Following the news that two episodes of the 1965-66 Doctor Who story, The Daleks’ Master Plan, have been found, we will soon have five episodes of the twelve-part story available to watch.
This last week, it was announced that The Nightmare Begins and Devil’s Planet have been found — i.e. episodes one and three of the story. These respectively aired on 13th November 1965 and 27th November 1965 originally, and will be available to UK viewers on BBC iPlayer very soon.
Here’s the full list of episodes in The Daleks’ Master Plan:
- The Nightmare Begins
- Day of Armageddon
- Devil’s Planet
- The Traitors
- Counter Plot
- Coronas of the Sun
- The Feast of Steven
- Volcano
- Golden Death
- Escape Switch
- The Abandoned Planet
- Destruction of Time
There was also a one-part prologue, Mission to the Unknown, which aired before The Myth Makers; while that doesn’t exist, it was recreated by students, graduates, and staff of the University of Central Lancashire back in 2019, using 1960s production values.
Remarkably, five of the twelve episodes do exist: The Nightmare Begins, Day of Armageddon, Devil’s Planet, Counter Plot, and Escape Switch, so that’s episodes one, two, three, five, and ten.
BBC Enterprises offered eleven of the twelve episodes for overseas sales, leaving out The Feast of Steven, given its festive (and somewhat standalone) nature, but no markets bought them. ABC in Australia was interested, considering censoring the parts it deemed “too violent” to air, but eventually pulled out entirely. Nonetheless, the reels for The Nightmare Begins and Devil’s Planet were cutting copies, used for reviewing the story for sales in foreign markets. Somehow, they ended up in the hands of a private collector, who left their collection to Film is Fabulous after their passing.
The BBC’s 405-line videotape of The Nightmare Begins was ordered to be wiped on 17th August 1967, while Devil’s Planet followed in January 1969. Extracts from that third episode were aired on Blue Peter in 1971, while the fourth episode was lent to Blue Peter in its entirety… but was never returned, so remains missing.
A similar curiosity is the discovery of Counter Plot and Escape Switch, both of which were found in the basement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Wandsworth in July 1983; no one seems to know how they got there. These two were released by BBC Video as part of the VHS, Daleks: The Early Years, in 1992.
Former BBC engineer Francis Watson then returned Day of Armageddon to the BBC in January 2004, and it was included in the Lost in Time DVD in 2004, then further released as a promotional DVD, given away with copies of The Sun, in 2006.
So yes, it’s been 22 years since an episode of The Daleks’ Master Plan was discovered!
The Nightmare Begins and Devil’s Planet will be screened on 4th April 2026, and should be available on iPlayer soon after. We hope to hear news about worldwide availability soon.
