Two More Lost Episodes Of Doctor Who Recovered

A William Hartnell episode and a Patrick Troughton episode returned to the BBC Archives

Attendees at the British Film Institute’s Missing Believed Wiped were treated to an unexpected world exclusive today: the first airing of two “lost” episodes of ’60s Doctor Who , reports Doctor Who News .

One was the third episode of the William Hartnell story “Galaxy 4” – from which previously no episodes existed in the BBC archives – and the second was the episode of Patrick Troughton's third story “The Underwater Menace ”, which means that two episodes of this four episode now exist in the archive (shame the recovered episode couldn’t have been from a better story, but hey, more Troughton is always a good thing no matter how rubbish the monsters and villain are). The Troughton episode is now also the oldest Troughton episode to exist in the archive.

“I occasionally meet up with a group of film collectors and retired TV engineers at a café in Hampshire. A few months ago I spoke to Terry Burnett, who used to be an engineer at [former ITV station] TVS. Somehow Doctor Who was mentioned in passing, and Terry said, ‘Oh, actually I think I’ve got an old episode.’ I thought it was bound to be something we’ve got already. I tried not to get too excited, but he came back the next day and brought this spool with him. It had no label, so I had a look at the film leader and it said ‘Air Lock’. I thought, ‘What’s that?’ I checked online and saw that ‘Air Lock’ was an episode of ‘Galaxy 4’ - a missing Hartnell serial. So then I got very excited.

Dave is a TV and film journalist who specializes in the science fiction and fantasy genres. He's written books about film posters and post-apocalypses, alongside writing for SFX Magazine for many years.