There are a lot of known lost episodes out there that collectors saved from thrash. The BBC knows it, everyone knows it, but the collectors won't come forward because they are afraid they are going to be prosecuted. They basically stole property which was meant to be destroyed.
The cost to make a digital copy from film stock has gone way down, to the point that fan groups [1][2] frequently encode and clean up old copies of film:
Taking these films back in the 60s might’ve been illegal, but has anyone actually been prosecuted for it in modern times? Haven’t other lost episodes been recovered from ‘illegitimate’ sources without issue?
If it’s a real risk, it also seems weird to me that it’s apparently known that some people have these. Like, if there was really appetite for prosecuting them wouldn’t that be enough to start an investigation?
The BBC can be very pigheaded, i.e. offering no incentives for people coming forward.
Even without losses, they have a trackrecord of stockpiling a lot of old content but not making it available to the public. I doubt this would happen to Doctor Who but it would elsewhere. You would think with streaming that the BBC could make a lot of obscure old content available, but they don't.
I don't really understand, it seems like if this was the main thing preventing people from returning them there would be ways around it. Couldn't they return them anonymously or upload them to the internet or something?
The original... takers of these films are dying off. It's well known that many episodes exist within private collections. The prevailing belief in the fandom is that they will be get released as the owners pass away. Indeed, that's likely where these two came from.
You're correct but as Uvix has said, BBC Enterprises made film copies for overseas sales before the original tapes were erased.
The earliest episode to survive on its original videotape is Ambassadors of Death episode 1 from 1970. None of the original 60s tapes still survive, though I believe there is at least one tape that we know used to have Doctor Who on it but which now has another programme.
The earliest episode to survive in its original medium is possibly The Dalek Invasion of Earth episode 5 (The Waking Ally). That's because, while this was shot on electronic studio cameras as usual, there were no videotape machines available to record.
Instead the output of those cameras was telerecorded straight to 35mm film. AIUI the negative of that telerecording still exists.
The BBC used a kinescope much longer than the US. (A kinescope recorded TV to film.)
The US pushed a lot harder than Europe for videotape because kinescopes dropped frames off of American 60i frame rates, but worked really well for European 50i frame rates. Thus the BBC continued to use kinescopes for a long time.
I remember wanting to love Dr Who even before it was broadcast. The TARDIS was great, but the first series was disappointing. Like so many others, it was the first sight (and sound) of a Dalek which vindicated my hopes.
I think there's LOTS of media out there, but there doesn't seem to be easy ways to convert it.
There was probably a renaissance period when conversion equipment was being actively developed and available, but that time is probably gone. For example I think a good film scanner would be the Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED, but current state of the art falls far short. For film, vcr tapes and more we should be doing so much better.
I have old family super-8 films that are kind of convertible, but not the magnetic sound strip.
If you have something precious on home movie film, this lab in Burbank, CA that does a lot of the movies will have sometimes deals on film transfers for holidays, or you can call them for a quote. No relationship, but I did have some done and they were very good. https://www.pro8mm.com/
There are several "holy grails" in British TV history.
Lost Doctor Who episodes are one of them. Dad's Army also has lost black and white episodes (the colour ones have been repeated ad nauseam all my lifetime).
I can think of a few others. Scotch on the Rocks was a political hit piece written by Douglas Hurd showing an armed Scottish uprising along the lines of Northern Ireland. It was supposed to frighten people away from Scottish nationalism, but ended up causing copycat incidents. It vanished shortly after being broadcast probably because of its unintended effects.
The ultimate would be some of the pre-WW2 television broadcasts. Most of these were broadcast in the London area and practically nowhere else. Almost no one had recording equipment back then and they were often broadcast live.
> the pre-WW2 television broadcasts. Most of these were broadcast in the London area and practically nowhere else. Almost no one had recording equipment back then and they were often broadcast live.
The "Phonovision" recordings made by Baird (which were unplayable at the time) have been recovered:
I just wanted to mention at this opportunity that some British TV series from the late 70s, early 80s are absolutely brilliant and some of the best stuff I have ever watched. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley's People, Danger UXB, Sandbaggers and Sherlock Holmes are some of my favorites.
