Doctor Who

The Daleks' Master Plan - S3-E4

Trivia: For many years, it was thought that every episode of "The Daleks' Master Plan" had been destroyed by the BBC, in their 1970s purge of the archives. However, in 1983, two episodes (5 and 10) were found and returned to the BBC for preservation. They were found in a highly unlikely location: the basement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Clapham, South London. No one knows how they got there.

The Daleks' Master Plan - S3-E4

Trivia: A "missing, believed wiped" episode was found in January 2004, when "Day of Armageddon", the second episode of "The Daleks' Master Plan", was returned to the BBC by an employee of Yorkshire Television. He had rescued the print from destruction in the early 1970s when, as a young BBC engineer, he had found it in a room at the BBC's Ealing Film Studios, which he had been asked to clear of rubbish. He disobeyed the instruction to destroy the episode and took it home with him. Arguably, he stole it from the BBC, but if he hadn't, it would never have survived. In 2013 (I forgot the episode name, but it was the one with Salamander), they found the rest of the films for another episode. The new ones were animated, combined with the already existing ones and released on DVD.

The Daleks' Master Plan - S3-E4

Trivia: One of the episodes of this serial, "The Feast of Steven", was broadcast on Christmas Day, 1965, making it the show's first technical Christmas special. Due to expectations of low viewer numbers on the holiday, the episode was made as a humourous romp through 1920s Hollywood, with no connection to the plot of the rest of the serial and the Doctor breaking the fourth wall at the end to wish the viewers a merry Christmas. This is one of two episodes known for certain to be completely lost, having been wiped in the BBC's archive purges.

Planet of the Spiders - S11-E5

Plot hole: At the climax of episode 2, the Doctor is about to catch Lupton when the latter simply teleports to safety. So why didn't he do that in the first place, before engaging in a 15-minute chase?

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Earthshock - S19-E6

Question: In Earthshock, season 19, at the end of episode 3, the Cyber Leader views his troops marching down the corridor. Each column is headed by a Cyber Leader. Is this a mistake, or is there more than one Cyber Leader allowed per army?

Answer: In 'The Five Doctors', three separate Cyberleaders are definitely used. So it's likely that Cyberleaders are like unit commanders, of which a fair-sized army might have several.

Daria Sigma

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