The timeline below lists major births, deaths,
discoveries and events from the show. All recoveries should be listed in
chronological order. Recovery dates listed either refer to when that particular
item became public knowledge or when the discoverer of the item found it. This
page will always be a work-in-progress page, as the process of recovering
Doctor Who material will continue for some time yet. As such this page will
(hopefully) be updated on a regular basis.
1890
Date unknown: Jack Hodges Bligh is born. Bligh has the distinction of being the
earliest born individual to have worked on the series, appearing as Gaptooth in
the 1966 serial The Smugglers. Bligh
passed away on the 25th of September the following year aged 77.
1908
8 January: William Henry Hartnell (the First Doctor) is born.
1913
26 May: Peter Cushing (Dr Who from Dr Who
and the Daleks and Daleks - Invasion
Earth 2150 A.D) is born.
1918
1 March: Roger Delgado (the first Master) is born.
1919
7 July: Jon Pertwee (the Third Doctor) is born.
1920
25 March: Patrick Troughton (the Second Doctor) is born.
1922
18 October: The British Broadcasting Company – or BBC for short – is created. It
would retain this name until 1927 when the royal charter is granted, becoming
the British Broadcasting Corporation.
1923
27 October: Peter Bryant (fourth producer of the classic series) is born.
1924
19 November: William Russell Enoch (Ian Chesterton) is born.
1925
26 March: Barry Letts
(sixth producer of the classic series) is born.
20 September: John Wiles (second producer of the classic series) is born.
24 December: Innes Lloyd (third producer of the
classic series) is born.
1927
21 April: Gerald Robert Flood (voice of Kamelion) is born.
1928
29 December: Bernard Cribbins (Tom Campbell from Daleks
- Invasion Earth 2150 A.D, Wilfred Mott) is born.
1929
16 December: William Nicholas Stone Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) is born.
17 December: Grace Jacqueline Hill (Barbara) is born.
1931
10 October: Victor Pemberton (writer of Fury
from the Deep) is born.
1932
31 August: Roy Castle (Ian from Dr Who and
the Daleks) is born.
1934
20 January: Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) is born.
1 July: Jean Marsh (Sara Kingdom) is born.
1935
27 November: Verity Ann
Lambert (first producer of the classic series) is born.
Date unknown: David Brierly (voice of K-9) is born.
1936
15 January: Richard Franklin (Cpt Mike Yates) is born.
16 April: Derrick Sherwin
(fifth producer of the classic series) is born.
2 November: The world’s first
“high definition” broadcast is made from Alexander Palace in north London,
heralding the start of the BBC Television Service. Compared to today’s
description of high definition being 1080 lines of resolution, Alexander Palace
was using Marconi-EMI’s 405-line system (alternating with John Logie Baird’s
240-line resolution system, which was phased out in 1937).
Date unknown: Jill Curzon (Louise from Daleks -
Invasion Earth 2150 A.D) is born.
1937
22 July: Adrienne Hill (Katarina) is born.
1939
10 February: Peter Purves (Steven Taylor) is born.
1 September: The BBC shuts
down all television broadcasts with the outbreak of World War Two, out of the
fear the television signal could be used as guidance for enemy bombs.
8 December: Jennie Linden (Barbara from Dr
Who and the Daleks) is born.
1940
22 January: John Hurt (the War Doctor) is born.
16 June: Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman) is born.
19 September: Caroline John (Liz Shaw) is born.
1941
10 July: Jackie Lane (Dodo Chaplet) is born.
20 October: Anna Katarina Willys (Anneke Wills) is born.
24 December: John Anthony Woods (Sgt Benton) is born. He used the stage name John
Levene to avoid being confused with an actor of the same name.
1942
29 November: Michael Craze (Ben Jackson) is born.
1943
16 March: John Leeson (voice of K-9) is born.
8 June: Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor) is born.
29 June: Maureen O'Brien (Vicki) is born.
20 August: Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith (the Seventh Doctor) is born. Percy adopted
the stage name Sylveste McCoy after appearing in a play entitled An Evening
with Sylveste McCoy. Later, he would use Sylvester McCoy to avoid the
theatre superstition of having a 13-letter stage name.
1944
22 September: Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon) is born.
1 October: Philip
Hinchcliffe (seventh producer of the classic series) is born.
20 October: Ian Don Marter (Harry Sullivan) is born.
1945
24 May: Graham
Williams (eigth producer of the classic series) is born.
7 June: Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon) is born.
1946
1 February: Elisabeth Clara Heath-Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) is born.
7 June: The BBC resumes
television broadcasts for the first time since 1939 with announcer Jasmine
Bligh saying "Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me,
Jasmine Bligh?". She then played a Mickey Mouse cartoon, the last
programme to be broadcast before the war, almost seven years earlier.
14 October: Catherine Ann "Katy" Manning (Jo Grant) is born.
1947
12 August: John Turner (ninth and final producer of the classic series) is born. He
would later change his name to John Nathan-Turner to avoid being confused with
an actor of the same name.
7 December: Wendy Padbury (Zoe Heriot) is born.
1948
2 January: Deborah Watling (Victoria Waterfield) is born.
The BBC creates
the BBC News Unit, and to accompany it the BBC Film Library. Initially the
Library is split between Windmill Road, Lime Grove and Ealing Studios.
1950
22 March: Mary Tamm (Romana I) is born.
21 May: Lime Grove Studios
is reopened by the BBC after purchasing them from the Rank Organisation the
previous year. The move was designed to be only temporary until the planned Television
Centre could be completed, however the BBC ultimately used Lime Grove until
1991.
1951
13 April: Peter Davison (the Fifth Doctor) is born.
20 April: Louise Jameson (Leela) is born.
28 June: Sarah Ward (Romana II) is born. Ward's stage name 'Lalla' is based on
her attempts as a toddler to pronounce "Sarah".
1953
18 July - 22
August: The first of three Quatermass serials airs on
the BBC. The Quatermass Experiment, as it was called, was a six-part science
fiction serial written by Nigel Kneale and starred Reginald Tate as Professor
Bernard Quatermass. The serial was a huge success, garnering an average of 3.9
million viewers over the six episodes and individually reaching 5 million for
the last instalment; an impressive feat considering a year earlier the BBC
believed the total viewing audience was less than 2.5 million. A second serial,
Quatermass II, was broadcast in 1955 and Quatermass and the Pit following
in 1958. Due to telerecording services being in their infancy, only the first
two episodes were retained (on 35mm film) with the last four episodes
effectively transmitted live without being recorded. These two episodes, along
with the other serials from the 1950s, were released on DVD in 2005. The show
was heavily influential in many British science fiction series for decades to
come, including Doctor Who.
9 August: Roberta Tovey
(Susan from Dr Who and the Daleks
and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 A.D)
is born.
9 September: Janet Fielding
(Tegan Jovanka) is born.
1955
22 September: Associated-Rediffusion begins broadcasting. The regional contractor
working under ITV (Independent Television) is the first independent station to
launch, as part of the Television Act 1954, to break up the monopoly the BBC
had on television broadcasts. Broadcasting is limited to London and surrounding
counties.
1958
14 April: Peter Capaldi (the Twelfth Doctor) is born.
1959
6 April: Mark Strickson
(Vislor Turlough) is born.
14 November: Paul McGann (the Eighth Doctor) is born.
1960
29 June: Television Centre is officially opened by the BBC.
11 October: Nicola Jane
Bryant (Peri Brown) is born.
8 October: The BBC
Television Service is renamed BBC TV.
1961
18 November: Steven Moffat
(second executive producer / head writer of the revived series) is born.
12 December: Sarah Sutton
(Nyssa) is born.
19 December: Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) is born.
1962
20 August: Sophie Aldred (Ace) is born
1963
30 January: Daphne Lee
Ashbrook (Grace Holloway) is born.
11 March: Alex Kingston (River Song) is born.
27 April: Russell T Davies
(first executive producer / head writer of the revived series) is born (birth
name Stephen Russell Davies).
27
September: The pilot episode of Doctor Who is recorded at
Lime Grove Studio D. This episode would prove to be unsuitable due to dialogue
errors, camera mistakes and other issues which creator Sydney Newman had
problems with.
18 October: The first
episode of Doctor Who is remounted and recorded.
22 November: US
President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His death would
overshadow the broadcast of Doctor Who the following day in the UK. The
assassination itself was mentioned in Silver
Nemesis, Rose, Let’s Kill Hitler, Who Killed Kennedy (novel), The
Space Race (audio), The Conspiracy
(audio), Zagreus (audio), 1963 (audio) and The Cambridge Spy (K9),
23 November: The first episode of Doctor Who, An Unearthly Child, screens on the BBC at 5.16pm. It attracts an audience of 4.4 million viewers. It marks the first on-screen appearance by the Doctor (William Hartnell), Susan (Carol Ann Ford), Ian (William Russell) and Barbara (Jacqueline Hill). This episode would be repeated the following week prior to the broadcast of the second episode, The Cave of Skulls, due to a power outage, as many viewers around the country would not have seen the initial broadcast.
21 December: The first
episode of The Daleks airs on the
BBC, garnering 6.9 million viewers. Six weeks later when the final episode of
the serial ends, that number jumps to 10.4 million.
1964
16 February: Christopher
Eccleston (the Ninth Doctor) is born.
20 April: BBC2 begins
broadcasting, using the more advanced 625-line resolution. The first broadcast
was interrupted by a fire at Battersea Power Station, which knocked out power
to Television Centre and much of London. BBC TV – which had just been renamed
BBC1 – was able to continue broadcasting via Alexander Palace (using the older
405-line system) but BBC2 proper launch was ultimately delayed until the
following day.
22 July: Bonita
Melody Lysette “Bonnie” Langford (Mel Bush) is born.
26 December: The final episode of The Dalek Invasion of Earth airs, marking the final appearance of Carol Ann Ford, who played the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan. This would mark the first time a companion would depart the series. Ford was apparently displeased with her character’s development and asked to leave the series.
1965
2 January: Maureen O’Brien joins the cast as Vicki in The Rescue.
18 April: Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler) is born.
26 June: The Chase 6 airs on BBC1. This marks
the final appearance of both William Russell (Ian) and Jacqueline Hill (Barbara) as regular companions, and also introduces
Peter Purves as Steven Taylor. Purves had previous appeared in The Chase 3 as a different character.
9 October: Mission
to the Unknown airs on BBC1. This single-episode story marks the only time
in Doctor Who history that neither the Doctor, the Tardis nor any companion
feature in an episode.
6 November: The Myth Makers 4 airs on BBC1,
marking the final appearance by Maureen O’Brien as Vicki, and the first
appearance by Adrienne Hill as Katarina.
4 December: The Daleks’ Master Plan 4 airs on
BBC 1. The episode features the first death of a companion, namely Katarina,
whom the show’s producer’s felt was unsuitable for the series and asked writer
Terry Nation to write her out of the show as soon as possible. Ironically,
Adrienne Hill’s first material filmed for the show was her death scene, recorded
on 27 September, followed by her first studio recording on 8 October. Another
companion, Sara Kingdom played by Jean Marsh, is also killed off at the end of
this story. Kingdom’s tenure as a companion is disputed, as she only appears in
a single story.
25 December: The Feast of Steven airs on BBC1, episode
7 of the 12-part story The Daleks’
Master Plan. It remained the only episode of the classic series broadcast
on Christmas Day, and the only Christmas special until The Christmas Invasion aired in 2005, exactly 40 years later.
1966
26 February: Jackie Lane
joins the regular cast as Dorothy (Dodo) Chaplet in the final episode of The Massacre. Despite having a strong
cockney accent in this episode, it is heavily reduced in subsequent episodes to
the “more acceptable” BBC English.
20 May: Mervyn Pinfield
dies aged 54. He was the show’s first associate producer from An Unearthly Child to The Romans, and also directed some
episode of The Sensorites and Planet of Giants, and all of The Space Museum. Mervyn is also
credited as inventing the autocue.
18 June: Peter
Purves leaves the series after playing Steven Taylor since The Chase. His final episode is The Savages 4. Peter would go on to being a long serving host of
the children’s show (and fellow British institution) Blue Peter.
25 June: Michael
Craze and Anneke Wills join the cast as Ben and Polly respectively with the
broadcast of The War Machines 1. A week
later on 2 July, Jackie Lane leaves the series when her contract expires upon
the completion of The War Machines 2.
As such, her character never receives the traditional ‘goodbye’ scene.
29 October and 5 November: The Tenth Planet 4 screens on the BBC, marking the final appearance of William Hartnell as the Doctor. Ill health forced him to retire from the role, and was replaced by Patrick Troughton. This is the first time regeneration is seen on screen. Initially, the Doctor transformation was to have been shrouded in the Doctor's cloak and the change itself happen 'off-screen', but BBC vision mixer Shirley Coward came up with a technique to switch between actors using a dissolve transition, thus creating the first iconic regeneration sequence.
17 December: Frazer
Hines is cast as Jamie and makes his first appearance in The Highlanders 1. His character would stay with the show until the
final episode of Patrick Troughton’s tenure.
1967
09 March: The engineering department routinely wipe master tapes for re-use, and after four years on air the department began erasing Doctor Who episodes. The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Highlanders 1 2 3 4.
11 March: John Barrowman (Cpt Jack Harkness) is born.
15 April: Michael
Craze (Ben) and Anneke Wills (Polly) leave the show during The Faceless Ones 2. They were originally contracted to appear up
until The Evil of the Daleks 2, but
producer Innes Lloyd had grown dissatisfied with their performance as
companions and requested David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke write them out of The Faceless Ones early on. They were
however allowed to appear in a pre-recorded insert in which their characters
elect to stay in then-present day London, during the broadcast of The Faceless Ones 6 on 13 May.
27 May: Deborah Watling
makes her first appearance as Victoria Waterfield in The Evil of the Daleks 2.
1 July: BBC2 begins
broadcasting in colour, over two years ahead of BBC1.
17 August: The master tapes
for the following episodes were erased on this date - An Unearthly Child 2 3
4, The Daleks 1 2 3 6 7, The Edge of Destruction 1,
Marco Polo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, The Keys of Marinus 1 2 3 5 6, The
Aztecs 1 2 3 4, The Sensorites 3 4 5, The Reign of
Terror 1 2 3 5 6, The Dalek Invasion of Earth 1 2 4 6, The Rescue
1, The Romans 1 2 3 4, The Web Planet 2 3 4, The
Crusade 2, The Space Museum 1 3 4, The Chase 2 4 6,
The Time Meddler 1 3 4, Galaxy 4 1 2 4, The Myth
Makers 2 3 4, The Daleks Master Plan 1 2 4 5 7 8 9, The
Massacre 1 2 3 4, The Ark 1 2 3 4, The Gunfighters 1.
It should be noted that the erasure of The
Daleks’ Master Plan 7 on this day is generally considered to be the first
episode of Doctor Who to be lost forever. There is no indication this episode
was transferred to 16mm film, or when The
Daleks’ Master Plan was offered for overseas sale the serial was marketed
as an 11-part story.
November
1967: The father of Toby Chamberlain recorded all six episodes of The Ice Warriors off-air during their
original BBC broadcast on a domestic reel-to-reel video recorder at the Birmingham
Dental Hospital. During the holidays that followed, Toby was left to watch the
six episodes while his father worked. Due to the purpose of the video recorder
- making demonstration tapes for students - the tapes were likely wiped days
after Toby viewed them.
1968
17 February:
The Web of Fear 3 airs on BBC1. This instalment marks the first
appearance of Colonel Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, played by Nicholas Courtney.
Courtney previously appeared as Bret Vyon in The Daleks’ Master Plan three years earlier, and Lethbridge-Stewart
would go on to be a regular character during the Pertwee era.
20 April: Deborah
Watling leaves the series at the end of Fury
from the Deep 6, though she appears briefly in a film insert at the start
of The Wheel in Space 1.
27 April: Wendy
Padbury makes her debut as Zoe Heriot in The
Wheel in Space 1.
12 May: Catherine Tate (Donna Noble) is born (birth name Catherine Ford).
28 May: The BBC sent
audition prints of The Ice Warriors 1 2
3 4 5 6 to ZDF in Germany, who decide not to purchase the series.
August: The master tapes
for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Evil of the Daleks
1 2 3 4 5 6.
2 November: The first
episode of The Invasion airs on
BBC1. The story sees the return of Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas
Courtney), last seen in The Web of Fear
and now with the rank of Brigadier, and introduces Corporal Benton (John
Levene).
November: The BBC
Film Library consolidates its resources into a single location at Windmill
Road, closing the branches at Ealing and Lime Grove.
1969
31 January: The master tapes
for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Edge of
Destruction 2, The Keys of Marinus 4, The Sensorites 1 2 6,
The Reign of Terror 4, Planet of Giants 1 2 3, The
Dalek Invasion of Earth 3, The Rescue 2, The Web Planet 1 5 6,
The Crusade 1 4, The Space Museum 2, The Chase 3 5, The
Time Meddler 2, Galaxy 4 3, The Myth Makers 1,
The Daleks Master Plan 3 6 10 11 12.
21 June: The final
episode of The War Games airs, and
thus the last episode of Patrick Troughton’s tenure. This also marked the final
appearance of Wendy Padbury’s character of Zoe, and Frazer Hines’ character of
Jamie (though both would return for the 1983 anniversary episode The Five Doctors). Frazer currently
holds the record for most appearances by a companion on Doctor Who, with 117
episodes under his belt.
17 July: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Daleks 5, The Chase 1, The Abominable Snowmen 4.
17 July: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Daleks 5, The Chase 1, The Abominable Snowmen 4.
20 July: Apollo 11
touches down on the moon, fulfilling American President John F Kennedy’s vision
of landing a man on the moon by 1970. Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin
become the first humans to step foot on another heavenly body. It should be
noted that the Doctor had already visited the moon twice by this stage…
21 July: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Underwater Menace 1 2, The Moonbase 1 2 3 4, The Faceless Ones 1 2 3 4 6, The Ice Warriors 4, The Enemy of the World 2 3 4 5, The Wheel in Space 1 2 3 4 5, The Dominators 1 2 4 5, The Mind Robber 1 2 3 4, The Krotons 2 3 4, The Seeds of Death 1 2 3 6, The Space Pirates 1 3 4 5 6.