I grew up with Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes, by far, in my opinion, the most accurate representation of the stories.
Only in my adult life did I read the stories, finding large chunks of the dialog in the TV show being word for word taken from the stories. And when not word for word, the tone and feel of the scenes so well portrayed on screen.
Brett's Sherlock Holmes is definitely the definitive one in my book.
There is a Soviet version of Sherlock Holmes which is surprisingly good starring Vasily Livanov. The locations sometimes don't quite look like England etc, but I really enjoyed it.
Sherlock Holmes is great. Tinker Tailor was repeated through my childhood, so I saw it a few too many times. I watched it again recently and found it slow... However the cast of it and Smiley's People are great. Karla is a notable early appearance of Patrick Stewart.
There were some great period dramas at the time, if a little set bound (like I, Claudius)
I was afraid this would never happen again. Two very good episodes, too.
I just pray that we'll get to see a few more Troughton episodes. He's the doctor that set the standard that all future doctors followed, yet the least known because the moronic BBC wiped basically his entire run, and now we only have about half of it.
Tom Baker was "my Doctor" because he's the one who made me love the show when I was a kid, but Troughton (and Zoë and Jamie) are my favorite era.
edit: Zoë and Jamie are from way back when the companions were expected to be useful, before Sarah Jane. Zoë was better at math than the Doctor; imagine them doing anything like that now.
The Tom Baker doctor had the best companion in K9. I was disappointed as a kid at the time when it chose to stay with his other companion.
I largely stopped watching from the "Five Doctors" episode onwards. Didn't like the 6th and maybe watched only a few episodes of the 7th doctor before not watching much free-to-air TV at all after that.
The problem with a lot of current companions is that they get dragged into soap opera. I have always seen the doctor as pretty much asexual and as a father figure to the companions, not a lover. (Or mother. I didn't take to Jodie Whittaker but I've never had an issue with a female doctor as such.)
No, they're cute, neurotic, complain a lot, and fall in love with the Doctor (who is a Great Man with the weight of the universe on his shoulders.) They're all Sarah Jane.
There was the one companion where both elements happened at the same time; the last primarily useful companion, the first companion to be in love with the Doctor: Jo Grant, the UNIT agent with a certificate from an "Escapeology course," but would look up at the Doctor with puppydog eyes. She had suddenly replaced Liz Shaw, the super-competent UNIT scientist who sometimes seemed like she could barely tolerate him. They made Jo Grant a rookie and a klutz.
Up to Jo Grant, the companions were primarily there to do things, so the Doctor didn't have to be everything. Jo Grant was the one who would free them when they were tied up and locked in a storeroom; like how Zoë would make fun of how bad the Doctor was at driving the Tardis. Sarah Jane, by contrast, was as helpless as a fetus, constantly complaining, and hopelessly in love.
Leela, Romana, and Adric (although Adric was constantly humiliated, then killed) were still left to come, and Ace allowed the useful companions from the original series to go out with a bang(sorry), but in Nu Doctor Who it was to be strictly Sarah Janes forever.
People even thought Donna Noble was a breath of fresh air because even though she was useless and constantly complaining, at least she wasn't constantly simpering and crying over him. The absolute nadir of this trend was when Martha Jones, actually a medical doctor(!), was nearly suicidal with lust over him and he was just not into her at all. Doesn't like career women, I guess.
It's not you, Martha, it's me. Now I'm off to haunt a little girl's bedroom and cuck the sweet, perfect boyfriend who would be willing to wait 2,000 years for her. Maybe you should look up Mickey, that other guy whose fiancé I stole while I let him ride in the backseat. He's single; I ruined his girl for anyone else.
There are notable male companions such as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as well as Jamie. The Brigadier is one of the best Doctor Who characters, a military man who is adaptable and can deal with strange situations.
The Brigadier got some great lines:
(To other soldiers) "Chap with the wings - five rounds, rapid."
"Most of their work's so secret, they don't know what they're doing themselves."
* "Look, just tell me this: Are you or are you not the Doctor that I met during the Yeti business and then later when the Cybermen invaded?"
No companion was like that until Sarah Jane. All companions were like that after the revival. It was decided by the person behind the revival that they would be women, never any more useful than Teagan, never as obviously hot as Peri but always cute. They would never be a threat to super Doctor and his magic screwdriver, or hot enough to make women angry.
