Until the ’70s, television productions were considered something ephemeral by the BBC, with a very limited number of repeats. Because the videotapes they were recorded on were expensive, after some time they were wiped to be reused. Sometimes there were other remaining copies sold abroad but many productions have been at least partially lost, including many episodes of “Doctor Who” with the First and Second Doctor. Today, this practice seems absurd but we’re talking about an era before even VCRs.

Of a part of “Doctor Who” adventures from the ’60s some of the episodes were recovered, returned from foreign broadcasters and sometimes ended up in private collections. Some adventures have been completely recovered, others only partially, of some of them all the episodes are still missing.

Until yesterday there were a total of 108 missing episodes but at the annual “Missing Believed Wiped” held by the “British Film Institute” in London they announced the discovery of episode 3 of the First Doctor adventure “Galaxy 4”, which until now was completely missing, and episode 2 of the Second Doctor adventure “The Underwater Menace”.

Ralph Montagu, who works for the Radio Times magazine and is a “Doctor Who” fan, sometimes meets a group of film collectors and former engineers who worked for TV stations. Some months ago he spoke with Terry Burnett, who was an engineer for TVS, which was an ITV franchise, who told him he had a “Doctor Who” episode.

At a subsequent meeting, Terry Burnett brought the spool and Ralph Montagu discovered that it was “Air Lock”, an episode of the adventure “Galaxy 4”. A couple of weeks later, Burnett told him he had another “Doctor Who” episode that turned out to be the second of “The Underwater Menace”.

These episodes were probably returned by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) to the BBC, which got rid of them but some fan saved them. In the ’80s, Terry Burnett bought them along with other films and kept them in his private collection.

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Now these two episodes must be restored, first of all because they’re worn. In the “Galaxy 4” episode, 27 seconds and the end credits are missing. Having the complete audio track they can use other materials to recreate the missing scene in some way. In the “The Underwater Menace” episode, 20 seconds are missing, cut by the ABC censors, but luckily that scene was already recovered in 1996 so the episode can now be restored to its entirety.

The latest episode of “Doctor Who” found before this news was the second of the adventure “The Daleks’ Master Plan” in 2004. In later years there occasionally rumors about new findings but they proved unfounded. In 2004 the BBC published the “Lost in Time” box set, containing various isolated episodes of the First and Second Doctor adventures recovered in small part only.

Inevitably, the more time passes the less likely someone finds the missing episodes but this new discovery revives hopes among “Doctor Who” fans showing that at least some episodes may still be present in some private collections whose owners haven’t realized what they have in their hands.

Soon the BBC will communicate its plans to publish the two episodes found. Probably they’ll be included as extras in one of the next DVDs to the delight of fans.