Whovians, rejoice. The BBC is about to unlock a piece of Doctor Who history that even the TARDIS might have forgotten. Two lost episodes of Doctor Who, the iconic sci-fi series, will broadcast in April, the showrunner for the current season confirmed.
The two 1965 episodes, The Nightmare Begins and Devil’s Planet, were donated to the charitable trust Film Is Fabulous by the estate of an anonymous collector.
“The collector did recognize what he had, but how he acquired them has been lost to time,” Professor Justin Smith Leicester of De Montfort University, who led the recovery effort, told the broadcaster.
The researchers said that while most of the donor’s private collection was destroyed by water damage, the Doctor Who episodes were intact.
Doctor Who showrunner, Russell T Davies, celebrated the news on Instagram and said the episodes would air in the UK in April, though no US air date has been announced yet.
“Lost for 61 years! Best of all, these will be made available for FREE on the BBC iPlayer in April,” Davies wrote.
He expressed gratitude to Film Is Fabulous for finding the lost episodes and encouraged people to donate to the registered charity. “Maybe they’ll find more! As the Doctor says… ‘Daleks!'”
The episodes feature the first incarnation of the Doctor, played by William Hartnell, and a typical Dalek plot to take over Earth and the galaxy.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the BBC had a policy of destroying film or reusing videotapes, leading to dozens of episodes of Doctor Who and other popular UK shows like Dad’s Army and Top of the Pops going missing.
Old Doctor Who episodes do surface occasionally, and in 2016, the newly discovered soundtrack for one storyline was turned into an animated series called The Power of the Daleks.
Meanwhile, Disney ended its working relationship with the BBC last year, and star Ncuti Gatwa left the show. However, the UK broadcaster says that Doctor Who will continue, and Russell T Davies is working on a new Christmas special.