Just sort of a cynical calculation by somebody who thought of women as tasteful accessories.
The literal reason for including companions from day one was so that the husbands had something to watch. The BBC have never hidden the fact that the companions were always there for eye candy.
When you look at the pre-UNIT episodes (before Dr Who went colour), the actors often left after only one season because they were fed up with their role just being there for the doctor to rescue. It’s something they’ve commented on in interviews since.
And you can see that when you watch them.
There’s also the the running joke of bringing in a female character who was supposed to be a computer programmer yet she never seemed to use a computer.
And there was another companion who used to talk pseudo-science with the doctor but they slowly dumbed her down as the show went on.
Unfortunately back then, female roles weren’t written to be strong and independent like they are now. Not just in Doctor Who, but in TV in general. And while things did improve in the 80s, you’re still greatly overstating things.
To talk more about that last point, let’s look at Ace. She really wasn’t written any differently to modern companions.
That all said, one thing I absolutely hate about the modern era, or Russel T Davis, specifically, is all the Doctor and Companion romantic plots. There was absolutely no need for any of that.
right here with me is an old 3/4" brodcast video tape machine I rescued from an arts collective that was shutting down, in it is a tape, labeled Doctor Who
I think Doctor Who was finding its feet in the Hartnell era and it was Troughton who really first defined the character to what he became later.
In the Hartnell era, the Doctor was a grandfather I think, looked old (although Hartnell was much younger than he appeared, thanks to the war etc) and seems to have been human.
> “It has to be worth it for the pleasure it’s brought me to see them,” Levine said. “Doctor Who runs all night in my bedroom, complete, nothing missing.”
Well heck - many don't even like the originals at all :p. On the contrary I found these much more enjoyable than the audio and stills! Of course I'd prefer more of the original copies be found... but for now the AI ones fill the gaps in my collection instead of the audio reconstructions.
They animated a lot of the missing pieces of the missing episode Shada with excellent results. If AI could do something of similar quality that would be wonderful.
There are production stills that are used like a slide show and combined with the recorded audio.
Certain episodes have been reconstructed using animation such that the basic scene blocking and events are played out alongside the recorded audio.
It could recreate missing episodes using the extant episodes. That's something worthwhile doing until someone finds them. It's not creating a complete new series.
People want to find the missing episodes because of their historical value as actual human artistic creations, and not because they want to watch a thing that looks like an old missing episode.
There would be as much value in an "AI-recreated" missing episode as there would be in taking the audio of a modern episode and using AI to create a new video track for it.
66 comments:
There are a lot of known lost episodes out there that collectors saved from thrash. The BBC knows it, everyone knows it, but the collectors won't come forward because they are afraid they are going to be prosecuted. They basically stole property which was meant to be destroyed.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/11/lost-do...
The cost to make a digital copy from film stock has gone way down, to the point that fan groups [1][2] frequently encode and clean up old copies of film:
[1]: https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k77/ [2]: https://www.youtube.com/c/kinekovideo
This of course has various IP implications...
This seems like a weird hangup. Is it likely?
Taking these films back in the 60s might’ve been illegal, but has anyone actually been prosecuted for it in modern times? Haven’t other lost episodes been recovered from ‘illegitimate’ sources without issue?
If it’s a real risk, it also seems weird to me that it’s apparently known that some people have these. Like, if there was really appetite for prosecuting them wouldn’t that be enough to start an investigation?
The BBC can be very pigheaded, i.e. offering no incentives for people coming forward.
Even without losses, they have a trackrecord of stockpiling a lot of old content but not making it available to the public. I doubt this would happen to Doctor Who but it would elsewhere. You would think with streaming that the BBC could make a lot of obscure old content available, but they don't.
I don't really understand, it seems like if this was the main thing preventing people from returning them there would be ways around it. Couldn't they return them anonymously or upload them to the internet or something?
I mean, at that point you're distributing piracy, no?
Arrrr! Aye aye maitey'tis a heavy toll, but the prize be worth the parley
I remember when Eccleston's version came out and all the nerd blogs were crying cause this means these episodes were never gonna be released.
