Missing Doctor Who Episodes Recovered!

The Doctor and Vicki in a scene from Airlock

The official Doctor Who website has revealed that two lost episodes have been recovered, restored, and unveiled in London today. The BFI's annual Missing Believed Wiped event at the National Film Theatre has shown Airlock, the third part of Galaxy 4 (originally broadcast September 25th 1965), and part two of The Underwater Menace (January 21st 1967).

The complete, black and white episodes were bought by film collector Terry Burnett at a village fete near Southampton in the early 1980's, but he was unaware that the canisters contained missing BBC material, and the classic footage was loaned to the BBC archives earlier this year. Screen shots are available to view here, and you can read a BBC News report here.

There are currently 106 episodes from 27 serials, still missing from the archives. Three stories have no surviving footage at all - Marco Polo, Mission to the Unknown, and The Massacre. This new find comes seven years after episode two of The Daleks' Master Plan was recovered, and the last, whole story to be unearthed was The Tomb of the Cybermen almost 20 years ago.