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Overview

Why are so many episodes of Doctor Who missing?

The search for missing episodes has created many rumours and half-truths over the years but much of this has, in recent years been cleared up by the sterling work of many dedicated fans. Here, in brief, is the story of how the episodes were "lost" and how some have been recovered. For a more in depth overview of the story I would recommend Dominic Jackson's "Doctor Who Video and Audio FAQ" an excellent and well-researched piece of writing. See the Missing Episodes Links Page for more details of this and other articles on the subject.

When BBC TV first broadcast in 1936 there was no videotape recording, programmes were broadcast live. Predictably very, very little survives from the early days of British television and what does survive was preserved on film. This was mostly filmed either from a monitor or by pointing a film camera at the actors or presenters as they made a programme.

By the 1950's a great many programmes were still broadcast live and no recording was made to preserve the event for posterity. An example of this is the famous 1953 science fiction series written by Nigel Kneale, "The Quatermass Experiment". The first two episodes survive as 'telerecordings" on 35mm film. A 'telerecording" was created by pointing a film camera at a special flat screen monitor and literally filming the programme as it was broadcast. There is little evidence that the other four episodes of this series were ever recorded.

Ten years later, in 1963, the situation was different; a science fiction programme like Doctor Who was mostly recorded and transmitted from 405 line videotape. The recording was done "as live" since videotape was very expensive and editing it was a matter of physically cutting and splicing the tape itself. This meant that there were very few recording breaks and these were mostly for the insertion of pre-filmed inserts. The videotaped episodes were subsequently copied, 'telerecorded", on to film for BBC Enterprises who sold the episodes abroad in this format. At this time the BBC did not have a dedicated archive for programmes, the system of preservation was fairly haphazard. The only dedicated storage facility for old programmes was the BBC Film Library which mostly held programmes that originated on film and not those that originated on videotape or were telerecorded. [1]

Destruction

The only videotaped copies of most stories were held by BBC Engineering, who, after making telerecordings of these programmes, kept them in a small videotape library. These would often be the only videotape masters of the programmes. In 1967 many tapes in this library were wiped to make room for newer programmes. This process of wiping continued into the 1970's. [1]

As mentioned above the telerecorded copies of programmes were sent to BBC Enterprises. They sold programmes abroad until they were deemed as having no further commercial value, at which point their telerecordings were liable to be "junked". This simply meant that the film reels were unspooled and thrown into a skip!

Enterprises pursued a policy of mass junking from around about 1972. It is important to point out that such was the lack of communication within the BBC that both department's thought that it was the responsibility of the other to preserve "old" programmes. This junking continued until 1977 and affected many programmes, not just Doctor Who, very badly. In fact, Doctor Who has fared much better than many other television classics of the past. This was not the case initially, the number of missing episodes was substantial, to say the least. Doctor Who was, however, lucky enough to have many of these episodes rediscovered over the proceeding twenty years.

In 1978, when, for a number of reasons the BBC stopped the mass junkings, The Engineering Videotape Library and the Film Library were merged to form The BBC Film and Videotape Library. Sue Malden, the new Archive Selector, decided to look into the situation with regards a number of programmes, including Doctor Who. The number of missing "Who" episodes was found to be substantial. The figures are quite staggering, out of a total of 381 episodes, up to the last Pertwee story, "Planet of the Spiders" (everything after this survived), there were only 110 episodes in the Archive! The bulk of the missing episodes were from the first six seasons (Hartnell and Troughton). The Pertwee era had half of its episodes missing, 64 out of 128. In contrast, out of the 253 black and white episodes only 46 survived in the archive! This meant that 207 episodes from Seasons 1 to 6 were missing. [2]

Recovery

Following this revelation Sue Malden organised an effort to find any existing episodes that other BBC departments might have. The obvious place to search was BBC Enterprises and, sure enough, a number of complete stories were discovered. This discovery included almost the whole of Seasons 1 and 2. When the net was cast wider and contact made with the British Film Institute three more stories were recovered. In addition to this, television stations abroad, particularly in Canada, were able to return many colour copies of the Pertwee stories. By 1980 only one Pertwee episode, "Invasion of the Dinosaurs", Episode 1 (named "Invasion") was missing in any form from the Archive. The total number of missing episodes from the black and white era was substantially higher, at 136 missing episodes. [2]

From 1980 to the present the number of missing episodes has fallen still further to a total of 109. The main recovery of the 1990's prior to 1999 was the January 1992 discovery, in Hong Kong, of all 4 episodes of "The Tomb of the Cybermen". Since then many clips from missing episodes have been found but no complete episodes until the latest discovery. "The Lion", Episode 1 of "The Crusade", was returned to the BBC from New Zealand in January 1999.

Scroll down this page to view links to a number of newspaper articles about the recovery of "The Lion". You can also read some articles about the BBC Restoration Team's sterling efforts in restoring the classic Pertwee story, "The Daemons", to full colour.

 

Footnotes and further information

[1] See: Dominic Jackson's "Doctor Who Video and Audio FAQ"

[2] See: Richard Molesworth's article "Doctor Who in the Archives", in "The DWB Compendium, the best of the first 100 issues", Dreamwatch Publishing, 1993.

Also of Interest

"Out of the Vaults" by Richard Molesworth (published in Marvel Comics' "Doctor Who Magazine" issues 255 to 257): three comprehensive articles on the eighties, the seventies and the sixties including lists of archive holdings both of complete episodes and other material such as studio recording tapes. A version of this article can be viewed on the "Doctor Who Restoration Team Website"