You are so right.They are never gonna be released.
The original... takers of these films are dying off. It's well known that many episodes exist within private collections. The prevailing belief in the fandom is that they will be get released as the owners pass away. Indeed, that's likely where these two came from.
I would have thought there would be parties willing to anonymously rip and upload any such materials?
Hopefully some day somebody will build a Tardis and travel back in time and eliminate the BBC morons who allowed all this destruction.
Film cans? I thought the whole reason the series was missing was because it was shot on video, and then the tapes were wiped after shooting?
You're correct but as Uvix has said, BBC Enterprises made film copies for overseas sales before the original tapes were erased.
The earliest episode to survive on its original videotape is Ambassadors of Death episode 1 from 1970. None of the original 60s tapes still survive, though I believe there is at least one tape that we know used to have Doctor Who on it but which now has another programme.
The earliest episode to survive in its original medium is possibly The Dalek Invasion of Earth episode 5 (The Waking Ally). That's because, while this was shot on electronic studio cameras as usual, there were no videotape machines available to record.
Instead the output of those cameras was telerecorded straight to 35mm film. AIUI the negative of that telerecording still exists.
> there is at least one tape that we know used to have Doctor Who on it but which now has another programme.
Recording over another recording does not completely erase the other. I wonder if it could be recovered.
It has been suggested numerous times, but the BBC didn’t just record over the top - the tapes were erased with a degausser before reuse.
Oh well.
The BBC used a kinescope much longer than the US. (A kinescope recorded TV to film.)
The US pushed a lot harder than Europe for videotape because kinescopes dropped frames off of American 60i frame rates, but worked really well for European 50i frame rates. Thus the BBC continued to use kinescopes for a long time.
Film prints were made for overseas sales.
"My flabber has never been so gasted." - Pete Purves
I remember wanting to love Dr Who even before it was broadcast. The TARDIS was great, but the first series was disappointing. Like so many others, it was the first sight (and sound) of a Dalek which vindicated my hopes.
It's strange for formerly lost media to get a whole news story about it. This should, but still strange.
Hope more are found sooner than another 13 years from now.
I think there's LOTS of media out there, but there doesn't seem to be easy ways to convert it.
There was probably a renaissance period when conversion equipment was being actively developed and available, but that time is probably gone. For example I think a good film scanner would be the Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED, but current state of the art falls far short. For film, vcr tapes and more we should be doing so much better.
I have old family super-8 films that are kind of convertible, but not the magnetic sound strip.
If you have something precious on home movie film, this lab in Burbank, CA that does a lot of the movies will have sometimes deals on film transfers for holidays, or you can call them for a quote. No relationship, but I did have some done and they were very good. https://www.pro8mm.com/
Wait, what's wrong with Cintel? I've not used it myself but got a really good impression back when I worked at BMD a few years back.
There are several "holy grails" in British TV history.
Lost Doctor Who episodes are one of them. Dad's Army also has lost black and white episodes (the colour ones have been repeated ad nauseam all my lifetime).
I can think of a few others. Scotch on the Rocks was a political hit piece written by Douglas Hurd showing an armed Scottish uprising along the lines of Northern Ireland. It was supposed to frighten people away from Scottish nationalism, but ended up causing copycat incidents. It vanished shortly after being broadcast probably because of its unintended effects.
The ultimate would be some of the pre-WW2 television broadcasts. Most of these were broadcast in the London area and practically nowhere else. Almost no one had recording equipment back then and they were often broadcast live.
> the pre-WW2 television broadcasts. Most of these were broadcast in the London area and practically nowhere else. Almost no one had recording equipment back then and they were often broadcast live.
The "Phonovision" recordings made by Baird (which were unplayable at the time) have been recovered:
http://www.tvdawn.com/earliest-tv/
I just wanted to mention at this opportunity that some British TV series from the late 70s, early 80s are absolutely brilliant and some of the best stuff I have ever watched. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley's People, Danger UXB, Sandbaggers and Sherlock Holmes are some of my favorites.
I grew up with Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes, by far, in my opinion, the most accurate representation of the stories.
