1965 Daleks episodes found
Episodes from the 1965 Doctor Who story 'The Daleks’ Master Plan' have been unearthed and are now available on BBC iPlayer, restoring a long‑missing chunk of classic serial-era material (getyourcomicon.co.uk). The rediscovery expands access to early televised lore for fans and researchers of the show’s formative years (getyourcomicon.co.uk).
Two missing 1965 episodes of *Doctor Who* from *The Daleks’ Master Plan* were restored and released on April 3 on BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom. (doctorwho.tv) The recovered episodes are episode 1, *The Nightmare Begins*, and episode 3, *Devil’s Planet*, from the 12-part serial first broadcast in November 1965. The official *Doctor Who* site said they are the first newly discovered missing episodes to debut in 13 years. (doctorwho.tv 1) (doctorwho.tv 2) Film is Fabulous!, a charitable trust focused on film collecting and vintage television, found the prints in a private collection and contacted BBC Archives. The BBC then restored the original 16 millimeter telerecordings for streaming. (doctorwho.tv) A telerecording is a film copy made by pointing a camera at a television monitor, a method the BBC used before videotape copying was routine. That matters here because many 1960s *Doctor Who* episodes survive only on film prints sent abroad, if they survive at all. (doctorwho.tv) *The Daleks’ Master Plan* is one of the biggest gaps in early *Doctor Who*. Radio Times reported that seven of its 12 episodes are still missing, even after this recovery. (radiotimes.com) The serial starred William Hartnell as the First Doctor and was written by Terry Nation. The BBC’s announcement also named Peter Purves, Nicholas Courtney, Adrienne Hill and Kevin Stoney among the cast. (doctorwho.tv) The story has a long reputation among fans because of its scale and because so little of it could be watched in its original form for decades. Radio Times said the two recovered installments drew 9.1 million and 10.3 million viewers when they first aired in November 1965. (radiotimes.com) The BBC had previously recovered only episode 2 in 2004 and episodes 5 and 10 in 1983, according to Get Your Comic On. This find means more of one of the franchise’s best-known missing serials can now be seen rather than reconstructed from audio and still images. (getyourcomicon.co.uk) For viewers in the United States, the rollout is different: the official *Doctor Who* site said the episodes also launched on April 3 on the Doctor Who Classic YouTube channel. More than 60 years after their first broadcast, two more pieces of 1965 television are back in circulation. (doctorwho.tv)
