Repopulate! Repopulate! Two lost Doctor Who episodes turn up in private collection

Dark Dalek drama to stream this April

Film preservation organization Film Is Fabulous! has found a pair of Doctor Who episodes thought to have been lost forever.

The outfit announced the find last Friday, saying the two episodes – “The Nightmare Begins” and “Devil’s Planet” – were part of “a deceased enthusiast’s private collection” and are “16mm telerecordings.” The collector “cherished the films for many years, and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude for preserving these episodes of Doctor Who.”

The two episodes were filmed as part of Doctor Who’s 1965 third season, which included 45 episodes organized into 10 distinct “serials” – a term that today we might call a “story arc.” The longest serial, at 12 episodes, was called “The Daleks’ Master Plan” and saw the Doctor discover and defeat a Dalek plot to destroy humanity with a planet-killing time weapon.

Both episodes star William Hartnell, the first actor to play the Doctor, and were broadcast in November 1965.

Here’s an excerpt from the episodes.

While Whovians will celebrate this find, sadly nine episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan remain lost, along with over 90 other episodes.

The reason for most losses was the BBC’s lack of a formal archiving policy, and the common practice of erasing videotapes felt to have outlived their usefulness so program-makers could save money.

And before you judge the BBC too harshly, remember that NASA probably erased its best footage of the first moon landing – an event just a little more significant than Doctor Who defeating the Daleks – to save money by re-using tapes.

The last find of lost Who episodes came in 2013, when 106 turned up at the Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency. Like other discoveries of lost Who, the find was a trove of episodes sent to foreign broadcasters for transmission in countries other than the UK.

Film is Fabulous! will stage a screening of the episodes on Saturday April 4 and promises to reveal details of that event soon. The BBC will upload the episodes to its iPlayer streaming service at Easter. That service is geo-blocked, meaning Whovians outside the UK may need a VPN to access the episodes. ®