Doctor Who, the sci-fi tv show produced by BBC, is listed in Guinness World Records as the longest-running science fiction television show in the world. It started in 1963 and – with a couple of hiatuses in the past – is still running strong today, for a total of 783 episodes and counting.

But, between about 1964 and 1973, large amounts of older material stored in the BBC’s various video tape and film libraries were either destroyed, wiped or simply deteriorated (due to bad storage). This led to the loss of many of the older episodes of Doctor Who.
According to BBC, the number of missing episodes amounts to 106. The hunt for these lost gems is desperate, but once in a while a new treasure is found. Like the two long gone episodes unearthed in the private collection of a former tv engineer, Terry Burnett, who bought them at a school party in Hampshire in the Eighties.

The two recently found tiles of the mosaic are “Airlock” (the third episode of a four-part story called Galaxy Four, which was aired during the autumn of 1965) and the second part of The Underwater Menace, from early 1967.

Burnett tells how he got to own these two treasures: “I’ve been interested in film since about 1947. I’ve built up a modest collection. I buy and sell, and keep the films I like. [...] In the mid-80s, an electrician at TVS was organising a school fête over Marchwood way [near Southampton]. Everybody down there knew I was a film buff, and he just mentioned to me, ‘I’ve got a box of films if you’re interested.’ So I said, ‘Bring ’em in.’ We did a suitable deal, I took them home and found two Doctor Whos among them. I cleaned them up, showed them in my ‘old Hollywood’ [home cinema] and then they went into my archive“.

You can find a great report on this find here.