22 September: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Underwater Manace 3 4, The Faceless Ones 5, The Evil of the Daleks 7, The Tomb of the Cybermen 1 2 3 4, The Abominable Snowmen 1 2, The Web of Fear 2 4.
25 September: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Abominable Snowmen 3 5 6, The Ice Warriors 1 2 3.
20 October: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Tenth Planet 4, The Ice Warriors 5 6, The Enemy of the World 1, The Web of Fear 1 3 5 6.
21 July: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Underwater Menace 1 2, The Moonbase 1 2 3 4, The Faceless Ones 1 2 3 4 6, The Ice Warriors 4, The Enemy of the World 2 3 4 5, The Wheel in Space 1 2 3 4 5, The Dominators 1 2 4 5, The Mind Robber 1 2 3 4, The Krotons 2 3 4, The Seeds of Death 1 2 3 6, The Space Pirates 1 3 4 5 6.
22 September: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Underwater Manace 3 4, The Faceless Ones 5, The Evil of the Daleks 7, The Tomb of the Cybermen 1 2 3 4, The Abominable Snowmen 1 2, The Web of Fear 2 4.
25 September: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Abominable Snowmen 3 5 6, The Ice Warriors 1 2 3.
20 October: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Tenth Planet 4, The Ice Warriors 5 6, The Enemy of the World 1, The Web of Fear 1 3 5 6.
15 November: BBC1 and
ITV begin broadcasting in colour.
1970
3 January:
Spearhead from Space 1 airs on BBC1. This is the first time the show
screens in colour, and marks the first appearance by Jon Pertwee as the Doctor,
Caroline John as Liz Shaw and Nicholas Courtney reprising his role as Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart.
April 1: The NZBC in
New Zealand conducted an audit of their Harriett St Film Store in Wellington.
Mentioned in the audit were Marco Polo 3
4 5 6 7, The Underwater Menace 1 2 3
4 and The Moonbase 1 2 3 4,
although it should be pointed out that Harriett St was the main location for
the NZBC so all Doctor Who episodes were likely stored here at some stage.
20 June: Caroline
John leaves the series at the conclusion of Inferno. John was pregnant with her first child and wanted to
depart the show, but at the same time producer Barry Letts felt the character
of Liz Shaw wasn’t working as a companion, and wasn’t going to renew her
contract anyway. John would return in a cameo role in The Five Doctors.
July: The NZBC in
New Zealand sent their 16mm film copies of The
Faceless Ones 1 2 3 4 5 6 back to BBC London. This story did not air in New
Zealand and the BBC likely requested it be returned for resale, knowing the
films hadn’t been attacked by the censor’s knife. It is possible that The Ice Warriors and Fury from the Deep – two stories which
also didn’t screen in New Zealand – were also sent back to London.
1971
2 January: The first
episode of Terror of the Autons airs
on BBC1. This marks the first appearance of Jo Grant (Katy Manning), Mike Yates
(Richard Franklin) and The Master (Roger Delgado).
18 April: David
Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) is born.
20 May: The master tapes
for the following episodes were erased on this date - The Pilot Episode,
An Unearthly Child 1, The Invasion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8,
The War Games 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.
June 18: The NZBC in
New Zealand destroy their 16mm film copies of The Reign of Terror 1 2 3 4 5 6.
1972
This year, BBC Enterprises at Villiers House began
systematically junking the film copies of Hartnell & Troughton episodes
which were deemed no longer viable for overseas sales. Stories which were
junked this year included Marco Polo, The Reign of Terror, The
Crusade and The Myth Makers.
10 January: The NZBC in
New Zealand sends a large shipment of films to RTS in Singapore, including many
missing episodes. The batch consisted of The
Savages 1 2 3 4, The Smugglers 1 2 3
4, The Tenth Planet 1 2 3 4 and The Power of the Daleks 1 2 3 4 5 6. In
the case of the latter two stories this was the final known broadcast
destination.
20 September: The NZBC in New
Zealand sends a further shipment of films to RTS in Singapore, consisting of -
amongst others - Galaxy 4 1 2 3 4, The Myth Makers 1 2 3 4, The Massacre 1 2 3 4 and The Celestial Toymaker 1 2 3 4.
30 December
1972 – 20 January 1973: The four-part story The Three Doctors airs on BBC1, marking the start of the tenth
season and thus the tenth anniversary of the show. William Hartnell and Patrick
Troughton reprise their roles as the First and Second Doctor respectively,
though William Hartnell is too ill to perform as needed, and thus his role is
reduced to reading cue cards to camera (explained as his character is ‘trapped
in a time eddy’). The serial is very successful, with the final episode almost
reaching 12 million viewers. This would be Hartnell’s final acting role before
his death in 1975.
1973
BBC Enterprises at Villier's House junk the prints
for The Celestial Toymaker and The Savages.
31 March:
Frontier in Space 6 airs on BBC1. This would mark the final appearance
of Roger Delgado as The Master, who was killed three months later in a car
accident.
18 June: Roger
Delgado was driving in a car whilst filming Bell
of Tibet in Turkey when it left the road and crashed down a ravine. Delgado
and two technicians were killed in the accident. Jon Pertwee has said this was
an influencing factor which would ultimately lead him to leaving the show.
Delgado played the first televised role of The Master from Terror of the Autons to Frontier
in Space. His planned final appeared was in a script called The Final Game, which would also see
the Doctor regenerate. The story was scrapped following Delgado’s death. He was
55, and Bell of Tibet was never
finished. (See the entry for 11
February, 2015 for more details).
5 November: Long
running BBC series Blue Peter airs a special episode dedicated to Doctor Who’s
tenth anniversary. The show featured several clips, including the regeneration
scene from the end of The Tenth Planet 4.
This gives rise to the biggest fan myth surround missing episodes; that Blue
Peter had and then lost the Film Library’s copy of The Tenth Planet 4. Given the 405-line quad tape was wiped in 1969
and the show was still being offered for overseas sales the following year, and
that the Film Library never actually had a copy of the episode to begin with,
the story is ultimately false.
1974
BBC Enterprises at Villiers House continues to junk
their collection of film prints. Stories junked this year include Mission to
the Unknown, The Daleks Master Plan, The Massacre, The War
Machines, The Smugglers, The Tenth Planet, The Power of
the Daleks, The Highlanders, The Underwater Menace, The
Moonbase, The Macra Terror, The Faceless Ones, The Evil of
the Daleks, The Abominable Snowmen, The Ice Warriors, The
Web of Fear, Fury from the Deep, The Wheel in Space, The
Invasion and The Space Pirates.
March: The master tapes
for the following episodes were erased on this date - The War Machines 1 2 3
4, The Macra Terror 1 2 3 4.
8 June:
Planet of the Spiders 6 airs on BBC1, revealing the regeneration of Jon
Pertwee into Tom Baker. It also marked the final appearance of Mike Yates
(Richard Franklin), though he would briefly appear in The Five Doctors.
June 27: The NZBC in
New Zealand destroy their 16mm film copies of The Macra Terror 1 2 3 4.
July: The master tape for the following episode was erased on this date - Mission to the Unknown.
Late 1974: The master tapes for the following episodes were erased on this date - Fury from the Deep 1 2 3 4 5 6. The master tapes from Fury from the Deep would be the last known video tape erasure for the sixties. Of the episodes where the fate isn't recorded: Planet of Giants 4 (the original studio recording tape) The Crusade 3, The Celestial Toymaker 1 2 3 4, The Gunfighters 2 3 4, The Savages 1 2 3 4, The Smugglers 1 2 3 4, The Tenth Planet 1 2 3, The Power of the Daleks 1 2 3 4 5, The Enemy of the World 6 and The Seeds of Death 4. Of the episodes where a master tape doesn't exist due to the episode originating on 35mm film: The Daleks 4, The Dalek Invasion of Earth 5, The Power of the Daleks 6, The Wheel in Space 6, The Dominators 3, The Mind Robber 5, The Krotons 1, The Seeds of Death 5, The Space Pirates 2.
Mid-late
1974: The NZBC in New Zealand shut down their Harriett St Film Store in a bid
to move their facilities to a central location at Avalon Studios in Lower Hutt,
north of Wellington. Crucial films and videotapes are removed but the rest are
scheduled for junking. Harriett Street is the last known location for many
Doctor Who stories that aired in New Zealand, some of which appeared on an
audit taken four years earlier. It was during this shut down that the 16mm film
print of The Crusade 1 would be
rescued from the rubbish dump and find its way into the hands of Bruce
Grenville in 1998.
Late 1974
(or early 1975): New Zealand fan Neil Lambess, who 25 years later
would be instrumental in the return of The
Crusade 1, recalls watching a pair of Doctor Who episodes at school,
episodes which would later be classed as missing. According to the story, Neil
attended Harley Street School in Masterton, when a joint summer sports day with
Fernridge School was rained off. In order to occupy the kids for at least an
hour before the busses would arrive to pick them up, teachers organised the
screening of a handful of Doctor Who episodes on 16mm film in a school hall.
Neil recalls he watched two episodes of The
Macra Terror, before the busses arrived and took the kids home. It is
possible the episodes were still screening when Neil was forced to leave to
catch his bus, implying more than two episodes could have screened that day.
Neil believes this event took place at the end of the year or at the start of
1975 as it was an athletics meet and would likely have taken place in the New Zealand
summer. If Neil’s recollection is true, this event took place after the wiping of the NZBC’s copy of The Macra Terror, which took place on
27 June, 1974. Similarly, Neil recalls a conversation with a TVNZ employee who
recalls seeing a few Dr Who episodes at Avalon in the late 1970s, and
specifically recalls seeing an episode of The
Highlanders. In 2013, English based fan David Crichton began investigating The Macra Terror incident and was able
to contact several dozen students from both schools. His story even made the
headlines of the Waiararapa news. His efforts into finding out more about this
story and the possible fate of the film prints are on-going at time of writing
this page.
1975
23 April: William
Hartnell dies in his sleep from heart failure. Hartnell played the first
incarnation of the Doctor from An
Unearthly Child to The Tenth Planet,
reprising his role for The Three Doctors
(though ill health restricted him to sitting reading cue cards to camera). He
had suffered from arteriosclerosis which eventually
led to him retiring from the show. In late 1974 he was permanently admitted to
hospital, and then in early 1975 suffered a series of strokes. William Hartnell
was 67 years old.
June 4: BBC London
received a shipment of films from the ABC in Australia. The batch consisted of The Space Museum 1 2 3 4, The Chase 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Time Meddler 1 2 3 4, Galaxy 4 1 2 3 4, The Myth Makers 1 2 3 4, The
Ark 1 2 3 4, The Smugglers 1 2 3 4,
The Tenth Planet 1 2 3 4, The Power of the Daleks 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Underwater Menace 1 2 3 4, The Moonbase 1 2 3 4, The Faceless Ones 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Evil of the Daleks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, The Tomb of the Cybermen 1 2 3 4, The Abominable Snowmen 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Ice Warriors 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Enemy of the World 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Web of Fear 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Dominators 1 2 3 4 5, The Mind Robber 1 2 3 4 5, The Invasion 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, The Seeds of Death 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Space Pirates 1 2 3 4 5 6, The War Games 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. It
is often believed that many orphaned episodes recovered over the years – such
as Galaxy 4 3, The Underwater Menace 2, The
Faceless Ones 3, The Evil of the
Daleks 2, The Web of Fear 1, The Dominators 5 etc – stem from this
shipment, which could’ve gone ‘walkies’ when scheduled for destruction. It is
interesting to note that a copy of The
Chase 1 and an edited copy of The
Faceless Ones 1 were both found to exist in Australia in the late-1970s,
despite being sent back to BBC London – either they never made it back or the
ABC made copies.
6 December: Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith) is born.
1976
The Krotons
1 2 3 4 are returned to BBC London from the ABC in Australia.
22 February: Peter R
Newman dies after suffering a brain haemorrhage sustained from a fall at the
Tate Gallery, from where he was working at the time. Newman wrote The Sensorites during the first season
of Doctor Who.
BBC Enterprises at Villiers House junks their
prints of Galaxy 4.
November: In
readiness for a planned documentary for the Lively Arts series, a BBC
production team drew up a list of surviving episodes within the BBC to source
clips from. The list included An
Unearthly Child 1 2 3 4, The Dalek
Invasion of Earth 5, The Crusade 3,
The Chase 1, Galaxy 4 2, The Daleks
Master Plan 4, The Gunfighters 4,
The Faceless Ones 1, The Enemy of the World 3, The Wheel in Space 6, The Dominators 3, The Mind Robber 5, The
Krotons 1, The Seeds of Death 5
and The Space Pirates 2, plus colour
prints of all four episodes of Spearhead
from Space. The list contained a few errors, some films listed as 35mm when
only 16mm existed, the Galaxy 4
episode wasn’t in the library, etc. Had this list been correct, it indicated
less than 20 episodes from the 1960s survived in the Library at the time.
Late 1976: 16mm film copies
of The Massacre 1 2 3 4, The Celestial Toymaker 1 2 3 4, The War Machines 1 2 3 4, The Highlanders 1 2 3 4, The Macra Terror 1 2 3 4, Fury from the Deep 1 2 3 4 5 6 and The Wheel in Space 1 2 3 4 5 6 are all
junked by the ABC in Australia.
1977
3 April: The Lively Arts series screens a special instalment entitled Whose Doctor Who, the first proper
documentary about the series, and included clips and behinds the scenes media
from the show's previous 14 years. Clips used in the show included footage from
An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth,
The Web Planet, The Space Museum, Galaxy 4, The Mind
Robber, The Invasion and The Seeds of Death, plus various
clips from Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee stories, though for the latter, many of
his clips required 16mm black and white film as the colour master tapes had
already been wiped. The show ran for 50 minutes and was later released on The Talons of Weng-Chiang DVD as an extra.
28 April: Anthony Coburn dies of a heart attack aged 49. Coburn wrote the first
serial An Unearthly Child back in 1963. Another of his scripts, The
Masters of Luxor, was delayed and ultimately abandoned by the production
team. Because of this, Coburn opted not to write for the show again.
Mid-1977: Long-time fan Ian
Levine purchases all six episodes of Frontier
in Space from the BBC in the first ever private sale to an individual. The
episodes were transferred onto U-Matic tape and cost a rather hefty £3000. He
wishes to acquire material from the 1960s but is told at the time that rules
prevent them from selling episodes older than seven years.
As interest in
private sales of old material begins to grow, the BBC conducted another audit
of their holdings at the Film Library. A slightly healthier number of 47
surviving episodes were found to exist: An Unearthly Child
1 2 3 4, The Keys of Marinus 5, The Romans 1 3, The Web Planet
2, The Crusade 3, The Space Museum 3, The
Time Meddler 2, The Ark 3, The Gunfighters 4, The
Tenth Planet 1 2 3, The Underwater Menace 3, The Moonbase
2 4, The Faceless Ones 1, The Enemy of the World 3,
The Dominators 1 2 4 5, The Invasion 2 3 5 6 7 8, The
Krotons 2 3, The Seeds of Death 1 2 4 6 & The War
Games 2 5 8 9. The prints for The Dominators 4 & 5
were edited. It has long been believed that the print for The Invasion 6
was edited also, but this appears to be just a rumour. Also recovered were the
35mm prints of The Dalek Invasion of Earth 5, The Wheel in Space 6,
The Dominators 3, The Mind Robber
5, The Krotons 1, The Seeds of Death 5 & The Space
Pirates 2. Also found were the 16mm colour prints of Spearhead
from Space 1 2 3 4. This left 206 episodes from the first six years
missing.
Late-1977: Ian Levine is finally
granted permission to purchase material from the 1960s from the Film Library.
He is given special compensation by the Writer’s Guild and Equity, and begins
acquiring the 47 episodes that existed at Windmill Road. It was during this
time that he and John Bridger (from the Film Sales Department) discovered a
copy of An Unearthly Child with a
different running time. Upon viewing it they discovered they had found the
original pilot episode, complete with bloopers, dialogue errors and 3
different takes of the second half of the episode.
1978
21 January: Geoffrey
Orme passes away aged 73. Orme wrote The
Underwater Menace in 1967.
In a bid to end the process of junking material and
capitalise on the growing domestic market, the BBC decide to merge the Film
Library, which had existed since 1948, and the engineering department which was
responsible for the videotape side of production, and create the Film and
Videotape Library. Sue Malden is appointed the Library’s first archive selector,
and to get a handle on how television shows may have survived within the BBC
she chose Doctor Who as her pet project. With the 47 films from the Film
Library already accounted for (see 1977 entry above), Sue turned her attention
to surviving videotape masters. There were no 2" quad master tapes from the 1960s were left in
existence (that is to say, none with Doctor Who on them; the master tape for The
Enemy of the World 3 for example still exists but with another programme
recorded over it). The complete list included The Ambassadors of Death 1, The Claws of Axos 1 4, The Daemons 4, Day of the Daleks 1 2 3 4, The
Sea Devils 4 5 6, The Mutants
3 4 5 6, The Three Doctors
1 2 3 4, Carnival of Monsters
1 2 3 4, Frontier in Space 4 5, Planet of the Daleks 1 2 4 5 6, The Green Death 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Time Warrior 1 2 3 4, Invasion of the Dinosaurs
2 3 4 5 6, Death to the Daleks 2 3 4, The Monster of Peladon 1 2 3 4 5 6 and Planet of the
Spiders 1 2 3 4 5 6.
