Missing Episodes analysis

UPDATED 8 Apr 2024

Well, there's fan telesnaps recons of all of them and 16mm telecines of some of them.
These days there's Animated eps on DVD and fan animations. Some are better than others.
For reference, here's the scoreboard


A  BBC DVD Animation
A   Fan animation with full motion and basically watchable with narrative integrity (incomplete ep animations not counted.)

R  BBC DVD reconstruction using telesnaps (not necessarily perfect, fan recons are often better)

 -   It's missing

No.	TITLE
001	1A An Unearthly Child	1	2	3	4
002	1B The Dead Planet	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
003	1C Beyond the Sun	1	2	3	4
004	1D Marco Polo	A	-	-	-	-	-	-
005	1E The Keys of Marinus	1	2	3	4	5	6
006	1F The Aztecs	1	2	3	4
007	1G The Sensorites	1	2	3	4	5	6
008	1H The French Revolution	1	2	3	A	A	6
009	1J Planet of Giants	1	2	3
010	1K The World's End	1	2	3	4	5	6
011	1L The Powerful Enemy	1	2
012	1M The Romans	1	2	3	4
013	1N The Web Planet	1	2	3	4	5	6
014	1P The Lion	1	R	3	R
015	1Q The Space Museum	1	2	3	4
016	1R The Executioners	1	2	3	4	5	6
017	1S The Time Meddler	1	2	3	4
018	1T Galaxy Four	A	A	3 A	A
019	1T/A Mission to the Unknown	A
020	1U The Mythmakers	-	-	-	-
021	1V The Daleks Masterplan	-	2	-	-	5	-	-
		A	-	-	-	10	-	-
022	1W The Massacre	-	-	-	-
023	1X The Ark	1	2	3	4
024	1Y The Celestial Toymaker	A	A	A	4 A
025	1Z The Gunfighters	1	2	3	4
026	2A The Savages	-	-	-	-
027	2B The War Machines	1	2	3	4
028	2C The Smugglers	-	-	-	-
029	2D The Tenth Planet	1	2	3	A
030	2E The Power of the Daleks	A	A	A	A	A	A
031	2F The Highlanders	-	-	-	-
032	2G The Underwater Menace	A	2 A	3 A	A
033	2H The Moonbase	A	2	A	4
034	2J The Macra Terror	A	A	A	A
035	2K The Faceless Ones	1 A	A	3 A	A	A	A
036	2L The Evil of the Daleks	A	2 A	A	A	A	A	A
037	2M The Tomb of the Cybermen	1	2	3	4
038	2N The Abominable Snowmen	A	2 A	A	A	A	A
039	2O The Ice Warriors	1	A	A	4	5	6
040	2P The Enemy of the World	1	2	3	4	5	6
041	2Q The Web of Fear	1	2	A	4	5	6
042	2R Fury from the Deep	A	A	A	A	A	A
043	2S The Wheel in Space	-	-	3	-	-	6
044	2T The Dominators	1	2	3	4	5
045	2U The Mind Robber	1	2	3	4	5
046	2V The Invasion	A	2	3	A
		5	6	7	8
047	2W The Krotons	1	2	3	4
048	2X The Seeds of Death	1	2	3	4	5	6
049	2Y The Space Pirates	-	2	-	-	-	-
050	2Z The War Games	1	2	3	4	5
		6	7	8	9	10

	Eps	Complete Serials
TOTAL	253	50
OK	- 156	- 24
MISSING	= 97	= 26
BBC ANIMATED	- 50	- 15
Fan animated	- 3	-1
Really missing	= 44	= 10

008 The French Revolution

AKA The Reign of Terror

Started it Wed 30-May

Once again a sort of character piece. The historical stuff has not gone out of style. Back when this was made Tale of Two Cities as a movie and a book was well known. Now Les Miserables and Black Adder 3 make this no less well known.

The studio bound farmhouse fire which ends ep1 is acceptable in context.
The 18h century 'sewerage' horror is hinted at darkly and effectively. Lily made a joke about the prison conditions faced by Barb, Ian and Susan in ep2 being much worse than on Skaro... which is quite true. Say what you like about Daleks but they keep a city clean!

The action is very Dennis Spooner. He'll be back of course when we get to the Romans and the Time Meddler. The drama is presented as little set pieces often with a 'comedic' character e.g. the road gang supervisor in ep3.

The last episode is the nearest to spectacular for two reasons. The Napoleon cameo: several bits of dialogue earlier in the series hinted at meeting historical figures. Indeed the Tardis travellers had met Kublai Khan and Marco Polo but here's one that everyone recognises.

