion, an eight-episode Second Doctor serial of which six episodes survive in the archives, was released on DVD with the missing first and fourth episodes animated by Cosgrove Hall, matched up with a newly remastered soundtrack, created from the extant restored fan recordings.^[31]

Although it is not strictly a missing serial, production of the 1979 Tom Baker story Shada was curtailed by a technician's strike after several scenes had been completed. The half-finished material would usually have been junked as useless, but incoming Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner placed a preservation order on it, as he still hoped to salvage Shada as a finished production at a later date. The serial, which was written by Douglas Adams, was eventually released on video in 1992, with linking narration by Tom Baker.^[38] A clip from the first episode of Shada was also used to allow the Fourth Doctor to appear in the 1983 story The Five Doctors, after Tom Baker declined to reprise his role.

Orphan episodes

Surviving episodes which do not form complete stories — referred to as "orphan" episodes^[39] — have been released by the BBC in the following ways:

1. The Hartnell Years, The Troughton Years, Daleks - The Early Years and Cybermen - The Early Years on VHS tapes, released in the early 1990s.
2. Abridged VHS releases, with the surviving episodes and one or more of the following:
3. * Linking material recorded by actors (The Reign of Terror, The Crusade and The Invasion)
4. * Audio CDs with recordings of the missing episodes (The Crusade and The Ice Warriors)
5. * Reconstructions with photographs, surviving clips and soundtrack (The Tenth Planet and The Ice Warriors)
6. The Lost in Time DVD boxset in 2004.^[40]

Starting in the early 1990s, the BBC began to release existing audio recordings of serials with all or a majority of episodes missing on audio cassette and compact disc, with linking narration provided by former series actors such as Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Colin Baker, Peter Purves, and Frazer Hines. Serials with only one or two episodes missing have also been released in complete soundtrack format. Some serials (such as The Evil of the Daleks) were re-released during this time with improved audio restoration, changed linking narration, and in some instances with scenes unavailable in the first release.

As of February 2006, the soundtracks for all of the missing episodes have been released.^[41]

See also

• List of incomplete Doctor Who serials
• List of Doctor Who serials
• Doctor Who DVD releases
• Doctor Who audio releases
• Doctor Who Restoration Team

Footnotes

External links

• The Doctor Who Gateway - information and articles on the missing episodes
• The Doctor Who Audio & Video FAQ by Dominic Jackson
• Mythmakers; the search for lost Doctor Who, by Ash Stewart (debunks many of the rumours that have cropped up over the years)
• The Doctor Who Clips List by Steve Phillips
• The Doctor Who Restoration Team Website
• Blog describing many missing UK Television programmes
• Loose Cannon Productions

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