Once the restrictions for purchasing old Doctor Who
episodes had been lifted, Ian Levine followed up on a rumour that more Dr Who
episodes existed elsewhere, and organised a trip down to the film vault at
Villiers House in London, where BBC Enterprises kept all their footage for
overseas sales. What Ian found was a staggering 79 episodes, most of which
didn't exist in the newly formed Film & Videotape Library. Ian's quick
reactions saved these film prints from destruction, as, according to the story,
they were sitting there just waiting to be junked. Ian had located An
Unearthly Child 1 2 3 4, The Daleks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, The
Edge of Destruction 1 2, The Keys of Marinus 1 2 3 4 5 6,
The Aztecs 1 2 3 4, The Sensorites 1 2 3 4 5 6, Planet
of Giants 1 2 3, The Dalek Invasion of Earth 1 2 3 4 5 6, The
Rescue 1 2, The Romans 1 2 3 4, The Web Planet 1 2
3 4 5 6, The Space Museum 1 2 3 4, The Chase 1 2 3 4 5 6, The
Ark 1 2 3 4, The Gunfighters 1 2 3 4, The Mind Robber 1 2 3 4 5
& The Seeds of Death 1 2 3 4 5 6.
Sue Malden pressed further and managed to find
every single story for Jon Pertwee's first four seasons, albeit as 16mm
monochrome film recordings. The discovery included Spearhead from Space 1 2
3 4, The Silurians 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, The Ambassadors of Death 1
2 3 4 5 6 7, Inferno 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, Terror of the Autons 1
2 3 4, The Mind of Evil 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Claws of Axos 1 2 3 4,
Colony in Space 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Daemons 1 2 3 4 5,
Day of the Daleks 1 2 3 4, The Curse of Peladon 1 2 3 4, The
Sea Devils 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Mutants 1 2 3 4 5 6, The Time Monster
1 2 3 4 5 6 (episode 6 would
later become redundant after a PAL – albeit black & white – 2” quadraplex
tape was found in 1987), The Three Doctors 1 2 3 4, Carnival of
Monsters 1 2 3 4, Frontier in Space 1 2 3 4 5 6, Planet of the
Daleks 1 2 3 4 5 6 and The Green Death 1 2 3 4 5 6. This left just
two episodes, Death to the Daleks 1 and Invasion of the
Dinosaurs 1, still missing from Jon Pertwee's era.
During the junking period, some Production Teams
(people responsible for specific shows) would gift some of their material to
The British Film Institute for preservation, mainly as an example of genre. Sue
Malden contacted the BFI and they promptly returned 3 complete Troughton
stories from Season Six; The Dominators 1 2 4 5, The Krotons 1
2 3 4 & The War Games 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.
A check of a stack of film cans recently returned
from Hong Kong lead to Sue Malden finding The Web of Fear 1. However new research into this may
indicate the film was actually from the batch of films returned from Australia
three years earlier. The film was likely sitting with a batch from Hong Kong
and but had been at the BBC for some time.
Ian Levine, who had recovered almost the entire
first two seasons a few months earlier, came into contact with a film collector
in Australia called David Gee. David had in his possession The War Machines 2. After negotiations, he was able to
convince David to return his film to the BBC, where a copy was made. This film
clearly survived the purge at the ABC two years earlier.
Upon checking the material used in the Whose Doctor Who documentary from 1977
– and material that hadn't been used – Sue Malden found a short clip from an
episode that didn't exist; 30 seconds from Galaxy 4 1.
The last discovery of 1978 came in the form of Film
Inserts from The Abominable Snowmen 2 & The Daleks Master Plan
2. They were recorded on either 16mm or 35mm film, and would be added to
the final episode during studio filming. Despite being archived, this footage
wasn't deemed important at the time.
30 October:
Brian Hayles, author of stories The
Celestial Toymaker, The Smugglers,
The Ice Warriors (and thus creator
of the Ice Warriors), The Seeds of Death,
The Curse of Peladon and The Monster of Peladon, dies aged 47.
Despite the junking officially ending in
1978, returned material was junked as late as 1981, partially due to the new
directive not being passed down to all departments, but mainly due to an
individual who blatantly ignored the rules at the time. This individual was
eventually reprimanded, but not before junking more returned material – including
Doctor Who films – recently returned from overseas. It is not known if the
material junked between 1978 and 1981 by this man is currently missing from the
archives. Paul Vanezis mentions these events in this post on the Missing Episodes
forum.
Still
missing at the end of 1978: 136 - 60 Hartnell / 75 Troughton / 2 Pertwee
1979
20 March: Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones) is born.
6 July: Writer Malcolm Hulke passes away at the age of 54. His writing credits
included The Faceless Ones, The War Games, The Silurians, The
Ambassadors of Death, Colony in Space, The Sea Devils, Frontier
in Space and Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
After searching the Film Library and BBC
Enterprises, Sue Malden turned her attentions to overseas sales. Up until a few
years earlier, the BBC would 'telerecord' episodes to 16mm films for overseas
sales. Towards the middle of the 1970s however, overseas broadcasters would now
be sent standards converted episodes (that is to say, the "British"
PAL video system converted to the "American" NTSC system) on the same
tape format as used by the BBC, namely 2" Quadraplex tape. One of the
first episodes to be returned came from Canada, an episode from Jon Pertwee's
final season and one of the two missing from his era; Death to the Daleks 1.
This left Invasion of the Dinosaurs 1 as the only outstanding episode
from Pertwee's tenure. Also recovered in 1979 were The Claws of Axos 1 2 3 (episode 1 redundant), The Curse of Peladon 1 2 3 4
(episode 3 no longer exists in this format), The Mutants 1 2 3 4 5 6
(episodes 3-6 redundant) and The Time Monster 1 2 3 4 5 6
from TVO, Ontario and Colony in Space 1 2 3 4 5 6 from CKVU,
Vancouver, all from Canada.
Still
missing at the end of 1979: 136 - 60 Hartnell / 75 Troughton / 1 Pertwee
1980
4 February: David Whitaker, the show’s first
script editor (credited as story editor), dies aged 51 from cancer. David’s
tenure lasted from An Unearthly Child
to The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
David also wrote a handful of stories for the show, namely The Edge of Destruction, The
Rescue, The Crusade, The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, The Enemy of the World, The Wheel in Space and The Ambassadors of Death, although the
latter was heavily rewritten by Terrence Dicks, Malcolm Hulke and Trevor Ray.
David also penned The Curse of the
Daleks stage play and several novelisations, including the first Dalek
serial.
Peter
Brachacki dies aged 54. Brachacki was the show’s first designer, and famously
designed the console room of the Tardis. He was however unhappy with working on
the show, and conversely director Waris Hussein wasn’t happy with Brachacki’s
work. His time on the show only lasted the first episode, after which he was
replaced with Barry Newbery.
Still
missing at the end of 1980: 136 - 60 Hartnell / 75 Troughton / 1 Pertwee
1981
21 February: Ron Grainer passes away after a short battle with
cancer at the age of 58. Ron composed the original theme tune for Doctor Who in
1963. He was born in Queensland, Australia and was taught piano by his mother
at the age of four. His other credits include Steptoe and Son, That Was
The Week That Was and The Prisoner.
21 March: The final episode of Logopolis airs on BBC1, ending with the
regeneration of Tom Baker. Baker’s time as the Doctor is the longest by any
actor to play the role (172 episodes over 7 seasons), and is replaced by Peter
Davison.
27 May: Dr Kit Pedler dies of
a heart attack. Pedler was a scientist and parapsychologist, and became Doctor
Who's unofficial scientific advisor during the 1960s. Pedler wrote three
scripts for the show; The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase and The
Tomb of the Cybermen (Tenth Planet and Tomb co-written
with Gerry Davis). Pedler and Davis also created the BBC series Doomwatch. Kit
Pedler was 53 years old.
Still
missing at the end of 1981: 136 - 60 Hartnell / 75 Troughton / 1 Pertwee
1982
February: BBC employee
Roger Stevens purchased a batch of seven episodes from a film collector.
Amongst these films was a 16mm print of The Abominable Snowmen 2. The print was passed to Ian Levine
who returned it to the BBC. Two additional prints in the collection, The
Space Museum 1 and The Moonbase 4, were redundant yet higher in
quality to the existing BBC versions.
May: A Dr Who fan
learned The Reign of Terror 6 was being sold at a film fair. With Ian
Levine's help he managed to negotiate with the seller, and the film was
successfully returned to the BBC.
17 June: Jodie Whittaker (the 13th Doctor) is born. Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams) is born.
22 September: Billie Piper (Rose Tyler) is born.
28 October: Matt Smith (the
Eleventh Doctor) is born.
19 December: Elwyn Jones dies aged 58. As well as writing The Highlanders for
Doctor Who, Jones also co-created Z-Cars and the spin-off Softly, Softly.
A third hand report indicating a “friend of a
friend’s uncle” who had visited Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1982 (or 1983) saw an
episode of The Savages on
television. This would not only indicate an illegal broadcast (screening the
episode after the rights had expired) but also the existence of a missing
episode in a foreign country. However the description of the episode – which
was made public a quarter of a century after the event – could also refer to an
episode of The Monster of Peladon,
which also screened in the country a couple of years earlier. This has never
been properly verified, though paperwork released in 2012 indicated The Savages, along with several other
Doctor Who episodes, were lost in the civil war which ripped the country in
1999-2002, when the old SLTV building was overrun by rebels and the film store
housing much of the country’s archives was destroyed. However, archivist Philip
Morris ventured into Sierra Leone in 2014 and discovered paperwork indicating The Savages was indeed sent back to the
BBC in 1974, and thus the third hand report must refer to the Jon Pertwee
story.
Still
missing at the end of 1982: 134 - 59 Hartnell /
74 Troughton / 1 Pertwee
1983
March: Fan David Stead
found a 16mm film print of The Wheel in Space 3. Stead bought the print from a film collector for £15, and
planned to give it back to the BBC in November of that year. However illness
and other factors prevented the BBC from receiving the print until the
following year, finally obtaining it in April 1984. David retained the
print until 2004 when he sold it to Francis Niemcyyk.
June: Ian Levine
returned a copy of the final missing episode of Jon Pertwee's era to the BBC, Invasion
of the Dinosaurs 1. Ian had acquired the print from Roger Stevens the
previous year in the batch of seven prints, yet elected to retain the print for
future bargaining material.
September: Gareth Morris,
the assistant head of the Film & Videotape Library, took a call from a
Mormon parish who were about to move into a building previously occupied by the
BBC. They advised Gareth that a handful of film cans had been found in a
basement area and asked if the BBC like them back. Gareth advised them to
return the film cans to Steve Bryant (Sue Malden's successor to the role of
Archive Selector) and promptly did so. Steve discovered the small collection
included The Daleks' Master Plan 5 & 10. There was
also an episode of a show called Warship and another called Adventure World.
ABC Australia contacted the BBC after discovering
PAL master tapes from a serial from Jon Pertwee's tenth season. They promptly
returned Frontier in Space 1 2 3 4 5 6. Episodes 4 & 5
were redundant as they were already held at the FVTL.
Canada would come to the party again with the
return of The Sea Devils 1 2 3 4 5
6; although episodes 4 & 6 were
redundant, episode 5 was needed as the PAL master was discovered to be
damaged (although thanks to the Restoration Team the damaged PAL version was
restored to broadcast quality).
25 November: BBC1
screens the anniversary special of The
Five Doctors. The one-off special saw the return of Patrick Troughton, Jon
Pertwee, Nicholas Courtney, Carole Ann Ford, Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury,
Caroline John, Richard Franklin, Elisabeth Sladen and John Leeson. William
Hartnell has passed away eight years earlier, and was replaced by William
Hurndell. Tom Baker chose not to appear in the special, and so footage from the
unfinished serial Shada (which included Lalla Ward) was used instead. The special was broadcast on the 25th
of November, which was a Friday, but was broadcast in America two days earlier
on the actual anniversary, one of only two times an episode of Doctor Who has
premiered outside of the UK.
Still
missing at the end of 1983: 130 - 57 Hartnell /
73 Troughton / 0 Pertwee - all of Jon Pertwee’s episodes are now recovered
1984
27 January:
Director Douglas Camfield suffers a heart attack and dies, aged 52. Douglas
directed several stories including Planet
of Giants (Ep3 only), The Crusade,
The Time Meddler, The Daleks’ Master Plan, The Web of Fear, The Invasion, Inferno, Terror of the Zygons and The Seeds of Doom. He also submitted a
script during the Philip Hinchcliffe era about the French Foreign Legion but
the script was rejected.
February: During a routine
examination of its film archive, the Australian TV broadcaster ABC discovered a
16mm print of The Celestial Toymaker 4. The ABC have documentation
listing the story as being junked in late 1976. When the film was returned to
the BBC, it was discovered that the ‘Next Episode’ caption had been edited from
it.
16 March: Almost
three years to the day since taking the role, Peter Davison bows out as the
Doctor, being replaced by Colin Baker in The
Caves of Androzani 4. Colin had previously guest starred in Arc of Infinity the previous year.
Two complete stories, The Time Meddler 1
2 3 4 and The War Machines 1 2 3 4 were returned from Nigeria with
thanks once again to Ian Levine, although most of the episodes were edited; The Time Meddler 1 was missing the
first couple of minutes set in the Tardis.
Still
missing at the end of 1984: 123 - 50 Hartnell /
73 Troughton
1985
16 February
– 2 March: The Two Doctors airs on BBC1. The serial sees Patrick Troughton
reprise his role as the Second Doctor for the third and final time since
leaving the show in 1969. Frazer Hines also stars as Jamie McCrimmon, and the
character of Chessene is played by Jacqueline Pearce (Servalan from Blake’s 7).
Future Restoration Team stalwart Paul Vanezis,
undertaking a personal search in Cyprus, found 16mm film prints of The Reign
of Terror 1 2 3 and a redundant copy of episode 6 on 16mm film. It
is generally considered that the missing two episodes of this story, parts 4
& 5, were lost in the Cyprus civil war in 1974, 11 years earlier,
when an attack destroyed one of their film archives. The films were Suppressed
Field recordings; the existing BBC print of episode 6 was a Stored Field
copy and thus superior to this version. Ian Levine was conducting his own
search at the time and also found the episodes, alerting the BBC who contacted
CBC who returned the episodes.
A couple of months later, the same collector who
returned The Reign of Terror 6 in 1982 also returned another copy of The
Reign of Terror 3. This was a Stored Field version (which wasn't actually
discovered until the BBC borrowed the film again to make a new transfer, this
time in 1994) and was thus superior to the Cyprus print, although the Cyprus
version is considered a better quality film. This is currently the last
recovery of any on-screen video footage from Season One.
The Web Planet 1 2 3 4 5 6 were
returned from Nigerian Television on 16mm film. These were mainly redundant,
having been recovered previously by Ian Levine in 1978. However episode's 1 & 6 were edited on the existing copies, so this finally made the
story complete.
TV Ontario in Canada contacted the BBC to announce
they had uncovered a complete 7-part doctor who story in their archives. This
lead to a rumour that The Evil of the Daleks had been recovered. When
further information released that it was a colour story the rumour was extended
and many believed The Evil of the Daleks had been found in colour! The
find turned out to be the classic season seven serial Inferno. The NTSC
2" quad tapes of Inferno 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 were returned to the BBC,
whereas before they only existed as black & white film recordings.
16mm copies of all six episodes of The Sea
Devils were found on an air force base in the Ascension Islands. As the BBC
already had copies of this story on both 16mm film and 2" NTSC quad tape,
these films were ultimately not returned to the FVTL.
Still
missing at the end of 1985: 120 - 47 Hartnell / 73 Troughton
1986
27 April: Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara Oswald) is born.
24 May: Robert
Holmes dies aged 60. Robert was a key writer for the classic series, beginning
with The Krotons in Season 6 and
wrote his final story in Season 23 (he was supposed to write the last two
episodes of The Trial of a Time Lord
but died whilst writing Part 13, which was finished by Eric Saward, and the
duties for Part 14 were taken over by Pip and Jane Baker). Robert wrote
numerous stories for Doctor Who over the years, including Spearhead from Space, Pyramids
of Mars, The Deadly Assassin, The Talons of Weng-Chiang and The Caves of Androzani. He also served
as script editor for Seasons 12 to 14, and is responsible for creating the
Autons and Sontarans.
20 September:
Dennis Spooner suffers a fatal heart attack and dies aged 53. Dennis was the
show’s second script editor, from The
Rescue to The Chase. Dennis also
wrote The Romans, The Time Meddler, six of the twelve
episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan
and helped with the characterization for the Patrick Troughton’s incoming
Doctor in The Power of the Daleks.
28 October: Ian Marter
dies on his 42nd birthday from a heart attack due to complications
brought on by his diabetes. Ian played Harry Sullivan from Robot through to Terror of
the Zygons, with a guest appearance in The
Android Invasion. Ian had originally auditioned for the role of Mike Yates
under Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, but was forced to turn it down. He also penned
several Doctor Who novels, two of which were published after his death.
6 December:
The Trial of a Time Lord 14 airs. This would prove to be the final appearance
by Colin Baker, as he was forcibly replaced by BBC management and producer John
Nathan-Turner forced to hire a replacement for Season 24. Baker would return
on-screen for the charity episode Dimensions
in Time in 1993.
Still
missing at the end of 1986: 120 - 47 Hartnell / 73 Troughton
1987
28 March: Patrick
Troughton was attending a convention in Columbus, Georgia, when he suffered a
heart attack. Troughton had played the second incarnation of the Doctor from The Power of the Daleks through to The War Games, and reprised his role
three times in The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors and most recently The Two Doctors just two years earlier. Troughton was a heavy drinker
and smoker, and had suffered two previous heart attacks in the past. He spoke
at the convention on the 27th (the final recorded footage of
Troughton can be found here) and then
on the morning of the 28th had just ordered breakfast when the final
heart attack took place. Despite paramedics being called, Patrick Troughton
died on the scene, three days after his 67th birthday.
18 April: Richard
Landen reveals his reconstruction of The
Power of the Daleks 2 to convention goers at Telly Con in Birmingham.
Richard is credited with the first reconstruction of a missing episode. He
would later release a revised version in 1990.
7 September: Sylvester
McCoy makes his first appearance as the Doctor in Time and the Rani 1. Despite being offered the chance to film a
regeneration sequence, Colin Baker refused to return.
