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Two Long-Lost Episodes of 'Doctor Who' Found (nbcnewyork.com) 52

Posted by BeauHD from the lost-and-found dept.
Longtime Slashdot reader tsuliga writes: Two new episodes of Doctor Who that were previously lost have been found. The original Doctor Who episodes were wiped or deleted by the BBC because they were not aware of the future use of re-runs of these shows. Ninety-five of the 253 episodes from the program's first six years are currently missing. How many more episodes are out there waiting to be rediscovered? "The main broadcasters in the UK in the 1960s, 70s, up to the 80s really, junked quite a lot of content," said Justin Smith, a cinema professor at England's De Montfort University and film archivist. "In some ways finding missing 'Doctor Whos' is the holy grail" of classic TV discoveries, Smith said.

The two episodes were "The Nightmare Begins" and "Devil's Planet," both of which aired during the show's third series in 1965. It features William Hartnell as the Doctor in a story involving archvillains the Daleks -- pepperpot-shaped metal aggressors whose favorite word is "Exterminate!" Smith said that for fans of the show, "it's got it all, it really has. It is intergalactic, it's got some great performances. It stands up really, really well."
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Two Long-Lost Episodes of 'Doctor Who' Found More

Two Long-Lost Episodes of 'Doctor Who' Found

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  • At last (Score:5, Funny)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Saturday March 14, 2026 @03:39AM (#66040756) Homepage
    It seems like so long since we had some good news. Finally we have Daleks in the news instead of AI or politics.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Samare ( 2779329 )

      I guess if you can't have Weeping Angels nor Silents, Daleks are the next best thing.

      • Personally, I find the concept of the Cybermen more chilling than the Daleks. At least the Daleks will kill you. The Cybermen will Cyber-convert you, condemning you to a life of servitude with no free will. Unlike Borgification, there's no reversing the process.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      But do Daleks have AI?

  • Archival status (Score:5, Informative)

    by BigBadBus ( 653823 ) on Saturday March 14, 2026 @08:38AM (#66040992) Homepage
    There's a graphical guide for what survives from the first three doctors at http://www.paullee.com/drwho [paullee.com]

  • Here's the missing info (Score:5, Interesting)

    by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Saturday March 14, 2026 @08:43AM (#66040996) Homepage
    The media format is 16mm film. Here's the irony. Unlike U.S. television shows, BBC was an early adopter of video tape. (Recall that video tape was invented really late, available in 1956; everything before then had to be either live or telecined from film live.) But when shipping shows to far-flung international destinations, BBC "transferred" the video tape to film by filming a TV! That's what was found in the collector's cardboard box. That BBC used video tape is what allowed them to erase said video tapes.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      But when shipping shows to far-flung international destinations, BBC "transferred" the video tape to film by filming a TV! That's what was found in the collector's cardboard box. That BBC used video tape is what allowed them to erase said video tapes.

      My understanding is that, given the variety of video tape machines and differing video standards, 16mm film was the easiest way to distribute shows internationally. Everyone had some sort of 16mm telecine machine, but videotape recorder standards were all different. The downside was frame-rate sync issues, which were fixed in the olden days by slightly speeding up or slowing down the film. Nowadays it can be re-sync'd to the original framerate using compositing/resampling tools. Modern "AI" tools are pretty

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      BBC "transferred" the video tape to film by filming a TV!

      That's actually how videotape is transferred to film. It's a standard process. It's not as simple as pointing a film camera to the TV - there are sync issues so it's actually a specialized telecine machine that is synced to the TV signal so it exposes one frame of film at the start of the frame of video, waits for both fields, then advances.

      Modern day processes aren't much more sophisticated - the film needs to be exposed to the entire frame. Even if

  • Interesting but not exciting (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday March 14, 2026 @09:34AM (#66041028)

    A couple of episodes from a 12-part story. If you're a hardcore fan, this is fascinating, but if you're less fanatical it's a historical curiosity - you still can't watch the complete story from start to finish.

    I have watched the fully available stories from classic Doctor Who, and it's interesting to see the show evolve up until it falls apart at the end due to management sabotage.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      It is certainly true you can't watch the whole of The Dalek's Masterplan (where you should really include Mission to the Unknown, making it a 13-parter). The full audio exists, the Target novelisation of it exists (it spans 2 novels!), but yeah, it would be nice if we could someday watch the whole story.

      • To get the intended effect, you need to go into Mission to the Unknown expecting the Doctor to turn up at some point, watch The Myth Makers having no idea what that was about, and finish up watching The Massacre wondering if the whole thing is coming to an end. Over the course of 20 weeks, naturally. It's a period when the show deliberately abandons having the individually named episodes neatly arranged into different stories.

      • >, it would be nice if we could someday watch the whole story.

        A very small part of me wants to see someone who loves the show remake it from the start - not a fan who wants to remake it as they think it should have been, but someone who respects the original source material and just cleans it up a bit in production value and makes the minimum possible tweaks to make it palatable to a modern audience. Get some actors who can imitate the original actors, and then use CGI magic for face and voice replaceme

  • If an entity has lost its copy of a creative work then the copyright should be voided. There is no possible way the entity could further profit from something they can't distribute and they have violated their part of the contract with society by not giving the work to society when the copyright expires. This should also be true of any media if at the end of the copyright society would not be able to fully enjoy the work of art. This means for video games or computer programs if the entity owning it must

  • No reruns? (Score:3)

    by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Saturday March 14, 2026 @11:27AM (#66041162) Journal

    I remember seeing many of the original Doctor episodes in the mid-80's, including many Hartnell episodes.

  • When I taped a lot of stuff, I sometimes wondered if I'd be the guy who had the only copy of some obscure, failed series broadcast only once. But even if not, for my personal use, my mantra was "DO NOT assume anything will be repeated, ever. Even episodes of an established series." Later and now, it's "don't assume anything will be packaged commercially into VHS tapes, DVDs, Blu-rays, or streaming." otoh, I ended up with tons of tapes of material that, today, is inescapable, for free, around the clock. Oh,

  • it's time travel (Score:3)

    by Growlley ( 6732614 ) on Saturday March 14, 2026 @03:28PM (#66041536)
    you know they could simply have the doctor nip back in time and tell them of the future use of re-runs of these shows.

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