Chapter the 346th, which features an unexpected return.
Plot:
The Doctor and Katarina land on the planet Kembel trying to find help for Steven, who's stricken with illness after he was injured during a violent tussle in Ancient Troy. Space Security agent Bret Vyon is also on the planet, trying to get word back to Earth that the Daleks are planning on taking over the universe. Bret has an altercation with the Doctor, and then bluffs his way into the TARDIS past the trusting Katarina. Bret provides some tablets that help Steven to recover and eventually they all realise they're on the same side. Later, having escaped in the spaceship of traitorous Earth politician Mavic Chen, the TARDIS team and Bret are brought down on the penal planet Desperus. They fend off the local convicts until they can repair the ship and escape, but one criminal has crept aboard...
Context:
For my last couple of years of blogging, I regularly added a 'Milestone Watch' section to each blog post, counting down the few remaining stories as I watched them in random order. I had reached a point of completion at the end of 2025, having blogged all of Doctor Who's TV stories and many of its spin-offs and oddities. How wonderful then to find that only a few months into 2026, I would have to start counting up. I discovered about the return of these two previously missing episodes on the morning of Friday 13th March 2026. The sun had not long come up, but the Whatsapp group chat with my fan friends was already alight, the messages having started just after midnight when the news first broke. Three weeks later, on Good Friday 2026, the 3rd of April, it was another early start. I didn't manage to get up at 6am (the time the episodes first landed), but around an hour and a half later I sat down to watch episodes 1 and 3 of The Daleks' Master Plan from the BBC iplayer while the rest of the family continued to enjoy an Easter lie-in.
The 2018 blog post covering the full story of which The Nightmare Begins and Devil's Planet are part can be found here. As said there, I first experienced this story in increments over a number of years, seeing the orphaned episodes as they were discovered and released, and catching up with the full audio recordings separately. These two new episodes are a very welcome new increment, but do they constitute the end of the Daleks' Master Installment Plan? There are seven episodes plus a one-part teaser from earlier in the season remaining to be found, so the story is only 38% complete. It would be lovely if the missing episodes strongly rumoured to survive in other private collections, when returned - and I do believe now that they will eventually be returned - turn out to be more episodes of this epic tale. But it would be just as wonderful if they came from any other story that's wholly or partly missing from the archives. It's a win-win for Doctor Who fans, really, so a big thank you to Film is Fabulous!, the charity that was instrumental in ensuring that these episodes, amongst other finds, were preserved for future audiences to enjoy.
As touched upon in the First Time Round section immediately above, these episodes formed part of a story that had a somewhat unusual transmission pattern when shown for the one and only time in 1965/1966. First, the story was about twice the length of the longest stories made to that point. Second, it had a teaser episode shown in advance that featured none of the regular cast, but teed up the story to come. Third and finally - and somewhat bizarrely - it had a completely unconnected story broadcast in between that starter and the main 12-part main course. This was The Myth Makers, another story that sadly has episodes missing from the archive (all of them, in its case). The title of that story took on a life of its own, though, when it was used for a decades long series of fan-made videos featuring interviews with Doctor Who alumni, both from in front of and behind the cameras. The appropriated title seems to be suggesting that the many people interviewed over the years from throughout Doctor Who's long history built up the mythology with the programmes to which they contributed. It's only when watching these two episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan that I suddenly felt the title of that video series was doing its interviewees a slight disservice: they contributed to something much better than myths. The real myth makers were those responsible for the policies, or lack of policies, that meant episodes were junked and gaps were created in Doctor Who's archive. The joy of watching The Nightmare Begins and Devil's Planet was seeing them turn in real time from things that were mysterious and to be revered to things that could simply be enjoyed, the intangible becoming tangible. The creatives of Doctor Who didn't set out to create myths, they set out to create stories (and stories are better than myths).
