Note; I had reviewed this story in July 2023 as part of my 60s Who marathon, the initial reviews of which can be read here;https://letterboxd.com/drashleywho/film/doctor-who-the-daleks-master-plan/reviews/by/added-earliest/With that said...Friday, 13th March 2026OH MY GOD THEY FOUND EPISODES 1 AND 3!!!…I mean look I’d have been grateful if even a couple of episodes from The Space Pirates had turned up but the fact they got some more of THE HOLY GRAIL OF LOST DOCTOR WHO EPISODES and that the first seventy-five minutes will now be able to be uninterruptedly seen on iPlayer THIS EASTER is insane. Between this and the TV Movie’s original film reels being recovered from Universal’s storage this is shaping up to be a golden year for classic Who.Massive applause for Film is Fabulous, I absolutely encourage anyone reading this to donate to them so they can save even more lost media … maybe even some more missing episodes so there might not be a more-than-twelve-year wait the next time!Friday, 3rd April 2026 (was going to post this the following day but as per usual I couldn’t resist)So here’s a review about those two episodes since they’re now on iPlayer a day earlier than announced, lucky us.Something noticeable about the first half of The Daleks’ Master Plan as a Terry Nation-penned script is how unusually dark it is. From the outset, this is a grounded and gritty affair from the usual action-adventure fare he normally writes, mostly set in a hostile environment akin to the radiation-laden forests of Skaro, where death lurks around every corner and anyone can be disposed of as quick as the snap of a finger (and a lot of them unfortunately do; in fact episode four gets bookended with the deaths of two major players) and congregations of higher-ups from across the galaxy plan the conquest of the universe in shady meetings within a Dalek city. But what truly hammers it home is the direction from Douglas Camfield who treats the material as a serious adult drama, much like he does with future stories like Inferno or The Seeds of Doom.Within these two newly found episodes, we can appreciate some details unseen for over 60 years; Katarina having two more existing episodes meaning the majority of her tenure now exists, Hartnell’s furious reaction to seeing the Daleks again, his excited mannerisms earlier on when seeing a city ahead that gets cut short upon a gun being pressed behind his back, Mavic Chen’s first appearance as an interview snippet being on a darkened space background which foreshadows his sinister nature, the cliffhanger to episode one being even more dramatically presented than the reprisal in Day of Armageddon, the Doctor getting into the Spar with his face covered in a balaclava and the ship taking off with some very 60’s effects work, Desparus being just as uncomprehendingly hellish as a prison planet as was hinted at in the surviving audio (the cave backdrop and bedraggled look of the torch-wielding prisoners being strikingly similar to the Stone Age dwellings of An Unearthly Child), that final shot of Kirson grabbing a screaming Katarina. This, I think, is the true wonder of missing episode recoveries, the chance to see little visual details that enhance the story even more that we didn’t beforehand. And god, if we ever got the chance to see the other seven like Destruction of Time, who knows how many more undiscovered riches there are…Again, many thanks to Film is Fabulous for this. If these are the only two they ever recover I’ll still be grateful but hopefully they’ll be able to dig out some more in the years to come!