Also the 'our destiny is in the stars' ending. This is a series finale after all. This might have only made any sense on original transmission in the UK since overseas viewers saw DW serials in different blocks (with repeats too(!)) to the UK (until the mid 70's anyway).

According to the doco on the DVD the production was somewhat troubled with the Hungarian director Henric Hirsch having a breakdown and struggling to complete his work. Also this is the serial (from ep5 I think) where the production moved from Lime Grove to Television Centre Wood Lane. (They'll be back..... but not for a year or two.)

Overall this is a vignette. It's not like a complete story but many little things sticky taped together.


ABM Rating 2.75/4.00
LJM Rating 3.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.50/10.00 

Peak Ranking No. 2 (out of 8)

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007 The Sensorites

This is slow and padded out to b*ggery.

There's about 25 minutes of plot in 6 episodes.

The Sensorites costumes are terrible. Their face masks are a disaster.

There's half an ok idea in the story but it gets buried under a metric sh*t ton of padding.


ABM Rating 2.00/4.00
LJM Rating 1.75/5.00
SPJ Rating 3.50/10.00 

Peak Ranking No. 7 (out of 7)

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006 The Aztecs

More accomplished, better acting, much better set design.

The music is brilliant and very memorable. Done by Richard Rodney Bennett (famed for some big film scores Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), each earned him Oscar nominations and some serious modern music after this) and a real set of musicians.

The story is a serious time travel fantasy. 'You can't rewrite history, not one line.'

Proper Doctor Who....  

ABM Rating 3.75/4.00
LJM Rating 3.00/5.00
SPJ Rating 7.50/10.00 

Peak Ranking No. 1 (out of 6)

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005 The Keys of Marinus

This is cheaper and more transparent than the previous serial. There are plenty of terrible visual effects (the plastic ice in ep3), lamentable action (the horrible fighting in ep4), boring and lazy direction and camerawork, the wobbly sets and some hammy acting (the wife of the bad guy in ep 5 and 6).

The script is tame codswallop. It's a basic quest story. It has been done better many times since.

The whole quest notion is eroded by the 'Oh well just blow up the Conscience of Marinus now Yartek is in control" ending. If that was a live option then why didn't the keeper do this in ep1 and save everyone the bother? That's an awfully huge plot hole.

George Colouris is quite a famous actor. He was in Citizen Kane (1941) for instance. His role is very short and not real impressive. I sense that he was seriously over the hill at this point in his life. He's in ep1 only. Blink and you'll miss him.

Also notice:

• Francis de Wolff is slumming it in ep3 and 4 (Jedikiah off The Tomorrow People and lots more movies dating back to the 1930's)
• Donald Pickering in ep5 (first of his 3 DW guest star appearances, films and TV from the 50's to the 00's)
• Edmund Warwick in ep3 (noted stand in for Hartnell)
• Raf De La Torre ep 5 & 6 (lots of films 50's to the 70's)
• Fiona Walker (Lady Peinforte in Silver Nemesis indeed!)
• Robin Philips (Altos) went on to be quite an important director on Broadway and in other big theatrical productions. Not sure if he took those shorty shorts with him but...

... The guest cast in this is probably the most notable aspect of the story. When Julian Glover is in next season's The Crusade, the publicity was 'hey great actors wanna be in this... good sign". But for some reason they don't say that about The Keys of Marinus which based on the above list has arguably DW's best cast of the 1960's.

The story is diverted by the Millenius trial stuff in ep5 and 6. It's probably a better story and by the time the keys and the pyramid bit comes back on, it's something of a let down.

ABM Rating 2.50/4.00

LJM Rating 1.90/5.00
SPJ Rating 3.00/10.00

Peak Ranking No. 4 (out of 5)

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004 Marco Polo

This is a completely missing serial. We watched recons.

We watched the colour flash animation version of The Roof of the World (ep1) (edgy and sketchy but effective). Then the Loose Cannon colour stills version of ep2 (looks ok). We watched a B&W SIMS generated animated version for Ep3. Intriguing use of a gaming technology but it has the curious effect of 'recasting' every character as some computer "sprite" which leads to confusion about which character is which. So we went back to the Loose Cannon stills version for the rest.

This is a slowish, long read kind of story. It has the problem that more than half of the cliffhangers are bad guy Tegana about to threaten something or someone.

The story/plot is kind of unimportant. It seems to take second place to the character interaction.
Marco Polo is drawn as a desperate diplomat. Kublai Khan as a fussy old man. Other characters are cardboard cut out villains or bystander 'ticket inspectors' of some sort.

A good production and an interesting setting. Not what you expect if you want Daleks and terror but intriguing in other ways.


ABM Rating 3.00/4.00
LJM Rating 3.50/5.00
SPJ Rating 6.50/10.00 

Peak Ranking No. 1 (out of 4)

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