It'll sound silly or even hypocritical given that I'm watching and writing about TV that was made more than 60 years ago, but having moving images to accompany what was only available as audio before makes the action live in the now rather than in some distant past. Just as with previous returns during my time as a fan (see the Deeper Thoughts section below for more details) this creates a novelty around details that would seem irrelevant to the uninitiated (what's the exact moment in the narrative when Steven dons his corduroy jacket?) that have significance as they've previously only been available to one's speculation not one's eye. A wonderful part of the experience was watching in the knowledge that a time will come when I don't think about these and just watch the tale unfold. That's more than okay - it's right. I can now just about watch the second episode of this story, Day of Armageddon, some 20+ years after its return, without being startled by the interesting choice actor Kevin Stoney makes about how his character Mavic Chen grips a pen (how would anyone ever have speculated on such a thing before the episode was found?). The time will come when seeing that the costumes for the convicts of Desperus each has a 'D' on the back doesn't take me momentarily out of the narrative. That day's not today, but it will come. It's testament to the fluid story-telling of Douglas Camfield's direction that I was mostly engrossed in the action despite a succession of such moments. There's a great scene in the first episode (which was made available as an online clip a few weeks before the episodes landed), where the camera tracks across the Daleks to find the Doctor in the foreground, hidden from them; the camera frames William Hartnell in close-up (Hartnell knows how to work a close-up) and he exclaims "Daleks!". It's just one of many flourishes that Camfield creates.
The other big thing that having these two episodes back gives us beyond additional evidence of the director's expertise is more screentime for characters that had precious little previously. Temporary companions Katarina and Bret Vyon now appear in three times more material than before. All the nuances of both Adrienne Hill and Nicholas Courtney's performances are suddenly visible to us. This is also the case for more minor characters. The only part of Brian Cant's performance as Kurt Gantry available before now was a surviving clip of his death scene, where Gantry interacts only with Daleks. Seeing scenes of his interactions with another actor (Courtney) allows more character to shine through, and gives the moment of his extermination much more power when seen in-situ. There are some unexpected effects treats too: a shot of the Spar ship moving through space, and a long shot of the three criminals on Desperus approaching the Doctor and Co, seen as only three distant torch lights. Details like the Doctor's hair being messed up after his altercation in the jungle with Bret, or just how plasticky the wrench is that Steven uses in the TARDIS, are wonderful to see. Best of all, is that there's more of Hartnell as the Doctor to enjoy. He is magnificent in these two episodes; his every tiny adjustment to his performance depending on what size shot he's in is a masterclass in screen acting, even when he's getting the line completely wrong (the Daleks, according to the Doctor at one point, would "stop at anything" to prevent our heroes warning Earth). Now's not the time to find such fault, I know, but some joy comes from knowing that time will come. Instead of being abstract ideals impossible to criticise, these will in a while just be any old episodes of Doctor Who with all the flaws (how plasticky is that wrench?!) and all the magic that entails.
Connectivity:
Both the two found episodes of The Daleks Master Plan and The War between the Land and the Sea feature the return of top division Doctor Who baddies, and see characters escaping from some form of custody to go on the run. Both feature at least one person with a close-cropped do (Barclay in the 21st century story, the Technix in Master Plan).
Many Happy Returns: a personal history of missing episode finds. Over the years, a handful of fans have been involved in the recovery of Doctor Who episodes missing from the BBC archives. For the vast majority of us, though, the experience of this activity has been from the outside-in. Many weren't even aware of the state of the BBC's archive holdings of Who until the publication of the Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special in Autumn 1981. This was the first time a mass publication had specified exactly what existed and what was lost. At the same time as the Special, there was a series of archive repeats, The Five Faces of Doctor Who, on UK channel BBC2. I was watching these, and rapidly becoming hooked on the show, but I wouldn't start buying the magazine or its special editions for another year. I also didn't know enough about the history of Doctor Who, unlike some fans watching those repeats, to wonder why they'd chosen the generally less than popular story The Krotons for Patrick Troughton's Doctor instead of one of his classics. If they managed to get a copy of the Special they had their answer: it was a series of four-part stories, one per Doctor, and there was then only one surviving four-part story for Troughton's Doctor. Based on many retellings in the years that followed, I know this was a great shock to many. One fan who wasn't shocked, one who was in the know from the inside-out, was DJ and music producer Ian Levine. In the late 1970s, he'd discovered the terrible state of the archives. This had come about because, as probably the first fan who had grown up with the show and also had significant disposable income, he wanted to watch old episodes and had the means to engage the BBC to obtain film copies. This led to his involvement in missing episode recovery, and the eventual return of a good few film cans plugging some of the gaps.
