Every now and then the world of Doctor Who throws up a story that reminds fans the archive hunt is never truly over.
This week brought one of those moments, with confirmation that two missing episodes from the 1965 serial The Daleks’ Master Plan have been recovered, marking the first discovery of lost material from the series since 2013.
The episodes that have been found are Episode 1 – “The Nightmare Begins” and Episode 3 – “Devil’s Planet.”
For fans of the Hartnell era, this is particularly significant. The Daleks’ Master Plan was one of the most ambitious stories the show ever attempted during the 1960s, running for twelve episodes and featuring a sprawling storyline that took the First Doctor and his companions across multiple worlds as they tried to stop the Daleks from unleashing the Time Destructor.
Unfortunately, like many programmes of the period, much of the serial fell victim to the BBC’s archive wiping policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Only a handful of episodes were known to survive, leaving the rest to exist only through audio recordings and reconstruction projects created by fans and the BBC over the years.
That is why the recovery of even a single episode is always big news.
The discovery of two episodes from the same story is something fans have learned not to expect too often.
I first heard about the recovery through a video posted on YouTube by Toby Hadoke, who has been involved in several Doctor Who restoration projects over the years and is well known within the fan community for his work on classic material.
Hadoke shared the story behind the discovery, but also mentioned a memorable moment involving Peter Purves, who played Steven Taylor during the First Doctor era.
According to Hadoke, he managed to trick Purves into attending a private screening of the recovered episodes under the pretence that he was working on something related to the production of Doctor Who in the 1960s.
Purves therefore went in expecting something very different, only to find himself watching episodes that had effectively been missing for decades.
It is hard not to appreciate the poetry of that moment.
An actor sitting down to revisit the programme he worked on sixty years ago, only to be confronted with footage he likely assumed had been lost forever.
Stories like this are part of what makes the missing-episodes hunt such a unique part of Doctor Who history. Prints of the series were sent all over the world during the 1960s, and while many were destroyed, some were misplaced, forgotten, or ended up in private collections. Every so often one resurfaces, usually in the most unexpected circumstances.
The last major recovery came in 2013, when nine missing episodes were returned to the BBC after being located in Nigeria. Since then, fans have continued to hope that more material might still be out there.
The discovery of “The Nightmare Begins” and “Devil’s Planet” proves that the search is far from over.
It also inevitably raises the question of what might turn up next. Each time an episode is recovered, it suggests that at least some material once thought gone may still exist in private collections or overseas archives waiting to be identified. Stories such as The Daleks’ Master Plan, Marco Polo, The Crusade, and parts of The Myth Makers are often mentioned whenever the subject comes up, simply because of how widely prints were distributed at the time.
Whether any of those will ever be found remains impossible to predict, but discoveries like this do improve the odds slightly, if only by reminding everyone that the search is still worthwhile.
After all these years, the missing episodes are still out there somewhere.
And every now and then, one finds its way home.
Fans will be able to watch the recovered episodes alongside previously surviving instalments of The Daleks’ Master Plan on BBC iPlayer from 4 April.
