Over the years, the main interest in Doctor Who has been because of the actors that have appeared in it, the many monsters that have been created. Many Single Doctor Who episodes were destroyed when the BBC had to clear out their vaults, and many adventures were lost for good, or were they?
In 1992 the full adventure of the Tomb of the Cybermen was discovered in Hong Kong and in January 1999, the first episode of the Crusade: the Lion was found at a sale of films. The episode was found in New Zealand (where many Doctor Who episodes were sold, but this episode had NEVER been shown on television in New Zealand) and it was brought by Bruce Grenville in June 1998 at a film collectors' fair in Napier. He did not realise that the episode was missing, and he told many of his friends (who also liked Doctor Who), and he found out that this was a missing episode. The BBC were informed almost immediately and the print had been copied and restored back to its original condition.
Many single Doctor Who adventures had been recovered before, some from collectors and The Dalek's Master Plan: Episodes 5 and 10 were both found in the cellars of a Mormon church. This episode had not been shown for thirty-five years and it was amazing that they had been discovered. Recently, Doctor Who fans and archivists have expressed their disappointment that more episodes were unlikely to be found.
The episodes were destroyed in the Seventies, when the BBC wanted to make way for new television programmes and they decided to destroy prints that have reached their full potential and they would no longer be any use. They had either been sold abroad for the last time or had no market in overseas sales. These were the days long before video recorders and cable TV stations were started, and there were not many repeats on TV then. As a result of this, many black and white adventures were erased. During the last twenty years, a small number of these have been recovered, but there are still 109 episodes missing from the BBC archives.
Many clips for Doctor Who were found in the vaults of the Australian Government sensor department, because programmes had to be checked and scenes that were too violent for Australian audiences had to be cut and return to the government so they could check that it had been done. They kept these clips, which include:
-clips for the Smuggles, The Underwater Menace, The Macra Terror, and Fury From the Deep.
Also, a clip from Galaxy Four was used in a documentary about Doctor Who, and it is now the only remaining material from the whole story. The most wanted episode is the Tenth Planet: Episode 4, this is where the Doctor regenerates for the first time. A few clips exist from this episode and a few clips from the next episode (The Power of the Daleks: Episode 1).
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