March 13, 2026
Bigger on the inside of a shoebox
Lost Doctor Who Episodes Found
Fans lose it as 1965 Dalek drama crawls out of a cardboard box
TLDR: Two missing 1965 Doctor Who episodes featuring William Hartnell were found in a collector’s box and will stream on BBC iPlayer at Easter. Fans are exploding with nostalgia and memes, split between joking they should’ve stayed lost and celebrating a rare, history-filling win for classic Who.
A dusty cardboard box just did what the TARDIS does best—deliver a time jump. Two long-lost 1965 Doctor Who episodes starring the very first Doctor, William Hartnell, turned up in an amateur collector’s stash in Leicester, and the fandom is screaming in caps. Actor Peter Purves (Steven Taylor) was ambushed with a secret screening at the Phoenix Cinema and declared, “My flabber has never been so gasted,” which the comment sections immediately adopted as a new meme. The BBC says the restored episodes hit BBC iPlayer this Easter, and fans are already planning watch parties and weepy rewatches.
The internet chaos? Delicious. One camp is all nostalgia confetti—beardy vets reminiscing about the first time a Dalek rolled on screen and “vindicated” their hopes. Another camp is gleefully conspiratorial: did the Doctor mean for these to stay lost? Jokes are flying about a “bigger-on-the-inside shoebox,” Daleks hiding from censors, and the BBC trying to “exterminate” old tapes. There’s also debate over the “dark and gritty” tone of The Daleks’ Master Plan—too violent for Australia and New Zealand back then—versus fans arguing that black-and-white bleakness is peak Who. Meanwhile, archivists at Film is Fabulous! get hero status for rescuing reels from water-damaged cans, and newcomers are asking why everyone’s crying over grainy film. Answer: because history just regenerated.
Key Points
- •Two missing 1965 Doctor Who episodes, The Nightmare Begins and Devil’s Planet, were found in a private collector’s film collection.
- •Restored versions will be released on BBC iPlayer this Easter.
- •The find completes the first three parts of The Daleks’ Master Plan, alongside Day of Armageddon recovered in 2004.
- •Leicester charity Film is Fabulous! led the recovery; Professor Justin Smith (De Montfort University) detailed the discovery.
- •The serial was wiped and not sold overseas due to censorship in Australia and New Zealand and the shift to color, contributing to its loss.