After more than 60 years, two missing Doctor Who episodes have officially been recovered and will soon be made public.
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.
Now, Malden works with Film is Fabulous, a charitable trust run by film collectors, cinema lovers and vintage television enthusiasts which is dedicated to preserving vulnerable film collections across the UK, helping collectors, and educating about film as a medium.
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.
The two episodes were discovered in a private collection after the death of its owner, who will remain anonymous. Incredibly, it's the first discovery of missing Doctor Who episodes since 2013.
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 website"Actually, it was six [episodes] that were found, but four of them are already in the BBC archive – but it's possible that they're better quality than the ones at the BBC. They're going to go back to the BBC anyway and be checked for that. But there's two of them that definitely are not there, which is incredible."
The 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.
Now, a total of 95 of 253 episodes from the show's first six years are missing, leaving 26 stories incomplete, because the BBC erased or reused tapes in the 1960s and 1970s to save storage space and costs, before archiving policies were in place.
So, how did these two episodes survive?
"Basically, we found out that these are what were called cutting copies," Malden explained.
"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!"
Malden adds that the worry was that too many cuts would be made in the episodes, so the BBC did not attempt to sell them in Australia.
"So these cutting copies were just, presumably, put aside, and who knows what happened to them then?" she adds.
"They probably were part of the holdings of the team who worked in Villiers House for the BBC, whether they put them in a skip, left them in a cupboard, gave them to someone to take, who knows? How they got from there to this old collector, we don't know how he acquired them, but we know they're probably last seen in about 1965 in Villiers House."
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."
Malden said: "Someone from Film is Fabulous rang me yesterday to say what a fabulous time it was. It was so emotional. Apparently, Peter was quite overwhelmed. He must have been absolutely stunned, suddenly to find why he'd been lured there. But the memories it must have brought back for him would have been fantastic."
Purves has been open about his frustration with the BBC for erasing the episodes – and it's a feeling that Malden understands and shares.
"[It's] incredibly frustrating, not just about Doctor Who but about many of the productions that the BBC put out, particularly in the '50s, '60s, even in the '70s, things that weren't saved," she explained.
"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."
She adds: "You can understand why they made those sort of decisions back then... It doesn't make it any better that these programmes haven't survived, but at least we know why, and can understand what the processes were in the past, and hopefully we've all learned now.
"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."
For Malden and the rest of the Film is Fabulous! team, it's crucial that the episodes are going to be made publicly available on BBC iPlayer.
"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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"So that's quite an important part of Film is Fabulous's philosophy, that if things are found, we try and do as much as we can to make sure they're seen. So we do put on events where found programmes are shown. This is the first time that something that's been found is being shown on iPlayer and that's absolutely brilliant.
"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."
And, while there are still 95 episodes missing, Malden is holding out hope that all of them could one day be recovered.
"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."
As for how that could happen? Malden is hoping that the news of this recovery will encourage collectors to look closely at what they have in their collections.
"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.
"So if they became ill, their family had nothing to go on. All they could see were piles of cans and would be tempted to throw them away. So I suspect there could well be people with stuff in their collection that they don't know what it is.
"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."
She adds: "So I think it is quite likely that they could be in collections everywhere, and people not know what they've got. And with all this excitement, maybe it'll get collectors scurrying off making lists of what they hold, which is what the whole objective of Film is Fabulous was at the start.
"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?"
Looking to the future, Malden went on to say of this discovery: "It fills me with optimism that there is the possibility now of finding more, maybe not just Doctor Who, but other great television programmes that are missing."
Doctor Who's recovered episodes, The Nightmare Begins and Devil’s Planet, will be made available on BBC iPlayer in April.
Doctor Who will return to BBC One and BBC iPlayer this Christmas.
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