Mission to the Unknown (TV story): Difference between revisions

Perhaps more than any other Doctor Who story, Mission to the Unknown generates confusing and debate over both the title used and the serial/production code allocated.

All Doctor Who stories from this period have no overall onscreen title, with the story referred to either by a production code or an internal title by the production team. (For example the early 1965 story featuring Nero was Serial M or The Romans.) The two were confusingly used interchangeably in many production and overseas sales documents.

Mission to the Unknown generates further confusion because some documents do not refer to it as a serial but rather as a "cutaway episode". As the story was produced alongside Galaxy 4 the two appear to have been referred to together. Several of the production codes offered are either Serial T or Serial T +, an appendage.

Early in 1965 the term Dalek Cutaway started to be used to describe the episode in the production office. The onscreen title Mission to the Unknown came later but both continued in circulation, with Dalek Cutaway seemingly being used in places as both a story title and a production term. The abbreviation DC also appears on a few early production documents.

Design documents successively refer to the episode as Serial T/A and later Serial T Episode 5. The episode's camera script gives Dalek Cutaway as a description and a handwritten addition states Serial T Episode 4 (which is the wrong number). Later when the videotape of the episode was wiped the relevant paperwork referred to Serial Ta Episode 1/1.

When it came to offering the story for sale overseas, the synopsis sent by BBC Enterprises gave the title as Mission to the Unknown (Dalek Cutaway). The 1974 Enterprises document A Quick Guide to Doctor Who, which listed the stories produced so far for potential overseas buyers, gave the title as Dalek Cutaway (Mission to the Unknown) and did not offer any production code at all.

When fans started compiling reference books in the mid 1970s it was this latter document which formed the basis of many lists. The story was referred to alternatively as Dalek Cutaway and Mission to the Unknown on many occasions, whilst the production code went vacant until the discovery of the design documents stating T/A. In more recent years the exploration of the BBC's written archives has exposed the problems of the title and production code