The Doctor Who Tapes Found in a Nigerian Relay Station

Until 1978, the BBC didn't have an archive for videotape. It had a film library and an Engineering Department that owned the tapes themselves, on the assumption that the tape, not the show on it, was the asset. The Department's job was to keep the stock in good condition for reuse, which meant erasing whatever was on it once the rebroadcast window closed. Equity, the actors' union, charged steep repeat fees, so a rebroadcast usually wasn't worth it. So the tapes got wiped.

Between 1967 and 1978, the BBC erased most of the early Doctor Who. Of 124 Jon Pertwee episodes broadcast 1970-74, more than half had their original transmission tapes destroyed within two years of going to air. As of March 2026, 95 episodes from the show's first six years are still missing, leaving 26 serials incomplete.

What survives, in every case, is sound. Fans had pointed reel-to-reel tape recorders at the television speaker on broadcast night and kept the recordings. Every missing episode exists as a complete soundtrack, often with breathing and chair creaks audible. The BBC has used those recordings to reconstruct lost serials with still photos.

The biggest video haul in decades came in 2013. Philip Morris of Television International Enterprises Archives, who tracks down old film prints sold to overseas broadcasters, found a stack of 16mm cans on a shelf at a relay station in Jos, Nigeria. Inside were six episodes of The Enemy of the World and five of The Web of Fear — eleven episodes total, returned to the BBC in October 2013. Web of Fear episode 3 disappeared somewhere between Jos and London. It is presumed sold to a private collector and has not surfaced.

The rest of what's gone is presumably overseas, in attics and church basements, on prints sold to small stations sixty years ago and never returned. The hunt is still active.