Levine wasn't the only person involved then or afterwards, of course. I mention him in particular because ultimately the drive for recovery of the old episodes was the desire to view them rather than for them to sit unwatched in a film library. In previous decades, a combination of factors had created the institutional belief that the episodes no longer held viewing potential for an audience. As they already weren't seen as worthy of a place in any film library, that did for them. This wasn't unique to the BBC or to Doctor Who, of course; it was a widespread belief, but it was changing. The Five Faces season and Levine's early private approaches to the BBC were both signals of that change. They were the early indicators that archive television programmes, even - or, damn it, particularly - frivolous ephemera like Doctor Who episodes, were of increasing value. Before this change nobody had particularly been interested in searching, but not too much time had passed since the initial junking of film copies. As such, the ground was fertile for the green shoots of recoveries. When I finally was reading Doctor Who Magazine, its news page regularly reported finds, and this continued through the first half of the 1980s. I remember at least one missive from the mag's letters page in that period, though, bemoaning the lack of access to these recovered episodes: what was the point of trumpeting the newly discovered existence of The Abominable Snowmen part 2 (returned in 1982) or the The Faceless Ones part 3 (returned in 1987), as just two examples, if they still remained unseen? Luckily, a suitable distribution medium was developing in parallel with these finds: by the mid-1980s, affordable sell-through VHS releases had become a reality and a Doctor Who range had begun.
I had not been too engaged with the subject during this period. I still had a supply of new Who programmes being broadcast annually on TV. Most of the show's history was new to me as well. I was doing my best to catch up by collecting Target novelisations and - as the decade wore on - the first videos, but there was more than enough of that history to exhaust my minimal funds. I remember reacting to the news of the 1988 recovery of four episodes of The Ice Warriors with little more than a shrug (forgive me - I was a teenager!). Four years later, the 80s having give way to the 90s, and things were very different. Doctor Who was no longer on the TV. The VHS range was increasingly covering black and white stories from the early years of Who in the 1960s. There had even been a couple of tapes released in 1991 that showcased some orphaned episodes within a wraparound documentary format. Then The Tomb of the Cybermen was found in its entirety. This was the most exciting recovery to date, as retold in the Deeper Thoughts section of the blog post I wrote about Tomb. The VHS range was established such that the story could be rush released, and it sold more in the UK in its first week than many Hollywood movies. More than just the potential of purchasers of archive Doctor Who, there was now a demonstrable market. Thereafter, a pattern was established that any further finds would become available quickly afterwards on VHS, then - as the 90s gave way to the 00s - DVD (and even later as downloads or on streaming platforms). Finds started to become fewer and further between, though.
In a 1998 documentary about missing episodes that was an extra on a VHS release of the recovered Ice Warriors episodes, Levine was quoted saying that he feared that all there was to be found had now been found, though he hoped someone would prove him wrong. That did indeed happen a few times over the following 15 years, but only four episodes were returned in that time, each one an orphan. If anyone thought the days of finding multiple episodes from the same story were over, they were pleasantly surprised when - wonderfully and miraculously - the biggest haul ever was gathered up at the end of that 15 year period. In late 2013, the whole of The Enemy of the World, and all but one episode of The Web of Fear were recovered from a Nigerian TV station. The thrill of that find had to keep us going through almost 13 years of nada, zip, bupkis. The lucky-for-some Friday 13th in March of 2026 saw the situation finally change, when the discovery of the two found episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan was announced. With the 9-episode 2013 returns the only ones this century to come from an overseas TV station, finds from such sources look to have been thoroughly exhausted. Further missing episodes seem more likely to be found in private collections, where there isn't likely to be many found at a time. If anyone cared enough to collect a number of Doctor Who episodes - the collector who ended up with The Nightmare Begins and Devil's Planet wasn't interested in Who and got them as part of a job lot - they would know what they had and would have returned them before now. There are now 95 missing episodes of Doctor Who in total: nobody can know for sure if or when that number will drop down further, but still we fans live in hope - all things considered, it's a nice place to live.
In Summary:
It's good to have these episodes back so that they can cease being revered mysteries and instead become blissfully ordinary and everyday.