28 November: Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) is born.
Newbie film collector Gordon Hendry bought The
Faceless Ones 3 and The Evil of the Daleks 2 from a film fair in Buckingham in 1982. Three years later, a cinema owner
tried to screen both films at his cinema in Brighton, and Saied Marham, an
associate of Gordon, tried to get Doctor Who fans interested at that years’
Panopticon convention. After being branded a hoax, the films went into hiding,
with Paul Vanezis spending the next 15 months trying to convince Saied to
return the prints. A tribute was to be organised for the recently deceased
Patrick Troughton at TellyCon, on April 18. After a tense wait and uncertainty
if Saied would provide an episode, The Faceless Ones 3 arrived in time
for the convention. The weeks that followed saw Saied and Gordon obtain films
from shows like Doomwatch, Out of the Unknown and Doctor Who from Ian Levine,
who in return was able to make his own duplicate prints. Gordon then handed
both films to Steve Bryant at Windmill Road, where duplicates were made.
A black and white 2” Quad tape of The Time Monster 6 was discovered at
the BBC. While a similarly monochrome telerecording already existed of the
episode, this would give the Restoration Team a much cleaner signal when trying
to restore the episode to colour.
Still
missing at the end of 1987: 118 - 47 Hartnell /
71 Troughton
1988
During a clear out of Villiers House in London, a
BBC Enterprises employee was surprised to find a handful of film cans pushed to
the back of a storage cupboard. The cans found were labelled The Ice
Warriors 2 4 5 6 and Fury from the Deep 6. On inspection, The Ice
Warriors 2 was actually The Ice Warriors 1 (the label had all the
correct details for ep 1 except for the instalment number), and the can
labelled Fury from the Deep 6 sadly didn't contain the missing episode.
Still
missing at the end of 1988: 114 - 47 Hartnell / 67 Troughton
1989
12 April: Gerald
Flood dies of a heart attack aged 61. Gerald provided the voice of Kamelion
from The King’s Demons through to Planet of Fire. Kamelion also appeared
in The Awakening, though the scene
was cut for timing reasons; and The
Caves of Androzani as a vision when the Fifth Doctor is regenerating. It’s
possible Kamelion and thus Gerald could have appeared in more serials but the
robot prop had a tendancy to break down often, and the prop’s creator, Mike
Power, died in a boating accident and no one else knew the computer codes to
access it properly.
6 December: The final
episode of Survival airs, which also
marked the final episode of Sylvester McCoy’s era (though he would return seven
years later for the TV Movie) and the final episode of the classic era. This is
also the last appearance of Anthony Ainley who had portrayed the Master since Logopolis.
Still
missing at the end of 1989: 114 - 47 Hartnell / 67 Troughton
1990
New Zealand fan Graham
Howard discovered two film cans labelled Marco Polo 7 and The
Moonbase 3 whilst searching at TVNZ (formerly NZBC) in
Wellington New Zealand, but sadly the contents didn't match the label.
17 August: Graham Williams dies aged 45. Graham succeeded Philip Hinchcliffe as
producer and made the show lighter, with help from script editor Douglas Adams.
It was during his tenure that the show achieved its highest ratings ever; 16.1
million viewers for the final episode of City
of Death. Graham steered the show from Horror
of Fang Rock to The Horns of Nimon.
He wrote large sections of City of Death
and The Invasion of Time, and years
later wrote The Nightmare Fair for Season
23, though the script was shelved after the show went on its 18 month hiatus,
and Graham ultimately wrote the novelisation of it. His cause of death is
listed as a shooting accident at his home in Devon.
Still
missing at the end of 1990: 114 - 47 Hartnell /
67 Troughton
1991
April: Ian Levine
returned unedited copies of The Time Meddler 1 & 3 on 16mm
film just prior to the screening of that story on BBC1. Unfortunately, this act
of generosity created a stir in the fandom; he had kept those episodes, maybe
he had more… Ian Levine has simply retained these complete episodes as a favour
to friends of his, and because they were not his property, he didn’t see fit to
return them himself.
David Stead, who previously had recovered and
returned The Wheel in Space 3 in
1983, was examining a batch of material recently returned from the United Arab
Emirates. In the collection, which was sitting outside in the poor weather, was
a full and unedited version of Death to
the Daleks 1 as a 2” PAL master tape. Previously only a 2” NTSC colour
master and a 1” (but edited) PAL master existed. This discovery allowed the story to be fully restored to its original
format.
2 July: Writer Don Houghton dies. He wrote Inferno and The Mind of
Evil. He was 61 years old.
July: Lime Grove
Studios in West London are closed by the BBC. Lime Grove was the early home of
Doctor Who's production team, especially Studio D, where over 20 serials were
filmed or partially filmed, including the Pilot Episode and An
Unearthly Child. The BBC had been operating Lime Grove since May 1950,
impressive considering the BBC were only supposed to be using the studio as a
"stop gap" measure until Television Centre was built. The studio was
demolished two years later and is now a housing estate.
23 August: Innes Lloyd passes away aged 65. Innes was the show’s third producer
from The Celestial Toymaker through
to The Enemy of the World. Innes was
able to implement a change inhibited by his predecessor John Wiles and replace
William Hartnell with another actor, thus creating the concept of regeneration.
Introduced during Innes tenure were the Cybermen, the Yeti and the Ice
Warriors.
31 August:
Script editor Gerry Davis dies in Venice, California aged 61. He tenure lasted
from The Massacre to The Evil of the Daleks. Gerry also
co-wrote The Tenth Planet and The Tomb of the Cybermen with Dr Kit
Pedler, created the Cybermen and the character of Jamie McCrimmon.
27 October: Paul Erickson, writer of The Ark, dies aged 70.
Late 1991: Hong Kong returns
16mm prints of The Tomb of the Cybermen 1 2 3 4. The story was rush
released onto BBC Video in May 1992, where it became an instant hit.
Around this time the BBC were looking to experiment
on the Jon Pertwee episodes that were original shot in colour but now only
existed as monochrome film recordings. Apart from an experiment with Terror of
the Autons a few years earlier, this would be the first full scale attempt to
colour a black & white story (in this case The Daemons). Ian Levine in the
1970s had contacted an associate, Tom Lundie, who hired a brand new Betamax
recorder and recorded Doctor Who serials off air from broadcasts in the United
States, who at the time still had colour master tapes. Thanks to this, many of
the monochrome serials now had a colour version in existence, albeit as an NTSC
copy on U-matic tape. The BBC's Restoration Team managed to successfully
extract the colour signal from the NTSC copies and match it from the luminance
signal from the monochrome film recordings. Their efforts were impressive, and
allowed for the successful re-colourisation of The Silurians 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, Terror of the Autons 1 2 3 4 and The Daemons 1 2 3 5. The
Ambassadors of Death would prove to be problematic, as colour banding was
present on the NTSC recordings, and as such a complete re-colourisation
couldn't be attempted. Only episode 5 could be successfully coloured, in
addition to around 90 minutes of the rest of the serial - just under half in
total - leaving the rest, including episode 4 entirely, in monochrome. A
colour copy of The Mind of Evil was unfortunately recorded over before
its value was realised, and thus only a small portion of episode 6 remained
in colour.
Still
missing at the end of 1991: 110 - 47 Hartnell /
63 Troughton
1992
3 January: Resistance is Useless airs on BBC2. The 30 minute programme used clips from all 26 seasons of
the classic series, linked by a man dressed in an anorak and was created by the
BBC’s Music and Arts Department.
Still
missing at the end of 1992: 110 - 47 Hartnell /
63 Troughton
1993
18 February: Jacqueline Hill, who played the role of
Barbara Wright from An Unearthly Child to The Chase, and
played the role of Lexa in the Tom Baker story Meglos, dies of cancer
aged 63. Hill was the first companion to appear on
screen, and is notable for speaking the first lines of dialogue for the show.
The British Film Institute hosts the first annual
Missing Believed Wiped event. MBW was organised by Derek Fiddy, and showcases
material that has been lost due to the BBC’s and ITV’s junking procedures, and
have since been found. Then event is also designed to draw awareness of missing
episodes to the general public. The 2011 event showcased the two episodes
returned that year, namely Galaxy 4:
Airlock and The Underwater Menace 3.
May: William Emms
passes away. Emms submitted several scripts during the calssic series, with
only one – Galaxy 4 – being
accepted. Emms also wrote for several series, including Z-Cars and Crossroads.
26/27
November: The charity special Dimensions
in Time airs as part of the annual Children in Need appeal. The two-part
special, running seven and a half minutes and five and a half minutes
respectively, sees the following actors returning: Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor),
Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor), Peter Davison (Fifth Doctor), Colin Baker (Sixth
Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (Seventh Doctor), Carol Ann Ford (Susan), Deborah
Watling (Victoria), Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Richard
Franklin (Captain Yates), Caroline John (Liz Shaw), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah
Jane Smith), Louise Jamison (Leela), John Leeson (voice of K-9), Lalla Ward
(Romana I), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Nicola Bryant (Peri) and Sophie Aldred (Ace).
The story centres around the Rani (Kate O’Mara) attempting to trap all the
Doctor’s incarnations in a time loop, with the First and Second Doctors already
being captured (thus avoiding the need to recast William Hartnell and Patrick
Troughton who had passed away years earlier). The story was notably as it was
the last official appearance of the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee passed away three
years later), and the only pairing of the Sixth Doctor and the Brigadier on
screen. Due to the special being a crossover with the BBC soap opera EastEnders, the
special was partly shot on the Albert Square set, and many characters from that
series appear as well. Part One screened during the live Children in Need
Telethon on the 26 of November (13.8 million viewers) and Part Two as part of
Noel’s House Party the following night (13.6 million viewers). As viewers could
ring in and vote for which EastEnders character saved the Doctor, two versions
of Part Two were shot; one with Mandy Salter (which won), the other featuring
Big Ron (which has never been released). As part of the charity deal, no one
was paid for working on the special, and the special isn’t allowed to be sold for
profit. The special raised over £100,000 for the
charity. This marked the only new dramatized material shot for the series to
mark the show’s 30th anniversary.
29 November: Thirty Years in the TARDIS airs on BBC One. The special ran for 50 minutes and featured numerous
interviews and clips from the past 30 years. The following year, an extended
version running to 90 minutes was released on VHS, entitled More Than 30 Years in the Tardis. In
2013, the extended version was released on DVD in the Legacy Collection box
set.
Still
missing at the end of 1991: 110 - 47 Hartnell /
63 Troughton
1994
11 August: Peter Cushing dies of prostate cancer aged 81. Cushing played the role
of the Doctor (credited as "Dr. Who") in the two Amicus Productions
films, Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks - Invasion Earth:
2150 A.D (1966). The films were based on the tv serials The Daleks
and The Dalek Invasion of Earth respectively. Cushing stated he took the
role to soften public opinion of him, as at the time he was well known for
appearing in horror movies.
2 September: Roy Castle dies of lung cancer. Castle played the role of Ian in the
Amicus Productions adaptation of Dr. Who and the Daleks. He passed away
two days after his 62 birthday.
Researcher Andrew Pixley located an episode of
'Blue Peter' from 1973 and discovered 90 seconds of 16mm footage from The
Daleks' Master Plan 3, as part of research for the More Than Thirty Years
in the TARDIS video release.
20 November: John
Lucarotti dies in Paris aged 68. Lucarotti wrote Marco Polo, The Aztecs, The Massacre and The Ark in Space, although the latter was re-written by Robert
Holmes, and Lucarotti ultimately didn’t receive an onscreen credit.
Still
missing at the end of 1994: 110 - 47 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
1995
A complete copy of The Dominators 5 was
returned to the BBC. It isn’t entirely known where this came from.
March: Richard
Develyn releases his first reconstruction of a missing story, which would begin
a flurry of releases – by him and by others – over the next few decades. The Web of Fear is the first story
released (RD1).
Information
about reconstructions and release dates have been collated and graciously
provided to me by Hugh M. Pearson.
June: Richard
Develyn releases the reconstruction of The
Wheel in Space (RD3).
October: Richard
Develyn releases the reconstruction of The
Ice Warriors (RD4).
Late 1995: RT member Steve
Roberts was enquiring with the ABC about a 20 year old programme that may have
included some clips from missing Doctor Who episodes. The programme, called
Perspective: C for Computer, was rumoured to have footage from The
Power of the Daleks. Acting on information provided to him by Robert
Mammone, who managed to find the original transmission date for the programme
in question, Steve Roberts eventually obtained 16mm film sequences containing 4
clips from The Power of the Daleks 4 & 5.
Still
missing at the end of 1995: 110 - 47 Hartnell /
63 Troughton
1996
A British audio production company by the name of Big Finish Productions is formed. Big Finish began their association with
Doctor Who by producing novel adaptations in 1998, and then a year later moved
into original authorised audio plays. Various actors from the original and new
series appear occasionally. More can be found here.
March: Richard
Develyn releases the reconstruction of Fury
from the Deep (RD2).
12 May: The TV
Movie “Doctor Who” airs in Canada.
Sylvester McCoy reprises his role as the Doctor before regenerating into Paul
McGann. The Master is portrayed by American actor Eric Roberts. Two days later
the movie airs in the US.
20 May: Whilst on
the convention circuit in America, Jon Pertwee suffered a fatal heart attack
and died aged 76. He played the third incarnation of the Doctor from Spearhead from Space through to Planet of the Spiders, and reprised his
role in The Five Doctors. He also
appeared in the non-canon fan film Devious
which he filmed in 1995; twelve minutes of this was released on The War Games DVD, and audio from this
film was used in the Big Finish production of Zagreus made for the show’s 40th
anniversary. On May 2nd he performed in the Isle of Wight as part of
his one-man show, and met several Doctor Who fans afterwards; footage of this is currently the last
known material shot of Jon Pertwee, who died 18 days
later.
27 May: Doctor Who the TV Movie airs in the UK
and attracts 9 million viewers. The broadcast was edited from the original
Canadian version, removing some of the gun battle at the start and footage from
the Seventh Doctor on the operating table to screen a pre-watershed timeslot.
The broadcast also included a tribute to Jon Pertwee who died a week earlier.
August: Change of
Identity release the reconstruction of The
Savages (COI1). In the same month Michael Palmer releases his
reconstruction of The Tenth Planet
(MP1).
September: Michael
Palmer releases his reconstruction of Mission
to the Unknown (MP2).
November: A busy
month for reconstructions; Change of Identity release The Power of the Daleks (COI2) while Richard Develyn releases The Highlanders (RD7) and The Moonbase (RD9).
Late 1996: Damian Shanahan,
an Australian fan, was researching at the ABC in Australia when he discovered a
16mm reel of footage. On the reel was footage from various episodes currently
missing. The footage, totalling roughly 4 minutes, was in fact deletions made
by the censor, and under the contract had to retain the footage to prove it had
been deleted. Details can be found here.
Still
missing at the end of 1996: 110 - 47 Hartnell / 63
Troughton
1997
January: Richard Develyn
releases his reconstruction of The
Smugglers (RD5).
February: Change of
Identity releases their reconstruction of Marco
Polo (COI3) while Richard Develyn releases his reconstruction of The Abominable Snowmen (RD10) and
Harold Achadz releases his first reconstruction, The Daleks Master Plan 1 (HA1).
9 March: Terry
Nation, the man responsible for the first Dalek story and numerous Dalek
adventures since, passes away aged 66. Terry wrote almost all of William
Hartnell’s Dalek stories, sharing writing credit for half of The Daleks Master Plan with Dennis
Spooner. He returned to the show in mid-seventies and created the character of
Davros in Genesis of the Daleks, who
would go on to appear in all remaining Dalek stories of the classic era. As
well as penning mostly Dalek stories, he also wrote The Keys of Marinus and The
Android Invasion. Outside of Doctor Who, Terry worked on Macgyver, Out of
the Unknown, The Saint and The Avengers, as well as creating Survivors and
Blake’s 7.
March: Michael
Palmer releases his reconstruction of The
Reign of Terror (MP3).
July: Change of Identity release their reconstruction of The Moonbase
(COI4) while also releasing an enhanced version of The Savages (COI1).
August: Michael Palmer releases enhanced versions of his three previous
reconstructions.
September: Michael Palmer releases his reconstruction of The Invasion (MP4).
Richard Develyn releases his reconstruction of The Power of the Daleks
(RD6).
6 October: Adrienne Hill
dies of cancer aged 60. She played the short-lived companion Katarina in The Myth Makers and The Daleks’ Master Plan, and is notable
as the first companion to be killed. Her final acting role was on the New
Zealand soap opera City Life; the episode she starred in was broadcast after
her death.
13 October: The
writer for The Savages, The War Machines and The Macra Terror, Ian Stuart Black,
passes away aged 82.
30 October: Sydney
Newman, the man credited as being the creator of Doctor Who, dies of a heart
attack aged 80. In 1986 it was reported Sydney was contacted by BBC Controller
Michael Grade to ask if Sydney had ideas that might revitalise the show.
Despite sending a proposal and offering himself as an executive producer,
nothing came of this.
Still
missing at the end of 1997: 110 - 47 Hartnell / 63
Troughton
1998
October: Steve Cole at BBC
Video took a call from someone who claimed to have tapes of Doctor Who recorded
off-air from the sixties and seventies. Steve Roberts, Mark Ayres and Paul
Vanezis visited the man, who was over 70 years old. They found a handful of
Doctor Who tapes, including a black & white recording of an episode of Carnival
of Monsters and a very early colour recording - possibly the earliest known
- of Frontier in Space 5. Also found was a tape which, they believed,
contained a poor recording of The Space Pirates 3. Upon checking again
however, the tape turned out to contain The Space Pirates 2, which
already existed.
8 December: Michael
Craze, who played Ben Jackson from The
War Machines to The Faceless Ones,
dies aged 56. He had fallen down a set of stairs on December 7, but due to a
pre-existing heart condition he couldn’t be operated on. He died of a heart
attack the following day.