Only in my adult life did I read the stories, finding large chunks of the dialog in the TV show being word for word taken from the stories. And when not word for word, the tone and feel of the scenes so well portrayed on screen.
Brett's Sherlock Holmes is definitely the definitive one in my book.
There is a Soviet version of Sherlock Holmes which is surprisingly good starring Vasily Livanov. The locations sometimes don't quite look like England etc, but I really enjoyed it.
Sherlock Holmes is great. Tinker Tailor was repeated through my childhood, so I saw it a few too many times. I watched it again recently and found it slow... However the cast of it and Smiley's People are great. Karla is a notable early appearance of Patrick Stewart.
There were some great period dramas at the time, if a little set bound (like I, Claudius)
> still strange
wrong doctor
Why should that be strange?
I was afraid this would never happen again. Two very good episodes, too.
I just pray that we'll get to see a few more Troughton episodes. He's the doctor that set the standard that all future doctors followed, yet the least known because the moronic BBC wiped basically his entire run, and now we only have about half of it.
Tom Baker was "my Doctor" because he's the one who made me love the show when I was a kid, but Troughton (and Zoë and Jamie) are my favorite era.
edit: Zoë and Jamie are from way back when the companions were expected to be useful, before Sarah Jane. Zoë was better at math than the Doctor; imagine them doing anything like that now.
Would you like a jelly baby?
The Tom Baker doctor had the best companion in K9. I was disappointed as a kid at the time when it chose to stay with his other companion.
I largely stopped watching from the "Five Doctors" episode onwards. Didn't like the 6th and maybe watched only a few episodes of the 7th doctor before not watching much free-to-air TV at all after that.
I'm hoping for more Troughton too some day. And speaking of Jamie: https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/images/2025/brendan_hines....
Companions are still useful, they just bring different skills to the Doctor (humanity?).
The problem with a lot of current companions is that they get dragged into soap opera. I have always seen the doctor as pretty much asexual and as a father figure to the companions, not a lover. (Or mother. I didn't take to Jodie Whittaker but I've never had an issue with a female doctor as such.)
No, they're cute, neurotic, complain a lot, and fall in love with the Doctor (who is a Great Man with the weight of the universe on his shoulders.) They're all Sarah Jane.
There was the one companion where both elements happened at the same time; the last primarily useful companion, the first companion to be in love with the Doctor: Jo Grant, the UNIT agent with a certificate from an "Escapeology course," but would look up at the Doctor with puppydog eyes. She had suddenly replaced Liz Shaw, the super-competent UNIT scientist who sometimes seemed like she could barely tolerate him. They made Jo Grant a rookie and a klutz.
Up to Jo Grant, the companions were primarily there to do things, so the Doctor didn't have to be everything. Jo Grant was the one who would free them when they were tied up and locked in a storeroom; like how Zoë would make fun of how bad the Doctor was at driving the Tardis. Sarah Jane, by contrast, was as helpless as a fetus, constantly complaining, and hopelessly in love.
Leela, Romana, and Adric (although Adric was constantly humiliated, then killed) were still left to come, and Ace allowed the useful companions from the original series to go out with a bang(sorry), but in Nu Doctor Who it was to be strictly Sarah Janes forever.
People even thought Donna Noble was a breath of fresh air because even though she was useless and constantly complaining, at least she wasn't constantly simpering and crying over him. The absolute nadir of this trend was when Martha Jones, actually a medical doctor(!), was nearly suicidal with lust over him and he was just not into her at all. Doesn't like career women, I guess.
It's not you, Martha, it's me. Now I'm off to haunt a little girl's bedroom and cuck the sweet, perfect boyfriend who would be willing to wait 2,000 years for her. Maybe you should look up Mickey, that other guy whose fiancé I stole while I let him ride in the backseat. He's single; I ruined his girl for anyone else.
That era of companions was a response to the eras before then when companions were expected to just look pretty and scream on cue.
There are notable male companions such as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as well as Jamie. The Brigadier is one of the best Doctor Who characters, a military man who is adaptable and can deal with strange situations.
The Brigadier got some great lines:
(To other soldiers) "Chap with the wings - five rounds, rapid."
"Most of their work's so secret, they don't know what they're doing themselves."
