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Missing episodes are those televised episodes of Doctor Who which no longer exist in their entirety. They are a phenomenon of the early days of television broadcast in the United Kingdom, when the price of the recording medium itself made it prohibitively expensive to retain recorded episodes of shows that were very unilikely to see re-transmission. Because contracts in the 1960s and early 1970s were written in such a way that future use was essentially inconceivable, many episodes of Doctor Who — and many other shows — were simply taped over. Technically, all 1960s episodes, and a number of Pertwee episodes are missing in that their original masters were intentionally wiped or outright junked by the BBC. However, thanks to the practice of making 16mm telerecordings of the masters for overseas sales, many 1960s episodes were in fact retained as film prints. Although most William Hartnell episodes do exist, the majority of Patrick Troughton stories do not, due largely to the fact that Second Doctor stories did not sell as broadly worldwide as his predecessor's. Thus there were fewer film prints made of the Troughton era.

The wistful hope for missing episodes has become so familiar that it is almost a trope of the Doctor Who fan community. Most years pass without a discovery, but 2011 brought the announcement of two unexpected finds: long lost episodes of Galaxy 4 and The Underwater Menace. Now, only 106 episodes of Doctor Who remained totally missing. Compared with other British shows of the same era, this number represents a particularly good recovery rate. Read more...