Still
missing at the end of 1998: 110 - 47 Hartnell / 63
Troughton
1999
January: The eight-year
drought of a missing episode find was finally broken when a missing episode
turned up in New Zealand. In mid-1998 film collector Bruce Grenville visited a
film fair in Napier and spotted an otherwise unmarked can labelled ‘Dr Who’. He
bought the print off fellow film collector Larry Duggan for $5. The can
contained The Crusade 1, one of the three missing episodes from Season
Two. Bruce took the film back to Auckland where he listed it on his website for
the entire world to see, yet it was never spotted. Bruce ran Sedang Cinema, a
“mobile picture service” which can provide screenings of films at a client’s
location. During one of these screenings he showed The Crusade 1 to Cornelius Stone, who mentioned it to fan Neil
Lambess. In January 1999, Neil got in touch with Bruce who went round to his
flat, accompanied by Paul Scoones, who runs the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club. Paul
filmed the episode off screen with his video camera as they watched it, and
contacted Steve Roberts of the Restoration Team that evening to break the news.
The film was sent by FedEx to the UK and arrived January 11. After the BBC made
a DigiBeta copy of the film, it was returned to Mr Grenville, after which he
sold it at auction. The full story of the find can be found here. Neil’s own
“ramblings” on the discovery and insights into the days and weeks that followed
can be found here.
5 April: John Wiles
dies age 73. John succeeded Verity Lambert as the show’s producer, running it
from The Myth Makers to The Ark. John clashed with William
Hartnell often, and had many of his planned changes, such as a companion with a
cockney accent (Dodo) and forcing the change of the lead actor, vetoed by his
superiors, leading to his eventual resignation.
July: The first
issue of Nothing at the End of the Lane
is released, edited by Richard Bignell, Robert Franks and Bruce Robinson. The
magazine is dedicated to the “research and restoration” of Doctor Who. Issue 1
features a look at the 1960s by Stephen James Walker, filming locations by
Richard Bignell, reconstructions by Bruce Robinson, William Hartnell’s archive
status by Robert Franks and Matt Dale, plus many more. The issue is now out of
print however it can still be sourced via an ‘omnibus’ edition released with
issue 2.
28 December: Donald Cotton dies aged 71. Cotton wrote two stories for season three, The
Myth Makers and The Gunfighters.
Still
missing at the end of 1999: 109 - 46 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
2001
11 May: Douglas
Adams dies of a heart attack whilst in California. Adams, best known for his
novel, radio and tv show The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, served as script
editor for season 17, and wrote The
Pirate Planet, City of Death and
the unfinished Shada. Adams is also
one of only two people outside of the main six Monty Python troupe to receive a
writer’s credit during the Monty Python Flying Circus series, and appeared in
two sketches during its final season.
22 May: Actor Jack Watling passes away aged 78. He
stared in Doctor Who as Professor Travers, appearing in The Abominable Snowmen and The
Web of Fear, and reprised the role in the non-BBC spin off Downtime. He was the real life father
of Deborah Watling (Victoria Waterfield).
3 July: Delia Derbyshire
dies of renal failure at the age of 64. Delia is best known for her work in the
BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and is responsible for creating the Doctor Who theme
composed by Ron Grainer, one of the first themes ever created entirely by
electronic means. Her obituary can be read here.
Still
missing at the end of 2001: 109 - 46 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
2002
1 May: John
Nathan-Turner, who produced the series from Season 19 (The Leisure Hive) to Season 26 (Survival), dies of liver failure aged 54. His time on Doctor Who
saw the Doctor regenerate three times, the show put on hiatus in 1985 and then
ultimately cancelled in 1989. He was the longest serving producer of the
classic era. After the series ended John helped produce the seven “Years” VHS
tapes which covered five of the seven Doctor’s time on the show, plus the early
years of the Daleks and the Cybermen, and also helped release the unfinished
story Shada on VHS.
1 November: 3 years after the
recovery of The Crusade 1 in Napier, prominent NZ fan Graham Howard located a film collector who possessed the
Censor Clips from the NZBC (New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, now known as
TVNZ), similar to those found in Australia in 1996. The reel contained footage
from The Web of Fear & The Wheel in Space, as well as
episodes already found. The film clips recovered for The Web of Fear are now irrelevant as the episodes they were cut
from were found intact in 2013. Details can be found here.
Still
missing at the end of 2002: 109 - 46 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
2003
30 July: 3’32” of footage
from Fury from the Deep 6 was recovered from the BBC Archives at
Windmill Road by Andrew Martin. He was checking through some reels of old waste
film which had been stored away to use as filler and leader material. The
footage exists on 16mm negative film and consists of nearly complete scenes
depicting the Weed Creature attacking the control room. Despite being the first
major find of 2003, the footage isn’t from the finished episode, but actually
from off cuts that were removed during editing and never went to air. Also, the
footage has no audio. A reconstruction of what the climactic battle would have
looked like was created using this footage and the original audio soundtrack,
and released on the Lost in Time DVD.
1 September: A man
named ‘Jet’ posted on
the Missing Episodes forum claiming that he was responsible for destroying
“approximately 300” black & white film prints of Doctor Who back in the
1970s. Considering a batch was sent to New Zealand in 1967 and a larger batch
being sent back to BBC London in 1975, he was either mistaken, lying, or BBC
Sydney / ABC Australia did indeed produce duplicate prints (which were
destroyed). ‘Jet’ also claimed to be responsible as the individual who
physically located the film print of The
Celestial Toymaker 4 at the ABC vault in 1984.
1 November: A short trailer
of The Power of the Daleks 1 was discovered by BBC employee Andrew
Martin attached to a 16mm telerecording of 'Beyond the Freeze - What Next?', a
political show broadcast on November 4th, 1966 - the night before The Power
of the Daleks 1 was to screen. It is believed the operator was testing the
film recording equipment and that the trailer was captured simply by chance.
The slightly incomplete trailer (only 36 seconds is usable, the actual duration
of the trailer is unknown) featuring the Doctor, Ben and Polly discovering the
Daleks in the capsule was restored by Steve Roberts of the Restoration Team.
The trailer was a surprise to fans as it was screened at the launch ceremony
for the 2003 Panopticon 40th Anniversary event.
23 November: Bill Strutton dies aged 85, on the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who.
Strutton wrote The Web Planet in 1965.
Still
missing at the end of 2003: 109 - 46 Hartnell /
63 Troughton
2004
15 January: Francis Watson,
former Head of Engineering at Yorkshire Television in Leeds, returned a 16mm
print of The Daleks' Master Plan 2 to the BBC after holding onto
it for over 30 years. Watson also returned a poor-quality (and redundant) 16mm
print of The Daleks 5.
3 May: Anthony
Ainley, who portrayed the Master from The
Keeper of Traken to the final story of the classic series Survival, dies of cancer aged 71.
May: Whilst preparing
the Lost in Time DVD Collection for release, which contained 18 'orphan'
episodes from the Hartnell & Troughton eras, the Restoration Team
discovered the short clip at the end of The Wheel in Space 6
depicting the events of The Evil of the Daleks 2 is actually from
The Evil of the Daleks 1, as it contains extra footage of Kennedy
not seen in episode 2. This entry is simply for completists sake, as
unfortunately the extra footage only consists of a mere 3 frames.
August: Around 1'35"
seconds of 35mm film inserts from The Space Pirates 1 were
discovered in a can labelled "Dad's Army" by Ralph Montagu.
Still
missing at the end of 2004: 108 - 45 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
2005
Whilst getting ready to re-master The War Games for DVD release, Steve
Roberts contacted the British Film Institute to see if they still held higher
quality prints as the existing BBC copies suffered from a fault which resembled
a ‘snowstorm’ of white artefacts. Steve was surprised to learn the BFI held
copies of all 10 episodes as pristine negatives, and the films were
subsequently shipped to the BBC for transfer to DigiBeta. The story can be read here.
26 March: Doctor Who
returns to television for the first time since 1996 with the broadcast of Rose, the first episode of the
“revived” series. Helmed by Russell T Davies, the Doctor is now portrayed by
Christopher Eccleston, and companion Rose is played by Billie Piper. The
episode earns 10.81 million viewers. The series dropped the classic template of
25-minute episodes, instead opting for 45-minute episodes.
18 June: The first
series of the revived show ends with The
Parting of the Ways, featuring the regeneration of Christopher Eccleston,
who opted to only do a single series. He was replaced by Scottish actor David
Tennant. The episode also featured the return of the Dalek Emperor, who hadn’t
been seen since the final episode of The
Evil of the Daleks in 1967.
June: The second
issue of Nothing at the End of the Lane
is released, edited by Richard Bignell and Robert Franks. This issue looked at
tele-snaps, the show’s tenth anniversary, The Dalek’s Master Plan, videotape
junking, Troughton’s archive holdings and many more. The issue is now out of
print however it can still be sourced via an ‘omnibus’ edition released with
issue 1.
25 July: Actor David
Jackson passes away aged 71. Jackson was best known for his portrayal of Gan in
the series Blake’s 7 and as DC
Braithwaite in Z-Cars. He also appeared in Space: 1999, The Avengers and The
Saint. Whilst Jackson never appeared in Doctor Who, he did provide his voice
for a Big Finish Productions audio drama in 2002.
11 September: BBC Two screened
an episode of the television-nostalgia series Sunday Past Times and featured a
section of an episode of Tomorrow’s World from 1966. Around 20" seconds of
footage from The Power of the Daleks 4 was included in the section. The clips were
subsequently recovered by the Restoration Team and were released as part of The
Dalek Tapes on the Genesis of the Daleks
DVD.
24 October: Robert Sloman dies
aged 79. Sloman wrote The Daemons, The Time Monster, The Green Death and Pertwee’s final story Planet of the Spiders.
Still
missing at the end of 2005: 108 - 45 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
2006
April: An episode of The Evil of the Daleks 2 appeared on
eBay, but this was not an original. Sometime after the discoveries of The Faceless Ones 3 and The Evil of the Daleks 2, someone at
the BBC decided to ‘borrow’ a selection of 16mm film prints and make his own
copies for private sales, both on 16mm film and downscaled to 8mm film as well.
This individual borrowed (at least) nine episodes, including The Keys of Marinus 6, The Dalek Invasion of Earth 3 6,
The Web Planet 6, The Chase 6, The Evil of the Daleks 2, The
Web of Fear 1, The Wheel in Space 3
and The Invasion 6. These episodes
often pop up on eBay and other online sale auction sites from time to time.
19 May: Producer Peter Bryant dies from cancer aged 82. Peter ran the show from
The Web of Fear to The Space Pirates, and handled The Tomb of the Cybermen as a test run
by outgoing producer Innes Lloyd. Peter was also script editor on three of
Troughton’s stories, and in 1969 cast Jon Pertwee to replace Patrick Troughton.
July: Another
episode on 16mm film appeared on eBay, The
Time Meddler 3 (on-screen title A
Battle of Wits). The owner had sold it in 2004, re-acquired it in 2005 and
was now selling it again.
8 July: Billie Piper leaves the series at the end of Doomsday, with her character Rose being
trapped in an alternate Earth. Despite this, she would return five more times,
in Turn left, The Stolen Earth, Journey’s
End, The End of Time Pt 2 and The Day of the Doctor.
14 September: Writer Peter Ling dies aged 80 after battling Alzheimer's disease for
several years. Ling wrote The Mind Robber in season six (and later the
novelisation). Ling co-created (with Hazel Adair) the series Compact (for the
BBC) and Crossroads (for ITV), and wrote for other series such as Dixon of Dock
Green and The Avengers. Early in his career he contributed to Waterlogged Spa,
a radio comedy series starring Jon Pertwee.
26 October: The first episode
of Torchwood premieres on BBC Three.
The first Doctor Who spinoff since the failed K9 & Company pilot in the early 80s, Torchwood (an anagram of “Doctor Who”) followed Captain Jack
Harkness (John Barrowman) and his team who track down alien beings and
technology. The series was skewed to a more adult audience, and ran for 4
seasons and 41 episodes.
Still
missing at the end of 2006: 108 - 45 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
2007
1 January: Invasion of
the Bane airs on BBC One, the pilot episode of The Sarah Jane Chronicles. Elisabeth Sladen reprises her role of
Sarah Jane Smith, after appearing in the Doctor Who episode “School Reunion” the year before. The
show is picked up as a series and would begin broadcasting (jointly between
CBBC and BBC One) in September. The
Sarah Jane Chronicles was targeted at a younger audience than both Doctor
Who and Torchwood. The show lasted
five seasons, though the final season only ran half as long due to the tragic
death of Sladen before production could be completed.
30 March: Dave Martin dies of lung cancer aged 72. Martin wrote The Claws of
Axos, The Mutants, The Three Doctors, The Sontaran
Experiment, The Hand of Fear, The Invisible Enemy, Underworld
and The Armageddon Factor. He collaborated with fellow writer Bob Baker
for all of his scripts, and they are credited with creating K-9 and the evil
Time Lord Omega.
9 July: Voice actor Peter
Tuddenham passes away aged 88. He had provided voice work for The Ark in Space, The Masque of Mandragora and Time
and the Rani, but was best known as the voices of Zen, Orac and Slave for
the series Blake’s 7.
22 November: Verity Lambert,
the first producer of Doctor Who, passes away aged 71 from cancer. Verity
produced the show from An Unearthly
Child to Mission to the Unknown.
Her obituary can be read here.
Still
missing at the end of 2007: 108 - 45 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
2008
2 April: Writer
Johnny Byrne dies aged 72. Byrne wrote The
Keeper of Traken, Arc of Infinity
and Warriors of the Deep, and is
credited with creating the character of Nyssa. Byrne also wrote for All
Creatures Great and Small (also starring Peter Davison), Space 1999 and created
the drama Heartbeat.
24 April: Composer
Tristram Cary passes away aged 82. Cary composed music for several William
Hartnell stories, including The Daleks
(which was later repeated in various other serials), Marco Polo, The Daleks’
Master Plan and The Gunfighters,
plus would return one last time for The
Mutants under Jon Pertwee.
10 June: David Brierly dies of cancer. Brierly replaced John Leeson as the voice
of K-9 during season 17.
In a similar event to The War Games three years earlier, Steve Roberts contacted the BFI
to arrange to borrow the prints of The
Dominators ready for DVD release. Upon checking they discovered five 16mm
negative prints were still in their possession. These episodes would be the
most superior quality prints of four of the episodes (episode 3 exists on 35mm
film) and so were used in production of the DVD.
Still
missing at the end of 2008: 108 - 45 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
2009
30 August: The same
team that produces the Nothing at the
End of the Lane released a special publication featuring the scripts of two
unproduced stories from 1964; the six-part story Farewell Great Macedon (the Doctor, Barbara, Ian and Susan meet
Alexander the Great in his final days) and the single-episode story The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance (Barbara
faces a dilemma when a native of Fragrance announces his love for her), both
written by Moris Farhi. Both stories were later converted to audio plays and
released by Big Finish the following year.
9 October:
Long-serving producer Barry Letts, who ran the show from The Silurians through to Robot,
passes away age 84 after a long battle with cancer. Letts directed a handful of
stories including Terror of the Autons,
Carnival of Monsters and Planet of the Spiders, as well as a
handful of studio sessions of Inferno
after Douglas Camfield was taken ill. He also wrote or co-wrote The Daemons, The Time Monster, The Green
Death and Planet of the Spiders.
Letts would also return as executive producer for Season 18 to assist John
Nathan-Turner ease into the role as – who would turn out to be – the show’s
final producer of the classic era.
Still
missing at the end of 2009: 108 - 45 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
2010
1 January: David
Tennant leaves the series and is replaced by Matt Smith at the conclusion of The End of Time, Pt 2 (Pt 1 had screened on Christmas Day a
week earlier). Matt Smith currently holds the record as the youngest actor to
play the Doctor, being cast in the role at the age of 26. The special also marks the final involvement of Russell T Davies, who had served as producer since the show was resurrected in 2005. He is replaced by Steven Moffat.
17 September: Writer Louis Marks dies aged 82. Marks wrote four stories for Doctor
Who; Planet of Giants, Day of the Daleks (the original script did
not feature Daleks and originally had the name The Ghost Hunters), Planet
of Evil and The Masque of Mandragora.
30 September: Richard
Molesworth releases Wiped! Doctor Who’s
Missing Episodes, an in-depth look at the history and status of Doctor Who
and the efforts people have gone through to recover missing material from all
over the world. The book, released by Telos Publishing, runs to nearly 500
pages in length.
29 October: Mervyn Haisman dies aged 82. Haisman co-wrote (with Henry Lincoln) The
Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear for season five, and The
Dominators for season six. Due to a dispute with the production team over
how The Dominators was handled, the proposed third encounter with the
Yeti (during season six) was scrapped. Haisman never wrote for Doctor Who
again.
Still
missing at the end of 2010: 108 - 45 Hartnell / 63 Troughton
2011
11 February: Long-time Who actor Nicholas Courtney passes away aged 81. Courtney first appeared in The Daleks Master Plan playing Bret
Vyon in 1965. He was later cast as Captain Knight in The Web of Fear but was offered the role of Colonel
Lethbridge-Stewart after the original actor dropped out. Courtney reprised the
role later that year for The Invasion,
and subsequently played the same character during Pertwee’s exile on Earth.
Courtney’s character was reduced to guest appearances once the Doctor’s exile
was lifted, but through further television adventures and audio stories he
managed to appear with the first eight Doctors. His final appearance as the
character was in the Sarah Jane Adventure episode Enemy of the Bane, 19 years after he last played the role.
19 April: Elisabeth Sladen dies of cancer aged 65. Sladen appeared as regular companion Sarah
Jane Smith from The Time Warrior to The Hand of Fear, but her association
with the series would last for several decades. After her own aborted spin off
failed (K9 and Company) she appeared
in The Five Doctors, then the
charity episode Dimensions in Time. Sladen’s
last appearance before the series rebooted in 2005 was in the independent film Downtime. In David Tennant’s first
season she reprised her role for the episode School Reunion, and would later star in The Stolen Earth, Journey’s
End and a brief cameo in The End of
Time, Pt 2. The BBC gave Sladen her own series in 2007, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which would
also guest star David Tennant and Matt Smith. The show ran for five seasons,
although only half the episodes of season five were filmed when Sladen fell ill
from cancer, and the show was discontinued when she passed away. Including all
of her appearances within the Doctor Who universe, Sladen appeared with a total
of nine of the Doctors.