* "Look, just tell me this: Are you or are you not the Doctor that I met during the Yeti business and then later when the Cybermen invaded?"
No companion was like that until Sarah Jane. All companions were like that after the revival. It was decided by the person behind the revival that they would be women, never any more useful than Teagan, never as obviously hot as Peri but always cute. They would never be a threat to super Doctor and his magic screwdriver, or hot enough to make women angry.
Just sort of a cynical calculation by somebody who thought of women as tasteful accessories.
The literal reason for including companions from day one was so that the husbands had something to watch. The BBC have never hidden the fact that the companions were always there for eye candy.
When you look at the pre-UNIT episodes (before Dr Who went colour), the actors often left after only one season because they were fed up with their role just being there for the doctor to rescue. It’s something they’ve commented on in interviews since.
And you can see that when you watch them.
There’s also the the running joke of bringing in a female character who was supposed to be a computer programmer yet she never seemed to use a computer.
And there was another companion who used to talk pseudo-science with the doctor but they slowly dumbed her down as the show went on.
Unfortunately back then, female roles weren’t written to be strong and independent like they are now. Not just in Doctor Who, but in TV in general. And while things did improve in the 80s, you’re still greatly overstating things.
To talk more about that last point, let’s look at Ace. She really wasn’t written any differently to modern companions.
That all said, one thing I absolutely hate about the modern era, or Russel T Davis, specifically, is all the Doctor and Companion romantic plots. There was absolutely no need for any of that.
right here with me is an old 3/4" brodcast video tape machine I rescued from an arts collective that was shutting down, in it is a tape, labeled Doctor Who
I guess the BBC just has no editors now. There’s no valid way to interpret that headline as grammatical.
Can you explain? It seems like a pretty standard British news/newspaper headline to me.
You may not understand it, but it is grammatically correct.
Only because you read it as Doctor Who (the noun, which should have included quotes or underline or italics).
Perhaps the doctor meant for these to be lost and not found, or that the daleks was afraid of them?
I think Doctor Who was finding its feet in the Hartnell era and it was Troughton who really first defined the character to what he became later.
In the Hartnell era, the Doctor was a grandfather I think, looked old (although Hartnell was much younger than he appeared, thanks to the war etc) and seems to have been human.
We have all the voice recordings, feed that into AI along with the extant episodes and it should be able to regenerate (geddit?) the missing episodes.
Somebody spent a small fortune trying this a while ago with disliked results https://nypost.com/2025/04/13/entertainment/ailing-doctor-wh...
They seem to have been pleased with the results:
> “It has to be worth it for the pleasure it’s brought me to see them,” Levine said. “Doctor Who runs all night in my bedroom, complete, nothing missing.”
Ah I mean others disliked the results.
Make up your own mind I suppose, I doubt you will find them rewarding: https://youtu.be/rQabMPpdQnk?si=Fm9Yqj7EwAjYp5np
Well heck - many don't even like the originals at all :p. On the contrary I found these much more enjoyable than the audio and stills! Of course I'd prefer more of the original copies be found... but for now the AI ones fill the gaps in my collection instead of the audio reconstructions.
They animated a lot of the missing pieces of the missing episode Shada with excellent results. If AI could do something of similar quality that would be wonderful.
Do we also have stills of all the episodes? Or only audio?
There are production stills that are used like a slide show and combined with the recorded audio. Certain episodes have been reconstructed using animation such that the basic scene blocking and events are played out alongside the recorded audio.
Feels a bit like Jurassic Park
The risk of the episodes going wild and kill lawyers seems minimal though.
Risk or benefit?
Then what is AI even good for? :(
From a utilitarian pov yes. But that's completely missing the artistic point. Why shoot a film when you could just feed the script into an AI?
It could recreate missing episodes using the extant episodes. That's something worthwhile doing until someone finds them. It's not creating a complete new series.
People want to find the missing episodes because of their historical value as actual human artistic creations, and not because they want to watch a thing that looks like an old missing episode.
There would be as much value in an "AI-recreated" missing episode as there would be in taking the audio of a modern episode and using AI to create a new video track for it.
> People want to find the missing episodes because...
Speak for yourself!
Even if it's motion comic level animation, it'd still be nice to see combined with the audio recordings.