Even though some lost Doctor Who episodes have found their back to the archive, some of them are still incomplete, and may never be fully restored. What happened to their missing Doctor Who scenes?
When Doctor Who was film recorded for overseas distribution, some countries required cuts to be made to particular episodes, usually for censorship reasons. One country that was particularly stringent about this was Australia, who made significant splices to some Doctor Who scenes. In their case, though, the Australian government required that the excised Doctor Who scenes be sent directly to them and retained as proof that the deletions had taken place.
Because of this, when certain missing Doctor Who episodes were returned to the archive, it was possible to restore them to their original runtimes by re-inserting the deleted Doctor Who scenes which were retained by the Australian government. One example of this is ‘The Underwater Menace‘ episode two, which had been cut in a number of places and was still incomplete when it was recovered in 2011. The restoration team did, however, already possess the missing Doctor Who scenes from Australia, and was able to put them back into the episode when they were preparing it for commercial release.
The advantage of this censorship is that we now have some Doctor Who scenes from episodes which are missing from the archive completely, and are now the only pieces we have left of certain stories. This is certainly true of ‘Fury from the Deep,’ of which we have only the audio recordings and a handful of censored Doctor Who scenes. The longest and most famous of these is the chilling sequence from episode two, when two possessed men enter the house of Maggie Harris and exhale deadly toxic fumes, which seemingly choke her to death.
Alas, there are some stories which remain incomplete to this day, with their deleted Doctor Who scenes lost to the sands of time. One of these is ‘The War Machines’ from 1966, which currently exists as something of a Frankenstein reconstruction from various sources owing to the cuts that were made to it when it was sold abroad. When the adventure was originally released on VHS, the restoration team did its best to bring the story back to its original run time, but there were some sequences where this just wasn’t possible.
The two biggest moments were the ‘test sequence’ from the end of episode two, where the eponymous war machine goes on a rampage whilst stalking the Doctor’s friend Ben. The second involved part of a conversation between two ‘villains’ Professor Brett and his assistant Krimpton in episode three, which was missing its opening. Fortunately, as is the case for all of the missing Doctor Who episodes from the 1960s, these moments still existed in audio form, so the restoration team was able to bring the episodes back to their original runtime by simply putting the sound back into the programmes.
The problem is that, without pictures, viewers would simply be looking at a blank screen as the sound from these missing Doctor Who scenes played out. Therefore, the team cunningly used footage from other sources to fill the gaps. For the warehouse sequence, it took other shots of the war machine from earlier in the episode, as well as clips from the machine’s Blue Peter appearance, which was repurposed with a smoke overlay. And for the conversation between Brett and Krimpton, the restoration team simply cut away to a shot of the WOTAN computer as they spoke, as it (obviously) wasn’t possible to recreate the actors’ performances.
There are other episodes, however, where it simply isn’t possible to recreate these lost Doctor Who scenes, and they remain missing from their various episodes. One of these is in the fourth part of ‘The Time Meddler,’ where two Viking soldiers are killed by the villagers. This moment is missing approximately 12 seconds, which depicts the slaying of the two men. And although the original audio was included on the DVD release, there wasn’t much the restoration team could do to re-insert the lost sequence, save from cutting away to a random close-up of a bush, or something, which would have been a bit jarring!
Interestingly, there is a pair of Doctor Who episodes which are missing even bigger chunks, and not for censorship reasons. The 1964 story ‘Planet of Giants’ was originally filmed as a four part adventure, and it was only after the story was cut together that the production team decided that it lacked a certain punch, and was a little slow-paced for a season opener.
Therefore, they decided to cut this adventure down to a three part story, meaning that there are, effectively, two missing Doctor Who episodes from the archive. And the chances of anyone ever seeing the original cut of ‘Planet of Giants’ are virtually impossible, as the tapes were never copied or film recorded, and were most probably junked around the time of their editing.
As such, there are huge swathes of missing Doctor Who scenes from ‘Planet of Giants’ which will probably never be seen again. But even then, there is no faulting the determination of some Doctor Who fans. In 2012, missing episode hunter Ian Levine and his team recreated the missing audio using two of the original cast members, William Russell and Carole Ann Ford, along with First Doctor impersonator John Guilor. The missing pictures were reconstructed using footage from elsewhere in the story, along with new animation sequences to bridge the gaps. The ‘complete’ version was subsequently released on DVD for all to enjoy.
As such, these Doctor Who stories are now about as complete as they will ever be, unless other, unaltered films are returned to the BBC archive.
In the meantime, which Doctor Who scenes would you most like to see again? And can you think of other moments which we haven’t included in this post? Let us know in the comments below.
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