July: Ralph Montagu, Head of Heritage for the
Radio Times, met up with film collector Terry Burnett, who was a former
engineer at TVS, a former ITV franchise in Southampton. During the conversation
the topic of Doctor Who was brought up, to which Terry thought he might have a
copy. The following day Terry met up with Ralph and handed him an unlabelled
film can containing a 16mm film print of 'Air
Lock', otherwise known as Galaxy 4 3. Two weeks later, Terry again
contacted Ralph and told him he had found another episode, The Underwater
Menace 2. In the 1980s an electrician also working at TVS was organising a
school fete and mentioned to Terry he had a box of films if he was interested.
Terry bought the films, screened them at his home cinema then put them in
storage, and they remained there until the chance encounter with Ralph. Galaxy
4 3 was found to be slightly dirty, with a 'tramline' scratch
present throughout the episode, but is intact except for the last 27 seconds,
which is missing. The Underwater Menace 2 has worn sprockets
which causes the picture to move around when playing. Part way through the
episode there is damage which renders one line of dialogue (spoken by Jamie)
missing. There is also 20 seconds of footage missing due to censor cuts from
the ABC in Australia (believed to be the source of both these prints). However
this footage exists as discovered in 1996 by Damian Shanahan. The original
transfer made by the ABC at the time is slightly lopsided so another transfer of
the censor footage is being sought in a bid to properly restore the cuts to the
episode. Despite being found in July, it was decided however not to reveal the
discoveries to the general public until December the 11th, when they screened
at the British Film Institute's Missing Believed Wiped event in London. The
Radio Times press release, including links to off-screen still images for both
episodes, can be found here.
August: A family in Essex contacted the BBC to say
they had recently purchased a house and discovered a box of film cans, and one
of them was a Doctor Who episode. Paul Vanezis and Steve Roberts travelled out
there to find the episode was 'Conspiracy',
a redundant copy of The Romans 3. The film was a duplicate of
another print, and was stored field, made after 1966. Details can be found here.
Still missing at the end of 2011: 106 - 44
Hartnell / 62 Troughton
2012
January: Issue 3 of Nothing
at the End of the Lane is released, edited by Richard Bignell. This issue
highlights the cancelled 30th anniversary production Lost in the Dark Dimension, several
unproduced storylines by writer Brian Hayles, rare photographs from The Evil of the Daleks, The Smugglers, The Enemy of the World
and The Invasion, a look at William
Hartnell in a Christmas pantomime after his departure from Doctor Who, and many
more. The issue is now out of
print.
March: An existing episode on 16mm film appeared on
eBay. The Reign of Terror 1
(on-screen title The Land of Fear)
was eventually won by a bidder who paid a record £1600! This appeared to be an
original Suppressed Field recording, and not a dupe print. As this was an
existing episode there was no need for the BBC to attempt to recover it, nor
did the seller have any additional Doctor Who episodes in his collection. The
closed auction can be viewed here.
April: Another episode of Doctor Who on 16mm film
appeared on eBay, this time The Web
Planet 6 (on-screen title The Centre).
This was identified as a dupe print. The winning bid was £747.97. As this was
an existing episode there was no need for the BBC to attempt to recover it, nor
did the seller have any additional Doctor Who episodes in his collection. The
closed auction can be viewed here.
May: A 16mm mute print containing film inserts for Invasion of the Dinosaurs 5 was listed on eBay. The winning bid was £172.
5 June: Caroline John dies of cancer aged 71. She played
Jon Pertwee’s first companion Liz Shaw from Spearhead from Space to Inferno.
She was married to actor Geoffrey Beevers, who also starred alongside Caroline
in The Ambassadors of Death and
later as The Master in The Keeper of
Traken.
26 July: Mary Tamm dies of cancer aged 62. Mary played the
first incarnation of Romana from The
Ribos Operation to The Armageddon
Factor. In 2007 she revealed in an interview she offered to film a
regeneration scene for Lalla Ward who was taking over her character from Destiny of the Daleks onwards, but the
production team declined to take up the offer.
16 August: As with The
Dominators and The War Games,
the Restoration Team contacted the BFI to arrange to borrow the prints of The Krotons 2 and 3, as the quality of the BBC’s versions was not very good. Some of
this story can be read here.
Still missing at the end of 2012: 106 - 44
Hartnell / 62 Troughton
2013
For 2013, I have added
rumours that popped up from time to time regarding missing episodes. “Quotes in bold” are direct quotes from
the source. Very special thanks must go to Paul McDermott for helping me keep
track of these rumours.
January: Being the
anniversary year, it was a sure bet a strong torrent of rumours would hit the
internet, and it was no surprise that a rumour - which had been making noises
prior to this - turned up saying that 54 episodes had been recovered but not in
a position yet to go public.
28 February: The second edition of Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes is
released, and includes numerous updates and corrections from the first edition,
plus details about the discovery of Galaxy
4: Airlock and The Underwater Menace
2, which were found since the first edition was published.
March: A 16mm film
print of Carnival of Monsters 3 appeared on eBay. Bidding
almost reached $300 although the reserve was ultimately not met.
10
March: The Mind of Evil, which up until now had previously existed as a
black and white story due to the lack of any colour masters (save for a few
minutes recorded off air by Tom Lundie for episode 6), was screened in
full colour for the first time since the 1970s, at the British Film Institute. The
Mind of Evil 2 3 4 5 6 were re-coloured using Chromadot recovery while The
Mind of Evil 1 was manually re-coloured by Stuart Humphryes from
BabelColour. Click here to read Stuart’s
efforts on the restoration. The DVD was released on June 3, 2013.
14
March: Jason Onion, whilst
researching the links between Doctor Who and Herne Bay in Kent, England (and in
the process of building a TARDIS for charity), stumbled upon a box of scripts
from Anthony Coburn, the script writer who wrote the very first Doctor Who
story, An Unearthly Child (known
then as The Tribe of Gum). Initially
passed over as just scripts from the first story, Jason soon discovered the
scripts were in fact earlier versions and as such were of high historic value.
The collection included two earlier versions of the first episode, and an early
draft of the second episode, along with scripts of the remaining episodes in
the serial. The earlier versions hinted at the Doctor’s past, and his
granddaughter Susan – who in the scripts is referred to as Suzanne – here is
described as “a princess saved from another world”. Additional details can be
read here.
31
March 2013: BBC Television Centre is closed. Opened in
1960, the Doctor Who production team used this multi-studio production facility
for several dozen classic serials, from as early as The Aztecs to the
final serial filmed, Ghost Light, plus scenes for Aliens of London
for the 2005 series. The building was sold to property developers Stanhope plc
for around £200 million.
11
April: A year after The Web Planet 6 appeared on eBay,
another existing episode of Doctor Who on 16mm film was put up for auction: The Rescue 1 (on-screen title The Powerful Enemy). The winning bid
was £620.00. The closed auction can be viewed here.
28 April: Paul Vanezis is granted access to the 11 film
prints recovered from Nigeria by Philip Morris in order to check their physical
status and viability for restoration. The prints remain outside of the BBC for
the time being.
3 May: Rumours continue
to surface of a significant find of missing
episodes in Africa.
31 May: Philip Morris personally delivers the 11 film
prints recovered from Nigeria to the BBC Archive Centre in West London. News of
this wouldn’t be revealed until later in the year.
13 June: The rumours
suddenly went viral thanks to a post by Rich Johnston from Bleeding Cool
news, who suggested “an eccentric
engineer who worked for broadcasters across Africa with a taste for science
fiction and a habit of taking things for “safe keeping”, is that the BBC
have secured a large number of presumed-wiped episodes of early Doctor Who”. Stories including The Tenth
Planet and The Evil of the Daleks were mentioned, although anyone familiar with
sales of early Doctor Who will know these two stories never made it to Africa.
Hours after Johnston made the first posting, he added an update claiming he had
received confirmation from “another, better connected source”. The
number of possible episodes recovered had now reached 60 (out of the 106
missing). Doctor Who blog Kasterborous also reported on it.
14 June: Entertainment site Ain’t It Cool News also ran a story about the
possibility of a missing episode discovery. On the same day, Big Finish author
Johnathon Morris tweeted “Three words
regarding rumours raising fans' hopes of missing episode recoveries: cruel,
irresponsible, bullsh*t.”
15 June: Bleeding Cool runs
a follow up article about the rumour
regarding reactions over the last 48 hours.
16 June: Twitter
exploded with several comments, including (Babelcolour’s) Stuart Humphryes
saying “Things like this start as a
simple misunderstanding, then exaggeration, false rumour & ultimately
dashed hopes.” Archivist Ian Levine said “There will always be 106 Doctor Who episodes missing. And yes you can
quote me on that.” Planet Mondas wrote an update for those playing
at home from the dawn of time until now.
17 June:
The rumour now reaches the height of 90 episodes recovered – the name
‘Omnirumour’ starts to float around. Ian Levine made a few tweets: “You all need to get real. I was told that
if its true it's Ninety. And 90 missing Dr Who episodes ARE REALLY NOT TURNING
UP” and ”Absolute Last Word. I spent
35 years looking for episodes since I saved The Daleks from being destroyed. I
am convinced none have been found” and “Look,I
DO believe no episodes have been found,based on what certain people told me at
the BFI. But I suppose they could have lied to my face”
18 June: Ian again
on Twitter wrote: “To answer loads of
comments online, the rumour I heard from an impeccable source was eight
thousand BBC film cans containing ninety missing Who episodes which would
complete 21 missing stories. Plus duplicates or most of what exists. Leaving 16
missing but however amazing that may sound, however much we all wish for it to
be true, I now don't believe a word of it. But it's 90 if true.” Ian also
spoke of another rumour at the same time: “But
I do know if that guy Pianist believes only 3 stories have been found, which I
knew 6 mths ago, if true it's only the tip of the iceberg” and “He is claiming only 3 full stories have
been found. But if the rumour is true,21 missing stores have been found. He's
wrong.” Ian later indicates which episodes are NOT in the collection: “Okay everbody - as I don't believe it,or
was lied to, the 16 eps still missing were Masterplan-9 Mission-1 Ice Warriors-2
Wheel-2 Invasion-2”
19 June: BBC America joins
the fun with their own article. At the
same time, Ian Levine suddenly changes his view on the rumour with a handful of
rapid fire tweets: “I have just seen
"three tons" of evidence that tells me it's all true. Saying no more.
Apart from I now believe it again.” and “I've just been given proof that backs up the entire story,from 2011.
So yes I now really believe he has found 90 missing episodes” and “I am so f*cking speechless, I have no idea
how I am going to sleep tonight. I was utterly wrong, but I was lied to, yes
barefaced lied to.” and “Just three
serials is a bad joke.There are literally three tons of film cans and that's
just from 2011. I have the actual proof” and “Right now I'm holding on to the proof + not leaking it publicly. But I
assure you I have proof of 3 tons of film cans arriving.” Bleeding Cool ran an article on this, and also
mentioned on 17 September 2011 a large shipment of films arrived in Liverpool
from Zambia via Nigeria. The shipment was addressed to a man called Phillip
Morris. Kasterborous posted their own story.
20 June: In response to the
growing rumours, the BBC issues a statement, saying “There are always rumours and speculation
about Doctor Who missing episodes being discovered. However, we cannot confirm
any new finds” (from Philip Fleming, BBC Worldwide). Philip Morris,
Executive Director of T.I.E.A who featured prominently in the rumours, published a statement on Facebook: “T.I.E.A. does not hold any missing
episodes of the long-running Dr Who series… They are not missing but destroyed.
The end.”
24 June: Bleeding Cool News
dives back into the rumour pool with speculation a
trailer for a missing episode will appear in the release of Terror of the Zygons later in 2013.
July: A pair of 16mm Doctor Who film prints appeared on
eBay; An Unearthly Child 1 (AKA the first episode of Doctor Who)
and The Tenth Planet 2. These prints
appear to have been duplicates made in the 1980s and not original films. An Unearthly Child 1 eventually went
for £692.87 while The Tenth Planet 2
sold for £820. The auctions can be viewed here and here.
15 July: Jon Pertwee’s opening story, Spearhead from Space, was released on Blu-Ray. Due to the strike at
the BBC studios when this show was being shot, the entire production was forced
to be produced on location and shot on 16mm film. Because of this, the
artefacts inherent in videotape when up scaling to HD would not be present, as
would be the case for all other productions of Doctor Who in the classic era,
making this – as present levels of technology allow – a one of a kind release.
Details of this unique release can be found here.
29 July: Bleeding Cool reports the rumour could be 40 or 93,
plus a full copy of The Web of Fear
will be broadcast on November 23rd on BBC4.
1 August: Slice of SciFi mentions the Restoration Team have their contracts
extended until 2016, explaining that the DVD releases should be finished by the
end of 2013
16 August: Restoration Team member Richard Bignell discovers the only surviving television interview of William Hartnell, which was originally broadcast in January 1967. The interview appears as an extra on The Tenth Planet DVD release. More can be found here.
24 August: Bleeding Cool posted a couple of quotes from Gallifrey
Base, about the new M.E.W rumour (Marco
Polo, The Enemy of the World and
The Web of Fear). This would lead to
article author Rich Johnston being banned from both Gallifrey Base and the
Missing Episodes forum.
1 September: Whilst preparing the biography of Dr Kit Pedler (who amongst other things co-created the Cybermen in 1966), author Michael Seely unearthed copies of a handful of scripts, including the original drafts of William Hartnell's final story The Tenth Planet. Aside from various differences in dialogue and characters, the most notable difference is the fact that the regeneration is absent from the end of The Tenth Planet 4. Details can be found here.
1 September: Whilst preparing the biography of Dr Kit Pedler (who amongst other things co-created the Cybermen in 1966), author Michael Seely unearthed copies of a handful of scripts, including the original drafts of William Hartnell's final story The Tenth Planet. Aside from various differences in dialogue and characters, the most notable difference is the fact that the regeneration is absent from the end of The Tenth Planet 4. Details can be found here.
15 September: Philip Morris,
Executive Director of T.I.E.A, posts another statement on Facebook: “T.I.E.A understands the passion felt by
Doctor Who fans and that looking for missing episodes of doctor who plus many
other series is an important but tiny part of the work that T.I.E.A does. The
main aim of this organisation, is to assist those archives, whose own cultural
items are at risk and with the management of their facilities. If any
films/tapes of missing British TV do exist overseas, their location,
identification and recovery, especially from areas of civil and political
instability, can be seriously hindered by inappropriate scrutiny and publicity
from uninvolved third parties. If any such films do exist T.I.E.A will
endeavour to recover them safely, as with the two sky at night episodes.”
6 October: The
Mirror starts up a storm as it announces that “at least 100 episodes” have been
unearthed from Ethiopia. An announcement would still be a while away. Hours
later however the Radio Times stated that a BBC
announcement would come on Wednesday the 9th of October and that
episodes would available for download shortly after that.
7 October: Gallifrey Base, The
Missing Episodes Forum and Outpost
Skaro all close their missing episode rumour forums as speculation
continues to grow. The Guardian reports the same story as
heard from Radio Times, that an announcement is imminent. Kasterborous releases a report saying Tom
Spilsbury (editor for Doctor Who Magazine) and Paul Vanezis still deny the
claims; Kasterborous also reported the '100 episode' rumour from the day
before.
8 October: Metro
mentions an announcement
from the BBC is imminent. Shortly after however, the BBC make an official announcement stating episodes have indeed been found, and
a press conference will be held October 10, from 3.30pm, delayed from the
previous Wednesday prediction. Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool news however felt that
the news is premature, and that the BBC “is
simply repeating the stories broken by the Radio Times and The Mirror earlier
in the week.” The Hollywood Reporter quotes the same.
9 October: Deborah Watling (Victoria Waterfield) confirms via
her website that she will be attending the press
conference, the first indication from an outside party that the announcement is
confirmed. Ian Levine is confident the world will see nine episodes on October
10 but believes Philip Morris (who denied finding the episodes earlier this
year) is holding onto more. During a conversation between Doctor Who Archive
and Ian; “@ianlevine, are you suggesting Phil Morris has extensive episodes
that he won't give back for free and wishes payment for their return?” Ian
replied with “@dwarchive I think that's pretty much the gist of it, yeah. We
know he's announcing 9 eps tomorrow. We don't know if he'll say anything else.“
The Telegraph nicely reminds viewers at home what we’re waiting for.
10 October: The Press Conference screens a couple of hours
earlier than planned. The embargo is set for 0000 UTC (Friday midnight).
Shortly after the press conference however, the Northern Echo website breaks the embargo several hours
early, announcing The Web of Fear
and The Enemy of the World have been
found. Quoting Phil Morris from TIEA: “I
remember wiping the dust off the masking tape on the canisters and my heart
missed a beat as I saw the words Doctor Who. When I read the story code, I
realised I’d found something pretty special.” The article states nine
missing episodes have been found at a Nigerian TV relay station – The Enemy of the World is complete
while The Web of Fear is missing
episode 3 (see the 26 September, 2015 entry below for more
details). An hour later, the Northern Echo retract the story and apologise for breaking the embargo. Ninety minutes
before the embargo is lifted, the Daily Mirror tweeted the front cover for their October 11 edition newspaper. All
11 recovered episodes of both stories plus the reconstruction of The Web of Fear 3 begin appearing on
iTunes half an hour before the embargo is lifted.
11 October: At 0000 UTC, the embargo is lifted and flood of
press releases begins. The BBC release their official news item, while The Mirror releases theirs, The Independent release theirs, and also interviews with Phillip Morris and a separate interview with Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling. Gareth Kavanagh for KasterborousTV films
part of the press conference and releases it on YouTube. DrWho-Online releases a great wrap of events, including images of
the predicted DVD covers. Doctor Who Magazine uses the discovery to release their new website and trail issue #466 (released October 17)
revealing exclusive details of the recovery, and featuring two collectable
covers highlighting each recovered story. OffTheTelly release transcripts from the press
conference, images of the t-shirt received from BBC Worldwide and an image of
the film can from The Web of Fear 4. Bleeding Cool release two articles about
the discovery, one about the initial announcement and later an updated story.
