Missing episode
Missing Episodes is the term widely applied to those whole television broadcast episodes that are believed to no longer exist in a visual format. (Soundtracks, clips, extracts or telesnaps may be separately available).
There are several episodes of Doctor Who currently missing from the BBC's Film and Videotape Library.
As of August 2007 there are currently 108 episodes missing from the black and white era of the series (Seasons 1 to 6).
There are also several episodes from Jon Pertwee's tenure as the Third Doctor which only exist in black and white, although they were originally made in colour.
Clips exist from most of the missing episodes. There are also cuts to the master copies of some of the episodes which exist in the BBC's Film and Videotape Library.
Complete audio tracks of all episodes exist, thanks to off-air recordings by fans in the 1960s. The soundtracks for the missing episodes have all been released with linking narration by the BBC Radio Collection.
Telesnaps exist for most missing episodes as well.
Deletion
In the days long before domestic home videos and satellite stations, a time when the probability of repeats was minimal, the BBC decided in the 1970s to clear space in the archives to make way for new television material.
Much of their black and white footage was junked, unless especially deemed to be useful (e.g. news items, special interest, or one-off productions).
Doctor Who was not the only programme to be lost but probably the most costly to the BBC in terms of potential revenue that was lost.
Cuts in existing episodes
Some of the master copies of the Doctor Who episodes which are held by the BBC (as opposed to full deleted) are damaged or censored copies. In most cases, the missing material is held in another form; for instance, the censor clips recovered from Australia and New Zealand filled in a lot of previously censored material. However, a few remain incomplete:
- The Celestial Toymaker episode 4
- The War Machines episode 3 & 4
- The Invasion episode 6
The video releases of The Time Meddler and The Dominators contained additional cuts due to material which was missing from the archives at the time, but has since been recovered.
Recovery
During the late 1970s, the BBC established an Archive Department charged with recovering lost material.
Copies, often of a lower picture quality, were sold to overseas broadcasters on the understanding that after broadcast the copies were to be returned or destroyed. Some fortunately were not and copies still existed.
Some copies found their way into the hands of private collectors.
The BBC in order to recover as much material as possible offered an amnesty, returning copies to the owner after they had been able to made a copy.
Some gaps in the Archive were filled, from surprising sources including car boots, churches and overseas.
Recovered Material
- In 1992 all four episodes of The Tomb of the Cybermen were recovered and swiftly released for sale by BBC video.
Clips from missing episodes
For many of the missing episodes, short clips exist. These come from several sources:
- clips used in contemporaneous television programs which exist
- clips used in other episodes of Doctor Who
- The censor clips: material physically cut from episodes by the censors in Australia and New Zealand
- The 15-minute-long clip from Galaxy 4, given to Jan-Vincent Rudski
- The 8mm cine reel filmed by an unknown fan pointing a film camera at the television screen.
Pretty much all of these clips were released on the Lost in Time DVD box set. A few clips discovered later were released on the Genesis of the Daleks DVD.
Restoration
Often the copies had been damaged over time and needed huge resources to restore and repair them. A separate Restoration Team was commissioned to work on the material. Working with separately available soundtrack material their aim was to master a copy of a quality suitable for broadcast or/and commercial release.
Doctor Who was an obvious choice for the new restoration processes, with a virtually guaranteed market for the end product, in this sense Doctor Who was once again a leader in television technology.
A variety of techniques were employed to fill the damaged or missing gaps including reversals, repeating, re-editing, using better quality clips from other sources, recolouring black and white copies with existing colour episodes etc.
30th Anniversary Releases
During 1992/93 a new re-colouring process was employed by the Restoration Team. By overlaying a colour home recorded (American) copy onto an existing previously-colour-but-only-held-by-the-BBC-in black-white copy.
Three video releases were made possible by this process:
Doctor Who Restoration Team
The Doctor Who Restoration Team restores all episodes which are earmarked for DVD release.
Missing Episodes
William Hartnell Stories
| Season | Title | Episodes | Missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marco Polo | 7 | All |
| 1 | The Reign of Terror | 6 | 4,5 |
| 2 | The Crusade | 4 | 2,4 |
| 3 | Galaxy 4 | 4 | All |
| 3 | Mission to the Unknown | 1 | All |
| 3 | The Myth Makers | 4 | All |
| 3 | The Daleks' Master Plan | 12 | 1,3,4,6-9,11,12 |
| 3 | The Massacre | 4 | All |
| 3 | The Celestial Toymaker | 4 | 1,2,3 |
| 3 | The Savages | 4 | All |
| 4 | The Smugglers | 4 | All |
| 4 | The Tenth Planet | 4 | 4 |
Patrick Troughton Stories
- All 6 episodes
- All 4 episodes
- Episodes 1,2,4
- Episodes 1,3
- All 4 episodes
- Episodes 2,4,5,6
- Episodes 1,3,4,5,6,7
- Episodes 1,3,4,5,6
- Episodes 2,3
- Episodes 1,2,4,5,6
- Episodes 2,3,4,5,6
- All 6 episodes
- Episodes 1,2,4,5
- Episodes 1,4
- The Space Pirates
- Episodes 1,3,4,5,6
Third Doctor Stories
No longer held in original colour
- Episodes 2-4, 6 & 7
- Episodes 1-6)
- Episode 3
- Episode 1
Other colour versions
- Color only exists in a poor NTSC copy
- Color and higher-quality B&W copy recombined by Doctor Who Restoration Team
- Color only exists in a very poor NTSC copy, with frequent total color dropouts.
- Color and higher-quality B&W copy recombined by Doctor Who Restoration Team where possible.
- Released in mixed Black and White/Colour
- Color only exists in a poor NTSC copy
- Color and higher-quality B&W copy recombined by Doctor Who Restoration Team
- Color only exists in a poor NTSC copy
- Color and higher-quality B&W copy recombined by Doctor Who Restoration Team
- Only six minutes exist in color, from a poor NTSC copy. The rest of all six episodes exist only in B&W.
- Except for Episode 4, color only exists in a poor NTSC copy
- Color and higher-quality B&W copy recombined by Doctor Who Restoration Team
- Episode 3 only exists in B&W.
- Episode 1 (onscreen title "Invasion Episode 1") only exists in B&W.
