THE MISSING EPISODES

Background

Between 1963 and 1989, over 600 episodes of Doctor Who were made. Currently, 108 of these episodes are missing.

Why Are Episodes Missing?

During the 1970s, the BBC junked a lot of black-and-white TV material. Not just Doctor Who, but other popular shows like "Dad's Army", "Steptoe and Son", "Z-Cars" etc. The reason for this destruction was that the agreements between the BBC and the actor's union, Equity, allowed only limited repeats of old material and the BBC did not think that these programmes would ever be shown again.

Ten years later, when home video recorders became popular, the BBC realised that they had lost a lot of programmes for which there was a video market. So, the hunt was on to try to recover the lost material.

Which Episodes of "Doctor Who" are missing?

The missing episodes are all from the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton stories of the 1960s and are listed in the table below. In addition to these, some of the episodes from Jon Pertwee's stories exist only in black-and-white, the original colour copies having been destroyed.


TitleEpisodes Missing
Marco PoloAll
The Reign Of Terror 4 5
The Crusade 2 4
Galaxy FourAll
Mission to the UnknownAll
The Myth MakersAll
The Daleks Master Plan 1 3 4 6 7 8 9 11 12
The MassacreAll
The Celestial Toymaker 1 2 3
The SavagesAll
The SmugglersAll
The Tenth Planet 4
Power of the DaleksAll
The HighlandersAll
The Underwater Menace 1 2 4
The Moonbase 1 3
The Macra TerrorAll
The Faceless Ones 2 4 5 6
Evil Of The Daleks 1 3 4 5 6 7
The Abominable Snowmen 1 3 4 5 6
The Ice Warriors 2 3
The Enemy of the World 1 2 4 5 6
The Web Of Fear 2 3 4 5 6
Fury From The DeepAll
The Wheel In Space 1 2 4 5
The Invasion 1 4
The Space Pirates 1 3 4 5 6

Have Any Episodes Been Recovered?

In the last 18 years, quite a few of the missing episodes of Doctor Who have been recovered. The programme was widely sold abroad and copies have been obtained from foreign TV stations. Other episodes have been returned by private film collectors and some episodes have been found in the most unlikely places - two episodes of "The Daleks Master Plan" were found in a Mormon Church! The last episodes recovered were episode one of "The Crusade", which was found in New Zealand in 1999 and episode two of "The Daleks Master Plan", found early in 2004.

Does Nothing Remain Of The Missing Episodes?

The audio soundtracks of all of the missing episodes do exist and the BBC are releasing these on CD with linking narrations. Some clips from the missing episodes do exist, for example the regeneration sequence from the end of "The Tenth Planet".