Phillip Morris recovered
The Enemy of the World 1 2 3 4 5 6
and The Web of Fear 1 2 4 5 6 from a
television relay station in the Nigerian city of Jos. The films were left over
from their sale to BPTV in 1975. The recovery of all of The Enemy of the World is the first full story to be found since The Tomb of the Cybermen in 1991. The
newly discovered copy of The Web of Fear 1 is superior to the existing
version, and was used in the iTunes/DVD release. The Enemy of the World 3
was already represented by the original camera negative so the newly discovered
Nigerian print was the inferior version. For
the first time, Doctor Who episodes are available for online download ahead of
a physical DVD release. For both stories, a trailer lasting over two minutes
was offered for free.
21 November: BBC Two screens An Adventure in Space and Time, a tv movie based on the creation of
Doctor Who and focusing on the life and health of William Hartnell around that
time. The movie starred David Bradley (William Hartnell), Brian Cox (creator
Sydney Newman), Jessica Raine (first producer Verity Lambert), Sacha Dahwan
(director Waris Hussein) and Lesley Manville (Heather Hartnell), written by
Mark Gatiss and directed by Terry McDonough. Nicholas Briggs, who provided the
Dalek voices in the new series, appears as original Dalek voice artiste Peter
Hawkins. Other cast and crew members involved in the original series to appear
in the movie included William Russell, Carol Ann Ford, Mark Eden, Anneke Wills,
Jean Marsh and Donald Tosh. The movie features recreations of various scenes
from missing Doctor Who episodes, including Marco Polo and The Massacre,
plus Hartnell’s final episode of The
Tenth Planet.
23 November: Doctor Who celebrates its fiftieth anniversary
with the worldwide release of The Day of
the Doctor, a feature length episode staring Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman,
John Hurt and returning cast members David Tennant and Billie Piper. It was
broadcast in 94 countries around the world simultaneously, which Guiness World
Records officially recognised as the largest ever simulcast of a tv drama.
Viewing figures for BBC America and Space in Canada broke records, as well as
becoming the most watched drama of 2013 by the BBC. The show generated a great deal
of Twitter traffic; at one point nearly 13,000 tweets per minute were
registered. As well as the television broadcast around the world, the episode
was also released in 1500 cinemas worldwide in 3D, generating over US$10
million at the box office.
Philip Morris does an interview with the BBC at an event in East London, speaking about
his finds and hope for the future.
8 December: Doctor Who Archive reports on several leaked emails to and/or from the
BFI over details regarding episode discoveries in Africa (some of these were acquired via a Freedom of Information request,
though others have been acquired by unauthorized methods. As such, I won’t
reprint any of the contents of those emails here). DWA also prints a short article on Bob Furnell and his efforts to find the
Canadian prints of Marco Polo. His efforts show it’s likely the prints were
either returned to the BBC or destroyed in Canada.
9 December: DWA further expands on the BFI emails scandal.
10 December: The Telegraph runs an article reminding viewers at home of the other shows
which are still missing, and of Phil’s other discoveries, including the return
of Patrick Moore’s The Sky at Night. Paul Vanezis and the BFI’s Dick Fiddy are
also quoted.
19 December: Ian Levine announces via Twitter that he found five 16mm film cans in Taiwan, though all five episodes are duplicates of existing episodes. "The hunt goes on. I have found five 16mm Dr Who film prints in Taiwan, but it's 2 eps of Dominators, 2 of War Games, and one Seeds Of Death". He goes on to say that "They were sent to American Forces TV back in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War. They were held by the owner of a radio station". "War Games 1 and 2, Dominators 2 and 3, Seeds Of Death 2. So sad it wasn't the Space Pirates instead. It easily could've been". "I've been on the trail of these Dr Who episodes for a long long time now. There were supposed to be eight but we found five. Well I did try. And I kept Paul Vanezis in the loop all along, but I specifically asked him not to say anything till we found out what they were". More can be found here.
19 December: Ian Levine announces via Twitter that he found five 16mm film cans in Taiwan, though all five episodes are duplicates of existing episodes. "The hunt goes on. I have found five 16mm Dr Who film prints in Taiwan, but it's 2 eps of Dominators, 2 of War Games, and one Seeds Of Death". He goes on to say that "They were sent to American Forces TV back in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War. They were held by the owner of a radio station". "War Games 1 and 2, Dominators 2 and 3, Seeds Of Death 2. So sad it wasn't the Space Pirates instead. It easily could've been". "I've been on the trail of these Dr Who episodes for a long long time now. There were supposed to be eight but we found five. Well I did try. And I kept Paul Vanezis in the loop all along, but I specifically asked him not to say anything till we found out what they were". More can be found here.
25 December: The Time of the Doctor airs on BBC1, marking the final appearance
by Matt Smith as the Doctor. He is replaced by Scottish actor Peter Capaldi,
who had previously guest starred in the series 4 episode The Fires of Pompeii.
Still missing at the end of 2013: 97 - 44 Hartnell
/ 53 Troughton
2014
16 January: Ian Levine
reveals on Twitter he has found five more orphan episodes from Taiwan, similar
to his discovery in December 2013. "Found five more Dr Who eps in
Taiwan including Enemy Of The World 6. If only I found them sooner. Two
Ambassadors eps, Marinus 6, Krotons 3." On Facebook Ian expanded more
to include: "Talk about so near yet so far. We have now found five more
Doctor Who episodes in Taiwan, including The Enemy Of The World 6. If only I
found them sooner. If only I had found them pre-October 11th. DAMN !!!!!!! The
other four episodes are The Ambassadors Of Death episodes 1 and 3, The Keys Of
Marinus 6, and finally The Krotons 3. Having found ten in total, the odds were
in favour of some being missing ones. it is simply INCREDIBLY BAD LUCK that
they weren't." The latter four already existed pre-1980 but The
Enemy of the World 6 was only revealed to be in existence as of October
2013. He added: "The 10 episodes are from the collection of
Keith Perron. They are in not so great condition. Bad splices and mold. He's
been asked to let Paul inspect them." " We found ten episodes. He
thought he had eight originally. When he searched his storage it turned out to
be ten. He thinks there may still be more in either Viet Nam, Taiwan, or
Cambodia. From the American Forces Network, not from the TV Stations." Keith
added in a comment on the same post that the episodes were "...censored
by AFRTV. Bad splices." AFRTV are the Armed Forces Network, who
distributed programming to overseas soldiers.
7 February: Christopher
Barry suffers a fall on an escalator in a shopping centre in Banbury,
Oxfordshire, and died from his injuries. Barry directed 10 serials over 16
years on Doctor Who, including the first Dalek serial, The Power of the Daleks, The
Daemons and Robot, thus having
worked with the first four Doctors. He had also worked on Compact, Z-Cars, Out
of the Unknown and The Tripods. He was 88 years old.
27 March: Veteran
director Derek Martinus, who helmed important stories such as The Tenth Planet, The Evil of the Daleks and Spearhead
from Space, passes away aged 82. He had also worked on Z-Cars and Blake’s 7.
30 March: Kate
O’Mara, who played renegade Time Lord the Rani opposite in Colin Baker in The Mark of the Rani and Sylvester
McCoy in Time and the Rani, as well
as the Children in Need charity special Dimensions
in Time, dies age 74 after a short illness.
2 April: Glyn Jones dies aged 82. South African-born Glyn wrote The Space
Museum in season two, though much of Glyn's original content, particularly
the humour, was removed by script editor Dennis Spooner. Glyn also went on to
appear in front of the camera in The Sontaran Experiment over a decade
later, playing the character Krans.
April: Concerns
have been raised as to whether the ten films found in Taiwan actually existed,
and that the entire story could have been a hoax. Paul Vanezis tweeted “…Keith hasn't responded to any of my
messages and there's no evidence that the films actually exist.” Tom Spilsbury, editor of DWM, posted on GallifreyBase: “It's a shame that it's now come to light
that no-one has seen solid evidence of these films' existence… We compiled the
news story, and I passed it under the nose of Paul Vanezis before we sent it to
be published. Paul told me then that the films had not been returned to the UK
at this time – but it honestly didn't occur to me that there was any question
of whether they actually existed at all. Neither Paul nor Ian pointed this out
to me, but to be fair, neither did I ask them that question. Naïvely, I assumed
that all that would have been verified before Ian announced it to the world.”
Tom did raise the point that if it were a hoax it doesn’t follow the usual
path: “In my opinion, it still seems
likely that the films are there in Taiwan, simply because it doesn't seem to
make much sense to hoax about ten films which are already held in better
quality by the BBC.” Keith Perron replied later on Facebook: “I'm fed up of all the dr who fans who
have been contacting me. I'm fed up. I'm at the point where I just feel like
destroying these films to end it or just lock them up and only have them
released when I die… I'm not making any money from this and not interested. I'm
very annoyed that someone passed this information about these rotten old films.”
11 May: According to Ian
Levine,
director Waris Hussein has found
his original set of scripts for Marco
Polo complete with handwritten notes and cast lists from 1964. He believed
they were long since lost but found them in an old suitcase. The set includes
Episode 4, which Waris ultimately
didn’t direct.
25 May: The
Wheel in Space 3 is put up for
auction on eBay, though the auction was
pulled, relisted and then closed again by the seller before the auction was
completed. The print isn’t an original but likely a dupe made in the late
eighties.
30 May: An 8mm print of The Evil of the Daleks 2 is put up for
auction on eBay. It sold for £200. Again this is likely a dupe print made in the
late eighties.
10 June: The
Time Meddler 3: A Battle of Wits is once again put up for
auction on eBay. The winning bid was
AU$1200.
20 July: Philip Morris, who located nine
missing episodes in 2013, held a Q&A session on the Doctor Who Missing
Episodes Discussion Group on Facebook. When asked about further discoveries
this was his reply: “And fans will just want a yes or no haven't you or have you. But its
complex all I can say is the wind is blowing the right way be patient. I don't
wish to jeopardise the ongoing project in any way .And feel the fans of all
lost tv will be very happy with the outcome.” Details can be found
here.
The Mirror published a
story based
on Phil’s comments. Philip also mentioned information about Sierra Leone; “I have visited sierra leonne .and I do
posses there programme traffic records .I can tell you all Doctor Who prints
were sent back to london in 1974”. This confirms the fate of the prints
thought lost in the civil war in 1999 was incorrect, however the fate of those
films once they arrived in England still remains unknown.
8 September: Jane Baker, who co-wrote (with husband Philip) both Rani stories and
five of the 14 episodes of The Trial of a Time Lord in the 1980s, dies.
Still missing at
the end of 2014: 97 - 44 Hartnell / 53 Troughton
2015
31 January: The much sought
after copy of Desert Island Discs starring William Hartnell is discovered in the collection of a listener
who retained a copy, although only half the episode survives. The copy runs for
just over 16 minutes out of a possible 35, and frustratingly cuts out just
prior to William Hartnell discussing his work from 1963 onwards, which would
include his time on Doctor Who. The instalment originally aired on the 23rd
of August, 1965, a couple of weeks prior to the broadcast of Galaxy 4. More news can be found
here. The surviving audio recording can be heard here.
11 February: A YouTube user uploads a French video called La Cloche tibétaine, which translates into ‘The Bell of Tibet’, the fourth episode in a series. This is the production – a television series and not a film as earlier believed – that Roger Delgado was working on when he was killed in a car accident back in 1973. The episode can be viewed here, with Delgado appearing around 13 minutes in.
25 February: Barry
Newbery, who was the designer on various stories from An Unearthly Child to The
Awakening, dies peacefully in his sleep. Newbery took over from Peter
Brachacki after the original pilot episode was shot. He had worked on over a
dozen stories for Doctor Who, including Marco
Polo, The Crusade and The Daleks’ Master Plan. Other
productions he worked on included Z Cars, Softly Softly and Dad’s Army, and in
1980 received a BAFTA nomination for his work on the production of Prince
Regent. He was 88 years old. Details can be found here.
16 May: Frazer
Hines guest stars in an episode of Outlander, the television adaptation of the novel by
Diana Gabaldon. The episode, entitled “Wentworth Prison” (the penultimate
episode of season one), sees Frazer playing the role of Sir Fletcher Gordon,
the governor of the prison. This role is historically important as it was
Hines’ character of Jamie McCrimmon from the Patrick Troughton era that would
inspire Gabaldon to set her novel in 18th century Scotland, and for
naming the main character Jamie Frazer.
26 September: At the Pandorica 2015 event in
Bristol, Philip Morris gave a Q&A and opened up about his discovery of The Web of Fear in 2013. Phil located
the films in late 2011, and revealed all six episodes of The Web of Fear WERE present in the storeroom of the tv station at
Jos in Nigeria. He was granted access to various stations and vaults after
providing equipment to transfer Nigerian films to more modern storage formats.
After discovering the films he asked they be safely stored whilst seeking
permission to remove them from the country. However, after arriving in the UK
it was discovered that episode 3 had
been removed from the collection, and Phil spent many months of negotiating to
try and get the missing instalment returned. With the potential
that the stolen instalment may be returned in the near future, Phil opted to
release a false story that it had simply been missing when he entered the
vault. After struggling for a year, Phil managed to
corner the station manager at Jos, who replied “I don’t know anything about the missing episodes”, which Phil
considers odd unless they were aware they were missing. Two days after this
exchange, the Jos tv station which had safely stored these films for the last
40 years, caught fire and burnt down. Phil is hopeful though – despite the
abhorrent nature of the thought to any missing episode hunter – is that the
missing episode was sold to a private collector prior to the fire, and believes
the film itself may no longer be in Africa. Additionally, Phil revealed that
most of the places that Doctor Who was sold to have now been checked, and that
official paperwork isn’t always correct. Phil also admitted telling people
about the discovery prior to the films being returned no doubt led to word
spreading to a collector who contacted the station manager and prompted the
private sale; he has ‘learnt his lesson’ and no longer comments to others
regarding his ongoing investigations. Some details can
be found here.
9 October: Stuntman
and actor Derek Ware dies aged 77. Derek coordinated fight scenes for stories
as early as the first serial, notably the fight between Kal and Za in An Unearthly Child, the climactic fight
between Marco and Tegana in Marco Polo,
sword fights in The Aztecs, The Myth Makers and The Smugglers, and most famously the
Battle of Covent Garden in The Web of
Fear. He founded the stunt group HAVOC, which provided most of the choreographed
action scenes for Jon Pertwee’s era, with their first major role being the
fight in the warehouse in The
Ambassadors of Death. As well as a stuntman, Derek played a handful of
minor roles on screen, from the conductor in the last episode of The Chase to the Egyptian Tuthmos in The Daleks Master Plan. Derek also
played Private Wyatt in Inferno who
famously falls 50 feet from atop a cooling tower (though the fall itself was
accomplished by fellow stuntman Roy Scammell). An obituary can be found here.
25 October: Issue 4 of Nothing
at the End of the Lane is released. This issue covers original sketches for
early Dalek designs, an article on original series designer Peter Brachacki, a
look at the original draft of The Tenth
Planet 4 without the regeneration scene, the original script for The Trial of a Time Lord episode 13,
and much more.
11 October: A photo
displaying all 12 film cans as originally discovered by Phil, was released on
October 11 – the 2nd anniversary of the Web / Enemy announcement.
The photo can be seen here.
Still missing at
the end of 2015: 97 - 44 Hartnell / 53 Troughton
2016
22
February: A 16mm film copy of The Web of Fear 1 appears on eBay. The
winning bid was £699. Details can be found here.
13 April: Welsh actor Gareth Thomas
dies of heart failure. Thomas was best known for playing the title role of Roj
Blake in Blake’s 7. The show was
created by Terry Nation, who 15 years earlier had created the Daleks for Doctor
Who, and ran for 4 seasons between 1978 and 1981. Though Thomas never appeared
on Doctor Who, he did feature in an episode of the spinoff Torchwood. He was 71 years old. Details can be found here.
25 June: The Dalek Invasion
of Earth 5
(‘The Waking Ally’) is put up for sale on eBay. The winning bid was £860. Details can be viewed here.
12 August: A seller on eBay lists The Savages 1 for sale, though the details indicate episode 4. The auction is withdrawn shortly
afterwards. All indications point to a hoax.
Mid-August: A small selection of clips running to two minutes
in length is released on YouTube, depicting scenes from The Power of the Daleks in animated form. No official word on the
animation is released, leading to speculation of an animated release or even
possibly a missing episode discovery with animation to support the
still-missing episodes. Days later the animation is taken down by the BBC.
29 August: The Mirror publish an article hinting that The Power of the Daleks will get a full
animated release some time in the near future. The article can be found here.
7 September: The BBC issue a press release confirming The Power of the Daleks will be
released fully in animated form, using the original audio recording. The
episodes are released from 5 November (the 50th anniversary of the
initial broadcast of the first episode) then one episode per day over the
following five days, plus a DVD release on November 21st. The
official BBC news story can be found here. The announcement on the BBC Store can be
found here.
3 October: The Doctor Who Missing
Episode Discussion Forum on Facebook enigmatically adds a "4 Days to Go" picture, and
updates their cover photo with the same details. Information about what this
involves is scarce but rumours already begin flying relating to the discovery of The
Avengers episode “Tunnel of Fear”, and the prospect that a Doctor Who episode or
episodes may have been found at the same time.
7 October: The Doctor Who Missing Episode Discussion Forum
release the long-awaited Q&A featuring Ian Levine, but instead of a text
transcription the forum release an extremely comprehensive video of the entire
interview, running to approximately 78 minutes in length.
