It's an announcement that Doctor Who fans worldwide have been awaiting – but not many have been waiting longer than Sue Malden, who was the BBC's first archive selector, and has been working on the recovery of missing Doctor Who episodes and other vintage television for decades.
This week, Film is Fabulous announced that it had recovered two previously missing episodes of the Doctor Who story The Daleks' Master Plan – The Nightmare Begins and Devil’s Planet – which will both be made available on BBC iPlayer in April.
Speaking exclusively to Radio Times after the news, Malden said: "Oh, it's so exciting. I've spoken so many times about Doctor Who and people always ask, 'Do you think there are any more to be found?'
"You go from saying, 'I don't know, I think this is the last,' to, 'Well, they were all recorded, so actually they've got to be somewhere,' and then these pop up.
View Green Video on the source websiteThe other four episodes that were found, which already exist in the BBC archive, are: The Survivors (episode 2 of The Daleks), The Escape (episode 3 of The Daleks), The Web Planet (episode 1 of The Web Planet), and The Executioners (episode 1 of The Chase). They will be returned to the BBC archive in the coming weeks.
So, how did these two episodes survive?
"They were struck from the original negative to view the technical quality and see if anything could be improved, and to check and see if there's anything in them that might have caused offence to another broadcaster.
"BBC Enterprises, as it was at the time, now BBC Studios, were always hoping to sell programmes, but they didn't want to cause offence. In particular, a lot of BBC material was sold in Australia, but stuff would be censored. And when these two cutting copies were viewed, the perception was that the Australians would find it too frightening. It's amazing to think that now!"
"So these cutting copies were just, presumably, put aside, and who knows what happened to them then?" she adds.
In an amazing full-circle moment, Peter Purves, who stars as Steven Taylor in the two episodes alongside William Hartnell's First Doctor, was invited to view them this week, initially under false pretences. It was only when he arrived that he discovered the news, and he later told the BBC: "My flabber has never been so gasted."
Purves has been open about his frustration with the BBC for erasing the episodes – and it's a feeling that Malden understands and shares.
"But through other work with the International Federation of Television archives, I've realised the BBC wasn't alone. Every broadcaster was faced with the same issues and problems, that the videotape could be recorded over. It would save money if you did that."
"And, with so many channels and opportunities to re-show programmes, the whole scenario has changed now. So I think most programmes in television archives are going to be kept, but it's so sad that some weren't."
"To us, it's really important, because we know people have collected things, and if they do hand them over, there's a huge frustration that there isn't an opportunity to see them and again for the fans," she points out.
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"It's really quite an achievement to be able to publicise that these have been found, to whet people's appetite, and then they can see them [in April], which I think is brilliant."
"I'd like to hope that," she said. "I'm sure they were all recorded at some time, so there's a strong chance that they're about the place somewhere, and the sooner we can find them, the better."
"Obviously, collectors are human beings with all their different foibles or whatever, but certainly from talking with collectors and using this as an example, quite often people don't really know what they've got in the collection," she points out.
"This is where John [Franklin, of Film is Fabulous!] and I started from in the first place – that collectors were not making lists of what they'd got.
"And the other thing, which is incredibly frustrating, is sometimes people just re-can things, so the label on the can might not actually be what is in the can. So for Film is Fabulous, we have to spend a lot of time double checking what the film is."
"Television people used to use film laboratories a lot for processing content, printing and developing negatives. It's possible there's piles of stuff in some old film laboratory somewhere. Who knows?"
Doctor Who's recovered episodes, The Nightmare Begins and Devil’s Planet, will be made available on BBC iPlayer in April.
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