5 November: The BBC Store releases the first episode of The Power of the Daleks in animated
form (which coincided with the serial’s 50th anniversary) then
subsequently releasing the remaining five episodes over the next five days. The
episodes were made available online to other countries throughout November. The
serial also received a limited cinematic release in selected countries. A DVD
complete with extras, including surviving footage from the original serial, was
released on 21 November. Information can be found here.
Still missing at
the end of 2016: 97 - 44 Hartnell / 53 Troughton
2017
2 June: Actor Peter Sallis dies at the Denville Hall
nursing home in London, at the ripe old ages of 96. Sallis played the character
of Penley in the 1968 story The Ice
Warriors. Sallis was best known for his role of Norman Clegg in the comedy
Last of the Summer Wine, and has the distinction of being the only actor to
appear in all 295 episodes of that series. Younger audiences also know him as
the voice of Wallace in the animated Wallace and Gromit series.
19 June: Actor Brian Cant dies after a long battle with
Parkinson’s Disease. Cant appeared in 1965 in The Daleks’ Master Plan as Kurt Gantry, and later in 1968 in The Dominators as Tensa. Cant is best
know for his association with the BBC children’s series Play School, appearing
as a host for over 20 years. Cant was 83 years ago.
16 July: The BBC announce Jodie Whittaker will play the role of the thirteenth Doctor. Actor Kris Marshall had been tipped as the bookmakers' favourite. This marks the first time the role would be played by a female. Whittaker would take over from Peter Capaldi in December.
16 July: The BBC announce Jodie Whittaker will play the role of the thirteenth Doctor. Actor Kris Marshall had been tipped as the bookmakers' favourite. This marks the first time the role would be played by a female. Whittaker would take over from Peter Capaldi in December.
21 July: Deborah Watling passes away after a short battle
with lung cancer. At the age of 19 Deborah was cast in the role of Victoria
Waterfield for The Evil of the Daleks,
staying through to Fury from the Deep,
and reprised her role in Dimensions in
Time and the non-BBC spin off Downtime.
Her real life father, Jack Watling, had portrayed Professor Travers in both
Yeti stories that she stared in during Season Five, and also returned in
Downtime. She also leant her voice to half a dozen Doctor Who audio dramas and
appeared in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot
in 2013. She also co-hosted The Missing
Years documentary with Frazer Hines in 1998. Deborah was 69 years old. An
obituary is here.
2 November: Patricia “Paddy” Russell dies aged 89. Russell
began her career in acting but was more interested in working behind the
camera. She appeared in The Quatermass
Experiment but was also director Rudolph Cartier’s production assistant.
She chose the name Paddy for her on-screen credit to avoid any potential disputes
with male staff. After becoming the first female floor manager at the BBC, she
became one of the first female directors as well. In 1966 she directed The Massacre, the first female director
on the show. In the 1970s she directed Invasion
of the Dinosaurs, Pyramids of Mars
and Horror of Fang Rock. She was
also a regular director for Emmerdale. An
obituary can be read here.
4 November: Veteran composer Dudley Simpson passes away.
Simpson was the most prolific composer for the classic series, working on over
sixty serials. Beginning in 1964, Simpson worked on Planet of Giants, The Crusade,
The Chase, The Celestial Toymaker, The
Underwater Menace, The Macra Terror,
The Evil of the Daleks, The Ice Warriors, Fury from the Deep, The
Seeds of Death, The Space Pirates,
The War Games, Spearhead from Space, The
Ambassadors of Death, Terror of the
Autons, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos, Colony in Space, The Dæmons,
Day of the Daleks, The Curse of Peladon, The Time Monster, The Three Doctors, Carnival
of Monsters, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, The Green Death, The Time Warrior, Invasion
of the Dinosaurs, The Monster of
Peladon, Planet of the Spiders, Robot, The Ark in Space, The
Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the
Daleks, Planet of Evil, Pyramids of Mars, The Android Invasion, The
Brain of Morbius, The Masque of
Mandragora, The Hand of Fear, The Deadly Assassin, The Face of Evil, The Robots of Death, The Talons
of Weng-Chiang (which Simpson also appeared in a cameo role as a conductor),
Horror of Fang Rock, The Invisible Enemy, Image of the Fendahl, The Sun Makers, Underworld, The Invasion of
Time, The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Stones of Blood, The
Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll,
The Armageddon Factor, Destiny of the Daleks, City of Death, The Creature from the Pit, Nightmare
of Eden and The Horns of Nimon. He had been booked to work on Shada before the serial was put on hold
following strike action at the BBC, and didn’t contribute when the remains of
the serial was released on VHS. From the start
of Season 18, incoming producer John Nathan-Turner advised Simpson that his
services would no longer be required and all incidental music would be produced
in-house. Dudley Simpson also worked on The Tomorrow People, The Brothers and
Blake’s 7, the latter of which he composed 50 of the 52 episodes for, as well
as the iconic theme music. He retired in 1987 and returned to his native
Australia. Simpson was 95 years old. An obituary can be found here.
25 December: Peter Capaldi departs the series in the Christmas special Twice Upon a Time. Jodie Whittaker takes over the role of the Doctor. The special also starred David Bradley appearing as the First Doctor, who had previously appeared in the 2013 TV movie An Adventure in Space and Time playing William Hartnell. The special also marked the final involvement by Steven Moffat, who had served as producer since 2010. He is replaced by Chris Chibnall.
25 December: Peter Capaldi departs the series in the Christmas special Twice Upon a Time. Jodie Whittaker takes over the role of the Doctor. The special also starred David Bradley appearing as the First Doctor, who had previously appeared in the 2013 TV movie An Adventure in Space and Time playing William Hartnell. The special also marked the final involvement by Steven Moffat, who had served as producer since 2010. He is replaced by Chris Chibnall.
Still missing at
the end of 2017: 97 - 44 Hartnell / 53 Troughton
2018
6 March: The BBC announces all twenty episodes of Season 12 - the first season to star Tom Baker - will be upscaled and released on Blu-Ray in High Definition, for a June 2018 release. The releases includes new special effects, new documentaries, new 5.1 sound mixes and The Tom Baker Years, originally released on VHS in the mid-nineties, will be released for the first time on disc. The stories include Robot, The Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the Daleks and Revenge of the Cybermen. To coincide with the release, cinemas in the United States will screen a condensed version of the story. Details can be found here.
21 April: Online auction house The Saleroom lists the original camera scripts from all six episodes of Fury from the Deep, reportedly originating from the collection of the late Victor Pemberton himself. The scripts are all signed by Mr Pemberton, to be auctioned in May. The auction can be seen here.
3 May: The creators of The Diary of River Song, an audio drama series made by Big Finish, announce they will feature four previous actors to play the role of the Master; Michelle Gomez (the 12th Doctor era), Derek Jacobi (Utopia), Geoffrey Beevers (The Keeper of Traken) and American actor Eric Roberts (the 1996 TV Movie) will all return for a January 2019 release. Details can be found here.
4 May: An original annotated copy of a script for An Unearthly Child is sold at auction for £6,200. Details can be found here.
18 May: Fan Graham Strong passes away aged 69. Graham was responsible for keeping dozens of episodes from the 1960s that he recorded off-air direct from the television set. He graciously loaned his collection to the BBC in 1994, and was some of them were found to be of superior quality to many existing film prints. More information can be found here. The creator of the blog would like to personally thank Graham for his contribution to Doctor Who.
25 May: The Big Finish audio drama Energy of the Daleks is released on Vinyl record for the first time. The story, initially released in 2012, features Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Louise Jameson as Leela, facing off against the Daleks, voiced by Nicholas Briggs. The release is limited to 1500 units, in an exclusive deal with Sainsbury's Supermarkets. Details can be found here.
29 May: Social video broadcaster Twitch begins screening over 500 episodes from the classic era. This marks the first time the classic series has been available on the digital platform. The broadcasts runs until July 23. For information can be found here.
3 June: In an interview on Radio Free Skaro (broadcast #638), Paul Vanezis reveals that there is "absolutely no question" there are missing episodes in the hands of private film collectors. The interview can be heard here, starting at 30'36" in.
3 September: Actress Jacqueline Pearce passes away after battling lung cancer. Jacqueline appeared in the Colin Baker story The Two Doctors, but was more familiar to sci fi fans as Supreme Commander Servalan from the series Blake's 7, a role which she played for the show's four year run. She was 74 years old. An obituary can be found here.
14 September: Zienia Merton passes away aged 72. Zienia played the role of Sandra Banes in the sci fi series Space 1999 for both seasons. Her first television role was that of Ping-Cho in the 1964 Doctor Who story Marco Polo. 45 years later, she returned to the Doctor Who universe in The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, a two-part story from The Sarah Jane Adventures. More can be found here.
7 October: Series 11 premieres on BBC1 with The Woman Who Fell to Earth, marking the first full appearance of Jodie Whittaker's thirteenth Doctor. Also appearing is Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill and Bradley Walsh, the first time since the Peter Davison era the Tardis crew comprises of four people. The episode earned 8.2 million viewers, the highest the series has achieved since 2013.
17 February: Twitch runs a six day marathon screening just classic stories featuring the Daleks. The run features stories omitted from the previous marathons, including stories not written by Terry Nation. Details can be found here.
20 February: Peter Purves announces (via Twitter) that UCLAN students will produce a remake of the lost episode Mission to the Unknown. The planned three-day shoot includes costumes, sets and actors Edward De Souza (who played Marc Cory in the original) and Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voice artiste) will be on set.
29 March: Canadian actor Shane Rimmer passes away age 89. Rimmer appeared in the 1966 story The Gunfighters as Seth Harper. His career included several high profile films including the original Star Wars, Dr Strangelove and three James Bond movies. He is best known however for his voice (and script) work on Gerry Anderon's Supermarionation productions in the 1960s; his most prominent role was Thunderbird 1 pilot Scott Tracy in all 32 episodes of Thunderbirds. Details can be found here.
3 June: Actor Paul Darrow (born Paul Valentine Birky) passes away aged 78 after a short illness. Paul appeared as Captain Hawkins in The Silurians and then as Tekker in Timelash. His most famous role however was that of Kerr Avon in the series Blake's 7. Paul met and later married actress Janet Lees-Price whilst working on Emergency Ward 10, and they were together for nearly 50 years until her death in 2012. In the last few years of his life he was confined to a wheelchair; in 2014 Paul suffered an aortic aneurysm and was forced to have both his legs amputated. The press release of his death can be read here.
29 August: Writer Terrance Dicks passes away aged 84. His first work on Doctor Who began in 1968 when he joined the production team during The Invasion as script editor, a role he stayed in (with the exception of The Space Pirates) until Planet of the Spiders in 1974. Terrance co-wrote The War Games in 1969, then under Tom Baker wrote Robot, The Brain of Morbius (which was later re-written by Robert Holmes), Horror of Fang Rock, State of Decay and The Five Doctors. As well as on screen work, Terrance novelised dozens of serials for Target, some New Adventures for Virgin, the stage plays Seven Keys to Doomsday and The Ultimate Adventure (plus their Big Finish adaptations) and several non-fiction books on the show. A news article can be found here.
9 October: The BBC, in association with the University of Central Lancashire, release the recreation of Mission to the Unknown online, which was shot back in February. The 9th of October, 2019 marks the 54th anniversary of the original broadcast. The video is introduced by Edward de Souza, who played Marc Cory in the original. The episode can be viewed here.
3 December: Donald Tosh, last surviving script editor from the William Hartnell era, dies aged 84. Tosh script edited the show from The Time Meddler to The Massacre. He also rewrote Brian Hayle's original version of The Celestial Toymaker, although his work was later rewritten again by Gerry Davis. He would also write The Rosemariners which, while ultimately never made into a television serial, was later turned into an audio play by Big Finish. His passing is mentioned here.
21 April: Online auction house The Saleroom lists the original camera scripts from all six episodes of Fury from the Deep, reportedly originating from the collection of the late Victor Pemberton himself. The scripts are all signed by Mr Pemberton, to be auctioned in May. The auction can be seen here.
3 May: The creators of The Diary of River Song, an audio drama series made by Big Finish, announce they will feature four previous actors to play the role of the Master; Michelle Gomez (the 12th Doctor era), Derek Jacobi (Utopia), Geoffrey Beevers (The Keeper of Traken) and American actor Eric Roberts (the 1996 TV Movie) will all return for a January 2019 release. Details can be found here.
4 May: An original annotated copy of a script for An Unearthly Child is sold at auction for £6,200. Details can be found here.
18 May: Fan Graham Strong passes away aged 69. Graham was responsible for keeping dozens of episodes from the 1960s that he recorded off-air direct from the television set. He graciously loaned his collection to the BBC in 1994, and was some of them were found to be of superior quality to many existing film prints. More information can be found here. The creator of the blog would like to personally thank Graham for his contribution to Doctor Who.
25 May: The Big Finish audio drama Energy of the Daleks is released on Vinyl record for the first time. The story, initially released in 2012, features Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Louise Jameson as Leela, facing off against the Daleks, voiced by Nicholas Briggs. The release is limited to 1500 units, in an exclusive deal with Sainsbury's Supermarkets. Details can be found here.
29 May: Social video broadcaster Twitch begins screening over 500 episodes from the classic era. This marks the first time the classic series has been available on the digital platform. The broadcasts runs until July 23. For information can be found here.
3 June: In an interview on Radio Free Skaro (broadcast #638), Paul Vanezis reveals that there is "absolutely no question" there are missing episodes in the hands of private film collectors. The interview can be heard here, starting at 30'36" in.
3 September: Actress Jacqueline Pearce passes away after battling lung cancer. Jacqueline appeared in the Colin Baker story The Two Doctors, but was more familiar to sci fi fans as Supreme Commander Servalan from the series Blake's 7, a role which she played for the show's four year run. She was 74 years old. An obituary can be found here.
14 September: Zienia Merton passes away aged 72. Zienia played the role of Sandra Banes in the sci fi series Space 1999 for both seasons. Her first television role was that of Ping-Cho in the 1964 Doctor Who story Marco Polo. 45 years later, she returned to the Doctor Who universe in The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, a two-part story from The Sarah Jane Adventures. More can be found here.
7 October: Series 11 premieres on BBC1 with The Woman Who Fell to Earth, marking the first full appearance of Jodie Whittaker's thirteenth Doctor. Also appearing is Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill and Bradley Walsh, the first time since the Peter Davison era the Tardis crew comprises of four people. The episode earned 8.2 million viewers, the highest the series has achieved since 2013.
Still missing at
the end of 2018: 97 - 44 Hartnell / 53 Troughton
2019
2 January: Broadcast heritage group Kaleidoscope announce a handful of off-air recordings of Doctor Who have been unearthed, after being contacted in late 2018 by one of their volunteers. The tapes, identified as belonging to someone called Randolph, are very high quality, higher than some that already exist. They cover The Daleks Master Plan 1 through to The Moonbase 1. A couple of episodes of The Sky At Night were also in the collection. Details can be found here.
5 January: Online broadcaster Twitch does an encore screening of the classic series of Doctor Who. As before, various stories are omitted from the run, but this time the broadcast is condensed over 20 days instead of 35. Details can be found here.
17 February: Twitch runs a six day marathon screening just classic stories featuring the Daleks. The run features stories omitted from the previous marathons, including stories not written by Terry Nation. Details can be found here.
20 February: Peter Purves announces (via Twitter) that UCLAN students will produce a remake of the lost episode Mission to the Unknown. The planned three-day shoot includes costumes, sets and actors Edward De Souza (who played Marc Cory in the original) and Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voice artiste) will be on set.
29 March: Canadian actor Shane Rimmer passes away age 89. Rimmer appeared in the 1966 story The Gunfighters as Seth Harper. His career included several high profile films including the original Star Wars, Dr Strangelove and three James Bond movies. He is best known however for his voice (and script) work on Gerry Anderon's Supermarionation productions in the 1960s; his most prominent role was Thunderbird 1 pilot Scott Tracy in all 32 episodes of Thunderbirds. Details can be found here.
3 June: Actor Paul Darrow (born Paul Valentine Birky) passes away aged 78 after a short illness. Paul appeared as Captain Hawkins in The Silurians and then as Tekker in Timelash. His most famous role however was that of Kerr Avon in the series Blake's 7. Paul met and later married actress Janet Lees-Price whilst working on Emergency Ward 10, and they were together for nearly 50 years until her death in 2012. In the last few years of his life he was confined to a wheelchair; in 2014 Paul suffered an aortic aneurysm and was forced to have both his legs amputated. The press release of his death can be read here.
29 August: Writer Terrance Dicks passes away aged 84. His first work on Doctor Who began in 1968 when he joined the production team during The Invasion as script editor, a role he stayed in (with the exception of The Space Pirates) until Planet of the Spiders in 1974. Terrance co-wrote The War Games in 1969, then under Tom Baker wrote Robot, The Brain of Morbius (which was later re-written by Robert Holmes), Horror of Fang Rock, State of Decay and The Five Doctors. As well as on screen work, Terrance novelised dozens of serials for Target, some New Adventures for Virgin, the stage plays Seven Keys to Doomsday and The Ultimate Adventure (plus their Big Finish adaptations) and several non-fiction books on the show. A news article can be found here.
9 October: The BBC, in association with the University of Central Lancashire, release the recreation of Mission to the Unknown online, which was shot back in February. The 9th of October, 2019 marks the 54th anniversary of the original broadcast. The video is introduced by Edward de Souza, who played Marc Cory in the original. The episode can be viewed here.
3 December: Donald Tosh, last surviving script editor from the William Hartnell era, dies aged 84. Tosh script edited the show from The Time Meddler to The Massacre. He also rewrote Brian Hayle's original version of The Celestial Toymaker, although his work was later rewritten again by Gerry Davis. He would also write The Rosemariners which, while ultimately never made into a television serial, was later turned into an audio play by Big Finish. His passing is mentioned here.
Still missing at the end of 2019: 97 - 44 Hartnell / 53 Troughton
2020
6 November: Actor Geoffrey Palmer passes away at the age of 93. A long and distinguished career, Palmer appeared in The Silurians and The Mutants in the 1970s, then starred in Voyage of the Damned in 2007. An article of his passing can be found here.
